|
Taking the
monopoly
idea further, we arrived at globopoly, an "actualized" monopoly, with
corporation and other international networks as a structure of movement
for the players in the game. We abandonned the concept of merely
occupying territory, to occupy network nodes. Based on the slogan
"think local, act global" , we would build an hyperlink structure
within the city. After having made a previous map of office buildings,
where international organizations and corporations are represented, we
would make a small research to find the countries to which they have
connections. So the office buildings become sort of
"servers" having "ports" to countries. Players could then move from one
building to another, providing they have connections to the same
countries. This hyperlink structure could lead to rich strategical
thinking, making the players adopt a global strategy to occupy local
buildings. Their mobile phones have a java application installed,
updated constantly from a server, showing the state of the network
nodes (buildings) occupied by the enemy players as they grow. When a
player arrives at a building, he/she has to type a code hidden
somewhere in the staircase or overcome some sort of challenge. Going
from one building to the next would be like a zoom effect, when the
deterritorialization lines to the countries slowly reterritorialize,
and abstractions become empiric in the next street and the building,
and then inside the building.
We started to look for codes on buildings to identify
them. In some buildings there are invisible
barcode stickers for the security company to know their employees have
been to the places they whatch. The device they carry, stores the
information when they read the barcode. Players
would have to be aware of the codes
and enter the
staircases to look after them. We also looked
for
other codes
(pictures below).
Drawbacks:
- We premap the city, giving the players predefined destinations, and
thereby make the way to them not interesting. Would be better to let
the players find their way. The map is generated while playing and not
before
- That corporations are global networks is nothing new. You can read it
on the web or in any booklet or leaflet of the company. We are
just corroborating a rather scary view of the world, and giving the
players a predefined interpretation of what they will find.
- Its a lot of work to premap all the buildings.
- In case of the barcodes, we would need extra hardware
- etc.
|
