The Gamitarians (2015)

Video, Speculative Fiction, Design 

 

           “Over the next generation or two, ever larger numbers of people, hundreds of                   millions even billions, will become immersed in virtual worlds. While we are                       playing, things we used to do on the outside, in “reality”, won’t be happening                     anymore, or they won’t be happening in the same way. You can’t pull millions of               person-hours out of a society without creating an atmospheric-level event.” -                     Economist, Prof. Edward Castronova 

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The Gamitarians is a speculative fiction project designed to debate the consequences of gamification and its role in a future society. The project culminates in a film with 3 fictional concepts to contextualise the story:

 

Game Face - a virtual mask

National User Number - a new identity

Meet Up/Your Civic Duty - an obligatory dating service from the government

 

The strength identified in speculative design is the freedom it offers for generating extreme scenarios and is at its best when those scenarios can be played back through our current cultural landscape, providing an opportunity to assess their impacts prospectively.  

 

This future scenario sees online gaming filtered into the everyday lives of all people and is the predominant driver of the economy, as billions of collective hours spent playing online games are now used to the advantage of the government. The Gamers = The Playbour Workforce. 

 

The rise of automation in most industrial sectors and services coupled with the natural migration to virtual worlds has prompted a mass re-shaping of the entire economy as virtual living envelopes all aspects of life. Everyday activity confined to one platform: virtual work, virtual social life, virtual families. 

 

The film depicts a day in the life of a member of this gamified society, a Gamitarian, exploring notions of virtual living and its effects on the human condition. 

 

The project comes as a the final project of a Design For Industry Ba Hons. The concept was derived from a card game itself called Future Fictions, designed to conjure up tales of the future, extrapolating from what we know about our technologies today. 

 

More details of how the project came to light can be read here.

The making of the film and further information on the project, here.