Emilie

Me and Alan had a good old chat today about my project and especially the Lost London website. Some things to have a ponder about:

- Look at the feedback which people would get from the interface.

- Add things to it to make it look more visually stunning

- Think about customer appeal.

I need to also think about how I can customise the map more so that it doesn’t look like a google map. I am also going to re-do my edit=ted version so that the ‘ghost’ stations will look ghost-like.

I have always known that I will want to add extra ‘levels’ to the piece, just to make it more game-like. It could therefore go like this. Tube > Railways > Bridges > Roads etc etc, of course it can’t carry on, as I’m not about to take it to the sky, but I can add secret quirky places for example. It might even be nice to jump between levels, or make it resemble a video game where you can go to the next level, however, you can’t do anything in it, as you still need to go back and complete tasks in the previous level.

Players taking photographs along their journey is a very big part of the game and opens up the appeal to more people than those who are interested in the social media and gaming aspect of it. People haven’t traveled on similar journeys to others, and see their photographs will want to find better/different pictures to take and send into the blog. This brings another competitive element into it as well as Foursquare. From this I could even add in a ‘picture of the day’ category. People might start even tweeting about it, which would be marvelous!

One thing which Alan brought up which is a very important thing for me to have a ponder about is the possibility of setting up the site so that it also works on mobile devices. For this, I may want to look for a tutorial.

In the ‘tips’ section on Foursquare I may want to put where there are any places to buy refreshments in the vicinity to the tubes. If people are going out for a whole day doing this journey, they will need it!

The penultimate thing that we discussed was how perhaps I could adapt the ‘advertising’ for the game for different mediums. For example how the game is discussed on Twitter would be very different to Face book which would be very different to how it is on the little MOO cards which I got printed with the website on.

The last thing which we discussed was how I could word it in a certain way along the lines of: ‘How many tube stations have you been to?’ ‘Have you been to Brompton Road, Down Street or King William Street?’ etc just to make it catching in a challengey/wordy way straight away.

On 16^th June I offered to help a game designer called Ben Henley run one of his games at the Hide&Seek Sandpit at the ICA. The game was designed as being ambient so that players could go off and immerse themselves in other games, but whilst doing that still be inadvertently playing this one. The narrative of the game is based around getting players to join one of two competing breakaway micronations that are trying to make the ICA independent of the United Kingdom.

We were told that the game was secret and to start with were instructed to subtly handout ‘passports’ to people, not giving too much away. The participants would read the instructions in the ‘passport’, basically being a booklet to collect stamps and read about the game, and first of all come to the Passport Office to get their passport stamped. After doing this they would have to go around and recruit as many people as possible to come back to the office with them, in order to get a passport themselves and get it stamped. Upon doing this, their recruiter would also get another stamp. Whilst doing this, an opposing team is doing the same thing and so one of the aims is to catch them whilst doing this and get their name. Once a player has done this they can return to their passport office and report the person. At 8:45 pm everyone was instructed to congregate at the Hide&Seek information desk so that passports, name and stamps could be multiplied together for each team to establish who the winning team was.

The running of the game itself went very well. I was sat at one of the passport offices for half an hour between 7:30pm and 8pm and the flow of participants coming to get their passports stamped was quite frequent. Everyone seemed to be enjoying it and there were hardly any queries, which meant that the game material was very self explanatory. I liked the idea of the game very much as well. It revolved around the thought that it could be our ticket to freedom from the Clegg-Cameronist government. The game is subtly dealing with social issues, but in quite a fantasy, silly way, but I like how the undertone in still there.

So, after much procrastination and pondering I have decided to call my game Lost London. This was decided on Thursday last week after sending an email round to a few friends and discussing possibilities with them. Other names I was thinking of were:

Lost Networks
Lost Nodes
Forgotten Networks
Forgotten London
London Underground
Subterranean London

Most people felt that using the word ‘nodes’ could end up being confusing and a few were also not keen on the word ‘networks’ being used. In the end I settled on ‘Lost London’ as it was suggested to me separately by two people and I felt that in a way, it was a perfect title for describing the project and gave a tiny hint as to what might be in store!

