We need more play in our lives!
And the city is the perfect playground!
This vision imagines a style of living, where a variety of City Games accompany your daily life. Breaking the routine with out-of-the-way things, it tries to make you think that very few things indeed were really impossible.
The games are designed to help you deal with the difficulties of routine modern life, and they come in forms of public installations, happenings, gatherings, or exercises integrating into your daily routine.
City Games
What can games bring to the city? Games that “citysource” its dynamics and modalities, and target the citizens as the players? Can new values and services be generated based on the participation of the communities in collaborative ways?
Or just some adventures in a city, that tell a story about your city, that you have not heard of?
White Rabbit is a creative collective interested in these questions, by making games for the city. Efficiency is the second priority, as we believe the people of the cities are more in need of poetic meanings and emotional attachments to their cities.
Read more here: www.citygames.wien
Gamification 2.0
Games are not just about ownership. They have strong potential to engage us in also collaborative efforts. Thinking of games or playful contexts as areas for free participation and creative expression can give deeper meanings to processes. Charming interactions and playful modalities catch people more gently. Application of, for example, childrens games into city services can yield interesting results, maybe sometimes even beneficial. Gamification 2.0, therefore, tries to look at the metaphor in a more easy way, the way that is also necessary to design such systems.
Spaces for Play and Creative Expression
The city contains lots of public areas for children to play. What about for adults? Playing is a leisure activity, as well being also a strong mental engagement. There are of course many such areas in the cities, simplest being open graffiti walls. Can we think of other ones, that are also made somehow magical through technology? Not like a screen game, but maybe some lego blocks of smart cubes?
The range of applications that can be born from this inspiration is wide. From public installations to city services that brings together the communities of the city. These areas can be the ground for the citizens to build things greater.
Or the main city park, for a couple of days, can be turned into a playground for new kinds of treasure hunting or adventure games, made more magical through technology.
Smart City & Playful City
There is an effort to make cities “smart” in means of efficiency, but no investigations on using technology to improve life quality in wider sense. Playful City aims to also note these other issues, that bring psychological, social and creative qualities to human life.
One strong inspiration is Alain de Botton‘s Art as Therapy and School of Life. Considering the ideas suggested, city services can be designed to address our frailties and basic needs, with an aim to make “better” versions of ourselves.
