deep play

The first time I told this story at a lecture, an audience member challenged me: "You puppet masters must really get a kick out of manipulating these players to do whatever you want. That must be such a power trip." But in fact, the opposite was true. We didn't get a rush of power when the players misinterpreted our simple welcome message. We actually felt completely out of control.

Stories linger in the places after we experience them. And the stories we tell about our personal experiences in a place help us own that space, to feel comfortable there, to make others comfortable there, to feel alive there. I believe the job of the designers of reality-based games like big urban games and alternate reality games is to figure out: What kind of story would players want to be able to tell about this space?