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

Team:
Celia Pearce, Principal Investigator

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

Morie, J.F. & Pearce, C. (2009). “Uses of Digital Enchantment: Computer Games as the New Fairy Tales.” In Proceedings Future and Reality of Gaming (FROG), October 17-19, Vienna, Austria.

Pearce, C. and Artemesia. (2009). “Identity-as-Place: Trans-Ludic Identities in Mediated Play Communities—
The Case of the Uru Diaspora.” In Proceedings Internet 9.0: Association of Internet Researchers (AOIR), IT University, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Pearce, C. (2008). “The Truth About Baby Boomer Gamers.” Games & Culture, Vol 3, Issue 2.

Fron, J., Fullerton, T., Morie, J. & Pearce, C. (aka Ludica) (2008). “Getting Girls Into the Game: Towards a Virtuous Cycle.” In Beyond Barbie and Mortal Combat. Yasmin Kafai, Carrie Heeter, Jill Denner and Jen Sun (eds). Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Pearce, C. (2007). “Narrative Environments from Disneyland to World of Warcraft.” In Space, Time, Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. Friedrich von Borries, Steffan P. Walz, and Matteas Bottger (eds). Basel: Birkhauser.

Fron, J., Fullerton, T., Morie, J. & Pearce, C. (aka Ludica) (2007). “The Hegemony of Play.” In Situated Play: Proceedings of Digital Games Research Association 2007 Conference,Tokyo, Japan.

Fullerton, T., Morie, J. & Pearce, C. (aka Ludica) (2007). “A Game of One’s Own: Towards a New Gendered Poetics of Digital Space.” Digital Arts and Culture 2007, Perth, Australia.

Pearce, C., Ashmore, C. (2007). “Principles of Emergent Design in Online Games: Mermaids Phase 1 Prototype.” SIGGRAPH Sandbox, July 2007.

Fron, J., Fullerton, T., Morie, J. & Pearce, C. (aka Ludica) (2007). “Sustainable Play: Towards A New Games Movement for the Digital Age.” (Reprint) Games & Culture, Volume 2, Number 3, July 2007.

Fron, J., Fullerton, T., Morie, J. & Pearce, C. (aka Ludica) (2007). “Playing Dress-Up: Costume, roleplay and imagination.” Philosophy of Computer Games Online Proceedings, January 2007.

Pearce, C. (2006).
Seeing and Being Seen: Presence & Play in Online Games and Virtual Worlds. Position Paper for Online, Offline & the Concept of Presence When Games and VR Collide. October 25-27, Institute for Creative Technologies, University of Southern California.

Pearce, C. (2006). “Communities of Play: The Social Construction of Identity in Persistent Online Game Worlds.” Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan (eds) Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Pearce, C. (2006). “Games as Art: The Aesthetics of Play.” in Fluxus and Legacy, special issue of Visible Language. Ken Friedman and Owen Smith, issue eds; Sharon Poggenpohl, series editor and publisher.

Pearce, C. (2006). “Productive Play: Game Culture from the Bottom Up.” Games & Culture. Volume 1 Issue 1, Winter 2006.

Fron, J., Fullerton, T., Morie, J. & Pearce, C. (aka Ludica) (2005). “Sustainable Play: Towards A New Games Movement for the Digital Age.” Digital Arts & Culture Conference Proceedings, Copenhagen, December 2005.

Pearce, C. (2005). “Theory Wars: An Argument Against Arguments in the so-called Ludology/Narratology Debate.” In Changing Views: Worlds in Play (Digital Games Research Association Conference 2005 Proceedings).

Pearce, C. (2005). “The Art of Worldbuilding: A Conversation with Raph Koster.” Game Studies Journal. Volume 5, Issue 1, May 2005.

Pearce, C. (2004). “Towards a Game Theory of Game.” In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance and Game. Wardrip-Fruin, N. & Harrigan, P. (eds). Cambridge, MIT Press.

Pearce, C. (2003). “Game Noir: A Conversation with Tim Shafer.” Game Studies Journal, Volume 3, Issue 3, May 2003.

Pearce, C. (2002). “Story as Play Space: Narrative in Games.” King, L. (ed.) Game On (Exhibition Catalog). London, Lawrence King Publishing Limited.

Pearce, C. (2002). “The Player with Many Faces: A Conversation with Louis Castle.” Game Studies Journal, Volume 2, Issue 2, December 2002.

Pearce, C. (2002). “Emergent Authorship: The Next Interactive Revolution.” Computers & Graphics, Winter 2002.

Pearce, C. (2002). “Sims, BattleBots, Cellular Automata, God and Go: A Conversation with Will Wright.” Game Studies Journal, Volume 2, Issue 1, July 2002.

