Chromaroma

A collection of my thoughts on Mudlark‘s Oystercard data game – Chromaroma.

About 4 months ago, I was contacted by a student journalist who had tracked me down as the winner of Season One of Chromaroma.
Tina just sent me the articles she wrote about the game, which nudged me into remembering that I’d started a blog post of my own back in 2010, with the idea of reflecting upon the concerns raised by Jemima Kiss’ slightly confusing piece on Chromaroma at the time.

Tina Remiz’s articles are here and here. Below are the answers I gave to her questions.

Why did you join the game?
Several reasons, I’m interested in pervasive gaming – how people can reengage with their mundane habitiat by playing within it. Also because I’m a low level train geek! I don’t go out of my way to ‘spot’ trains or look up facts, but I do like to notice things when I’m on my commute. I love how the tube network is an integral part of London life, influencing how people relate to the city as well as the strange instinctive ettiquete caused by squishing so much humanity into such a tiny space.
I know that Toby Barnes is also into Psychogeography, and so I thought the game might hit on some interesting ideas.

Are you still playing?
I’m still using my Pay As You Go Oyster card, although I’m thinking of switching back to a travel card to save money. If it weren’t for that I wouldn’t ever unsubscribe from the game.
I have stopped visiting the website however, I’ve not been keeping tabs on my score for a while now. I think mainly because there’s no chance I’ll win again!

- Are you enjoying the experience and what is so cool about Chromaroma?
It’s an ambient game, so ‘enjoying’ is perhaps an inaccurate word. It is something I have chosen to be part of and that makes me happy in the same way as other positive decisions do. What is cool about Chromaroma for me, is that it overlays everyday choices with a reward criteria. If I have to make a tiny choice such as ‘which of these two equidistant stations should I head to?’ I will be able to make that decision more rewarding in my head by thinking of which station will get me better in-game benefits.

- Are you just collecting points as you go, or did you make some trips just because you’ve accepted a mission?

I have never gone massively out of my way to visit a station, I have on occasion checked the website before going somewhere out of the ordinary, just to see if there’s a chance of grabbing a mission before setting off. There was a ‘collection’ called Shoreditch Tw*t that I went out of my way to collect the last station in order to complete it.
I won the first season of the game most probably because at that time I was a freelancer and so I dotted around to new stations more than players who commuted to their set home -> work stations. I’ve not come anywhere near winning these last two seasons.

Any interesting stories? Places discovered? People met?
- What’s the importance of those type of games? Do you know/play any similar things?
This game feels like it belongs to the stable of location based ‘games’ such as Foursquare and Gowalla. Unlike these services, Chromamroma is concerned more with the build up of information over time. 4sq and Gowalla are about immediacy and the transendental moment, your check-in at a location is disposable and forgetable. Chromaroma HAS to be slower, and HAS to be these same set locations (tube/bus/bike stops) It builds up a map of your personal relationship with the city rather than with the people within it.

I’d also be inclined to put it with ChoreWars/EpicWin as a neat way of turning a chore into a passtime.

- Does Chromaroma experience go beyond online? Have you met any other players?
I know other players, but I’ve not met up with any whilst out playing. Unlike Gowalla or Foursquare, it’s not possible to see who is nearby to you in real time and so you can’t spontaneously meet up. Having said that, I don’t think I’ve ever done that with either of those services! But it is part of the idea of those ‘games’ that it is possible.

- What could be improved?
I know that it can’t really be helped that the game has to get it’s data from TfL two days after the journeys happen, but the time delay in getting feedback for your actions really detracts from the impact of the game. I can think of lots of fun little challenges and puzzles that could be played out on the Chromaroma set-up, but I’m a game designer, so I would!
I guess another factor that could be improved is the players’ sense of agency, the gamespace being one that the player has to pay for and primarily use for utilitarian purposes means that choices tend to be limited by circumstance the majority of the time. Putting more strategy into how the player interacts with the website – choosing missions etc – could increase the player’s overall feeling of control.
Another impossible want would be for the game to register the interchanges made when under ground, anyone who has ever traveled by tube, will know that navigating from entry to exit is a whole strategy game unto itself ^_^

Hope this is useful. You might also get something out of this Guardian blogpost about the game, including the arguments in the comments. I chipped into that about half way down http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/8586058

[I've copied my comment below (this is as far as my original 2010 post got)]

JonA1966

So my whereabouts can be sold to a private company for effectively nothing (this type of business never has significant start up capital) – whatever happened to data protection?

