I know those of us who came of age in an era when gaming was entirely console based, simplistic in the “kill or be killed” bloodbath sort of way, the appeal has been limited. But I see that changing in creative and completely engaging ways. For instance, this week saw the launch of Armchair Revolutionary, a non-profit that uses money generated from their games to support innovative science and technology projects attempting to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems.

According to the Geek Gestalt blog, the games available to play on ArmRev are also lessons in social change. The article reports that among the first games are a “videogame called “Make Waves” that is designed to provide users with real-life social activism tools while they manage part of the ocean in a virtual environment modeled on the real-world. Second, “Hack Your Body,” a three-part effort designed around the “fast approaching genomics revolution” that includes the Personal Genome Project; the development of commercial software that will allow users to analyze their own DNA; and a full-length commercial documentary film about genomics. And “End of Darkness,” a publicly financed company that aims to build clean energy infrastructure for the poor.”

For anyone thinking about social change, it has become imperative to consider the impact of interactive play as active learning. Its power cannot be underestimated, especially among younger players for whom interactivity is a way of being, and not merely a time consuming pastime. Nowhere is this more of a priority than Games For Change, a hub for innovators and artists in this space to share their games with the public. In a quick peruse through the games, I immediately noticed how youth-focused the play was, and rightly so, as that is the audience we need to be innovating for.

I believe that the need to educate on social issues is pressing and to do it artfully and beautifully is an enormous but exciting challenge. I’m glad gaming is starting to fulfill its potential across the board and I’m looking forward to delving more deeply into specific games in coming posts — looking at them in terms of their design, content and social impact.

So, as you can imagine, I am the perfect candidate for an electronic reading device. The subject of tactile interaction with technologies is one of endless fascination to me these days. How your finger moves around the screen, how the page turns, where your eye rests or where your arm positions itself when holding the device. I played with a Kindle and found I didn’t love it but became excited about its potential. Though I didn’t buy one, it made me curious enough to install Kindle for iPhone. And as small as that screen is, it makes me so happy to know I have twelve great books close at finger’s reach should I find myself stranded on a desert island or JFK in a blizzard.

I am interested in how our reading behavior and interaction with narrative and text will change as we adopt these devices in a more integral way. So when I saw this prototype for magazines, I thought it well worth sharing. The video is a tad long and a bit dry in spots and I was unable to rip it to edit. But do watch through the demo, and share your thoughts.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

This is a PS3 game. Not a piece of installation art. That’s all I’ll say for now. Ponder that while I go buy a Sony Playstation. Seriously though, I’m curious – really curious. So consider this Part 1. In Part 2, I’ll discuss what this could mean in the wider space of media art and storytelling.

Here’s some sample gameplay that shows you how it looks when you’re actually controlling.

My initial post had this WSJ video review but due to their technical issues streaming the embed this morning, I pulled the above clips. It’s worth reading.

The idea of a phone as a device of person to person communication as it was initially conceived way back when landlines were invented is certainly no more. What’s more, I think what this TED presentation demonstrated was that the mobile phone is now completely transforming our lives – socially, politically, physically and creatively. Of course, the question of whether these changes mark “progress” or not will continue to a subject of lively debate for some time to come.

I am personally fascinated by the idea of mobile Augmented Reality because it has the potential to completely alter the way we filter the world around us as we go about our daily business. In my last post, the overview of various experiments in AR focused almost entirely on gaming, or uses that required a less nimble and seamless interaction with the augmented world. With the iPhone platform (and to some extent Android) unlocking all kinds of possibilities in mobile AR, I think we are in for a complete shift that will impact our entire notion of reality.

The recently released Layar app for iPhone puts the location + information based product to work in a practical sense as the Techcrunch article explains “it’s the placement of a digital layer of information on top of a real-life view of the world around you, as seen through e.g. a mobile phone’s camera lens. …use your smartphone to glance around the main square of a city you’re visiting and get up-to-date information about nearby restaurants, ATMs, real estate offers, and more on-screen, bolted on top of what you’d be seeing if you weren’t looking through the lens.”

