Social Media and Games

Gradesheets will be handed out at the start of class. Your midterm grade will be passed out next week, along with an update. The extra credit option for 500 points is still available. If your team would like to pursue the bonus posted during the raid week in light of your grade, you can do so for 1,500 points as a late extra credit.

New this week: nominate someone for an achievement based on their site participation. Have you seen someone create a great group? Contribute above and beyond? Nominate them by emailing me their name and the achievement you believe you deserve. You cannot nominate yourself.

Step One: Reflective Essay

There is no reading quiz today. Instead, reflect on your participation in your team throughout the midterm raid. What did you accomplish personally? What value did you add to the collaborative work? Were there any surprises or obstacles along the way? Think honestly about your role and what you have produced, and write the narrative of your experience. You are responsible for assigning rankings to yourself and your teammates and explaining your reasons.

The rankings:

• Concept Leader: Assign this ranking to someone who contributed substantially to all elements of the project.
• Mission Specialist: Assign this ranking to someone who did not necessarily engage with all aspects of the raid, but did complete their assigned portion.
• Valued Collaborator: Assign this ranking to someone who was involved in all aspects, but never took a strong role in anything.
• Silent Partner: Assign this ranking to someone who was minimally involved in your team and did not contribute substantially.

You have 25 minutes for this task. Essays should NOT be posted publicly but instead should be sent to anastasia.salter@gmail.com with the email heading “Mission Reflection.” Make sure to include your name at the top.

Step Two: Mission Reports

Present your final game to the class. We should hear from each member of the team on their contributions.

Make sure to address how you answered each aspect of the design challenge and listen attentively to other teams presentations: you should also actively visit their site and provide feedback after the presentation.

Step Three: Badges and Accolades

Vote for your favorite game in three categories:

• Best Overall
• Designer Space
• Creative Concept

Badges (and bonus points) will be awarded to teams who win each achievement. Also, the “Class Artist” achievement is open to anyone who designs original art for all three of these badges.

Step Four: At-Home Tasks

Open Forum Week: After the structured mission last week, it’s time to prepare to pursue your own projects. This week, consider both your opinions on his concepts and your own ideas for a final project. Your project must involve building, manipulating, evaluating, interpreting, playing and otherwise prodding at social media networks, games and tools.  Post your final project ideas, or current news and ideas you’ve observed that relate to class discussions. Conversations should take place in the COSC 407 Forum under the heading “Final Project Brainstorming.” These posts are due by the start of class on 11/14!

As you are working on your ARGs, you receive a message from a packaging firm. They’ve heard you are making an ARG and they want to know if you have the chops to use ARGs as a marketing tool.

Persuade them that your ARG could be used to market a fictional media or experience (a film, an educational or political event, a traditional game, a book…). Describe what that media or experience would include and how your ARG would act as a viral lead-in to the product in a 2-3 page pitch.

Remember to consider:

• The audience for the ARG versus the audience for the product
• The strengths of viral social marketing versus traditional marketing
• The ideology of your game and its impact
• The fictional product’s ideology and your game’s ideology
• Your game’s narrative as opposed to the product’s narrative or drive
• Passive versus interactive experiences (and expectations)

Of course, it’s going to cost you to make your pitch. Your group needs to donate $1000 in social currency to get your pitch through to the right people. But, if successful, your pitch can be worth up to 5 bonus points per team member in the category of your choice an an achievement for marketing savvy.

The product pitch is due with the rest of the raid at the start of class on November 7th.

Step One: Choose Your Team

Each raid team *must* include 4-5 people. Ideally, your team will include one member of every suggested class.

Already declared for instance:

Team One

• Raid Leader – @halflingbarbarian
• Builder – @laserpointer
• Designer – @taralqua
• Writer – @dzl24
• Writer – @orlock723

Team Two

• Raid Leader: @velocistar
• Builder: @nomonyxs
• Designer: @joyeux
• Writer: @jcage
• Designer/builder: @joncausith64

Team Three

• Raid Leader: @deadmanwalking
• Builder: @skim321
• Builder: @bazzodee
• Designer: @blarg
• Writer: @student007

Team Four

• Raid Leader: @zachpower
• Builder: @matador
• Designer: @ballzac
• Writer: @sephistrife

Team Five

• Raid Leader: @w35k5r
• Builder: @comradespade21
• Designer: @shadowkitsune
• Writer: @iskander
• Designer/Writer: @mmrichter

Team OPSynergy

• Raid Leader: @unclegun
• Writer: @beanburrito
• Designer: @orez
• Designer: @glowingweakspot
• Builder: @pezz

It is your responsiblity to form and declare a team.

In Class: Team Building – Brainstorming

With your team, you will be given time to plan for the raid today. The Raid Leader is responsible for posting the completed brainstorming and the handles of all team members participating in your group’s forum under the heading “Brainstorming,” and notifying me of completion.