@JonA1966 – your data isn’t sold to a private company. TfL stores all your travel data and gives you access to it – normally via one of those machines in a station. If you choose to play Chromaroma, you give the game permission to see that data too. Nobody sells anything.
This might not be what it says on the tin, but this is what Chromaroma *does*: it allows you to visualise and quantify the ‘data shadow’ you cast, merely travelling about.

Why would you want to do this?

Everyone who has an Oystercard generates data about which gates they go through and when. Nobody looks at this information, it just sits there until it gets old enough on TfL’s systems to be legally deleted (like the receipt roll in a shop, they have hold it for x months).
They aren’t set up to watch where people go and when, they’re set up to monitor what they spend. The nice thing Chromaroma does, is reinterpret the commuting population’s spend data back into being about people. I like the thought that a huge corporation that I pay tithe to, could start caring about ‘people’.

I’ve played Chromaroma for a year now, I don’t care about winning or getting points to be honest, but I do love this game because every time I get out at a new-to-me station, I think “I’ll get a new bonus score for being here” and it reminds me to appreciate the small excitement of going to a new place in my own city.

The Story Conference 2011

A narrative ran through the event for me. I made this of it:

Story telling is about editing. The act of turning an experience into a story is enriching for the teller.

Karl James told us how listening constructively can help a person tell a story. Asking ‘useful’ questions – rather than ‘helpful’ leading questions – leaving vacuumous pauses to draw out tales.

His listening techniques seemed similar to how I imagine a therapist would conduct a consultation.

I’ve seen several people saying that The Story was information overload, either calling it ‘a confusing mess’ or a head-bending‘ experience.

Every speaker was different but all seemed to me have one common theme – which is the very essence of storytelling: processing and conveying an experience.

No one person said this explicitly mind you, but it pieces together somewhat like this:

Experience is processed and constructed into a story which can be told. The telling of the story requires a listener – how the story is articulated depends on both the listener’s and the storyteller’s skill.

The listener now has the story in their head, and can pass it on and on and on and on etc .

This is the basic version of this sequence, in different scenarios the role each part has to play differs.

The main issue ‘traditional’ and ‘new media’ storytelling have with each other (using my stickman analogy) is what place the audience has in this sequence.

Adam Curtis said you cannot ‘tell’ a story on the internet because it is all about experience. He compared The Internet to seeing a Punchdrunk show, and I think he is right. In a Punchdrunk show the audience can wander about, look in drawers and discarded coat pockets at will – crucially, they can completely miss the narrative, (whether by choice or accident). It’s unedited before the audience gets to it, the path is uncrafted – some might say; a mess.

Now think of the internet as a set filled with furniture. Each hyperlink is a drawer filled with extra detail. And possibly a photo of a cat. With those details you have a far richer knowledge of the story, but the focus is diminished.

Phil Gyford’s talk showed how he added these asides and links back into the text of Pepy’s Diary, allowing the audience to explore the events as an experience and relate to it in a different way.

A journalist edits and distils a story down to find an interesting strand of truth that will provoke the listener into exploring certain thoughts.
Adam Curtis talked about how the rushes (aka raw unedited film footage) tell more interesting stories than the end result. He showed a mostly forgettable 10 second interview shot in Helmand Province. He then told us four different stories about what happened in the longer unedited shot, all four stories happen simultaneously and it’s hard to focus on all other them at once.

An artist constructs a truth out of other pieces of experience.

But unlike Traditional Storytelling thinkers, I don’t believe this makes the sequence broken. It merely shifts the job of articulating the experience into the hands of the audience.

After an experience has been had, a story must be told, or else it will nag away at you in the back of your mind – a mass of unprocessed data.

‘Frothing’ as described by Mary Hamilton in her talk on Zombie LARP is an organised way of doing this. So is Cory Doctorow’s technique of only writing five sentences on a topic and letting commentors fill in the gaps of overlooked details, until the story is honed.

Articulation is key – experiences are raw and unrefined: told stories are processed (considered) and a good listener facilitates that articulation.

IVY4EVA was a sophisticated robotic facilitator in this respect. Blast Theory’s talk about this interactive teen drama concerned me, though not for the same reason as some other people I’ve read. Having myself ‘puppet mastered’ or ‘pretended to be fictional people on the internet’, I can reassuringly tell you that audience/players who correspond with fictional people never believe the characters to be real. That the teenagers Matt Adams described talked earnestly to the empty IVY robot, is not so worrying because they still benefitted from the process of articulation. People talk to themselves (and their cats!) all the time to sift thoughts. They even write diaries.

