Problem Statement:
Experiences like LARPing, Escape the Room, cosplay, and karaoke are prevalent and seem to be gaining in popularity. These are experiences that partly or completely take place in the real world – not in virtual worlds; they are intended entirely or primarily for adults, and yet involve dress-up, role-playing, and other kid-like play. Why are these experiences popular? What itch are they scratching? What does the landscape of these experiences look like today, and how might it evolve from here?  What tools can we employ to help players let go and play with their imagination?

Discussion Results:
We cast a wide net and found a fascinating collection of experiences that give people permission to pretend.  With this collection, we mapped common traits to find patterns in how this is accomplished (see accompanying spreadsheet).  Through this exercise, we found useful tools that can be re-used in new designs.  We also found threats to imaginative play that should be avoided that threaten the popularity of the medium.  We also looked at the underlying reasons why people seek out and enjoy these experiences.

Phases:

1. Examples of these experiences in order to create a current snapshot of the space.
2. What lessons can we draw from the examples – create a rules set.

Jim suggested that we should create an Imaginative Play experience, to let participants live the experience rather than be lectured on it, for our final presentation.

Phase 1: Survey of Existing Experiences

Escape the Room – a real world version of a digital game experience.  A group of players are locked in a room and have one hour to escape.  Players must find and solve a variety of puzzles to find combination to unlock the safe that holds the key. There is one now in San Francisco’s Japantown, which is booked for months in advance. Ryan Creighton did something similar at the last GDC. Group activity for 2 to 8, maybe even more. A group called Scrap brought these experiences over from Japan. There’s also one on the Queen Mary. You assemble clues crossword-style. “Wordy and McGyverish”.  Lending to its popularity is to advertise a success rate, typically 10% to 30%, that gets people excited as to whether or not they can be part of that exclusive club of success. Example puzzle: put vase on bookshelf, the shelf swings open. The trick with tuning these experiences is to make it easy until near the end, where it gets really hard; you feel like “I almost did it” with a bunch of early successes. Low-tech solutions still feel magical.  Another example is an Escape the Room with time travel … two identical rooms, one day apart, with a time tunnel crawl tunnel in between, and time puzzles alter the two.

Tomb was a locked room adventure around 5 to 10 years ago, in Boston. It was an Indiana Jones-y experience for a group of about 10 people, plus a guide (cast member), into a cursed Egyptian tomb.  There were three rooms, with a couple of puzzles per room; the best puzzle was the last one, where the group had to use multiple mirrors to shine a beam of sunlight into the face of the pharaoh’s sarcophagus. The guide would give hints … in this case, too readily. It looks like the company has closed that location, but added two new locations, and also added Jules Verne and espionage-themed adventures.

Dinner Theater with Audience Engagement.  A cast of performers, usually dressed in the same casual nature and distributed with the rest of the audience, introduces themselves enact a drama, such as enacting a murder and subsequent investigation.  The audience is called upon by the actors to participate in solving the drama.  The group setting allows participants to find their level of comfort in how engaged or withdrawn they are in the fiction and role playing.

Murder Mystery Party. These are done more at a friend’s dinner party. It came in a box. Each player was randomly assigned a role, and given a brief pamphlet that outlined the backstory, and also told them the information that was known uniquely to them. Then, players mostly mingled in a pretty unstructured way, sharing information, until the group figured out who among them was the murderer. It wasn’t a particularly good set of roles for fun role-playing, and the writing/design of the game was pretty mediocre. Unknown if there are boxed experiences like this out there.

Competitive Tech Exhibits in a Restaurant.  Now defunct Seattle-based restaurant Entros featured a number of technical game experiences for its diners before or after their meal.  One example was a grid maze, through which two pairs of participants competed to complete.  The twist: one of each pair was blindfolded in the room with the grid maze with a camera placed on their head; the other was in another room looking at the video feed and directing the blindfolded person through a private audio channel.  As the blindfolded person moved through the grid maze, if they made an error they were disqualified.  The same restaurant had a 40-step scavenger hunt baked into the eclectic decorations around the interior, and sometimes exterior, of the building, interesting in that the hunt could be started at any of 4 places but still completed, spreading out player density through the experience.

