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Veni, vidi, ludi. If the Latin in that sentence is actually correct, it´s got more to do with luck than with any actual language skills. But yes, I went to JoinGame, I saw what was going on, and I even played a little.

JoinGame is a Norwegian network for game design professionals. Twice a year, they have a workshop, with a different theme each time. Company representatives, students, game designers and academics meet up to discuss digital games. There are presentations of new projects, panels on Important Matters in gaming, and – of course – eating, drinking and talking.

This was my first JoinGame workshop, and it was a very enjoyable and educational experience. The theme was «Pervasive games and ARGs», wich is something both I, Agens and our customers are interested in these days. There´s a lot of buzz, many cool ideas – but what actually gets done?

Three projects within this specific field were presented: «Mørkeboka», «Varg Veum» and «Rottenetter». The first one is one of my own projects. It´s an entry-level ARG for young players, in the form of a novel with related web sites – some hidden, some open, some password-protected, some not. It´s a standalone spinoff from the popular trilogy «Alvetegnet» by Sigbjørn Mostue, who also wrote the «Mørkeboka» novel. The ARG was developed on a shoestring budget, and its theme is environmental issues – thus the slogan: «Read the book, solve the riddle, save the world». (Norwegian readers can read a newspaper article on the book here).

«Varg Veum» was a pervasive game created for the Bergen newspaper BT. While the game is based on the popular crime novels about Varg Veum, the main character himself is actually not active in the game – in fact, he´s jailed right at the start, which gives the players more room to play detectives. The game is a crime mystery which requires players to visit specific locations, activating game content via RFID tags. The game designers were able to use the newspaper to give in-game messages to the players. Apparently, the project changed scope drastically along the way, from an intended three-week intense game to a more drawn-out 12-month experience; possibly a bad thing, as it´s very hard to preserve any kind of momentum for so long. (Norwegian article with several links here).

«Rottenetter» was an ARG used to promote the movie «Rottenetter», about the hard-boiled financial world in Stavanger, Norway´s oil city. The movie wasn´t a great success – in fact, more people played the game than saw the movie. (This led to some debate on whether a game of this sort was the right way to promote a movie, and if so, how it should be done). «Rottenetter» had some fairly challenging puzzles, but that didn´t stop people from playing very actively – although, of course, the 250.000 NOK (approx $40.000) prize may have helped. One very daring move was to split the players into two groups right from the start with the question: «If you win the money… will you keep it for yourself, or donate it to a good cause?» The two groups followed the same story line from different sides: When a laptop containing financial secrets was stolen from the (fictional) Sagen financing company, one group tried to recover it for their money-hungry boss, while the other tried to recover it to uncover the company´s greed and corruption. (Norwegian presentation & case study here).

Other interesting projects were the games «The Foreigner» from Agenius and «Minitinget» from Media Farm. «The Foreigner», an upcoming game for the Nintendo DS, is designed to help players learn a foreign language. An interesting design choice was to leave the educational element as a tactical choice – players can win without learning foreign words, but it´s usually smarter to go the learning route. «Minitinget» is a big-budget educational project, actually a specially-outfitted building where school classes can come and experience first-hand what it´s like to be a parliament representative; from debating problems with no easy solutions, to facing the blitz of the photographers.

The conference ended with a panel debate about game criticism, taking as its starting point an article by John Erik Riley asking for deeper analysis in articles about games. An interesting subject, but the debate was unfocused and hard to follow at times; the overall impression was that the panelists didn´t feel particularly strongly about the subject, and the blame for lack of analytical content was put on the public («the consumers just want to know whether they should buy the game») and the state of game design («there´s not much interesting to say about most games»).

I’d like to thank the organizers, who did a good job of inviting interesting people to connect with, and were very helpful in all matters practical.

(And in case people haven’t already heard of it, I’d like to recommend the book and blog «Pervasive Games» to all participants: It will definitely be an inspiration for further fun and possibly ground-breaking projects).