Is it a game?

Hearing about epistemic games in which young people spend hours working on reports, sitting in meetings, and sweating out deadlines, people occasionally wonder aloud, “But is it really a game?” Jane McGonigal’s article “‘This is not a game’: immersive aesthetics and collective play” provides some interesting additional context for thinking about this question.

McGonigal writes in this article about Alternate Reality Gaming (ARGs), an approach to game design which emphasizes mystery and puzzle solving with a unique twist: these games use ordinary and ubiquitous technologies like web pages, cell phones, and newspapers, to present simulated organizations, press releases, whistleblowers, etc., and gradually reveal complex storylines that online teams of players try to solve.

A common practice for initiating such games, and the reference for the article’s title, is to declare on a web page, for instance, that ‘This is not a game,’ (TING) while simultaneously embedding the opening clues within that same web page. As McGonigal points out, this express denial becomes “one of the most intriguing and lingering effects of TING immersion tactics: a tendency to continue seeing games where games don’t exist.”

ARGs blur the boundaries between what is in-game and what is outside the game by replacing the separate play-space many games use (e.g., soccer field, videogame console), with a particular mindset through which everyday communications tools can become components in the game regardless of where they happen to be located. In turn, as McGonigal points out drawing on the work of Erving Goffman, these games “provide ‘a model, a detailed pattern to follow, a foundation’ for later application to serious real world situations.”

By recruiting non-play spaces and things into the service of play, these games emphasize how game play can come down to a decision between different frames of mind.

While avoiding potentially creepy yet common ARG techniques like having game characters calling or emailing players at home, epistemic games are all about equipping young people with different frames of mind. Our studies show that engaging in professional practices within these games helps players think like professionals beyond the games.

So – to the extent that we want to engage players in these kinds of frame shifts, indeed – this is not a game!