I just wanted to give a quick little mention for anyone interested in Alternate Reality Gaming here. Jane McGonigal, one of the people behind the hugely successful “I Love Bees” viral campaign that surrounded the release of Halo 2, has published a paper examining the use of collective intelligence in gaming. Why is this cool? The paper is one giant case study on “I Love Bees.”
For those unfamiliar with “I Love Bees,” it was a cross-media game that led participants on an immersive experience through blogs, websites, emails, images, and digital recordings. McGonigal was the lead community designer of the game and oversaw much of the interaction between players with different areas of specialties as they worked together to attempt to solve problems.
I’m not going to comment on the contents of the paper yet because I’m only about halfway through, but for anyone interested in reading about how collaborative knowledge networks actually function, take a gander at this paper.
