MobileActive.org

Have you ever had a problem with your neighborhood and wanted to rally your community around finding a solution? Commons, a mobile mapping and reporting game, does just that. Commons is an iPhone app that allows players to locate their position on a map and then guides the players through a series of challenges to report and comment on their neighborhood. Reports can be voted on, so users who submit the best reports or images can win badges that show their involvement. The first real-world gameplay happened lower Manhattan in New York City on June 19th at the Come Out and Play Festival.

The game was designed for the Real-World Games for Change Challenge, a partnership competition hosted by the Games for Change, an organization that promotes the development and use of games for social impact and good, and Come Out and Play, an annual outdoor public games festival. 

More than 50 teams entered the competition, which asked entrants to submit a game that takes place in New York City’s lower Manhattan neighborhood and that would have a positive impact and change on a neighborhood. Commons beat out more than 50 other submissions to take the $5000 prize and the chance to be played in real life during the Come Out and Play Festival. 

Developers and designers Suzanne Kirkpatrick, Jamie Lin, and Nien Lam presented their winning game at the eighth annual Games for Change Festival on June 21st to explain how they came up with the idea and the real-world impact it could have. 

Kirkpatrick explains that the group was inspired by New York City’s 311 system, a help line that allows New York City residents to report problems (such as potholes or noise complaints), request services (such as better handicap accessibility), and access information (such as street cleaning schedules). Kirkpatrick says that the call-in nature of the service means that there is a great potential for overlap in subject matter (i.e., many people on one block could call in about a broken traffic light), but that they would not be able to know if neighbors shared their concerns as the service lacks a social aspect. She says, “What if people could see and comment on other people’s reports in real time?,” adding that it would be an opportunity to take citizen reporting social.

Nien Lam added that the mobile component of the game was key; users can send messages, take photographs, and record and upload their location in order to best document the problem. They decided to develop the game as an iPhone app because the smartphone operating system allowed them to record and share data easily. Lam said that mobiles are a great platform for games, because it’s the equivalent of players having small computers with them at all times. Unfortunately, of course, not everyone has an iPhone, limiting the use of the app to just iPhone users.

The first day of gameplay came on June 19th, and brought 27 teams of two or more people to lower Manhattan. Each team had an iPhone, and spent 2.5 hours explore the neighborhood and reporting on issues and voting up other submissions, eventually gathering 350 reports during the span of the game. The game asked guided questions to get players involved (such as, “How would you make the waterfront more fun?” or “How would you help out a tourist in the South Street Seaport?”). Players won badges for activities such as having the most highly rated submission or submitting the most reports, and results update in real time so that other players can see what’s happening in the neighborhood.

Lin explained that the game is a “fun, collaborative way of finding problems and finding solutions.” The game is available in the Apple app store, and the group says that for the future they would both like to integrate the system with New York City’s 311 service, and see the project expand to other areas and cities. 

While we applaud the creativity of the game developers, we have a few questions that were not answered. For one thing, apps are limited to smart phone users and while the number of users with smartphones is rising, it is by no means universal yet, especially not in areas other than affluent American cities. Limiting the use of the app to the iOS/iPhone, of course, limits access further (although the group is currently working to expand Commons to other operating systems). The 311 line gets around this by having an SMS function with which residents can text in questions to a shortcode (311NYC) to get immediate feedback and info. We also wonder what, in the end, the point of the social interaction around neighborhood limitations is, especially when it is to report shortcomings such as broken street lights or potholes. Don't residents, in the end, just want those issues fixed in a speedy manner rather than having any kind of social interactions around these problems? While improvements such as a playground or park cleanup might be useful to rally people around, isn't fixing a pothoie simply something that residents report to have that problem speedly addressed by the city? We are not sure that everything needs to be either 'social' or "gameified" and reporting problems might just be one of those instances.