User:Happyseaurchin

From Ludocity

games

I've contributed three games to ludocity:

  • friend collider: to get cliques of friends to break up so people mingle easily
  • aurable night: people are encouraged to safely remark on their first impressions of each other
  • experiential nights: combining the biggies of people, time and money, in one minimal experimental package

philosophy

My games are below the radar. They often challenge standard methodologies, and invite people to question their own self-representation. They do not usually conform to the rulesets common to games. Many are defined within the social realm. If we take board games as rules around a board, and pervasive games as rules which manage our behaviour, then social art games are rules which invite us to think and question. I am a big fan of thought-experiments. I suspect that's all I do: pose thought experiments for people. I have spent many years going in a buddhist-direction, at the request of my friends and family who believe that inner peace is necessary before we have outer peace. I believe we just need to facilitate our social engagement a little so that we all have the opportunity to explore what it is to be human, and not to get too deep within ourselves nor too elaborate with our organisational structures.

I am currently in the process of redefining myself and what I offer so that it is more understood by adults. Hence, I am writing a book to complement Social Art (http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/social-art/5520781), and designing games for people to experientially come to terms with alternative ways of engaging, which foster trust and acceptance and courage, generate the skills required to enable a sustainable social self-organisation.

We shall be playing games with thousands of players, if not millions. Think of a film and the cinema complex as a game. Think of politics and economics as game sets. Computer games are now evolving to the point where it can carry substantial political relationships, amoungst thousands of players. Call it games, call it art, call it maths, call it love, call it what works. Pervasive games (which surely is asking for a name-change if ever there was the chance of it being mis-heard or misunderstood!) is a strong influence in social change.

history

Been playing games most of my life. Started with roleplaying games at the age of 11 because my brother (8 years olders) was one of the first in scotland to be playing AD&D: the DungeonMaster's Guide is not something you should put a 11-year-old's head through. Played with a small, closed group of friends during adolescence. Our games evolved, we designed our own worlds and games systems, and most of the game play was pseudo-realistic, which meant that nothing happened. I'd write scenarios of various forms of intrigue and adventure which the players often didn't notice. They would spend 6 hour slogs just trying to survive out in the wilderness. Tough gaming, but good practice for the real world :)

Early twenties played with friends, finding such things as Murder, and inventing all kinds of social games, two of which I have described above: one was for a valentines party for my single friends, and the other for all the different cliques my partner and I knew. I decided to become a maths teacher, and though I didn't invent 'games' per se, I ended up playing a lot of games during supply in inner city london. These games involved consciousness, self-awareness, social dynamics, and though the rules sets can not be defined easily, some amazing results emerged: positive vibes, self-discipline, emergent responsible behaviour and exam results. Meanwhile with my family, I would always buy a whole-family board game (try cluedo in teams, it's a hoot!), or providing everyone with a musical instrument so we made music together (don't ask for the recording!).

Had a critical time in my late twenties, the result of which was an insight into certain social dynamics that are feasible if we only play it right: 2020worldpeace is an off-shoot. Quit teaching after 10 years off-and-on, believing that the maths department should be renamed the games department. Algebra is just a game, a good one to refine strategy, and should be kept away from kids. That'll teach 'em! I am now trying to apply what I have learned working with kids to adults; it's a tricky transposition since many adults still live/work within institutional frameworks, and the constraints they accept are not so much to encourage creativity, but deprive us. A man much wiser than me (Michel Bauwens of the http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/) remarked that there is a parallel between institutional forms and ego. I am particularly interested in dynamics which are more fluid: the consequence of self-discipline is alignment to others which gives rise to confluence.

contact

Catch me on twitter, youtube, and googlemail, in fact google: happyseaurchin. (otherwise known as david pinto: http://www.davidpinto.org/)