Teach us a Story

With Superstruct launching on 22 September you may want some background on ARGs (Alternate Reality Games). In the online Guardian there is an article with a brief history and some ideas for the future of the ARG:

An ARG is an interactive narrative in which players work together to solve puzzles and co-ordinate activities in the real world and online, using websites, GPS tracking devices, telephones, newspaper adverts and more. All of which sounds as if it must require even more effort and resolve than a public holiday gym session, but ARGs employ media - text messages, blogs, social networking sites, video-sharing - that many people already use every day.

The concept that an alternate reality can be developed at game level and used to solve problems and change thinking is central to the Superstruct game and is taken up in the online Guardian article:

"The fact that the genre is growing up is exciting. The opportunities are limitless. You can easily see how they might be used in a training setting in business, or in a medical environment to teach doctors how to cope with large-scale crises. What will be really exciting is when biometric information can be more easily integrated into gameplay. For instance, a real-world game that delivers challenges based on heart rate or other physical criteria." Siobhan Thomas, a research fellow at the University of East London and ARG design lecturer.

Superstruct:: Humans have 23 years to go

Super-threats are massively disrupting global society as we know it. There’s an entire generation of homeless people worldwide, as the number of climate refugees tops 250 million. Entrepreneurial chaos and “the axis of biofuel” wreak havoc in the alternative fuel industry. Carbon quotas plummet as food shortages mount. The existing structures of human civilization—from families and language to corporate society and technological infrastructures—just aren’t enough. We need a new set of superstructures to rise above, to take humans to the next stage.

From September 22 and going for six weeks people can play Superstruct, a alternate reality game that is being presented as a simulation and problem solving exercise. Designed by game god Jane McGonigal (a past guest in HUMlab) working out of the Institute for the Future, Superstruct intends to build upon concerns for the future of human society on earth. Here is the brief:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SEPTEMBER 22, 2019

Humans have 23 years to go

Global Extinction Awareness System (GEAS) starts the countdown for Homo Sapiens.

PALO ALTO, CA — Based on the results of a year-long supercomputer simulation, the Global Extinction Awareness System (GEAS) has reset the "survival horizon" for Homo Sapiens - the human race - from "indefinite" to 23 years.

“The survival horizon identifies the point in time after which a threatened population is expected to experience a catastrophic collapse,” GEAS president Audrey Chen said. “It is the point from which it a species is unlikely to recover. By identifying a survival horizon of 2042, GEAS has given human civilization a definite deadline for making substantive changes to planet and practices.”

According to Chen, the latest GEAS simulation harnessed over 70 petabytes of environmental, economic, and demographic data, and was cross-validated by ten different probabilistic models. The GEAS models revealed a potentially terminal combination of five so-called “super-threats”, which represent a collision of environmental, economic, and social risks. “Each super-threat on its own poses a serious challenge to the world's adaptive capacity,” said GEAS research director Hernandez Garcia. “Acting together, the five super-threats may irreversibly overwhelm our species’ ability to survive.”Garcia said, “Previous GEAS simulations with significantly less data and cross-validation correctly forecasted the most surprising species collapses of the past decade: Sciurus carolinenis and Sciurus vulgaris, for example, and Anatidae chen. So we have very good reason to believe that these simulation results, while shocking, do accurately represent the rapidly growing threats to the viability of the human species.”

GEAS notified the United Nations prior to making a public announcement. The spokesperson for United Nations Secretary General Vaira Vike-Freiberga released the following statement: "We are grateful for GEAS' work, and we treat their latest forecast with seriousness and profound gravity."

GEAS urges concerned citizens, families, corporations, institutions, and governments to talk to each other and begin making plans to deal with the super-threats.

This is a game of survival.

Super-threats are massively disrupting global society as we know it.
There’s an entire generation of homeless people worldwide, as the number of climate refugees tops 250 million. Entrepreneurial chaos and “the axis of biofuel” wreak havoc in the alternative fuel industry.

Carbon quotas plummet as food shortages mount. The existing structures of human civilization—from families and language to corporate society and technological infrastructures—just aren’t enough. We need a new set of superstructures to rise above, to take humans to the next stage.

You can help. Tell your story. Strategize out loud. Superstruct now. It's your legacy to the human race.

Want to learn more about the game? Read the Superstruct FAQ.

Superstruct Now

Get a head start on the game. It’s the summer of 2019. Imagine you’re already there, and tell a little bit about your future self.