As well as choosing a name for the project I made a lot of progression in terms of working on my ideas and deciding on the game-plan.

Aimless Walk

I was thinking it would be good to insert an element of the Aimless Walk mini project which we had to do in the Autumn as for me this task enabled me to really absorb my environment when walking from A to B. The fact that we were asked to document the experience in any way we liked as well pushed me to be observant and to capture anything which interested me. It was also quite liberating being given the freedom to choose anyway you wanted to get somewhere as we normally follow a routine when traveling in London I find.

When the participants in my game are traveling from tube to tube I want them to explore a little this task of Aimlessness. I’m not going to impose on them any restrictions of what order they have to travel to each tube in and in the description of how to play the game, they will be asked to document their journey/experience. This will provide data for a map which I want to produce later of all the participants journeys and observations based around the tube stations.

Use of Twitter/TwitPic in Game

My game is about discovering real but lost spaces in the city and gaining an emotional experience through their perceptions. I want the participants to use Twitter whilst exploring these places as a way to document their experience but also to make other people aware of it and to perhaps start a dialogue. They could also use TwitPic to share pictures of their journey with other participants.

Use of FourSquare in Game

FourSquare is an application that allows players to ‘check in’ to real world places but in the virtual. These include cafes, pubs, music venues, houses as well as others. Players earn points whenever they check in somewhere, and if they earn more than anyone else, they will become the ‘mayor’ of that place. You cannot cheat though, you have to be in the area so your phone can find the location. As well as having this competitive element to it, the game also allows people to leave notes and messages for other players. This is nice communication around these spaces starts to build up. As well as checking in to places which have already been added, players can add new places for others to check into.

I would like to implement this into my game so that players can check in to the different tube stations. I can also leave notes and clues for them as well as a link back to the project website. It would also be a way to get people who aren’t aware of the game, but use FourSquare, to play too! Piggybacking onto social media which already exists is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while and using FourSquare as well as Twitter seems to add more to my project.

Tube Map and Navigation around London

I have decided that rather than releasing a station at a time to the participants I will give them the entire tube map which I created and shows them the closed stations as well as the open ones. This will mean they have the freedom to explore each station in an order which they choose and they don’t have to wait continuously for me to send them information. I’m still deciding whether they have to find the exact location themselves or whether I will send them a map with it on.

Posterous Blog

I have set up a blog on Posterous which uses the domain name http://lostlondon.org.uk . The reason I chose Posterous rather than wordpress is because it is very well connected to other media like Twitter in that if you email Posterous and the update will be sent to your other social media accounts. Also, you can email in photos, videos and mp3s which will appear on the blog. What is good about this is that anyone can send stuff in therefore building up a community and also a hub of information which can be used.

Gameplan in the long run

This initial stage of play is really a way to build up a virtual London based on people’s perceptions around these closed tube stations and to eventually map it. The next stage will be to use this as a platform for something else; it will help to create the base for putting on events.

Mini Events

I would like to use the closed tube stations as a way to execute some events in London based around the underground. Before the 2nd world war, posters on the underground were a way to advertise days out in but also out of the city, of course traveling via the tube. This was all done in an  idealised/romantic sort of way:

I have been thinking that it would be nice to create some posters like these, but for modern times, and either out a link to them on the FourSquare entry for each station OR use QR codes so that when people scan them with their phones, a picture of the poster pops up! What I could so for this would be to orgnise event like the activities which are portrayed in the orginal posters and actually execute them on various dates in July/August. These could be picnics on Hampstead Heath, some sort of performance in the West End and walks in suburban London, say around the green belt. We could even choose a location which used to be green and now isn’t, but celebrate its former glory and have a picnic there. We could even use the underground to travel further afield! We could even do completely different things which are more modern like go rollerblading, now a popular activity in London. The spaces could be re-interpreted based on new ideas. The original posters were basically glorifying the idea of commuting ans using the tube to travel as that is what I could do.