Then there’s Wikitude, which claims to be able to identify “more than 370,000 world-wide points of interests (cafes, museums, schools, caves, castles, archaeological sites, battle fields) and can be searched by address by overlaying information on the real-time camera view of a the iPhone, as you hold up the device. See a list of museums nearby sorted by distance and links Detail, Map, Drive.”

None of these advancements should shock anyone who has used a GPS device in their car because it is essentially using the same technology – mapping, and satellite tracking, enhanced with additional data applied to certain uses, like travel. I think it’s fantastic in the same way that having a cellphone completely transformed picking someone up from the airport – a convenience that you wonder how you lived without in the pre-mobile days.

But here’s where mobile AR leaves the realm of purely informational and begins to have real implications for the idea of SEEING, EXPERIENCING and STORYTELLING: Imagine if your mobile phone’s AR potential meant that you could simply “encounter” a story, rather than say, sit down in front of your television and watch a story, or go to Broadway and watch a musical, or even the very interactive experience of playing your Wii at home.

I think that when the mobile device leaves the realm of exclusively being a communication/information tool, it enters into the realm of being connected to a digital persona, in even the crudest of ways. Say, for instance, if I were to enable a virtual persona on my device (maybe I took it from The Sims, or Second Life, or heck, even Facebook, if I had some online identity that wasn’t me), within some sort of application that connected me to other people who were doing the same thing. What would happen to my experience of the world around me, or the people I am interacting with when I walk down the street? Is it possible that rather than “me” Aina, walking to the subway, my AR personality could be anyone I fictionally created, and I could interact with people IN REAL LIFE as someone else within a mobile story/game?

While this all may sound completely bizarre and unnecessary in the world of storytelling, it’s obvious that this development will invariably happen sooner than we all imagined. Even if you choose not to participate in that AR world, it still begs the question of how that AR capability alters our way of seeing “fictional” or “real” stories? In the same way that having a mobile phone changed our social behavior, I think we are bound to see a shift in the way we both view, consume and create fiction.

I mentioned this to a writer friend of mine, who instantly went into mental “nap” mode – as in: I see your lips moving but I cannot hear a word of what you are saying. I have lots of writer and filmmaker friends who roll their eyes when the subject of technology enhanced storytelling comes up. They just want to know why we just can’t tell stories the old-fashioned way – the way humans have done for generations. And if my writer friend would have been paying attention, he might have understood that in fact, Augmented Reality can be a very primal, imaginative way to tell stories.

There is only a little difference between my imaginary castle and say, this kids’ “Mixed Reality” game called WizQubes.

In my doll play, I transcoded the fairy tale princesses castle from my storybook onto the experience whereas in WizQubes, not only does the game provide a virtual version of the castle, but it also allows a shared experience with another child.

The above example is an early interesting foray into Augmented Reality gaming and there appear to be many different approaches – some which feel more 3D than others like levelHead’s 3D Spatial Memory Game, some that require location based technology like the well-discussed Roku’s Reward and some which feel only a few degrees from a more conventional gaming experience such as Ahrrrr from GA Tech and SCAD Atlanta which utilizes an interface on the mobile device combined with a “real” space environment.

As I write this, there are probably thousands of experiments being conducted in this area, from the most technologically complex to the simplest and most accessible, like Esquire’s upcoming AR integration in their physical December issue and the John Mayer music video enhanced by AR and activated by a webcam. The one thing they all have in common is that they aim to enhance one’s experience of the real world and engage the user, inviting him/her to dig deeper, and look for something beyond the “real” or surface appearance of the experience.

I can just see my writer friend’s eyes still rolling when I say this, but here’s what I’m thinking: our world is increasingly complex in the way we navigate from device to device, city to country, work to play, and this massively complex network of experiences means our way of interacting both with stories and “real life” is shifting. And while I’m not suggesting that we all go live on some AR planet where all our friends are imaginary, I think that some very interesting creative experiences and stories can come of this form.

Note: In Part 2, I’ll delve more into the role of the mobile device in creating seamless AR experiences.