Javier Lloret - Draft

Abstract Pervasive games redefine our relationship with the physical environment integrating play into urban space. In this draft I introduce the characteristics of pervasive games and study how they are related with the Situationism and with Aldo Van Eyck playgrounds.

Draft According to Bo Kampmann Walther (Space, time, play) “it is characteristic of pervasive games that they expand the gaming space, often by reconfiguring the social landscape of cities into a dense grid of game objects, game goals and game worlds, thus obscuring the demarcations between the real and the virtual. Pervasive games play with these demarcations.” Pervasive games extend gaming experiences out into the physical world for a more embodied game practice.

The properties of pervasive games influenced Jane McGonigal, game designer and researcher specialized in pervasive games, to try find a connection with the ideas and practice of the Situationist International.

Situationist International (1957 to 1972) was a group of european revolutionaries with their ideas influenced by 20th century European artistic avant-gardes and marxism. They promote experiences of life, situations, in urban spaces which disrupted the ordinary and normal in order to jolt people out of their customary ways of thinking and acting.

“Due too its marginal existence in relation to the oppressive reality of work, play is often regarded as fictitious. But the work of the situationists is precisely the preparation of ludic possibilities to come.” Guy Debord, “Contribution to a Situationist definition of play”, 1958.

Aldo Van Eyck (1918-1999) was a Dutch architect, member of the Team 10 organization, that shared some ideas with the Situationists. Between 1947 and 1978 Van Eyck designed more than 700 playgrounds for the city of Amsterdam. With these playgrounds he transformed pieces of ground that were not used into active urban elements where kids and adults could play, meet up, interact.