Collaborative gaming takes to the streets

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For the organizers, one rewarding element of "SF0" has been holding events in which many of the players come together to, for example, go onto a downtown rooftop garden that's normally off-limits, and learn that it can be a good--if sometimes legally precarious--exercise to go beyond their usual personal boundaries.

"The events work really well for getting people involved, because it's an introduction to doing the types of tasks that you're asked to do in 'SF0,'" said Kizu-Blair, "that are beyond what people normally do but which aren't beyond the realm of possibility."

McGonigal is a fan of "SF0," in part, because of the way its designers worked around problems with the underlying mechanics of the game. Organizers had to grapple with the reality that some players would do things--such as creating a comfortable bench out of bus stop seating--that while funny, could be illegal. And she said she appreciated the way the organizers used the fine print of the game's disclaimer to address such instances.

"Due to the malleability of digital media, any appearance of (violations of the law) by any player may not be considered evidence, precedent, or approval of such a violation," the disclaimer states. "Any material displayed as part of the Game should be considered fictive until and unless proven otherwise."

"With 'SF0,' a lot of the missions involve you leaving traces," McGonigal said, "so the places are physically altered. That's going to be a potential problem for the game, so they're fictionalizing the experience. It reverses the trend of realism in games, so I was really struck by that."

To players, the chance to invent tasks themselves and to be directly involved in the creation of the game is a unique opportunity, and one they relish.

"I think it's really innovative that they put all the actual game-creation tasks on the players themselves," said Nicole Aptekar, a Burlingame, Calif., systems administrator.

Aptekar said one of her favorite tasks has been one that requires players to get random strangers to write postcards to the players' friends.

"It doesn't sound so interesting" at first, she said, "but everyone's response to someone coming up and asking them to write a postcard to a person they've never heard of, especially if you don't mention the game at all, is really fun to see."

For Muszalski, one of the best parts of "SF0" is imagining the ways that the game's community will attack some of the harder tasks.

For example, he pointed to the highest-value task the game offers: planting a flag on top of San Francisco's Sutro Tower, the city's tallest structure and one that's located behind well-secured fences. It's a fairly unrealistic and certainly illegal goal, but nonetheless a humorous rallying cry for game participants.

Muszalski said he was having fun thinking of ways to approach the problem and that in the end, he imagined that the only way to achieve the goal might be for the game's entire community to show up outside the fences and announce that they were there to plant the flag.

In any case, both Muszalski and Aptekar said they were in some sense jealous of the game's designers for bringing to life an idea that's so simple and elegant.

"I'd been trying to figure out how to make a game like this myself for some time," Aptekar said. "Pushing the content to the players keeps it as fresh as everyone playing it makes it, and causes everyone to really strive for neat things to do."