justin hall’s passively multi-player online games
just read an article about the recent seminar by justin hall on his concept of “passively multi-play online games.” interesting concept.
Justin has fun online, works online, studies and loves and plays online — and on his phone and his Playstation. Why can’t the whole thing be a game — a social game and a knowledge game? … all calls the notion “Passively Multiplayer Online Games,” and describes it as ” a system for turning user data into ongoing play. Using computer and mobile phone surveillance, a user and their unique history. These resulting avatars can be viewed online, and they interact with other avatars online. Examples of data: web sites visited, email addresses, chat handles, contents of email or messaging, contents of word processed documents, digital images, digital video, video game moves.”
– original post here
when i had a very quick glance at his ideas, i thought we were talking about the same thing. the crucial role of the element of “play” in our lives, amplified particularly by network technologies. we’re living in the “entiretainment” age.
then i had a better read of it and realised that we were actually talking about the opposite ideas within the framework of network play. we’ve got pretty much the same elements of investigation - play, network, mobile etc - but in the simplest sense, he’s looking at ludus while i’m looking at paidia, the opposite end of the continuum (as suggested by caillois) by means of measuring your passive (turned into active) participation - some people might disagree with this idea since strictly speaking, measuring alone wouldn’t make a paidic experience into a ludic one; i suppose here i’m thinking more in lines of (sub)conscious/unconscious accordance to rules. i consider “games” as rule-binding therefore ludic, and subcategorical to the concept of “play”) - i don’t know if i want to be “in game” all the time. the idea just doesn’t appeal to me. i believe in play but i’m not sure if i believe in games.
anyway, it was fascinating to see “the other side” of what i’m trying to do within what “we’re trying to do.”
