Message driven play

Molly Ränge at Playful 09, London

Suggested soundtrack: Nina Simone:  Mississippi Goddam

I came here today from Stockholm and I have been asked to give you a couple of Scandinavian examples of what going on in the area of playfulness.

The programme says I shall talk about digital learning, but since I’m here to represent a Scandinavian perspective,  I thought about taking a small step back from the digital stuff, and instead show a few cases that represents an increased trend of using use much more physical forms of play, to create arenas for learning and political discussion.

But I will start with introducing you to this fine lady…

Her name is Nina Simone, and we meet her the12th of June in 1963.

She has just been watching the national television where president J.F Kennedy has held a speech in support of civil rights. So she is in quite good mood…

But her eyes will turn dark as the news reaches her, that civil rights activist Medgar Wiley Evers as well as 4 black children, this afternoon has been killed.

The tragedy, makes her walk in circles for about an hour, before she sits down an writes the song called Mississippi Goddam, a furious accusation of the situation of her people in the USA.

And it’s also a song that, accompanied by many, made us call Simone the greatest storyteller of her time. And generally I would say there is to ways of telling a story.

Because while Simone among many in the 60’s reached large audiences with stories packed in the shape of soulful songs. We in earlier days sat around the campfires telling and listening stories in the sparkling light of night.

And in one sense this way of storytelling is just the same as we see on Youtube or Facebook today. One tells, while others looks, listens, and hopefully, reacts.

And then we have this other opportunity,  that let every present individual join a co-creative process in which a story grows from a narrative framework, but develops in to a co-created production that is relevant to every involved part.

And this is the kind of interactive storytelling that we see happening in any kind of physical or online role playing games, as well as on Wikipedia.

So we got the Facebook kind of storytelling, and we got the Wikipedia kind of storytelling.

Now, game- and play culture as it has developed in the Scandinavian countries tend to have a ambition regarding the later kind of co-created narratives. And this is something that puts much less focus on the formal ludic aspects of the game. And something that through history in itself opens up the design space for a lot of experimental productions, often heavily influenced by contemporary arts as well as politics. And in that sense, some tend to say that Scandinavian game culture beyond fun.

Scandinavian game culture not seldom is said to go beyond fun. And on this background, what we see happening, is an increased use of play in order to both highlight political issues and create contexts for learning.

I will show you some examples…

To get the first case we have to imagine a scene where a group of young people coffee shop in the middle of Copenhagen, complaining about where to the Danish democracy is going.

Nationalistic winds are blowing through the country and they ask each other how to make young people realize the importance of taking active part in the democratic process to stop the city from growing even colder.

One of them, takes a sip, looks up and says;

Why don’t we make it playful?

What came out of that saying, was System Denmark.

A live action role play that during 3 days invited 350 participants,

in the age 16-42 to be part of a scenario in which the political situation in Denmark was drawn til it’s extremes.

What makes me share this case is the way that the producers worked with both the Pre and post production to anchor and strengthen their message to the participants. This by both involving a big group of people in writing the drama in a co-creation process to make sure to create a simulation that could frame as many personal aspects of the political situation as possible.

Directly after 3 days of role-playing, the crowd was invited to a panel discussion on the democracy topic to ensure that participants had the opportunity and time for connecting their play experience with what was actually going on in their everyday life.

The event got a great amount of media space and raised the question of the political tendency’s in Denmark at the time. Or as one of the participants said to express his experience:

”This scenario made me realize, that if we are going to change Denmark, we have to do it all over, and we have to do it now”

Moving on to the next case, we stay in Denmark and got to imagine that it is the day that is has been made public that the Danish state is about to invest millions and millions of tax money in the building of a new opera house in the city harbour. This day 4 usually quite happy guys are walking down the street, but troubled by the news, they decides on a new mission;

”The important thing must be to find ways for everyone to use the harbour. And we’ll do it through play”

These 4 guys are formally know as the Danish arts crew Parfyme.

Who, often dressed up as construction workers, work to re-arrange public spaces inviting people to play in it, all to question for whom and what the modern city actually is planned.