Another interesting thing would be to look at how the tube used to be, and still is a way for advertising via posters. I could invent some products and using the QR codes (as I think they could really be useful for this) stick them on the outsides on the closed stations for being to look at upon scanning. This would really be nothing more than a visual thing but I think it would add an element of the real and the virtual merging and give more depth to the project from a physical and visual angle. This site shows some examples of old advertising posters:

http://www.geekiz.com/des-affiches-de-films-des-annees-50-dans-le-notting-hill-gate-tube-london

Tutorial with Alan

Today I had a tutorial with Alan which really really helped my thought process.

I basically explained to him my current thoughts on my project as thus:

1. Participants receive ticket/letter through post asking them to go to a station
2. They go to the said station and either collect something and have to look at something and report back to me about what they have found/seen and their experience. I also want them to explore their surroundings and think about what they haven’t noticed before.
3. They would then be given some information on the next place.
4. Eventually a map would be built up from this, representing their findings and perception of the areas around these closed stations.
   

I told him about how I would like to start by giving people a card with the project blog on it and then they would go from there.

Concerning how the participants can give feedback to me I discussed how I had been pondering over them entering it into database over the web. We decided that perhaps it would be better to start off with email/blog or text based feedback and see how that goes. My aim from this would be to keep the experience open, and even though as stated I want people to explore these forgotten areas (the closed tubes and perhaps other areas following) and then gain a new perception of London through it, I also want the project to be quite organic and for participants to get what they choose from it.

One thing which we also discussed was the idea of encouraging participants to use up their free texts as part of the game-play as many people (including myself) do not use all of them in their monthly allowance.

Another ponder which we discussed was the idea of making different levels out of different forms of communication, this being text, email and Twitter. It would also be nice if in some way people could interact with one another whilst playing and connect through these mediums.

One task which I should do over the next few weeks is to ask people I know to play a mini version of my game and to start blogging about it on the site which I am setting up.

The last thing which we discussed was taking into account how other senses about from the visual could be used in the game as I am using specific locations. For example if there was a fish and chip shop by the location this could be used in some way. Another thing to consider would be whether people are going to the locations during the day or at night as this could change things.

Tutorial with Graham

I also had a tutorial with Graham today which was very useful with my current ideas and thought process.

Things we discussed:

• What if you look at the underground overground
• Mapping the underground overground
• Looking at what dark spaces mean to us

An important point which Graham believes I should think about is the idea of transport and communication as being directly linked and intertwined as with transport networks this used to be the case during and before the 1930s.

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Some ideas about the 1930s:

Railways nationalised

Telephones nationalised/state owned (run by post office?)

Radio

British railways state owned, post office letters and telegrams state owned. Telephones too!

No email, letters carried by train for long distance and van by car for short distances.

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Another thought which I had concerning communication and transport was the idea of people having to collect and carry things from one location to another in order to play and to build up a kind of narrative. A bit like Alex Fleetwood’s Archipelago

One task which Graham has suggested I do when it comes to choosing my stations of interest is to print out my images of them all and place them on the wall of the lab to see people’s reactions to them and where their interests become concentrated…

Chat with Anita

My last discussion of the day was with Anita.

We first discussed the idea of why people don’t make the time to explore these lost spaces/locations in London, like the closed underground stations. It is probably to do with constraints of routine, being that people do to work, come home and don’t really take in their surroundings after getting stuck in something. They would have time to explore say, their work route, at a weekend but then why would they want to go back and do that?

One point that Anita made was that I have to look at why this is different to a normal walk. Perhaps I could make it into an event based thing and show people these lost tube stations but with my own perspective on it.

We also discussed something quite interesting and in an ironic but not nice way, is a form of deja vu in relation to the Bethnal Green tube disaster of 3 March 1943 in which 173 people were killed in a crush at the stations whilst trying to enter the shelter during the blitz. Someone actually stumbled and fell down the escalator recently whilst at that station causing a pile up on it! This is of course not serious as no-one was hurt but I just thought the connection to it being the same station as the disaster was interesting.

I also spoke to her about my views of putting the pictures of the stations up in the lab and they point of it. We concluded that as well as it being  a way to see where other people’s interests went it would also be a way to see which ones I was drawn to as well.

