Perplex City is what I meant

Last week, before the League of Worlds conference, I had a conversation about the game/non-game aspects of Second Life. The real subject of the conversation was the possibility of introducing a narrative element into La Mentala Rosario. The questioner was of the opinion that placing the project inside Second Life ruled out the possibility of introducing a narrative. “Surely you should have placed it inside something like World of Warcraft?”

My answer was a convoluted (and possibly slightly feeble) description of the synergy between the Nintendo GameCube and the GameBoy. You can train your Pokemon on your GameBoy and then unleash it against mine in the arena on the GameCube. The point, I tried to explain, is not to have Rosario exist as a narrative. The point is to find ways of making narrative games possible inside the framework of Marinetta. They might involve other means of data input and reception which feeds into the island in Second Life.

This approach has been in Camie and my heads for a couple of years now, since we were first chalenged to come up with ways of linking the project to other projects in Arcada, such as the experimental DINA television station.

Today I found a much better example: Perplex City. This seems to be a trading card game, an online narrative, a series of real world gatherings, a set of brain-twisters, and much more, all rolled into one overarching narrative.

It is precisely the approach I have been thinking about as a way of incorporating a conspiracy-based narrative into Rosario which residents can participate in or ignore.

Now all I need to do is find a way of having the conversation again.