videoludica. game culture 

Frank Lantz is the Creative Director and co-Founder of area/code, a game designer based in New York City. Over the past few years, Frank has been involved in a number of high profile, large-scale, real-world game projects including PacManhattan, Big Urban Game, and ConQwest. Frank has worked in the field of game development for the past 20 years. Before starting area/code, Frank was the Director of Game Design at gameLab, a developer of online and downloadable games. Frank has also worked as a game designer for the developer POP, where he created games for Cartoon Network, Lifetime TV, and VH1. Between 1988 and 1998, he was Creative Director at R/GA Interactive, a New York digital design company. For over 10 years, Frank has taught game design at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, the School of Visual Arts, and the New School. His writings on games, technology and culture have appeared in a variety of publications. videoludica talked to him about Big Games, ludic events that transform the urban environment in playful arenas.

Where did the idea for Big Games come from? Were there any specific reasons why you used an arcade game such as Pac-man instead of more contemporary videogames?
Some computer and videogame designers see what they are doing as a totally separate kind of experience and some of us see it as part of a continuum of game culture that stretches back as far as history. I'm in the second camp. For people like us it is natural to think about making games that take place in the real world, like sports, boardgames, social games, children's neighborhood games, and so on. So, for many years, I have been interested in experimenting with new kinds of games for people to play in real-world settings. As for PacManhattan, it was designed by the students who take my Big Games class, I think they chose Pac Man because of its iconic status, because its familiarity allowed them to pack a lot of game mechanics into the game without overwhelming players with rules, and because of the visual pun between the Pac Man maze and Manhattan's city grid.

Big Games transform the urban environment in real life videogames. Today they are 'simply' games, but they show the potential for the city to become a ludic space. After all, the phenomenon is already happening: wi-fi connections, GPS system, 3G mobiles with internet access allow people to stay always connected in a network. These technologies can literally erase the boundaries between real and mediated, virtual worlds. Digital is in the air, rather than being confined to a screen. Videogames escape from the desktop and invade the streets. Where are Big Games going?
Yes, this is exactly the situation we find ourselves in, as the world around us becomes increasingly layered and framed and penetrated by data our physical spaces become more and more like information spaces. This is a kind of mirror reflection of what is happening in the virtual spaces of 3D computer games which are becoming more and more realistic. So Big Games play with this confusion. For example, a taxi cab is certainly a real-world object, and a practical way to get from one place to another, but a taxi cab with a GPS device could easily become a symbol within an abstract logical system of positions, flows, and vectors - just like a chess piece. Of course these systems have always been in place around us, but now we have a greater ability to see them and understand them and intervene in them and turn them into games.

Big Games require large investments and great organizational skills. Maybe in the future they could become easier and widespread. Could better technology help them to evolve into a new kind of social interaction that uses the game as a pretext?
We are very much interested in making Big Games that are more accessible and wide-spread. I often fantasize about making a simple game that is played by millions and millions of people all over the world. A game that is so widely played that, when you meet someone, you will ask them "are you playing X?" the same way you ask someone today if they play World of Warcraft or Grand Theft Auto.

Big Games aren't simply new kind of games. They are also spectacular and mediated events. Do you think that advertising agencies could use them to create a new form of ads?
Yes, because Big Games take place in public and can be highly visual and spectacular, they are ideally suited to this kind of promotional communication. For example, we created the game ConQwest for a company called Qwest to promote their mobile phone service to teenagers. This is the largest game of this type so far, but we expect to see more games like this in the future. Also, ARGs (Alternate Reality Games) are almost always created as promotion for movies or other media like The Beast (for the movie AI) and I Love Bees (for the launch of Halo 2). These games often have real-world Big Game style aspects. You can learn more about ARGs here.

How does ordinary game design differ from the design of Big Games?
There are many specific design issues related to Big Games. First, the real-world is messy and games that take place in real-world settings need to be very simple and clear so that they don't get swamped by the complex detail of the world. Also, players need to understand what's happening in the game, what the overall situation is. Game designers call this the "state" of the game. Representing the state of the game to the players in a clear and continuous way is one of the main challenges of Big Game interface design. These are just a few of the particular design challenges that Big Games present.

For Conqwest you used a new technology called Semacode. How does it work?
Semacodes are 2D barcodes that can be photographed by a cellphone camera and then interpreted into digital information. Semacodes are an example of "bottom-up" location technology. In contrast to something like GPS, in which satellites are used to pinpoint the absolute location of something on the earth's surface, in the case of semacodes you place a particular code out into the world somewhere and then when someone can see that code you know where they are.

What are you working on these days? Are you planning some show?
We are currently working on ConQwest 2006, which will have a totally new game design and be bigger in both space and time then before. We are also working with Nokia to develop game concepts for their next generation technology. And we recently launched SuperStar, a Big Game for the city of Tokyo. And of course we have some secret projects that we can't talk about yet.

Link: Frank Lantz' Studio

Pac-Manhattan.

Conqwest

SuperStar Tokyo .