The last thing we discussed was whether my project was going to have any narrative element in it. The idea of using characters would perhaps add something but I think I’d be a little scared getting too deeply into that as it could take away from the pervasive experience and idea of freedom in the piece.

One of my friends, John Mckiernan is a student on the MA Culture Industry course and also an organiser of the Brockley Max Festival. He asked me if I would like to participate in the festival in some way, either by showing some work or running an event. I told him about my involvement with Fire Hazard and how perhaps we could run some mini games for the day and he agreed.

To start the ball rolling I had a chat with Gwyn to find out if he would be happy to help me run some games. He agreed, and we recruited two further crew members to get involved in the form of James and Casey. We held a small meeting for the event on the evening of 27th May in the usual Fire Hazard meeting place, the Horse and Groom pub, and discussed games which could feature at the event. We decided that we would run Manhunt (a version of Hide and Seek which incorporates tag), Backstab (players disperse, all with a piece of paper with a target on their back, the aim being for other players to draw a cross in the target without them noticing) and also and Circle Rules Football (a simplified game of football using a 60cm yoga ball). We also decided that we definitely wanted to run a game involving a ‘bridge’ which would run over an imaginary sea of lava and involve participants having to work as a team to cross it but then also having the option of betraying each other to be a final winner.

The organising of the event was left completely down to me. Gwyn sent out an initial email to other crew members in order to get them involved but I then followed it up with corresponding with them over details and also corresponding with the festival organisers about the event.[1] It was also up to me to go out and buy props for the event. These consisted of a roll of carpet, a yoga ball, felt tip pens, safey pins and white paper.

On the day of the 5^th June we got to the festival in time to have a short meeting before the games started. We decided that the first game we would run would be the lava bridge game but we decided to develop the idea further. The other games did not require much of a set-up so we would start with this one and see how it went. We set the game up in the form of a small obstacle course, using bits of carpet cut up into small squares and rectangles. We also used a bench and two yoga balls as part of the physical landscape. The aim of the game would be for participants to get across the course without touching the ground or being attacked by giant who would be trying to hit them with a blow up weapon; this would be almost theatrical however and the giant would be more likely to strike the ground in front of the player rather than hit them. Once reaching the end of the course, the participant would collect their own blow up weapon and make their way back to the start, killing the monster on their way. Whilst doing this, other crew members would slowly roll yoga balls towards participants, who, if did not dodge them would again be out of the game. We decided to name the game ‘Giant’s Kingdom’.

After a short while of running this game it became clear that our audience was primarily children. They seemed to enjoy playing very much but also got easily distracted and started just kicking the yoga balls around. If we let another child play the giant, there was also the danger of the child trying to get across and back on the course of being too rough when hitting them, and we didn’t want any angry parents. We therefore decided just to have ourselves as playing the role of the giant. To keep the other children entertained, Casey took them over to another section on the grass and played mini games with them involving yoga balls.

Eventually, after two hours of running the games we decided to pack up and just play a game of Backstab amongst ourselves. The festival environment was not, it seemed, the best place to run games which had not been sufficiently promoted and were just a small activity in relation to the rest of the larger event. There were not many punters and we only had a few children participating. The Brockley Max Festival seemed to be more a place where families could go and listen to music whilst having a lazy day in the sun and drink cider. It was, however, a good opportunity for us as a games group to test out some new mini games and also work with an audience that we hadn’t before: children.

I’ve been having further ponderings about using maps in my project, other than the London Underground Tube maps. As previously mentioned I would also like to in some way use my new found knowledge that London has underground rivers. Below is a map showing these:

I also found another interesting map which shows other things about ‘underground’ London which most people would note be aware of:

It shows things like the underground rivers, closed tube stations and deep level shelters in the tubes. This is great inspiration as it is the sort of thing which I want people to explore in my project!

I’ve also found some other maps of the tube which just made me smile as it’s very obvious that many people have decided that they would like to get people to rethink London through it!:

This map shows the underground placed over a satellite map of London.

