Ways of Being Together - discussion

Summary:

The thread to gather feedback on a Zoom installation by Jennie Gottschalk.

Ways of Being Together - discussion

odolany 15 Nov 2020 22:47

After the seemingly successful previous discussion on the work "Imagined Seconds", we can now turn the game design eye towards a more complex work (as agreed at Twitter). I had a pleasure of tuning in to the online action during the Boston Music Festival, but I'll leave some time for your first impressions over just the score first. So please if you have thoughts from your gaming experience, please share. Here's description of the work.

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There are hosts running the process and it's occuring in the "main Zoom room" and 3 breakout rooms: Tones, Sounds, Words.

In every of the four spaces, slides are being displayed. Available here:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Dgx8NBu-sGUMWsKAOSuhXX8vWpkmP-DQmUjQTQc8TNY/edit

Participants may ask to be assigned to the room and also for the specific slide to be set, and slides have "tasks" that are central to the participatory experience.
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Notes from the action:
- "Tones" room — this one is certainly the most within music gaming. It has the very fun and useful method of sharing the graphic score live through Zoom "annotations" feature (first time I saw it).
- "Sounds" is more involved and is for found sound work. Personally haven't even been to this one room — the work is big.
- "Words" is huge by itself, I dived with the then present users into Q&A which was interesting to me the most even just from seeing the score beforehand.

Anyway, the great big content is there ;) may we now use the power of game design to help a bit with the structure?

Re: Ways of Being Together - discussion

jennie_g 17 Nov 2020 00:41

Hi everyone - thanks for starting this discussion! I'd be very happy for input, and I can also share my thoughts and some necessary changes from the first experience, once the discussion gets going. Mainly I think there was so much freedom built in that it became easy to get lost, either because of technology or because more people would be needed to fill and manage all the spaces. I have some ideas about how to fix it but I am still thinking about the mechanics of it.

Re: Ways of Being Together - discussion

BeneJ 20 Nov 2020 13:47

I look forward to contributing game design ideas too. I will follow this forum closely : )

Re: Ways of Being Together - discussion

odolany 20 Nov 2020 21:47

Here from the direct experience with the game. It's quite hard to talk about 'pure problems' independently of some ideas for solutions that jump to the head. ;)

I think I can frame most of it around the single notion of skills.

Expectations from the participant are imo unnecessary high, but here technical Zoom trouble is not a lot — even if I got stuck once. ;)

• It's more tough on social skill right now, and that especially for solo players. It's much better for groups in this case. It is very related to the general theme, but I didn't feel that this difficulty was crucial for the concept.

show a possible solution

Continuing the relation to "choose your own adventure", or maybe text Zork-like games.
I was thinking about basic protocol of navigation. With everything being marked with letters and suitable to write 'commands' in the chat. "go A", "go C", etc. Don't know how technically it works for mobile users though. :(

It would be considered as extendable (you basically might do whatever, just like now) but if you have a closed set of default, very precisely defined options it will be easier to just "try out" some of them even while still staying a bit confused.

• Cognitive load during the process is also quite high, as right now you get a lot of the information about the rooms to have an informed choice of actions (which is generally good) but

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…as much as possible information could be put on slides to be delivered exactly when needed and the actions of participants are then treated as further "discoveries" with consecutive actions "revealed" with next steps.

Although, there is a risk that such a game-goal will overshadow the meaning.
When you're hooked on getting to know the next question in Q&A, you will spend less time on answering a current question (which were quite interesting by themself imo). This could maybe be solved by avoiding large chunks of connected mysteries.

• Especially a lot of investigative intellectual skill is needed when a participant looses any of the context. Like gets to the room when something is already in progress, or drops headphones and doesn't hear part of the instruction (as was in my case).

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Slides could show the location — "breadcrumbs" style for example - which would signal how deep we are and maybe how we got here.
A single group activity could be quite time-limited (it should also be very simple and only in the default form at first) and then the situation resets maybe to something that complies with a basic protocol.

• Coherence. This last point is connected to skill — it's easier to remember a small set of universal rules that apply to everything than treat every case individually. But it might be used also to strengthen the themes. This is hard and solutions above would work a bit here too, but it's not enough yet.

I'm very curious of what direction you have in mind right now.

Last edited on 20 Nov 2020 21:50 by odolany Show more

Re: Ways of Being Together - discussion

jennie_g 03 Dec 2020 21:24

Thank you for this! I agree with all the issues you raised. Social skill is a big issue, especially when people are only sharing virtual space, and not physical space. It takes more work to create a shared context.

