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Editor's Notes

• #4: I¡¯ve said pervasive gaming a few times, and what do I mean? From term pervasive comes from the language of ubiquitous computing Avant-garde game design and play that started to use emerging technologies. Mixed digital gaming with the real world Community of practice that surrounds the conjunction between experimental game design, technology development and the everyday physical world.
• #8: Mostly what I've been looking at is urban/street gaming Charting a trajectory away from technology Often consciously engaging with the nature of public space, urban space and the streets. Using the social topology and geographies of urban space as the space for game play. Not just as a cartesian map, but as a socio-spatial part of the game.
• #9: A critical exploration of the design of pervasive, mixed reality, big games, etc. Emphasis on critical. Not isolated to academic and research project. How does this fit into the way things are really happening? What are people really designing, making, playing? A project that is based on empirical qualitative work with real players and practicing designers. How do these games, and their emergence reflect on society? Are they a sign we are becoming more playful? How is our relationship to technology changing? Some useful design insights.
• #12: This is Staghunt. A game by hide and seek. One of the striking things I¡¯ve found during my research is a strong similarity between symbolism and the mechanics of symbols in both primative ritual and street gaming. Masks, identity shifting, the use of archetypes, spectacular elements, the nature of the carnivalesque all are mirrored between street, urban gaming and ritual. Like this example of stag hunt which plays with the idea of the ritualised hunt and turns it into a team sport. Not to say that they are exactly the same, but they contain symbolism that functions similarly.
• #13: I draw on the work of British anthropologist Victor Turner to tell me how and why rituals work. Turner in Africa in early 50s. One point about pre-industrial society is that it is much more rigid than the contemporary world. Social crises or dramas that were unsolvable in the strict everyday tribal structures. Paradoxes and problems. Such as the birth of twins, infertility or how to promote someone to chiefdom. Rituals had to go outside the everyday to solve problems. They had to break with the norm.
• #14: Turner is most famous for this three part ritual structure ofhow rituals work The first phase comprises symbolic behaviour that signifies detachment from the regular fixed point in the social structure. Identity is broken down and blurred. In the intervening liminal period the characteristics of the ritual subject are ambiguous, and has few or none of the aspects of the previous or future state. They can and do partake of taboo activities and thoughts. The distance between the physical and imaginary is significantly less. Not only are the markers of identity blurred, but the sense of identity also breaks down. It is disorienting, but can also deliver new perspectives. In the middle of ritual everything can be ambiguous and have multivocal meaning. In the third phase the ritual subject is returned to structured society in the new state. Reintegrated but changed. It is termed ¡®the liminal¡¯ as he had noticed that rituals physically occurred on edges of occupied space, the edge of the village, the edge of the territory. Rituals have a structure and a sense, but it isnt the structure of the everyday. An anti-structure. It is a personal journey. It has a narrative to it, but it is not traditional narrative structure.
• #15: The best street games I believe clearly follow this structure. When I also looked at the work of Blast Theory it was also the case. In a detailed analysis of Blast Theory¡¯s Machine To See With I found huge levels of liminal symbolism.
• #16: The logic of liminality is a great way to think about physical games, street games, pervasive games. Key differences between ritual processes and narrative structure. Climax is at the end of the second act. One big critique of street gaming is that it tends to be very messy with the beginnings and the ends. Getting the beginnings and endings right is really important.
• #19: Kaboom player Hide and Seek player Hide and Seek player/designer Players of urban games associated their adult play activities with childhood play. In a nostalgic and celebratory way.
• #20: Bunting and info desk at Hide and Seek 2010 Games of Yore for igfest 2010 CO+P at the brooklyn Lyceum and Old Stone House, also in the post industrial Gowanus.
• #21: Nostalgia for times past. Referential nostalgia. Nostalgia for childhood. Participants all have busy lives, many of them talked about this. Idealising previous generations and childhood provide a space for play, and a place to escape to. This is marked when compared to video/computer gaming which is very concerned with bigger, faster, flashier and science fiction. Though linked to the idea of retro gaming. It points to "simpler" games from "simpler" times.
• #22: Importantly the reason for all of this is from childhood memories and experiences. People's experiences are incredibly determined by childhood experiences and feelings from childhood. Evoking the feeling of childhood, the space of childhood gives people the sense of escapism.
• #23: Work with the memories of both childhood, but also other games. Urban games do this to make them work. Work for childlike feelings and emotional responses. Wonder, delight, fear.