Gameplay

     The invitation. Outside the theatre, I greeted participants and introduced myself

 as their ‘host’ for the evening. I prepared them for an adventure by telling a small

 story of how the Earth had exploded into a million pieces due to ‘the Separation’, but

 now things were trying to come back together and had formed an entity that wanted

 to make a new world for itself. I told participants that they were the body and mind  

 of this entity, and that the body could be controlled using the four game controllers

 they would find inside. I also mentioned that if they had never used a game

 controller before, they should just mash buttons until they got the hang of it.

     I made sure everyone had a mobile device and a wifi login (I provided these if

 participants did not have them), and distributed a QR code, telling them to follow the

 instructions on the website it took them to. In addition to these instructions, I added

 three rules for the space: 

1.  This is not a theatre—this is a game. Speak up, walk around, have fun!
2.  Be supportive. Rules can be hard to figure out, especially in the beginning. Offer help if you can and kindness if you can’t. 
3.  Keep an eye out for wires on the floor. 

     Finally, I told participants they would only have 40 minutes, but that they should  

 not rush. I would move them ahead, if necessary, so they could experience the

 whole piece. At that point, the doors of the theatre opened. 

     The new context. The lighting was dim inside the theatre, accented with bright,

 indirect colors similar to a video game arcade. Gentle choral music filled the space.

 Four lit white plinths stood in the center with a game controller on each, and a

 projected image of a translucent Earth took up the breadth and length of the far

 wall. As participants scanned the QR code on their phones, they were instructed to

 choose an emoji and fill in the blank “We Called It _______.” As they submitted their

 answers, their text appeared on the screen in colored rectangles. I requested that f

 four participants step up to the plinths to take control of the avatar. Once they had

 accepted and pressed ‘x’ on all four controllers, level one began. 

     The simulation. Upbeat synthesizer music began to play. On the screen appeared

 a 2D platformer game. An avatar also appeared as a black hole with brightly colored

 lips, one chicken leg, one cat leg, bee wings and a human arm. Each game controller

 governed one mobility function (right leg, left leg, arm, and jump) and one

 expressive sound (singing, whistling, yawning, and growling). Participants had to  

 collaborate to maneuver onto the platforms and avoid deadly hazards like exposed

 rebar and plastic bags. 

     On their phones, participants were offered a series of emotion-based icons that  

 allowed them to ‘send energy’. When tapped, these would appear on screen above

 the avatar before floating into space. 

     At times, the avatar would collect a token that would switch control of each limb

 to a different game controller. It would also sometimes encounter chasms it could

 not cross. When this happened, a red button was pushed to activate the storytelling

 aspect of the game. The camera would shift away from the avatar and into the

 chasm, where a story fragment appeared. Online participants needed to fill in the

 chasm with their responses before the avatar could continue.

     At the end of each level, a glowing Earth token was collected, cueing the words

 “Let’s Dance!” and playing dance music for one minute. To advance to the next level,

 all four controllers were required to press ‘x’ and the mobile phone participants had

 to send 50 energy points within 90 seconds. 

 Designing and iterating for Values:

 Collectivity in We called it Earth

     Early in the creative process, I identified the core values of this piece as

 collectivity, access, and disidentification. Below, I will explore in detail how the

 collectivity was approached and developed over the course of the piece's

 development, and how through 1,711 playtests, three prototypes, and three

 performances, they evolved. The examples I have chosen represent only a small

 sample of the design work that was done, focusing on the game’s main mechanics:    

 distributed limb control, sending energy, and collective storytelling. The decisions

 surrounding these mechanics, however, are indicative of many design conversations

 I had with my mentors and my collaborator, software developer Hadi Asghari, over

 the course of several months. 

     Collectivity. This was the primary value guiding We Called It Earth. My original

 conception was a Deleuzian/Guattarian rhizomatic assemblage lacking hierarchy,

 beginning, or end (1988, p.9). I liked the idea of decentralization and lines of

 connectivity that would reterritorialize and spread infinitely. I imagined translating

 this to a game mechanic wherein each player could choose and attach a limb to a

 central entity, and then control its movement. I realized quickly, however, that this

 mechanic did not capture the quality of a rhizome, but rather the chaotic and

 awkward momentum of a social movement with its power to change society  

 through a sustained and concentrated effort. The politics of this began before the

 first keystroke. If every participant controlled one limb, what would determine the

 direction of the avatar’s movement? Would majority rule, or would the decision need

 to be unanimous? Would there be a penalty for lack of consensus?

     A social movement had differentiated roles, a unified (if not uniform) goal, and a

 form of agency that exhibited power in unpredictable bursts from various directions.