The solution I want to try first is to have everyone begin in the same room, and then they can choose to start an activity-specific room or join one when they see how it works. But until there are more than a few people who know what is happening, it doesn't make sense to split up. This seems like a necessity since with these kinds of events it's very hard to judge how many people will turn up. I will keep thinking about this and make a version 2 of the slides, maybe with a suggested rotation of activities. Last time there were more activities than active participants, which was challenging.

The polling feature of Zoom can also be used periodically to see what people want to do. I think I will build that in. It is an easier entry to participating than raising hands or speaking up. Ideally people should be able to observe for some time before being prompted to make a decision publicly. And the host can make decisions about the spaces according to what is happening.

I like the idea of splitting up the questions. It's much better to focus that way.

One of the big issues I've created here is how to create a balance between freedom and structure. Too much freedom, people feel confused/lost. That's where it is now, so I guess I can build in more structure and see if it goes too far.

I will work on the second version and share it hopefully before Saturday.

Here is the Zoom info. I can't post the link here (my "karma" is too low) but this should be enough?

Jennie Gottschalk is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Ways of Being Together
Time: Dec 5, 2020 10:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Meeting ID: 243 815 1672
Passcode: 964310

Re: Ways of Being Together - discussion

odolany 04 Dec 2020 10:18

Sorry about the karma, actions taken, but not sure if it's fixed.
But the meeting ID is enough to join from here: https://zoom.us/join

Maybe don't share a description of a new version now: in a way it should be self-explanatory as a process, so testing is better when done blind.

As for structure, it indeed may fall closer to structured process/team-building excercises than board games.
I don't think we have an expert on that, I personally dislike engaging in such stuff although there is something interesting in that too. The experience is even more loose there than in "party games" in game design.
Especially your Q+A part made me think of something like: https://icebreaker.range.co/

See you tomorrow! ;)

Re: Ways of Being Together - discussion

jennie_g 05 Dec 2020 00:54

Thanks! Still no luck with the invite link, but you can tap me on Twitter or by email if the access information doesn't work. I think some judgement will always be required from the host, and there has to be a gradual introduction to more engagement from other participants. Just speaking for my intentions though, I don't think team-building is a real objective. But I do see how it could match up as a structure. We'll see how it goes / how it feels tomorrow.

The icebreaker questions are very relevant to the Q&A section! I'm tempted to add that link as an extension, not that we need one, but just out of a sort of greed for options.

I have also added something like breadcrumbs, as you suggested, in the new version of the score.

See you tomorrow, and thanks!
Jennie

Re: Ways of Being Together - discussion

BeneJ 07 Dec 2020 21:52

(FEEDBACK ABOUT SESSION ON MONDAY 5th DEC)

In a paradigm where platforms like YouTube and TikTok encourage users to communicate with strangers using comments and comments on comments; the prospect of interacting with strangers verbally seems like the next inevitable step. You may be blazing a very important and world-changing trail!
In addition to comments already made, I’d like to share more about the experience of being a first-timer in the kind of cyber-social environment which you’ve created. I am in agreement that a round of introductions is inappropriate in this drop-in context - however, I would have benefited from some kind of acknowledgment from the host. Being ignored is like being told you’re not welcome. Given the drop-in format, there is no opportunity for an icebreaker, so reaching out to new users as they arrive would be a constant effort; there is no easy solution to this.

I enjoyed the collaborative annotation drawing although (as I have discussed with Izaak!), I’m sceptical about how well this kind of illustration can be used practically as a graphic score. When the interpretation is so loose, it renders any interpretation rather arbitrary.

I didn’t enjoy the part in which those who were in a kitchen made breakfast. I felt like I was waiting for it to be over. I was tethered to my studio PC, and also it was 4pm in the UK!

I was expecting the session to involve more music and instruments. Free improvisation lends itself extraordinarily well to online jamming, so I was looking forward to making some noise. Unfortunately Zoom isn’t ideal for online jamming because the app assumes only one person is “speaking” at a time. It is designed to mute everyone except “the person speaking”, therefore multiple instruments will find themselves being muted. I can’t suggest any alternative though. I’ve done plenty of online jamming recently using the browser-based conferencing app CleanFeed - but it’s audio-only.

The whole event was a great idea and demonstrably the end-result of a great deal of planning and preparation. I’d like to help make it better!
Regards, BENEDICT