This one shows London upside down, stressing how little of south of the river the underground actually serves.

This map very usefully shows where one can find the nearest toilet on the tube! Would be slightly more helpful if the names where on there too though…

Below are some thoughts which I was having a week ago and I’m only just writing up:

1st Thoughts

Make tube map with just phantom stations on?

Create tube map with phantom and normal stations on?

Make it so phantom stations blends in?

Make it so that tube is greyscale and phantom tubes in colour

2nd thoughts

map on London

People could go to places and report their findings and gets added to a data base which gets turned into a map

Using gaming methods in a historical context. Getting people to be an archeologist.

Using games to engage people but to use it for a practical end.

Map becomes way of navigating hidden London

Idea of ghost stations but not just sending them to them, sending them to somewhere else

‘people like you owuld have gone here for this’

Characters? Fake communters? Interact with characters to get information. Give human touch rather than just getting something from building.

Guy who invented  laughing gas and had those parties? E.g could connect something like that to put into it.

Idea that people have to find things which can build up a map on London around these hidden areas….

*Ponders*

I definitely think that using a map as a starting point to send participants into the game and then encouraging them to compile what they have found so that it can be turned into a map afterwards would be great! It represents a personal geography and gives these lost spaces and networks a new life.

It kind of makes me think of Stephen Walter’s ‘The Island’ (2008). Walters, a London native, created a map which shows local and personal details of each area up until the outskirts, all done through little pictures and handwritten words. He portrays London as being an Island with places like ‘Epping Bay’ beyond it.

I’ve been researching and attempting to develop ideas for my Major Project for a few weeks now but have been hitting my head against a virtual wall quite frequently. I know that I want to create a pervasive game which utilities the ‘ghost’ stations of the underground in some way and invites players to become immersed in some form of narrative whilst doing this.

I met up with Gwyn from Fire Hazard last week to discuss the possibility of carrying out a game at the Brockley Max Festival and also briefly discussed my project with him too. He advised me to think about some points during my planning; I need to put some constraints on what I’m doing. For example I have not as yet defined a specific audience that I wish to aim the project at. This is obviously important as it could change the logistics of the game.

I therefore need to decide:

• Why do I want to create a game?
• What do I want participants to get out of the game?
• Who do I want the game to be for?
• Which stations do I want to use?
• Why are dead underground stations interesting?
• Do I want it to contain a narrative or be abstract?
• Do I want to work organically or set out a game plan in advance?

Why do I want to create a game?

I think it’s an effective and fun form of interaction which can be used to teach and show people new things. On a selfish note, I love them and am using this as an opportunity to become a games creator! this is something that I want to carry on after I graduate either as a hobby or a possible job route…..

What Do I want Participants to get out of the Game?

I think the most important thing I want participants to get out of this game is to see London in a different way. As Londoners, or people who come here frequently we see it as it is now, the same as any place I guess. But there are hidden network and nodes (in this case the phantom stations and disused lines) which are quite common. I want participants to discover these spaces and go ‘Oooohhhh!’, hopefully a bit like I did! I also want to use them as a launchpad to then take them onto different things. Another thought is to bring London’s underground rivers into the game. So yeh, I want participants to discover new things about their city and to then question  and explore the space in a different way. I also want to to give them an experience which overlaps the real with the virtual so my current thoughts of perhaps using QR codes or sms messages in the game could be fun.

Who is the game for?

As briefly mentioned above I would like the game to be for people who know the city already. Therefore people who work and live here BUT also those who frequent the city for activities too perhaps. There are some people who live here but don’t, for example utilise the city to its full potential, whereas there are others who may live a little out but will spend their weekends doing things here.

I will not be aiming this at children or the elderly as that may require special requirements and may constrict what I can do with the game.

Which stations do I want to use?

I have been playing around with the underground map and have provisionally decided on using the following closed stations:

Lord;s

Marlborough Road

St Mary’s (whitechapel Road)

Brompton Road

Down Street

Mark Lane

British Museum

South Kentish Town

Strand (Aldwych)

York Road

City Road

and lastly, King William Street

Below is a PDF which shows my new (and improved?) tube map!

lost_networks

Why are dead underground stations interesting?