They find inspiration in the current political climate, and this time their opera house frustration leads to a project called ”The Harbour laboratory” which during 6 months was inviting inhabitants in Copenhagen to examine and discover what the harbour could be used for.

The project engaged thousands of people in creative play in the harbour including, among many other things, birthday parties, underwater radio, a violin concerts and the making of a oversized marimba.

Unfortunately, today, this area is used as a parking lot, for visitors the opera.

Now as we get to my last case, you have to imagine an elderly man working at one of the biggest museums for modern history in Sweden.  He’s got a new task on his table, and it’s about making a exhibition for people in the age of 15-20 that communicates what it means to be a refugee. He takes a sip of his Swedish coffee and says to him self; It can’t be meant that I shall portray such tragic stories in the shape of objects looked up in ordinary show cases. He says:

“In some way It has to be made real, and it has t be made playful”.

What this man then did, was to call a couple of colleagues of mine, and together they produced The Journey. It was a 4 hour simulation of what it can be to come as a refugee to a new and unknown country. The production was totally interactive making the students play together, with students from a couple of different schools to make it easier to break out of their social classroom roles.

The project earned a great reputation and was set up all over Sweden involving something about 4000 people in playing the scenario.

But these are just some of the productions that we’ve seen lately. Just to quickly mention some others:

AmerikA [Norway]– a larp focused on liberty, capitalism and the American dream. Set up in the center of Oslo, played by hundreds, and watched by thousands.

Secret Nation Island [Sweden] – that for an intense week this past summer invited hundreds people to a tiny Swedish Island to the start up of a new nation.

The Boarderland [Sweden] – is a new world under construction. I unfortunately I can’t tell you that much about it, but if you are ever planning to visit Scandinavia , I think you shall mark your calendar for Sweden the summer of 2011…

And these again are just a few.

So what I’m actually saying is that in the same time as we see game marrying in to new media everywhere around us, as we seen a couple of great examples of here today. There are a lot of Scandinavian people walking around, deeply in love with a more physical form of message driven play, convinced that this is something superior to traditional forms of learning contexts.

Not only because it makes people have a lot of fun, but because it

• makes us deeply engaged,
• gets us willing to try out new perspectives
• and, eventually, change.

From this point of view, the capability to make games and playful productions, also make you the owners the most powerful storytelling tool of today.

Something that also makes all you game-designing guys very powerful people.

In 1965 Nina Simone got the opportunity to perform with her song Mississippi Goddam, in front of 40 000 in the end of the Selma to Montgomery marches.

A moment which by spectators has been described as 4 minutes of silence followed by massive deafening applauds.

But what that event actually meant to the ones present I can’t say, and as a true believer in interactive communication, my wish will never be to make 40 000 people listen, but to make 40 000 people get their hands dirty in a transforming experience as well produced as System Denmarc.

So how do we make that happen?

Well, this is we get to the tricky part, and also maybe the most central questions facing the Scandinavian serious game scene at the moment.

Because what we got is a whole lot of engaged producers, taking valuable initiatives for making play and games out of stories that has to be told.

But what we lack is a standardized way to compare our productions in ways that helps us to describe and prove how our methods actually work and makes a difference. And this is not so much for the people in the game industry, but in relation to the academy, the civil society and business life.

That might seem simple for some, but in Scandinavia, the ambition to measure and evaluate our productions, is not just a rather new thing, but also surrounded with a whole lot of scepticism. We ask ourselves questions like:

So where do all this leave us to? Well, it leaves me with a wish for the future:

Cause to be able to make educational and transformational productions that not only pops up like mayfly productions, but that truly have the power to take place as part of society development, I will try to change my daily routines just a little bit.

And this by starting a new play- or game design, not by letting the only central question be what medium or framework I rather work with, but by asking myself:

• If I put the desired learning experience in the middle, What elements of play, no matter digital of physical, will strengthen that desirable experience the most?
• How can I combine these in a type of play, that goes beyond medium?
• And last but not least: How do I already from the start work to involve actors from all part of society to ensure that my game design will become something more sustainable than just an other, playful, event?