Midterm Raid: The Design Challenge

Your team is charged with designing an apocalypse-inspired Alternate Reality Game. This is intended to be a proof-of-concept ARG that you can show to potential future comments to show your skill with melding reality and gaming in a way that blends a range of social media and experiences.

Your game should:

• Reflect and acknowledge real-world future concerns as viewed through your own creative lens
• Use a clear narrative or metaphor with a progressive storyline
• Require  player creativity, puzzle-solving and collaborative growth
• Show a plan for making good use of social media throughout

Remember the models you’ve seen. You will need to:

• Write a game design document
• Explain your intentional engagement with potential players’ motivation and cognitive surplus
• Design an engaging rabbit hole
• Plan for social media use and progression
• Reflect on the results of your own collaboration

Midterm Raid Task One: The Game Design Document

As a team produce a 1-2 page document explaining your plan for meeting the raid objectives. The team Designer should take point on this task.

Make sure to include all the basic information about your game, including:

The Raid Leader is responsible for notifying me through direct message when the design document is available. While the document is not due until the end of the raid, submit earlier for feedback! No feedback will be given for design documents submitted after November 3rd at Midnight. 

Midterm Raid Task Two: Cognitive Surplus Analysis

As a team produce a 2-3 page document engaging with Clay Shirky and/or Jane McGonigal’s work. How does your design relate to the motive, means, and opportunity for creative work that Shirky described? How does your game make use of alternate reality to create engagement and encourage meaningful collaboration in accordance with (or defiance of) Jane McGonigal’s work? Use specific examples (quotes with PAGE NUMBERS) cited from the reading to support your claims. You can also draw on other readings from the semester thus far to explain how your game will function. The team Writer should take point on this task.

The raid leader is responsible for notifying me through direct message when this document has been agreed upon by all members.

This document is due at the end of the raid: November 7th at 12:30 pm, before the start of class.

Midterm Raid Task Three: Prototype Space

As a team you are responsible for building a working prototype of your game space. You must build enough material to demonstrate how your ARG will work.

The team Builder should take point on this task. Your game space will be judged at the end of the raid: November 7th at 12:30 pm

You have several options for building your space, and if you want to request a BuddyPress space (like this site is built on) to create the community for your ARG, I will host it for you. Your team Raid Leader can request it through direct message by November 4th at midnight. You can also host your space on your own website (on the IAT student server or elsewhere) or keep it on your own computer and provide me with the files, using screenshots on your team’s page.

Your space should include a complete Rabbit Hole:

• An introductory video/audio/play/puzzles or some other hook to start the game
• Clues and design elements pointing to the larger theme
• A clear organization / entity / event that provides the alternate reality apocalypse set-up

• At least three puzzle elements (for any stage of the game) and a plan for how players will reach these markers
• A social media-based plan for creating interaction between ARG “characters” (controlled by the design team) and players

Be as inventive and ambitious as you like with planning: you can plan structures for location-based games, film video introductions, design characters and mock-ups for fake Twitter accounts and FaceBook pages, brainstorm ideas for integration of phone and other communications, and make use of other clues that might already be scattered on the web. Your final build plan should give us a coherent impression of how your game will work and its apocalypse-themed narrative and design. You do not need to build all these structures out, but indicate how you would get there.

Midterm Raid Task Four: Reflection and Playtesting

A debriefing will take place in class on November 7th. There will be opportunities to show off your ARG raid games and take us through the rabbit hole along with a short-in class essay reflecting on your individual contributions so you can explain to me the role you played in the collaboration and any additional obstacles encountered by your raid team.

Midterm Raid Evaluation

Halfway through the raid mission, a bonus task will unlock that a team can opt in to for a set number of points. Bonus points from that task can be applied to any part of each team member’s grade.

Achievements will be awarded by peer evaluation for:

• Best Overall
• Designer Space
• Creative Concept

Reports: ARG Findings

• Resistance
• Find Me Event
• Interdimensional Games
• Veil Nanoscience
• Test Subjects Needed
• The Night Circus
• Lost Experience
• Majestic
• Marble Hornets
• Lost Ring ARG
• Zombies Run

Alternate Reality Games

• I Love Bees
• Hunger Games
• ARG Net
• Becoming Superheroes

Step One: Tool Time

Be prepared to share the concept for the social creativity tool you collaborated on last week.

Step Two: Gameful

In Class Discussion: Gameful and Evoke

Step Three: ARG Research

Choose an alternate reality game from the list at ARGNet or your own research to play and observe. Using ARGNet, ThinkTransmedia, and Jane McGonigal’s work as a reference point, examine the ARG and report back on the COSC 407 forum. Answer the following questions about your ARG:

• What is the “rabbit hole”? How does the game draw you in?
• Is there a community aspect?
• How do you progress?
• What other stories is the ARG tied to?
• What social media does the ARG use to tell its story?

Step Four: Choose Your Class

The raid is an extended collaborative challenge that draws upon a range of skills and is best completed by a balanced team. On the “Raid Class Roles” forum in the Metagames group, indicate which role(s) you are best suited to take from the possible classes below.

