pervasive media studio

Swarm | Simon Evans & Simon Johnson

Games are our thing, games outdoors with loads of people. Interesting games. We wanted to work with swarming, mainly for interesting games but we also dreamt of the other revolutionary things swarm intelligence might make possible. Low carbon futures, mass creativity, living happily with less.

We set out to get to swarm games through understanding swarm principles. Turns out we've done it the other way round, getting to the principles through some really captivating and exciting games. These aren't the computer games that we are all familiar with (although they use computers) but games that use large numbers of people, playing with and against each other in a public space.

A swarm game uses very simple rule sets – stay close to your team mates, but away from the others – downloaded to game players' wireless devices. Game communication is between players with no centralised control. This makes the games efficient to run and easily scalable. It also deals with the lack of public wireless network infrastructure.

The games we developed during the project range from networked mass player SMS games, to paper based street games, to swarm games played on HP ipaq PDAs. We ran these at the new monthly games night iglab http://iglab.urbanantics.net learning some tough lessons along the way, some simply to do with the practicality of testing mass player games, but all challenged us not to think with old centralised, hierarchical models: client>server, experiment>guinea pig. We have structured the development process around people and play, and learnt to trust the potential of the games to reveal real insights on our research area.

This part of the research has culminated in a new game called Comfort of Strangers, the result of a partnership between Swarmtoolkit and HP labs. In the game players have to identify and keep close to their team mates, whilst avoiding the other team. You gain points for the former and loose them for the latter. The game is played in busy city spaces such as shopping malls.

We believe passionately in these type of games and have formalised our partnership in a business, simon, that will develop the ideas and the games. Our first goal is street games as an entertainment product, and we are launching Comfort Of Strangers at the Come Out and Play festival in New York in June. We are following this up with further performances in London at Hide and Seek Festival later in June and the launch of the second game in the series at the new igfest in Bristol in September.

http://swarmtoolkit.net
http://www.comeoutandplay.org/2008_comfortofstrangers.php

Simon Evans leads a digital design studio specialising in design for mobile platforms. This focus on mobile networks extends to Simon's art work where he uses game play in pervasive media experiences. He has exhibited at FACT in Liverpool and the ICA London. Along with Simon Johnson, Simon Evans has recently formed a street games company - simon - out of their swarmtoolkit research project. Their game Comfort of Strangers is opening Come Out & Play in New York and the first commercial application of the business is a student induction game for the University of the West of England. Simon lives with his wife and three children in Gloucesterhire where he has organised the local charity fun run for the last four years.

Simon Johnson – Artist, Game designer, Developer. Has spent the last 2 years touring internationally with locative games. This year he set up iglab, the interesting games lab, the uk's first offline/online community built around locative, street and pervasive games. On the back of their Media Sandbox success, Simon Johnson and Simon Evans set up Simon, a Street games company. They are currently developing games to help with student induction in partnership with UWE. In September of this year Simon Johnson will also be directing igfest, the south west of England's first street and pervasive games festival. http://iglab.igfest.org