ARTICLES & PAPERS

"A Real Little Game: The Performance of Belief in Pervasive Play."  Digital Games Research Associaton (DiGRA) "Level Up" Conference Proceedings.  November 2003.  Read this paper.

ABSTRACT: Ubiquitous computing and mobile network technologies have fueled a recent proliferation of opportunities for digitally-enabled play in everyday spaces.  In this paper, I examine how players negotiate the boundary between these pervasive games and real life.  I trace the emergence of what I call “the Pinocchio effect” – the desire for a game to be transformed into real life, or conversely, for everyday life to be transformed into a "real little game.”  Focusing on two examples of pervasive play – the 2001 immersive game known as the Beast, and the Go Game, an ongoing urban superhero game — I argue that gamers maximize their play experience by performing belief, rather than actually believing, in the permeability of the game-reality boundary.

"Unsupervised Scoring for Scalable Internet-Based Collaborative Teleoperation."  Ken Goldberg, Dezhen Song, In Yong Song, Jane McGonigal, Wei Zheng, UC Berkeley, and Dana Plautz, Intel Corporation.  Draft Date: November 2003.  Conference proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), April 2004.  Read the current draft.

ABSTRACT: Our group is studying the potential for scalable Internet-based Collaborative (multi-operator single robot) Teleoperation, where many users simultaneously share control using browser-based point-and-click interfaces.  In this paper we describe our "unsupervised scoring" system for individual assessment within a collaborative activity.  We explore how unsupervised scoring can be used to increase incentive for active and effective interaction and how user performance can be numerically reprsented based on cluster organization, frequency of interaction and response time.

"A Lost Cause: Performance and the Free Speech Movement Digital Archive."  American Society for Theatre Research 2003 Meeting.  November 2003.  Read this paper.

ABSTRACT:  Is there room for dramatic improvement in the way digital archivists approach their art?  If so, how might performance intervene in the current Sisyphean struggle against digital decay?  In this paper, I take my cue from Peter Lunenfeld’s proposal in the introduction to The Digital Dialectic (1999): “"Rather than thinking of the digital media and environments mentioned herein as though they possessed the stability of painting or architecture, better to embrace their mercurial qualities and conceptualize them as being somehow evanescent, like theatrical performances or dance."  What would happen if we treated digital archives not as attempts at a permanent cultural record that bypass the messy organic difficulties and decay of hard-copy materiality, but rather as ephemeral objects that offer up opportunities for distinctly embodied and collective experiences?  This paper addresses a range of theoretical complications that occurred when I attempted to transplant a performance studies approach to the theories and methods of archive practice. 

"This Is Not a Game: Immersive Aesthetics & Collective Play." Digital Arts & Culture 2003 Conference Proceedings.  May 2003.  Read this paper.

ABSTRACT: The increasing convergence and mobility of digital network technologies have given rise to new, massively-scaled modes of social interaction where the physical and virtual worlds meet. This paper explores one product of these extreme networks, the emergent genre of immersive entertainment, as a potential tool for harnessing collective action. Through an analysis of the structure and rhetoric of immersive games, I explore how immersive aesthetics can generate a new sense of social agency in game players, and how collaborative play techniques can instruct real-world problem-solving.

"Watching Horror: A Gendered Look at Terrorism, or, Everything I Know, I Learned Watching Psycho." Senses of Cinema Magazine.  November 2001.  Read this article.

ABSTRACT: A personal meditation on viewing strategies developed as a long-time watcher of horror movies, and an analysis of how these habits affected the author's experience of watching television coverage of the 9/11 attacks.

"Splitting Heads: Collaborating Toward Less Invasive Surgery."  Berkeley Science Review.  Fall 2002.  Read this article.

"Mobius Madness: Inside Out with Clifford Stoll." Berkeley Science Review.  Fall 2002.  Read this article.

MANIFESTOS

"The Curious Interface: A Design Manifesto in Favor of Play."  UbiComp 2003.  October 2003.  READ THE MANIFESTO:  Version 1.0: "A reasonable request." OR Version 2.0: "An escalation of our demands." 

ABSTRACT: This manifesto argues that our opportunities to engage digitally are increasingly limited and pre-determined by technologies that too clearly announce their intentions and capabilities. The user who instantly understands the purpose and processes of a technology is compelled to respond in specific, directed ways. Once learned, these habits preclude user experimentation, modification and intervention. For this reason, we must insist: clarity in design is not always an advantage.  On the contrary, we call for more curious interfaces...

"PlaceStormers: A Manifesto."  READ. Created for Intel Research.  March 2004.  Also, read a set of PlaceStormer Missions to be deployed in conjunction with the manifesto.

ABSTRACT:  This manifesto calls for more play, space, expression and everyday superpowers in shared, public environments.  It outlines a set of beliefs in support of its demands and suggests a series of modus operandi.

PRESENTATION MEDIA

Report from "PlaceStorming Workshop" co-facilitated by Jane McGonigal and Ken Anderson for Intel Research.  DOWNLOAD. (March 2004)

Powerpoint presentation from StoryEngines conference at Stanford University.  "The Runaway Game: Spectacle and Performance in Public Play." DOWNLOAD. (February 2004)

Report from the "Entertainment and Play Workshop" co-facilitated by Jane McGonigal and Ken Anderson at Intel's Meaning of Place Forum. DOWNLOAD. (September 2003)

Powerpoint presentation for DiGRA 2003.  "A Real Little Game: The Pinocchio Effect in Pervasive Perversive Play."  DOWNLOAD.  (November 2003)

Powerpoint presentation for Melbourne DAC 03.  "This Is Not a Game: Immersive Aesthetics & Collective Play."  DOWNLOAD.  (May 2003)

Powerpoint presentation for 030303: Collective Play.  "Introductory Talk: Collective Play."  DOWNLOAD. (March 2003)

CV

Jane McGonigal, Curriculum Vitae.  Updated March 15, 2004.