• Raid Leader: To be eligible for this role, you must have achieved the minimum rank of “Scribe” (500 points) by the start of class on October 24th. The Raid Leader is responsible for keeping the group organized and making sure all mission objectives are met. The Raid Leader will also be in charge of contacting me if any group member fails to complete their assigned responsibilities. The  best Raid Leaders are also comfortable taking a support position for any of the other classes.
• Builder: The Builder is comfortable picking up new tools and interfaces quickly. While the Raid is not programming intensive, a Builder who can take responsibility for working with basic web production will be essential to creating prototypes of game elements.
• Designer: The Designer ideally has an artistic background or comfort with user interface designs and needs. The Designer should work closely with the Builder to prototype their way through Midterm Raid hurdles.
• Writer: The Writer is responsible for taking content brainstormed collectively and bringing the textual elements of the group together. The writer should be confident in their mastery of the powers of spelling and grammar check.

Step Five: Form Your Team

Each group should have 4 to 5 members and must have one Raid Leader. Once your team is formed, send me a message listing the names and roles of all team members.

Mission Seven is due at the start of class October 24th.

I’ve just returned from the doctor this morning, and I have a highly contagious respiratory infection. Rather than spread the misery, I am cancelling class today.

This means:

• Keep up with the reading
• Continue discussing McGonigal’s Reality is Broken on the forums (at least 3 thoughts total)
• The Mission Six deadline (for all parts of the mission, as described below) is extended to Monday, October 17th.

Sorry for the inconvenience, and I’ll see you all next week.

Remember, there is no in-person class today. In lieu of today’s in-class discussion, respond to the Jane McGonigal readings on the COSC 407 forum topic: Reality is Broken. Post at least one thought by our next class meeting on the readings and how McGonigal’s ideas relate to Shirky’s or your own theories.

Continue your team’s work on Mission Six: by Wednesday you should have –

Tool Time (or, Amateur Hour)

Consider a playful (perhaps “gamified”) social tool you could create to make a type of amateur production easier and more accessible. Try not to duplicate any existing tools, but instead look for an original niche (consider the LOLCat builder as an example). With your group of AT MOST four members, create a group on the site advertising your planned tool and the ways it will improve people’s social production. Brand your space with an original image as a group logo and make sure to include:

• A description of what the tool does and what social role it fills
• An explanation of the procedural literacy necessary to use the tool
• Mock-ups and examples of the interface or outcomes of the tool
• An argument for the value of the tool for social media and games
• A discussion of the motivations the tool provides users: why build?

Reading Quiz

There will be a reading quiz available in the first 15 minutes of class today.

Social Media News

• #OccupyWallStreet
• NYT Editorial
• #OccupyColleges / List
• #OccupySesameStreet / Muppets

Discussion

• Wikipedia and Crowdsourced Knowledge
• Minecraft Wiki
• MineCon
• Minecraft Gallery
• Minecraft Mods

Step One: Using Your Cognitive Surplus

Watch: Clay Shirky: How Social Media can Make History

Discuss:

• Scavenger hunt finds
• LOLCats 
• LEGO CUUSOO
• Xtranormal
• Gamestar Mechanic
• GameSalad
• Machinima
• Minecraft

Step Two: Tool Time (or, Amateur Hour)

Consider a playful (perhaps “gamified”) social tool you could create to make a type of amateur production easier and more accessible. Try not to duplicate any existing tools, but instead look for an original niche (consider the LOLCat builder as an example). With your group of AT MOST four members, create a group on the site advertising your planned tool and the ways it will improve people’s social production. Brand your space with an original image as a group logo and make sure to include:

• A description of what the tool does and what social role it fills
• An explanation of the procedural literacy necessary to use the tool
• Mock-ups and examples of the interface or outcomes of the tool
• An argument for the value of the tool for social media and games
• A discussion of the motivations the tool provides users: why build?

• Create your own LolCat around a social media or games theme. Submit it to icanhascheezburger.com and share it on our site–you can even give the LOL Builder a try. While you’re at it, think about the appeal of an archive like this. Why has the LOLCat phenomenon been so persistent?
• What are examples of tools that allow people to move easily from the role of consumer to producer? Are there any free production tools you use regularly that have allowed for new social communities or content produced by amateurs? Tell us about them on the COSC 407 forum.
• Propose an achievement or mission for the ongoing class game: if proposing a mission, make sure it relates to either this week’s readings or an upcoming theme. Post your ideas in the Metagame group.
• Challenge Task: Clay Shirky points out that new tools allow anyone to publish. One such tool is xtranormal, a program for going from “type to video” that allows for a new type of YouTube hit. Try out the xtranormal tool and create a video that addresses social games in some way. You might stage an imaginary debate between a hardcore gamer and a social gamer, or envision a rehab session for  a Farmville addict. Got the start of an idea but not the time to build the video on your own? Find a collaborator or two and create it together.