Digital Puppetry.  An off-stage performer controls a computer-generated character in front of an audience, wherein the performer has cameras to look at, and interact with, the members of the audience.  (Turtle Talk with Crush @ California Adventure, Monsters Inc. Laugh-In @ Disney Florida)

Interactive Installations.  Projectors create synthetic environments on the ground in public spaces (shopping malls, museums, etc.).  Cameras or other technologies measure participants’ interactions in the synthetic environment and make graphic changes.  These can contain gameplay, such as moving a soccer ball around a field, or can be entirely aesthetic.

Augmented Reality Theater.  A group of participants with augmented reality glasses freely walks around in a 360-degree dome capable of creating stereoscopic imagery from the point of view of each participant.  The technology allows the participants to see and interact with each other as well as the synthetic imagery.  The positions and actions of the audience change the narrative thread of the narrative experience.

Haunted houses around Halloween – Sometimes guests are invited to become cast members.  They range from pretty lame to pretty scary, but commonly involve cast members surprising guests, reaching for them, chasing them, etc. Not too much role-playing by the guests.

LARPing: From Wikipedia, “A live action role-playing game (LARP) is a form of role-playing game where the participants physically act out their characters' actions. The players pursue goals within a fictional setting represented by the real world while interacting with each other in character. The outcome of player actions may be mediated by game rules or determined by consensus among players. Event arrangers called gamemasters decide the setting and rules to be used and facilitate play.”

Wasteland Weekend: Mad Max LARPing in the desert outside LA. It’s like post-apocalyptic SCA.  They set up some makeshift buildings, no utilities.  Everyone, even visitors must dress up in fallout garb.  There are foam combat duels, a parade/cruising in post-apoc cars and vehicles, and lots of food and drinking.

Zombie Run.  A mini-marathon, often including obstacle course elements, where some participants identify as humans and others as zombies.  The humans get a head start, then the zombies take off after them.  When caught by a zombie, the human becomes a zombie and then pursues other humans.

Zombie Paintball.  A zombie run including paintball peripherals.

Zombie Walk. Cosplay flash mob where people show up as zombies, role play, and befuddle the general public.

Fugitive. A group game played across a real city.  One team is the Fugitives, and the other the Marshalls.  The Fugitives have a goal they are trying to reach about a mile away - often a parking lot.  They are on foot.  The Marshalls are all in cars driving around.  If a Fugitive is spotted by a Marshall, he is captured and has to get in the car.  Marshall can’t patrol close to the goal.  Best played in suburban neighborhoods.

The Haunted Basement.  A bio kinetic experience that pushed the limits of comfort. These experiences shouldn’t make you uncomfortable, shouldn’t make you feel stupid, etc.

Improv Everywhere. This is a group that essentially organizes scripted and very creative flash mobs. You can see videos of their many wonderful efforts on their website: http://improveverywhere.com/. Some favorites include Frozen Grand Central, where  the participants froze in the middle of whatever they were doing for 5 minutes in the middle of Grand Central Station; and Spontaneous Musicals, where they will stage Broadway-style musical numbers in places like grocery stores or mall food courts. Steve’s son participated in this one.

Assassin. Classic game played with squirtguns or nerf guns.  A group of players are all secretly given the name of another player that they have to shoot.  If they shoot them, their victim is out of the game.  The victim gives them the name they had and now they must find and shoot that new name.  This is often played with large groups at high school/college, and can be run as long running events over many days, until there is only one player remaining.  Sometime for dramatic effect, the last two players are put in a gym with everyone watching the final showdown.

Kim Possible’s World Showcase Adventure. This was an interactive game set in Disney’s Epcot theme park and using the Kim Possible TV show IP. When you signed up, near the park entrance, you were lent an old flip-style cell phone. It gave you the backstory (a villain creating the world’s largest golf ball … Spaceship Earth, of course), and the first clue. Each clue sent you to a particularly point in the park; when you got within a certain distance of that point, the story would advance and the phone would give you the next clue. It was interesting, but buggy. Wikipedia article here.

Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom. Similar to the above, set in the Magic Kingdom at Disney World. But instead of a cell phone, the clues were given by physical installations -- Magic Portals -- that were placed around the park, and would allow the various sorcerers (Merlin, Rafiki, Mamma Odie, etc.) to speak to you. Wikipedia article here.

Neurocam - An online based ARG using a cryptic website and lack of information to entice volunteers. Once signed up, players are provided bizarre missions that take them into real spaces, putting notes inside particular books for instance. Participants then email proof of completing their mission, and get acknowledgement as well as a new mission. The purpose was never discovered.

Geocaching - Caches of items (random objects, information, etc) are hidden in locations around the globe. The lat and long coordinates are provided to the players, who use GPS technology to find the caches, and discover the contents. The most common rule is that players are allowed to take an item from the cache, as long as they replace it with a new item they brought with them.

Location-based interactive fiction - Using a smart device to provide an interface, usually a map, to communicate the players location, and locations they can move to in order to trigger interactive story and game elements. One such game was created for an art festival called Northern Spark in Minneapolis, MN called MysteryPhone. Players had real world time limitations during the run of the festival to physically move to locations where the festival was being hosted, including numerous art museums. Once there, interactive mystery stories were presented to the player matching the physical location they currently inhabit, creating a link between reality and the fantasy.

Pirates of the Caribbean experience at Disney Quest -- This was an interactive experience, designed by Jesse Schell, for a planned series of Disney installations that would go in malls all over the US. But they were not a commercial success, and only a few Disney Quests were built. One is still active at Downtown Disney in Orlando FL. Groups of four enter a model of the prow of a pirate ship, surrounded by screens that display a PotC-era harbor. With one person steering the ship, and the others acting an cannoneers, you travel the harbor attacking forts and rival ships, amassing a score.

Role-playing Board Games. A number of board games (many of them popular at Project Horseshoe!) have a role-playing component, or are more fun with played with role-playing components.  Snake Oil puts players into roles like Grave Robber, Zombie, or Alien, and other players into the roles of store clerks trying to create and pitch them products that they need to buy. Aye Dark Overlord puts players into the roles of an evil overlord and his sycophantish minions. Family Business, a mafia-themed game, is far more fun when the players conduct all their game business in cheesy mob accents.

Road Rally: Driving game where players and divided into teams of two (driver and navigator) to follow specific set of driving directions to arrive at a location at a specific time.  Players that arrive closest to the correct time win.  Some of the directions are cryptic and involve clue to know where to turn.

Artemis -- Thom Robertson’s game where the players have different roles in helming a starship, with their own controls but playing locally, with inter-player communication required and role-playing encourages.

Renaissance Faires -- medieval faires with cosplay, games, period food, jousting competitions, and so forth. All cast members role-play, but so do a significant percentage of the attendees.

Multi-day Music Festivals.  Multi-day music festivals such as Burning Man offer participants a wide range of opportunities across the spectrum of observing to participating in festive play.  Participants can experiment with or try on new behaviors, create alternative characters, or explore a new connected part of themselves with like minded people.

Halloween Costumes -- The simple act of putting on a costume (or even just a mask) seems to give people permission to immediately step outside their normal persona, and to role-play to various degrees. Groups costumes even more so… this past Halloween, Mr. Meretzky was in a group Big Lebowski costume at work, and everyone stayed in their character throughout the day.

Murder to Go is a theatrical group that will stage interactive murder mysteries for parties, corporate events, etc. They also do events such as “mystery trains” or mystery weekends at a bed & breakfast. They were engaged for an Infocom party, as CES in Las Vegas, to announce Dave Lebling’s game “Suspect”. The invitation to the party was an engraved letter opener, which participants had to bring to gain admittance. The murder occurred in mid-party … and the murder weapon was one of the letter openers, such that everyone at the party was a suspect!