I felt uneasy at how happily Blast Theory showed us these conversations. It felt like a breach of trust, like reading someone’s diary.

@Glinner told us of the techniques he uses to construct a told story. By absorbing pretty much ALL the internet holds hilarious (+ life beyond presumably) and tailoring together different parts to fit the characters.

He said the stories ‘form like coral’, building up and taking shape.

I hear tell that the extras of the most recent IT crowd DVD are essentially him giving a Sitcom writing masterclass. I might go out and buy the DVD just for that. And a DVD player. And a Television.

He talked about trying to form a group of people he found on Twitter who are witty observers (I presume that was the criteria) to be the writing team for his next show.

Using Beluga and Basecamp to reverse engineer how ridiculous events could have happened, having a group like this to bounce ideas between is a great way to create as all are working as storytellers and listeners at once.

He lamented that Basecamp isn’t the optimal tool for this kind of thing, but then there is nothing better out there. “Why wasn’t this the first thing they designed for?!” got a laugh – but then again, maybe it’s not so niche; wouldn’t it be good to treat ‘serious’ stories in the same way and look at and discuss real world events with an experiential eye?

Through this post I have peppered links to things other people have written about The Story. The links might not seem to correspond, but what I have attempted is to tie in where I think their account works better or touches with what I thought.

This is far longer than 5 sentences, but it would still benefit greatly from hearing others’ thoughts, to hone it down and fill in the blanks. I rarely invite comment on half-formed ideas, but this time I tentatively invite your comments.

Please add annotations below.

Rail Trip 2009, We were a bit scared still but maybe because of our ignorance.

It seems slightly crazy that the rail trip from Belgrade to Istanbul was nearly 2 years ago, but it is true.

I recorded some soundscapes and mini-interviews with the people we were travelling with, which I’ll put up on Audioboo.

Listening to the salvaged recordings, there is a moment where Charlie mocks a hilariously terrible ‘review’ from a website we had read before setting off. The post is incredibly titled Budapest – Belgrade, So scary seems like war, and doesn’t get saner from there on in.

Charlie made a terrific video out of our collective photos and recording of the rail trip :

Railtrip 2009 from Charlie Fish on Vimeo.

Memories restored before the restoration

I just figured out (or rather, fortuitously stumbled upon) how to get the recordings and photos off my old iPhone. Just in time too as I was one click away from Restoring it to Factory Settings.
Top Tip: press Command and Alt when plugging in your phone to allow it to be a drive.

Any way, this means I now have a treasure trove of hitherto ignored recordings and photos, which are now all the more precious for having been snatched from the jaws of oblivion.

I shall upload some of things I am most glad not have lost in an ad hoc manner from now on it.

First of all:

Augmented Pictures of Reality

Some words of wisdom from my better half today.

Augmented Reality is a great idea, but it’s too early for it – the same way the 1950s was too early for 3D films. Anything we do now will be like wearing green and red glasses and expecting Avatar.

Viewing the world through the screen of your mobile device is already taking you a step away from reality in the first place, drawing pictures on top of that image only augments that already secondary layer.

If we want truly AR experiences, we need a layer of augmentation that is almost imperceptable, that improves the perception of the world, the way glasses improve the vision of their wearer.

Spot the odd one… oh wait, don’t bother

This screenshot of the Develop conference newsletter was posted to a Girl Gamer group by a friend, with the question “Notice anything in particular?”

They do line up well to reinforce the stereotype, ticking the appropriate boxes for gender, age and general ethnicity. It’s the kind of thing that once pointed out is quite embarrassing to look at.

But I think it may look worse than it truly is – it’s quite misleading to put ‘very successful game developers’ then show the individuals – for example, Richard Hogg (top, second from right) would be representing ‘successful game developer’ Honeyslug, 1/3 of which is female. At Six to Start, Adrian and Dan always ALWAYS* represented us but (at the time I was working there) we were a 50% female/male company.

The reason this list is so disappointing to look at is because it presents the idea that 

‘successful games development = (male) individual’.

We all know that an individual pulling off a project alone is a one-in-a-million chance and therefore that equation can’t be right, more accurate would be

‘successful game = good game development team + (visible) individual’

and that adds potentially hundreds of invisible people, of potentially any gender, age, race or other variable. 

