What Pervasive Gamers Can Learn From Snow
This article eloquently captures what we all felt yesterday. A return to innocence, a rare moment when talking to strangers, play, urban creativity are all allowed. A suspension of the usual rules of engagement… And this video shows how, in a tiny space of time, a crowd can generate a huge amount of joy and an epic theatrical event. All themes close to Hide&Seek’s heart, so I thought I’d reflect briefly on what snow might mean in terms of games design.
1. Snow is pervasive. Well, that’s certainly true… It’s a unifying social event - more than football, Strictly Come Dancing or Brad Pitt, snow affects every single person underneath its blanket.
2. Snow is transformative. It changes everything. Speed of travel, acoustics, the way the world looks. It’s an incredibly powerful game-rule. Incidentally, when in a game has it snowed? And has the impact of snow ever been truly brought off in a game?
3. Snow is an enabler of play and creativity. Like sand, but even better. It’s affordances are numerous - you can slide on it, build things with it, throw snowballs. All complementary activities, especially building snowmen and throwing snowballs - bored of building? Start a snowball fight. Bored of fighting? Finish your snowman. Furthermore, this technology is non-digital, and free.
4. Snow reminds us of childhood, family, and fun. I was out at 7am yesterday, and the giddy sense of joy I felt recalled each REALLY BIG snowfall, all joined together in my memory, a Proustian rush of sledging, waking in the middle of the night and seeing the flakes under the sodium streetlamp, yells of ‘It’s Sticking’. Snow is the opposite of work - it’s ingrained in our minds that Snow=No School=Play.
5. Snow is a little bit extreme. It’s really really cold. It hurts your hands. You might fall on your bum. A snowball in the gob or a sledge crash can be a bit harsh. But all of these threats are relatively mild (compared to, say, a rugby tackle, or a F1 racecar crash.
6. Snow is temporary. It’s perfect when it lands, and you know, you just know, it’s all going to turn to slush and ice in no time at all. So you have to play while you can.
7. Snow only happens outdoors. Snow increases in quality, the further you are from traffic. Parks beat side streets beat main roads.
Anyone got any ideas for a pervasive game that might reflect some of the qualities of snow?
(and one final thought - was this the first twittered snowfall? It was the only thing in people’s updates all day. See also this - which was a lovely bit of collaborative snow-mapping, even if the end result was necessarily rather incomplete.
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February 3rd, 2009 at 5:28 pm
People’s delighted reaction to the snow yesterday reminded me a bit of Artichoke’s Sultan’s Elephant coming to London, and also of videos I have seen on YouTube of the Grand Central Station freeze organised by Improv Everywhere in New York. I expect you know that the BBC had more than 2,400 photos from people of the snow, more than for any other event?
I don’t have any ideas for a game but the elements common to those events - of a surprise visit, of something simple and beautiful and reminiscent of childhood unexpectedly transforming a familiar place, of there being no cost involved to participate, of people feeling it’s important to record their reaction to what they see or that they hold a piece of a puzzle that creates a whole (so important that they need to contact the BBC about it), or that (in the case of the snow) they can use it to create something beautiful of their own - it seems to me that those are elements that could be incorporated into a game.
It suggests a game that involves freely and randomly distributing some simple, childish thing likely to bring joy to the recipient and then collecting evidence of people’s reaction to and interaction with it.
Good luck with it. I hope someone comes up with something.
February 3rd, 2009 at 7:12 pm
That youtube snowball vid had 23,750 views within a day. Marvellous.
February 3rd, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Absolutely that snow transforms the world into a playspace. But there is no ruleset. And it’s a material transformation over every public space that doesn’t need to ask permission or apologise for invasion, and then naturally tells you how much you can play there.
So I think that no pervasive game can ever achieve all the qualities of snow. But that every good game will inevitably share some . So isn’t this a non-question?
I’m reminded of the end of Slava’s Snow Show. I always am. Which was giant crowdballs dropping into the auditorium during a blizzard of paper snow. And then at least 30 minutes running around the stalls of the Hackney Empire having a paper-snow-fight with the rest of the audience, kids to grannies. While Slava sat on stage swigging a beer and laughing uproariously at the mayhem.
February 3rd, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Brilliant post - thanks, Alex.
February 4th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Another property of snow which I think is important here is that it comes with built-in advertising.
There are a lot of games which people would like to play if they knew they were happening. Snow arrives and you can’t miss it. Immediately you know that snow play is an option.
February 4th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Nice way of putting it, Dom Camus. But it’s more than just advertising. It’s an all-pervasive blanketing of an invitation to play throughout an environment. There’s no escape if you’re going to stay outside. And it’s done by the weather, not by a person, so there’s no arguing with it.
I didn’t quite finish my Slava thought. That was the closest I’ve had to a snow day that wasn’t a snow day… and it still had paper snow. But it’s about filling an environment with a play material which is infinitely transformatory. I’ve had plenty fun in a theatre filled with infinite rolls and fields of blank paper. But more fun when it’s the world filled with snow.