Stanford Prison Experiment.  From Wikipedia: Twenty-four male students out of seventy-five were selected to take on randomly assigned roles of prisoners and guards in a mock prison situated in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. The participants adapted to their roles well beyond the principal investigator’s expectations, as the guards enforced authoritarian measures and ultimately subjected some of the prisoners to psychological torture. Many of the prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse, and, at the request of the guards, readily harassed other prisoners who attempted to prevent it. The experiment even affected the PI himself, who, in his role as the superintendent, permitted the abuse to continue. Two of the prisoners quit the experiment early, and the entire experiment was abruptly stopped after only six days.

Physical play – e.g. inflatable sumo suits.  Adults can spend their play opportunities in a physical environment in relative safety by donning specialized equipment such as an inflatable sumo suits or bubble soccer. In these games, the physical nature of the game is such that the fun is the colliding and being able to fall down in relative safety.

Majestic. [From Wikipedia] Majestic was a science fiction thriller based on a Majestic 12 shadow government conspiracy theory. As an ARG, the game was played by phone, email, AOL Instant Messenger, BlackBerry messages, fax, and by visiting special websites. Gameplay frequently involved the player receiving clues that they would use to solve puzzles and unravel the story. All the messages were automated, with limited dialogue options, but AIM provided some interactive conversations. As an option to warn unsuspecting members in the same house you could enable a warning at the beginning of each phone call, and a small message on the top of all faxes.

Civil war reenactments. Players dress up in historical costumes and re-enact battles of the Civil War.  Participation varies widely from just dressing up to acting the part of a specific historical figure, complete with a personal history.

Revolutionary War Reenactments. Many of the first battles of the Revolutionary War occurred at sites in Massachusetts. On the anniversary of those April 1775 battles, they are reenacted by enthusiasts. Participants take the role of specific historic soldiers on both the British and American sides. Participants are accurately uniformed and carry historically-accurate weapons, fifes, drums, and so forth. These events are very highly scripted, with characters “dying” at pre-ordained points in the battle, corresponding to the historical record.

Living history museums e.g. Sturbridge Village, Plimoth Plantation, Williamsburgh. These are recreations of colonial villages where tourists can get a first-hand glimpse of life in that time and place. The cast members are always in character, but visitors typically are not. (In fact, it’s something of a tradition for school children to try to ask questions that force the cast members to break character. “Do you have an iPhone 6?” might be a typically lame example.)

Digital Jukebox.  A public space (bar, restaurant) has an internet-connected jukebox.  Patrons of the establishment download an app with which they can queue songs to the jukebox from their seats.  Patrons can also compete against each other in trivia games or beat-matching games, using their own devices as controllers.  Leaderboards, follow-alongs, and additional gameplay features are possible using monitors placed throughout the public space.

Mega-Maze -- This 8 acre maze, in Sterling MA, is made out of corn that grows all summer to a height of over 10 feet, and is then mown into a different maze each fall. There isn’t much role-playing by visitors, but there are annual themes such as pirates, and gamification elements such as finding six monuments hidden in cul de sacs throughout the maze.

Sweding a movie e.g. “Be Kind, Rewind” - Star Wars was recreated in 15-second clips - Groups of people (or in rare cases individuals) get together to recreate a film of which they have some sort of love or nostalgia for, and attempt to capture the essence of the film by recreating it as quickly as possible using only the resources they have around them. For example, cotton balls to create a false beard, or a bathrobe as a wizards robe. A major driving goal is to have as much fun during the creation process as it is to watch the final product, rather than suffering the process in order to create something valuable. The experience is the greater value with the resulting short film a bonus.

Ironic LARPing: Live action role-playing games about humorous subjects.  One example is a Soap-Opera based LARP where players are expected to be melodramatic.  This makes LARPing much more approachable, because succeeding or failing both can be effective because the real goal is giving everyone a good laugh.

Karaoke.  Participants take turns singing popular songs in public settings or semi-private rooms with invited guests.  Success conditions are varied: a purposefully bad performance can create as much energy and enthusiasm as a well-trained vocal rendition.