 In order to evoke these qualities, it was important for each participant to experience

 both intermittent individual agency and collaborative effect. I introduced the idea of

 using the computer code to randomly rotate control of the avatar's limbs to

 participants, while simultaneously allowing everyone to share their opinions on

 screen via mobile phone text. My collaborator and I also decided that, while there

 would be no penalty for dissensus, disagreement between the limbs would cause

 the avatar stay still, and lack of participation would greatly slow progress. 

     Group flow. During the first prototype, we were not able to pass off control of the

 limbs to the participants joining through Zoom; however, participants were able to

 experiment with entering text, although it was prompted only when the avatar

 (controlled by me) found the proper token. At that point, their text boxes would fall

 from the sky to settle nearby. Those submitting text enjoyed the game, but

 expressed the desire to spend more thoughtful time writing, and to have the

 opportunity to respond to each other. 

     Their feedback reminded me of the research I had been doing into collective

 creativity and group flow, a concept widely explored by psychologist R. Keith Sawyer.

 He asserts that characteristics of collective emergence include many pauses to

 leave space for contribution, a deliberate ambiguity that allows for retroactive

 meaning making, and unpredictability that requires creativity in order to participate 

 (2010). 

     Taking this into account, a scenario was proposed where the avatar would be

 dependent on text submissions to fill in holes in the level that couldn’t otherwise be

 traversed. It would freeze upon activating this mechanism, giving mobile phone

 participants more time for writing. In a further attempt to support this, I composed

 some mellower music for these sections, hoping that it would calm the exuberant

 energy that maneuvering the avatar generated, and offer a conducive atmosphere

 for creative writing (in subsequent iterations, I even added a small meditation in

 order to achieve this). I hoped that this separation of activities would address the

 potential inequality between what I was now referring to as the avatar’s ‘body’ (the

 limbs) and ‘mind’ (the story). 

     Revisiting collectivity. As the second prototype showing approached, I began to

 focus more on how to deliver instructions and how rules might be enforced if they

 were violated during the performance. It was a priority for me to avoid a top-down

 approach, because I wanted to leave space for the collective to affect its own form

 through the experience of gameplay. I decided to revisit my definition of collectivity

 in order to better understand how I might maintain a directed sense of community

 without exerting hierarchical pressure. 

     Galloway and Thacker explore networks as a system of interrelated, individual

 nodes. A protocological network is distributed rather than centralized, and is

 inclusive upon agreement to the terms and conditions. This kind of network

 operates through relationships, and exerts control through protocols that regulate

 flow through ”multiagent, individuated nodes in a metastable network” (2013, p.30).

 In other words, it is controlled in a radically horizontal and distributed way without

 an actor controlling the network itself, thus allowing for more robustness and

 flexibility when confronting unpredictable contingencies. 

     During the second prototype I decided to implement this by presenting the rules in

 written form outside the space so the door could act as a threshold of consent to

 the terms and conditions of the game. They would communicate two important

 points: the theatre was a space of play, and being supportive of other participants

 was the most important behavior. I used playful language and tried to reassure

 participants that being confused was okay; they were all beginners, and should feel

 free to try things out.

     Bringing it all together. Due to pandemic restrictions, the second prototype was

 the first time experiencing the multiplayer limb control of the avatar with

 participants. The mechanic itself was an unmitigated success, characterized by

 cheers of encouragement, loud laughter and confirmation at the end that

 participants felt like part of a community. Without prompting, participants took turns

 with the controllers during the game. What had taken me 2.5 minutes to navigate in

 playtesting, however, now took 25 minutes for participants during the prototype, and

 this caused people to forget about their mobile phones entirely, opting instead to

 focus on the action unfolding on the projected screen. 

     It was pointed out during feedback that the written rules and instructions did not

 prepare participants for the energy and aesthetics of the game, and they would

 prefer having a host present to be responsible for the flow of events. I decided to

 proceed with this idea,  thought I noted that I would need to be careful not to assert

 myself as an enforcer of the rules during gameplay in order to let the collective

 develop without my direct intervention. 

     To address the flagging interest of the mobile phone users, the programmer and I

 decided that it was necessary to once again increase the interdependence between

 the ‘body’ and ‘mind’, and that an additional mechanic was required to achieve this.

 An energy bar was added to the top of the main screen, and as the avatar

 progressed, its level would steadily decrease. Also, if the avatar ‘died’, 50 points

 were deducted, and if it fell to zero, the avatar was unable to move until it was

 replenished. On mobile phones, we added the ability to send emotional energy

 through five icons, some of which added energy points and some of which drained

 them.