Why indeed…..to me they are interesting as they are a little bit of history that has been forgotten, even though once people would have used them everyday just as we each now use the living stations on the London Underground every day. I find it fascinating how these spaces exist and most people do not even know they are there; they just walk on by and don’t even glance at them. I used to live (for example) on Castlehaven Road in Camden. South Kentish Town Tube is literally just around the corner on Kentish Town Road. I did not even know about its existence until a few weeks ago. To me that’s fascinating. It is now a pawn shop and next door is a sauna place.

If one goes and has a look at the old Strand (Aldwych) station it is sandwiched between a couple of buildings owned by King’s College London and has graffiti and old posters on it and basically looks a bit sorry for itself!

Do I want it to contain a narrative or be abstract?

I would like my project to be abstract but to contain narrative elements. When exploring London and discovering facts and features about it which are from the past, participants are going to build up a narrative in their heads about the city. They already have a set view of it and will know stories which are connected to it; this will bring a new story to light and will perhaps develop through certain means as they pass through the game.

Do I want to work organically or set out a game plan in advance?

I would like to do both if possible. I have decided to send participants out on a treasure hunt type task with a tube map being their starting point. They will then go to the closed tube stations and find things which will lead them onto something else. Some of these things may be rewards, others may be a lead onto more findings and so on. I also know that I would like to utilise in some way my new found knowledge that London has underground rivers! It would be nice if participants didn’t have to go on a treasure hunt for every task and could do something over the internet or be send something to use creatively themselves.

I like the idea of working organically as I don’t often do it. I’m a planner and feel happiest when I know exactly what I’m doing. However, I’m worried that if I work that way on this project I will never get anything done as I only have 6 weeks left now and that is not enough to plan and execute a pervasive game like this. I guess, as said before a bit of both planning and organic working will be needed.

On 13th May I went to visit the archives in LSE’s library to examine Charles Booth’s Poverty Maps of London from the late 1800s

On the Fire Hazard website the event is described as: ‘…an evening of after-dark zombie mayhem on Hampstead Heath.’[1] Games that are played at Dead Reckoning are all post-apocalyptic, zombie themed and consist of being stealthy or as fast as possible. They are played on Hampstead Heath after dark, creating the perfect atmosphere. Night Watch is a game in which you start off in a quarantine zone and have to somehow make your way to the end zone. The players have to be as stealthy as possible, hiding behind trees as they make their way through a small forest which has guards patrolling it. If they catch you, you have to go all the way back to the quarantine zone and start again. What is interesting is that whilst playing it, I felt very much as if I was in a video game. Here I was, running around on Hampstead Heath, in the dark, pretending I was living in this post-apocalyptic world and trying to make a great escape! The guards in the game also act like they have AI rather than a real intelligence; they walk up and down illuminating their path with torchlight, only spotting a player if they make their dash for freedom very obvious. For me the highlight of the game was making a dash across an open area of grass, the distance across being approximately 50 metres. I felt like I genuinely was running for my life, and that everything depended on it! I went into stealth mode for the last part so that I could successfully hide behind a tree without the nearest guard spotting me. When it was clear I ran to the end zone. It was a great feeling.

What was interesting about this game was how people chose different ways to get to the end zone. Some people took their chances is staying close to the guards and ducking behind trees, others tried to go around the perimeter of the area, coming back in again at the end to reach the end zone. This worked well, but they were some of the last people to make it back. There was even one player who had gone out so far, that by the time he was making it back again we had already started the next game!

For me, this game was much more exciting than my previous Fire Hazard experience of playing Riotball as the game had more substance. It had a narrative and felt more powerful form an aesthetic point of view; the setting and time of day was perfect for the context of the game and this is turn made the atmosphere spot on as well. There is also a theatrical element involved; as a player you are also a character who needs to get to the end zone very urgently. If you are caught then everything you have physically worked for is lost. I felt like I was ‘in the game’ very much so and this is probably the first time I experienced that apart form when playing a video game.

