Massively Multiplayer Urban Games

Grab some friends and traverse remarkable neighborhoods in a world city… Talk to strangers, find clues, and fetch ingredients for a giant collective dinner party!

Tiltfactor’s Massively Multiplayer Urban Games: Massively Multiplayer Soba, Massively Multiplayer MuShu, Massively Multiplayer 晚餐 [wǎncān] are a collection of team-based urban games focused on culture, food and language. This game-event entices players to the non-tourist neighborhoods of a world city, encouraging interaction with and among the members of the community.

Outdoor games are a lot of fun. Our design team looked at and played, treasure hunt games, street sports, and GPS games like geocaching quests. We found that oftentimes, however, urban games are designed for players to appropriate the city. Items are found and discovered or information is exchanged without much real human interaction. How could a game really reward deeper human exchanges?

Massively Multiplayer Urban games combine play with opportunities to mix with new places in the city, creating unexpected encounters with residents while challenging concepts of culture and language through storytelling and discovery! Higher points are received for longer, more in depth exchanges. The highest points in the games are when teams bring back new friends to the culminating collective dinner party — those who offered clues, even entire families who wish to come along out of curiosity.

 

Massively Multiplayer Mushu

 

 

Massively Multiplayer Soba

 

 

MassivelyMultiplayerSoba Ingredient Hunting

 

 

Massively Multiplayer Soba Players Interview a Monk

MassivelyMultiplayerSoba The personal history of a lemon

 

 

MassivelyMultiplayerSoba Flanagan Cooks

 

Massively Multiplayer 晚餐 [wǎncān]

 

 

 

 

Credits
  • Executive Producer: Mary Flanagan
  • Game Design: Mary Flanagan, Suyin Looui
  • Graphic Design: Alice Bonvicini, Zara Downs
  • Playtesting: Fivel Rothberg, Jay Bachhuber, Jonathan Belman, Pilar Ortiz, Alice Bonvicini, Anna Lotko
  • Project Coordination: Jay Bachhuber, Jonathan Belman

 

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With support from the U.S. National Science Foundation, Collaborative Research: SoD-TEAM:
Values at Play: Integrating Ethical and Political Factors into System Design, CNS-0613867