I wonder how many other girls are being hidden in this picture?

 

*Okay, so I did twice go speak at things.

 

Forget the rules

I’ve been playing Dixit recently, and have had the pleasure of introducing new people to the game. I bought my own set last week at the Essen board game convention – I unpacked the box promptly discarded the instructions, showed them the cards and pieces and showed them how to play.

I taught them it slightly wrong, even though the instructions were right there in front of me, I told them how to play the way I was told.
The difference was slight – ending the game when the cards run out rather than when the first player reaches 30 points. The person who taught me to play told me from memory, possibly the person who taught him also did.

Game instructions are part of the oral tradition, they need to be able to fit into someone’s head in order to be carried about, they need to be light-weight and spring back into the right shape when called upon after years of storage.

A friend told me of how he’d found a game of Cluedo in a bar and tried to play. The instruction sheet was missing and it was a ‘new’ version of the game that had all different rooms and extra cards. All his memory touchstones were gone and, to his great frustration, he had no idea how to play it at all and had to give it up.

If we’re to think of instructions as part of the oral tradition, they need to take on the behaviours stories have. They should stick in the mind in the correct order so as to not have anything be confusing or get missed out. if a rule isn’t easily remembered – was it essential to the game play? Nobody forgets a main character from a story. There are as many versions of Cinderella as there are people’s heads, but the shape of the story is the same in all of them.

Ditching the rule book isn’t unique to board games, having a page of instructions at the beginning of a computer game is undesirable and preferably avoided if you don’t want your player to bounce away in distain. In most modern computer games, the first few levels will gradually introduce the player to how the game works and what they need to do in order to play. Could this be replicated in board game rule sets?

Choose your own identity

Here is a fun chart looking at all the different ways women can be represented in films and TV. Not really it’s intended purpose but a diverting game anyway is seeing where one fits into the stereotypes.

Failing at the first hurdle (can she carry a story in her own right) I ended up with in the tangled mesh of ‘what is her flaw?’ – couldn’t really decide between adorable klutz and cat lady, so took a second punt, then a third.

Bending various truths, I got: Sexy Underling, Bossy Girl, Perfect Wife and Ideal Woman. If I was to write myself a character I don’t think I’d want any of those! But then that’s the point I guess.

Can someone do us one of these for guys?

 

 

Over-thinking-it's female character flowchart

Chicago Tribune: Women missing from video game development work force

Here is an article on chicagotribune.com

For a second I thought this article was about a mass kidnapping, but no. It opened with statement that instantly made my knee jerk:

In certain corners of the gaming world, women are treated in one of two ways.

“If you let anyone know you’re a girl, you’re going to get hit on or picked on,” said Tracy Fullerton, a professor at the University of Southern California who teaches game design.

Is this talking about in the workplace? Because hiding that you’re a girl can get pretty tricky after that first day you show up in the office. No of course it’s not, how silly of me to misread that*.

But after scaring off anyone who isn’t already singing from the hymnsheet, it does have some sensible quotes.

“young girls who like video games don’t connect their leisure activity with a potential career path.”

although I would simplify that to
“young people who like anything don’t connect their activity with a potential career path.”

“It’s not, ‘There are girl games and boy games,’” said Gilmore, an incoming junior at Evanston Township High School. “It’s that there are good games and bad games.”

Yay! Thank you 15-year-old Mary Gilmore for saving this article for me. Keep that rational head on your shoulders, you are our shiny shiny hope.

Talking to bloggers

My mind has turned once again to the thought of blogging. I’m not alone, Annette Mees has decided to take up the virtual pen and Marc McG has recently made a return.

These are both people I go out of my way to listen to the thoughts of, yet reading people’s thoughts seem so different – so formal – in comparison to chatting to them or even the written conversations of skype and twitter. It’s the same thoughts and phrases, only more *official* somehow.

I’ve started reading the blogs of people I know and I’ve been having fun spotting thoughts that have come up in conversation with that person. It’s like seeing the broadcast of an episode of a TV show that you saw being filmed. A strange jarring memory of time and place that overlays the unfamiliar formality.

It’s quite nice to be reminded of forgotten moments, like; being sat on a tram in Sheffield as Topfife pointed out interesting architecture as we went past. Drinking diet coke in the faux-50s diner under w+k talking badges with Dan, the wildeyed murmerings of a Minecraft-junkie getting his fix in my living room.