The next game that we played was one called Outbreak in which myself and some other crew members played the role of zombies, waiting for other players to fall as prey to us. The idea of the game is simple; there are a few zombies waiting in a small part of woodland for the players, who are instructed to move around the woodland without getting caught. They are armed only with a nerf gun and a torch and by this point in the evening the light has completely gone. All in all, this equals a very real seeming ‘zombie experience’. The description of it is:

‘Outbreak is 28 Weeks Later except that you’re in it. You don’t have a lot of ammunition (and anyway, the nerf darts only stun the zombies – nothing kills them). You don’t know where they all are. And if you get caught, or get unlucky, and you’ll become one of them. With the only light coming from your torch and the only sound the moaning of the dead as they shamble towards you, this is pure mayhem.’[2]

When players started coming towards me, I started my best zombie acting, eyes rolled looking upwards, shuffling with my foot dragging and voicing a slight moan. I did infact create a couple of genuine screams in people which was a great feeling. Having the opportunity to have an acting part in a game was very satisfying, and it gave me the chance to experience having to think on my feet. Certain decisions need to be made whilst in the game situation, but they have to be done without breaking the ‘magic circle’[3]. One example of a change which had to be made was that it was obvious that as shuffling zombies we were not taking out enough players. Gwyn (the leader of Fire Hazard), and James (another crew member), were shot down by nerf guns at the same time. As they lay on the floor together, Gwyn said to James in his best zombie voice ‘I think we’re evolving’, as the cue to get up and become basically a faster zombie. This enabled the game to start running faster and for more participants to be caught, and therefore turned into zombies themselves. The best thing about this game as it gives the players a very important role in it. Not only are they just playing in the game, they become part of the mechanics.

On 2^nd May, myself and a friend, James (a fellow Fire Hazard crew member), took part in the Robin Hood Tax Game run by Oxfam. The event was being held at Rich Mix, on Bethnal Green Road.

We arrived at the venue and were asked to dress up in Robin Hood costumes. Following this, we were split into teams of approximately six people. Two of our team members turned out to be MA Radio students at Goldsmiths! When we were given the format of the game it transpired that it was a photographic treasure hunt that we would be doing. This was split into different tasks, including photographing key words and having to find out specific information like finding the most expensive property in the E1 postcode. Another task consisted of filming an interview between us and members of the public, concerning their views on Robin Hood Tax.[1] Each task completed would gain a team a certain number of points. There were also bonus points to be gained for people who also tweeted about their journeys, using the hashtag #rht . We were told to return to base after completing 4 tasks. I assume this was to make sure that people were doing ok, but I saw this as a bit of a nuisance more than anything.

The afternoon itself was fun, but there was too much to do in the instructions for the day. There were 9 tasks on the sheet, but within them within 3 to 6 extra things which you had to do! We were the only who managed to get nearly all of them and in the end actually won! The prize was tickets to a festival.

The organisation of the day did not feel particularly professional. I work for a company called Shoot Experience who also organise photographic treasure hunts professionally and so I think was comparing it to that a bit too much. I did talk to the oragnisers afterwards about how they could approach them for future even perhaps.

I was actually very happy with the game in theory. I liked how they were doing this as a way to make people more aware of the Robin Hood Tax plight, as I feel that using gaming as a way to tackle social issues is very effective, as can be seen with Jane McGonigal’s and Ken Eklund’s ‘World Without Oil’ and Susana Ruiz’s ‘Darfur is Dying’. Myself and Anita used gaming in our minor project to make people more aware of illegal diamond mining so I already know the two go very well together. I liked how participants had to talk to members of the public about Robin Hood Tax, giving themselves an opportunity to reflect on it but also making the general public more aware of it. It is actually quite sneaky of Oxfam to make this into a photography and film treasure hunt as it creates promotional material for them for free! I’m not against that though, it’s a great idea and fun to take part in.

The only things that I would therefore change about the day would have been better organisation, less tasks and actually, maybe a discussion at the end or the beginning of the event about Robin Hood Tax, just so that people who were not aware of the campaign could be given more an insight into it.