Mermaids is an experimental massively multiplayer game set in an underwater world in which players take the roles of hatchlings coming to life in the ruins of a long-extinct mermaid culture. The over-arching goal and storyline is to rebuild the lost Mermaid culture and reclaim their various skills and cultural practices (such as magic), while at the same time trying to avoiding the mistakes that caused the extinction of their ancestors. Players will quickly discover that in order to survive, they must also revive the damaged ecosystem, and ultimately learn to work with it in a harmonious fashion.

Mermaids has four primary design credos that the team was given as its “high-level” design constraints:

•Think socially; act procedurally
•Question conventions
•Appeal to diverse players
•It doesn’t have to be complicated to be complex

The game has no combat and no grinding. Instead players must revive dead coral, collect items that they can assemble into wands and other tools, and spawn new fish schools to replenish the ecosystem. Mermaids uses a unique gesture-based interaction system where players draw symbols in the water to cast spells and perform other tasks.

For more information visit:
www.mermaidsgame.net

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Creative Collaboration in Online Worlds is a yearlong study conducted with a grant from the National Science Foundation to learn how players collaborate, teach and learn in virtual worlds. The study focuses on The University of There, a player-run virtual university within the virtual world There.com. We have been participating in classes and other events, attending staff meetings, and interviewing staff, students and faculty. The findings will be released in a series of papers, the first of which will be presented at DiGRA 2009 in London.

Team:
Celia Pearce, Principal Investigator

Graduate Research Assistants
Pauline Chan (Spring-Summer 2009)
Katherine Mancuso (Summer-Fall 2008)

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Passage is a test bed for emergent gameplay design techniques: by learning to balance simulationist game mechanics with collaborative narrative play, we can create artifacts that encourage rather than simply allow player to player interaction. We are currently working on three interlocking game artifacts: an experimental massively multi-player online role-playing game, set in New York City during the Ellis Island Era (1892-1954); a cross-generational educational board game about the process of entering the United States through Ellis Island; and a table-top roleplaying game which focuses on the situated experience of life in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. The MMO, tentatively titled “5 Boroughs”, draws heavily from the tradition of exploratory MMOGs like Myst Online: Uru Live, and will allow players to assume control of a virtual world populated by other players. The as yet untitled board and role-playing games will provide an analogue counterpart to the digital artifact, allowing younger and older players to experience the narrative context of “5 Boroughs” with less technological investment, and providing us with a fast iterative tool for testing emergent gameplay concepts before introducing them into the MMO.

The rich cultural backdrop of this period also affords us opportunities to examine the endemic racism and sexism of the time; and in an era of inescapable globalization, it is valuable to consider the role that forced cultural assimilation has played in the emergence of an explicitly defined ‘American’ identity. Within that historical context, players have the freedom to direct not only the course of their own lives and destinies, but that of the world at large. They can contribute to the creative and intellectual life of their community by participating in oral traditions and folk activities, write and publish literary materials, produce art, get involved in social or political organizations (labor unions, religious groups, or organized crime, for example), or open their own businesses. In the process, they might work as trailblazers to overcome cultural and economic barriers in an era of racial and sexual discrimination, or attempt to balance the construction of vibrant immigrant communities against the desire to assimilate into the American identity; all alongside (or in opposition to) historical figures of the day. In so doing, players actively engage with their own cultural history, and gain a nuanced understanding of the role immigration plays in that history.

Team:
Audrey Whitman, Lead Designer/Project Manager
Pauline Chan, Game Design/Art Direction
Betsy Gooch, Game Design/Art Direction
Evan Mandel, Game Design/Programming
Joshua Cuneo, Game Design/Programming
Nigel O’Rear, Game Design
Joseph Aboud, Game Design/Level Creation

Celia Pearce, Executive Producer

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An Alternate Reality Game to Help Mitigate Global Climate change

Humans have been having a dramatic impact on the global climate for centuries, but it was not until recently that the true effects of man were realized and documented.”The ‘greenhouse effect’ is not an idea which is new to science. It has merely become more easily detectable in our time as temperatures have risen and scientists have devised more sophisticated ways to measure and forecast atmospheric process” (Johansen, 2002, p.2).Due to the consumption of fossil fuels and other greenhouse gas producing activities, the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen over the past 250 years, and more rapidly in the past 50 years (Houghton, 1997).

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Mermaids Trailer

For more visit www.mermaidsgame.net.

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