Pearce, C. (1997). “Beyond Shoot Your Friends,” Digital Illusion, ed. Clark Dodsworth. New York, Addison-Wesley.

Pearce, C. (1994). “The Ins & Outs of Nonlinear Storytelling.” ACM Computer Graphics, Volume 28, Number 1, May 1994.

METANOMICS: Av-Culturation
Host Robert Bloomfield and guests Celia Pearce and Tom Boellstorff
Monday, March 2, Noon to 1 PM Pacific Time
Hear the Podcast
Read the Rebuttals

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

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).

Alternate reality games (ARGs) are a new genre of digitally-enabled gaming that spreads the “game board” into the real world. They are most commonly used to promote other media products, such as the highly successful Dark Knight game used to promote the 2008 Batman film, or “I Love Bees,” a game deployed on web sites, pay phones, mobile devices and the real world to promote the video game Halo for the xBox. These games can instigate thousands or millions of players to engage in large-scale group actions as part of a social gaming experience.

Terra Viva is an alternate reality game designed to motivate players to take real world action to stop global climate change. According to climatologists change has to be made now, and on a large scale, to stop coming global climate disaster. Both traditional and digital media are being used every day to evangelize this cause, but these methods lack the motivational boost provided by presenting the problem as a game. Some alternate reality games, such as World Without Oil and Superstruct (both produced by the Institute for the Future) have been used to engage players in a discussion about these issues, but to-date no ARG has been used to propagate real world actions to help actually resolve the problem.

The Internet has been used effectively in a viral fashion to mobilize activists in the past, through organizations such as MoveOn.org and Barak Obama’s highly successful election campaign, but it is traditionally used to “preach to the choir” of existing activists. By using gameplay focused on making real world changes, Terra Viva seeks to reach out to a new audience of savvy technology-users by getting them to turn their problem-solving skills to solving actual, rather than hypothetical or imaginary, problems. Alternate reality games have been able to make activists and evangelists out of players for fictional causes. This same gameplay approach will be utilized for a serious cause. Terra Viva hopes to show that games can motivate players to make changes in a way that is both serious and fun at the same time.

Terra Viva is set in the year 2009, but the game characters have used the Internet to tunnel back in time from 2100. In 2100 the effects of global warming have devastated the earth. The earth has already passed the point of no return. The game characters have discovered technology allowing them to travel to the past, but only via electronic media. Because these characters from the future cannot physically travel into the present, they need players from the present-day to help them rewrite their own history and avert the disasters they are experiencing. Along the way, players will discover that these future characters are their own descendents, creating a sense of emotional attachment and empathy to the characters and their cause. Working in secret, under the guise of “The Society for a Better Past,” they reach out via existing social networking sites, mobile phones, YouTube, and other media to create a community of activists who can save humanity from itself and ensure a better future for generations to come.

The main gameplay of Terra Viva revolves around the completion of missions. Players are given specific missions which, when completed in large numbers, can make a significant difference. These are deployed through social networks via facebook, mobile text IMs, YouTube and other means. The player community itself tracks successful missions as completion of each mission must be documented by a minimal number of other players in the game. Players earn points for completing documented missions, sharing missions with others, and verifying others completion of missions. Feedback within the game’s narrative let’s them know when they’ve succeeded in averting a disaster, or how far they have left to go in order to do so.

When players’ reach a certain level in the game, new “levels” will open up to allow them to start creating and deploying their own missions. These will also be ranked and vetted by other players. At the same time, their connection to the game characters will be revealed to be more complex: you might find out that one of the characters is your great-great grand daughter, a nephew or cousin. This creates a strong sense of connection of empathy to the characters and also expresses the core idea of the game, which is that failure to act today is at the expense of future generations.

Team:
Sara Raasch, Lead Designer/Project Manager (Fall-Spring 2009)
Michael Downing, Writing/Video Production (Fall-Spring 2009)
Siddarth Gupta, Video Production (Fall-Spring 2009)
Ray Vichot, Writing (Fall-Spring 2009)
Celia Pearce, Executive Producer

For more visit www.mermaidsgame.net.

]]> http://egg.lcc.gatech.edu/?feed=rss2&p=30 http://egg.lcc.gatech.edu/?p=21 http://egg.lcc.gatech.edu/?p=21#comments Thu, 19 Feb 2009 05:38:29 +0000 gamegrrrl http://egg.lcc.gatech.edu/?p=21 Celia Pearce will be featured in an interview along with Tom Boellstorff on Metanomics, March 2, 2009, 12 noon PST, in Second Life.