Designing for Immediate Play Martin Pichlmair Lena Mech Miguel Sicart Center for Computer Games Research Center for Computer Games Research Center for Computer Games Research IT University Copenhagen IT University Copenhagen IT University Copenhagen [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT denition of play. Examples of immediate play are the interaction is paper is concerned with designing for immediate play, the with interactive installations in museums, many urban games, party experience that a player has when joining a game designed for be- games, and alternate reality games. Videogames can be immediate, ing played without particular preparation. Museum games, urban too, if they are pick-up-and-play games that do not require reading games, casual sports, and ad-hoc multiplayer video games are kinds manuals or passing tutorials. Amateur sport is also full of examples of games that facilitate immediate play situations. Aer a detailed of spontaneously joined playful activities. While there is a lot of explanation of immediate play, we analyze the context of the imme- unstructured spontaneous play, e.g. in child’s play, we will focus diate play situation, which is mostly characterized by an overlap on the harder design challenge of games explicitly structured to be between dierent realities of the experience. e article continues played immediately. by describing various design dimensions and outlining the design Designers creating immediately playable activities face unique space those oer using examples and expert opinions. While most challenges. is paper addresses those by proposing design tools practices and game examples mentioned in this paper are from and techniques. e authors of this paper have many years of non-digital games, a special focus is put on the role of technology experience in the design of games and playful media art pieces, in immediately playable experiences. Still, the examined design have curated and organized art and game exhibitions and festivals, dimensions are independent of the technological foundation of the as well as public playing events. During those years they have game. is paper provides a starting point for designing beer played and playtested numerous public games, adapted games to immediate play situations. be played publicly, and presented new playful experiences to the public. Additionally they have created commercial and artistic CCS CONCEPTS videogames and analog games. e research this paper is built upon is informal, though substantiated with online questionnaires •Human-centered computing ! Interaction design; Interac- answered by six experts, Philipp Ehmann – a game designer, theatre tion design theory, concepts and paradigms; Interaction design pro- director and a co-founder of Play:Vienna festival, Holly Gramazio cess and methods; – a game designer and curator from Hide&Seek and currently at KEYWORDS Matheson Marcault, Patrick Jarnfelt – a game designer and co- founder of Copenhagen Game Collective and w00t Copenhagen Game Design, Play Design, Immediate Play, Urban Games, Perva- Play Festival, Gwyn Morfey – a game designer and a founder of Fire sive Games, Museum Games Hazard Games; Sebastian ack – a game designer, curator and ACM Reference format: co-founder of Invisible Playground and Playpublik festival, and Eric Martin Pichlmair, Lena Mech, and Miguel Sicart. 2017. Designing for Zimmerman – a game designer, academic at NYU and co- founder Immediate Play. In Proceedings of FDG’17, Hyannis, MA, USA, August 14-17, of Gamelab. us, some of our design claims and arguments are 2017, 8 pages. based on research and analysis of the eects of design decisions, DOI: 10.1145/3102071.3102075 while others are supported by expert voices. e research results are best practices and practical advices, oered with the intention 1 INTRODUCTION of supporting the design of beer immediate play experiences for is paper is concerned with particular challenges in designing digital as well as analog games. eir basis is urban games but for “immediate play”. Immediacy means that the activity of play the lessons learned are applicable to a wide range of experiences. is entered spontaneously and unprepared as opposed to the act Additional empirical studies can validate the theoretical framework of joining a game in a planned way, with training, preparation, and design claims put forward in this work. or any other steps taken in advance. We regard play as a wider practice than the playing of games following Sicart’s [26] minimal 2 PLAYING IMMEDIATELY is paper is concerned with design aspects of immediate play. In Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed order to describe those, a clear denition is required. e following for prot or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation paragraphs oer an outline of what we mean when we call an on the rst page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the activity “immediate play”. author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permied. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specic permission Immediate play is a mode of playing. It can occur in many and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. circumstances and in its simplest form is nothing more than a FDG’17, Hyannis, MA, USA spontaneously entered state of playfulness. e behavior can be © 2017 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. 978-1-4503-5319-9/17/08...$15.00 observed in children as well as adults, and can be regarded as a DOI: 10.1145/3102071.3102075 momentary state of mind. FDG’17, August 14-17, 2017, Hyannis, MA, USA Martin Pichlmair et al. Immediate play does not require a formal game. ere are no player they have to enter a playful state of mind, thereby activating immediate games; just situations that allow immediate play for what Apter, calls the “protective frame”[3] – an invisible barrier some, sometimes all, participants. Audiovisual Environment Suite between them and their surroundings that grants them the freedom by Golan Levin [15] for example is not a game, but an art installation to behave according to the game rules instead of to societal norms that allows museum visitors to express themselves using an easy- [29]. Establishing a safe space that allows players to enter the game to-learn but expressive audiovisual instrument in an immediate is thus an act of creating the right spatial, sociocultural, and psy- play situation. chological environment, all of which inuence each other. Doing Immediate play is designed to allow for spontaneous joining and so can be as easy as throwing a football into a crowd, or depend on leaving. Immediate play can happen in groups or alone. Players month long preparation, depending on the intended game. All play join the game voluntarily or incidentally, depending on the design has a physical component, even if it is only the body of the player. of the game. ey might do so alone or in groups. Dierent players e relation between this physical component and the game shapes might join to varying degrees, taking up dierent roles in the game. how immediate play manifests. Players also have to be able to drop out of the game easily. Both, joining and leaving, has to be as friction-less as possible for the 2.2 Playing in Context other players. Pick-up play on public basketball courts would be Some kinds of public places, such as playgrounds and sports courts, an example for such a case. Escape Rooms, which are also entered are already marked as “magic circles”. In other cases the magic unprepared and t all other criteria for immediacy, are exceptions circle is a construct that is only present in the minds of the players to this rule, since their whole purpose is to make it hard for the but invisible to non-participating passers-by. Game props can turn player to leave the game. Escape Rooms feature emergency exit any space into a clearly marked play area, the recognizable uten- procedures, though, to allow players to leave. is interrupts or sils becoming the demarcation. e presence of a football and its even ends the game. observable use turns any space into a makeshi football pitch. e Immediate play, given its low barrier of entry and the possibility football comes with a context ready to be unlocked by the ad-hoc to easily join and leave, is especially prone to interfering with the football players. reality outside the game. is property can be exploited in design. Context is in our argument used according to Dourish’s “What e popular live-action game Assassin sometimes features the rule We Talk About When We Talk About Context” [8], in that is not a that witnesses invalidate a game action, turning bystanders into stable background but a relational property between objects and unaware players. activities that changes dynamically. In our case that means that Immediate play can transition into regular play, losing its imme- participants in the activity create a context using a prop, the foot- diacy over time. One could argue that all play starts in an immediate ball. At the same time their activities are embedded in the existing form, but for the sake of clarity, we will focus on the design of games context of the public space. that are aimed at being played in immediacy in this article. Play A football is a very broadly recognized object of play. More de- sessions can last between minutes and hours, and feature actions sign eort is necessary to turn a lesser-known object, or an object that repeat. with less playful context, into an invitation to play.