(Originally published on ourpennilesswrite.)
Manhunt was invented in Toronto in 2003 by Matt Collins, and for a while it seemed like it was part of something. I started running Manhunt in Edmonton in 2005. Access All Areas was published by the zine Infiltration. Montreal hosted a variant of the increasingly popular and hackneyed “zombie walk” as a hilarious and spontaneous intervention into sword-fighting LARPers at the tam-tams. A couple of kids called newmindspace started running huge capture the flag games in downtown Toronto and New York City and attracting hundreds, then thousands of participants, and you know about flashmobs. Something was happening.
Today my performance practice is in a big way about challenge and competition, even when its not directly about games. Its about arbitrary division and awkwardness, and forcing the audience to make choices. I play the violin and I play hide-and-seek. My work is urgent and political and shaped by its surroundings, and back in those days I thought that all of the games and game-related performances springing up on city streets were too. Nowadays I’m not so sure.
This is a long one →
It’s a compelling idea, certainly. I’ve been covering video games for more than 10 years and am especially interested in the “serious games” movement; I believe whole-heartedly that wonderful things can happen when people play. But gamification advocates do not preach the beauty and power of play. Perhaps without knowing it, they’re selling a pernicious worldview that doesn’t give weight to literal truth. Instead, they are trafficking in fantasies that ignore the realities of day-to-day life. This isn’t fun and games—it’s a tactic most commonly employed by repressive, authoritarian regimes.
The hunt, called “Find the Future: The Game,” was created for the library’s centennial celebration by Jane McGonigal, renowned for designing games that tackle real-world problems designing marketing for major corporations and writing books about how that’s a good thing, really.
