Akoha
During my latest reading about Superstruct, I also found Akoha. Here's what the Akoha site says:
Akoha is the world's first social reality game where you can earn points by playing real-world missions with your friends. Missions might include giving someone your favorite book, inviting a friend for drinks, or buying a friend some chocolate.
Imagine if the cards were tarot cards. That would be neat. Then Akoha would remind me of "The Good Book", a concept from the science fiction novel Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder. It's neither game, religion, or political system, but in way, it's like all three.
Its hundred or so chapters used parables, stories and poetry to describe particular "roles" such as Phoenix, Priestess, or Pack-Carrier. "Pick a role, any role to start with", Sophia had said. "That's you--for now." While you were acting in a particular role, you were supposed to try to emulate its qualities as closely as possible. At the end of each chapter were a few pages of rules about what each role should do when encountering people playing other roles. You might take charge of that person for a time; your own role might change to something else; so might theirs.
"The Good Book's not a religion." Sophia had laughed. The book started replacing local adhocracies about seven years ago. It's just a bunch of simple rules; if this happens, do that. People have had systems like it for thousands of years--you know, the Ten Commandments and the Categorical Imperative, that sort of thing. But those systems weren't based on systematic testing. The Good Book is based on massive simulations of whole societies--what happens when billions of individual people follow various codes of conduct. It's simple--if most people use the rules in the Book most of the time, a pretty much utopian society emerges spontaneously on the macro level.
The Book was like magic. Sophia had wanted Livia to try it out, so she did to be polite. Using it was like play-acting; Livia found she could slip easily into some roles but had more difficulty with others. One day she was the Courier, and people came to her with packages to deliver until she met someone whose role changed hers. The next day she was designated the Tourist, and she did nothing but explore Brand New York until she met a Visitor, at which point her role changed to Tour Guide. That was all very simple, she thought; any idiot could have designed a system like this. But every now and then she caught glimpses of something more--something extraordinary. Yesterday she had run through a chain of roles and ended up as Secretary.
Reviewing the Secretary's role in the book, she found that she should poll inscape for anyone nearby who had one of the roles of Boss, Lawyer, Researcher, or about five other alternates. She did, and went to meet a woman who had the odd, unfamiliar role of Auditor.
Livia met the Auditor in a restaurant. Five other people were there, too; all had been summoned to this meeting by their roles, but nobody had any idea why, so they compared notes. One man said he'd been given the role of Messenger three days before, and couldn't shake it. He was being followed by a small constellation of inscape windows he'd accumulated from other roles. When he distributed these, they turned out to all relate to an issue of power allotment in Brand New York that the votes were dragging their heels on. Suddenly the Auditor had a task. As Secretary, Livia began annotating her memory of the meeting. In under an hour they had a policy package with key suggestions, and suddenly their roles changed. A man who'd been the Critic suddenly became the Administrator. According to the rules of the Book, he could enact policy provided conversion to Administrator was duly witnessed by enough other users.
This was amazing. After a while though, Livia had realized that far larger and more intricate interactions were occurring via the Book all the time. It was simply that few or none of the people involved could see more than the smallest part of them.
The "Good Book" has the advantage over Superstruct-- at least for a gamer with my tastes-- that it lets you forget about the gloomy and intimidating problem that the game is solving. Also players have challenges that are
either
(1) brainlessly simple fun like Solitaire or Google Image Game,
or
(2) specific, narrowly-defined, and measurable.
Perhaps a game system hybrid of Akoha and "The Good Book" will be a project that results from within the play of Superstruct itself! I've been hoping to find something to do in Superstruct that doesn't emotionally paralyze me-- maybe this will be it.
Perhaps you're a Superstruct or Akoha player, and arrived at this blog post via Google Alerts for the search terms involved or through similar means. The Internet is similar to the "Good Book" from Lady of Mazes in this way. If these concepts appeal to you, the Internet has assigned you the mission to introduce yourself.
Comments
cadmus on (None)
matt-arnold on Sep. 16, 2008 9:08 PM
I take it the internet service in Egypt is poor.
cadmus on (None)
tlatoani on Sep. 16, 2008 8:47 PM
Of course, The Good Book also has similarities to a game referenced in Stross's Halting State, where players are given real-world missions. That's about all I can say without risking spoilers.
matt-arnold on Sep. 16, 2008 9:15 PM
I have been breathlessly anticipating reading Halting State. Given that I do not spend new-price money on books, and also I dislike having to deal with bookshelves full of heavy cumbersome non-searchable paper products, I'm not sure when that will be.
rikhei on Sep. 16, 2008 10:24 PM
Akoha sounds fascinating. Kind of like PMOG, only much better.
sfllaw on Sep. 17, 2008 6:22 AM
Hi, I'm from Akoha.
We bumped into PMOG when we were developing Akoha and it was one of the many influences that made Akoha the thing it is today. :) Of course, Jane McGonigal, of Superstruct fame, was also a major inspiration. The whole idea of games that you play while you're living your life is something that works so amazingly well.
I've started playing Akoha casually, tacking on an extra minute or so to explain it, whenever I do something nice for someone. It's strangely easy and strangely fun.
atropis on Sep. 16, 2008 10:36 PM
remember morton's list? that was (is? i think it might still be in print) a life-game, too. except that the options ranged across good/neutral/evil territory, and were determined by extensive dice rolling on an assortment of option-narrowing tables. you might find yourself on a mission to help a stranger - or assault one. tee hee.
matt-arnold on Sep. 16, 2008 10:56 PM
Yeah, I know some of the guys who make Morton's List.
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