Sing-along movies (e.g. Rocky Horror Picture Show).  Participants cosplay and perform ritualistic dances, sing-alongs, and interactive jokes based on cultural memes around a particular film.

Ingress/Shadow cities: these are location-based games where players use smartphone to track virtual world resources and threats.  All these virtual objects have a real-world location that players must visit to access.  The gameplay is team-based territory control.

 “The Quest”: a fantasy-themed reality show where players live in a castle, participate in medieval living, compete in challenges and eliminate toward a single winner.  But the players also interact with cast members playing people from this fantasy world, and interact with them as such.  Players know the fiction is fake, but still play along. 

US Border Crossing LARP. Town in Mexico doing an “adventure weekend” where you pretend to be trying to sneak across the border into the US

D&D – a good dungeon master and good players are creating a story together - In a reduced form, creating and interactive story or game where there is one participant taking on the role of the game master, who helps to define the world the other players inhabit, at the players existing within that world. It can be as simple as the game master telling a story while allowing the players to provide narrative as to their own actions, or enhanced by adding layers of game mechanics much like D&D, with character stats and dice rolls in order to add random and structured elements to the play.

Pac-Manhattan -- This was a one-time event, organized in part by Nick Fortugno, which turned the streets of lower Manhattan into a huge real-time live version of Pac-Man.

Two live action games at Disneyland:

Adventureland Trading Company is open for business at the Indiana Jones Outpost. Guests can go on several different quests to hunt for “juju”(small trinkets), which are little artifacts that they can collect and trade.

Legends of Frontierland: Disneyland guests were supposed to create a character for themselves, buy “land” in town including several of the businesses, could run for government office, and even throw other players and Cast Members in jail without reasonable cause.  Evolved into a highly engaging experience that player really got into character and created tons of activities of their own creation - like a fully staged wedding for two of the characters.

Phase 2: Learnings and Rules

In looking at the above examples, the team determined some themes, traits, or tags that were common to some, but not to all:

Tags:

• Dress Up
• Role-Playing
• Game
• Multi-Day
• Environmental (setting matters)
• Solo
• Scripted
• Digital Elements
• Props Required
• Cast Member(s)
• Spectators
• Pay to Play

The team also identified obstacles or deterrents to players and/or audience members holding themselves back from a complete experience:

Deterrents:

• Embarrassment
• Physical Danger/Discomfort
• Don’t Feel Creative/Lack of Confidence/Lack of Competence
• Introversion
• Fear/Phobia
• Lack of Interest
• Lack of Time
• Cost
• Cultural Barriers/Gender Bias
• Orientation/Onboarding
• Trolls/Abusers

The team then investigated ways to reduce, minimize, or remove said deterrents.

Antidotes to Deterrents:

• If I’ve paid, it lowers my resistance to participating, since I want to get my money’s worth.
• Anonymity … a mask.
• Peer pressure/social pressure (okay to look like an idiot if everyone else is, also)
• Set expectations, e.g. Warning/Rating system
• Safe words
• Difficulty levels/handicapping
• Campy – allowing something bad to be good
• Observation before playing
• Participant matching (e.g. letting players choose who they play with)
• Variable commitment
• Choice of role: spectator, participant, cast member, organizer/designer
• Immersive environment

The team then identified the rationale of what makes these events popular in the first place.

Why Do People Participate in These?

• It’s a mammalian need to change your reality.
• Nostalgia – playing as you did as a child
• Performance
• Recreation and Fun
• Relaxation
• Connection to another human being or a group
• Fantasy fulfillment
• Escapism
• Novelty
• Safe Fear
• Adrenaline Rush
• Learning
• Insights into Self
• Exercise your Creativity
• Rejuvenation
• Personal Growth
• Status/Story to Tell
• Catharsis
• Altruism – I’m doing it for someone else
• Curiosity
• Inspiration
• Safe Exploration

section 7

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1. Introduction
2. Workgroup Reports Overview
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5. Turtles All The Way Down
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7. Altering Reality For Imaginative Play
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