Research on Prosopopeia Larps

So, read about Prosopopeia games from Pervasive Games but want to learn more? Our second research data dump covers Där vi föll and Momentum. (Remember, we had one on Mogi earlier?)

Där vi föll [Website, in Swedish]

• Prosopopeia: Playing on the Edge of Reality. An approachable text showing our first findings regarding indexicality, game mastering, blurring of boundaries and so on. A great place to start. (Montola & Jonsson 2006)
• Prosopopeia: Experiences from a Pervasive Larp. A bit more technical paper, focusing more on presenting the technology and evaluation results in more detail. (Jonsson, Montola, Waern & Ericsson 2006)
• Participant Roles in Socially Expanded Games. A paper focusing on social expansion in Där vi föll and some other games. (Montola & Waern 2006)
• Ethical and Practical Look at Unaware Game Participation. A Medi@Terra paper opening our discussion on ethics of pervasive gaming, also discussing Vem gråter. Not available online, mostly covered in Chapter Ten of Pervasive Games. (Montola & Waern 2006)

Momentum [Website]

• Five Weeks of Rebellion. Designing Momentum. A design description paper, perhaps the best one for telling what it all was about. (Jonsson, Montola, Stenros & Boss 2007)
• Play it for Real: Sustained Seamless Life/Game Merger in Momentum. A full project description paper, including both descriptions, evaluation and results. (Stenros, Montola, Waern & Jonsson 2007)
• Post Mortem Interaction. Social Play Modes in Momentum. A paper focusing on role conflicts between players being in-character and outsiders not being themselves. Mostly of interest to larpers. (Stenros, Montola & Waern 2007)
• Game Mastering a Pervasive Larp. Experiences from Momentum. A paper focusing on the GM technologies, their development and use. Presented in PerGames 2007. (Jonsson, Waern, Montola & Stenros 2007)
• Pervasive Games in a Ludic Society [ACM]. Looking at a larger context of pervasive games, only featuring Momentum in the concluding analyses. (Stenros, Montola & Mäyrä 2007)

Both

• Tangible Pleasures of Pervasive Role-Playing. A paper generalizing some of the experience-related findings from Där vi föll and Momentum. (Montola 2007)
• The Art of Game-Mastering Pervasive Games [ACM]. A paper expanding the PerGames paper findings on game mastering. (Jonsson & Waern 2008)
• Philosophies and Strategies of Pervasive Larp Design. A design paper summarizing design lessons of Prosopopeia games and putting them into the context of other pervasive larps. (Montola, Stenros & Waern 2009)

To be entirely honest, I’m not sure if this list covers it all. If you want to dig even deeper, check out the IPerG reports (D11.x, ) detailing many parts of the process of creating and evaluating those games — including some design specifications and evaluation results. A Momentum video also exists, but I’m not sure if it’s up anywhere. Jaakko wrote a thesis on Momentum and our ethics discussions touch these games.

In retrospect I’m very satisfied on how Prosopopeia games contributed to the whole IPerG project as artistic and radical probes trying to find out how far the envelope could be pushed by really trying. After these larp experiences it has been far easier to think about cool pervasive experiences that do not feature role-play, props or characters, as well. Just if you wonder, a big thanks goes again to David Fincher’s The Game.

These games also have a quasi-sequel Sanningen om Marika, but since the research on that game differs quite a bit, we’ll do another data dump on that one later.