Ever since I first heard about alternate reality games, I’ve been interested in the crossover of gaming ideas into the “real world”.

I came across a game called Akoha a few months ago that promises to use mission cards to encourage good deeds and interactions with new people. They recently made packs of cards available for a few dollars and mine arrived just before Christmas. However after looking at the concept in more detail I feel that they’ve misjudged people’s motivations for playing such a game and have therefore got the interaction model wrong.

How it works

You get a mission card (either from another player or in a pack from the website) which bears a short inscription such as “Thank someone”, “Give someone a book” or “Send drinks to a couple in love”. They’re all nice things that we probably ought to do more often. In order to “play” the mission, you do the nice thing to someone and also give the card to the person you did the thing to. And that’s where the first problem is. It just doesn’t seem natural to say “Thank you for being my friend, I really appreciate your company. Oh, and here’s this mission card. No, but I really meant it… I’m not just saying thanks because it says to on the card!” It’s inevitable that presenting a mission card will devalue the apparent kindness of whatever act you performed because it reveals an ulterior motive. For the book mission it’s a bit easier to imagine hiding the card between the pages but how do you give a mission card to the couple in love? And which person do you give it to?

My second issue is the scoring system. Each mission has a number of karma points associated with it and some missions score higher than others (i.e. the missions mentioned above score 125, 125 & 200 points respectively). As you play successive missions, you acquire karma points and “level up” accordingly. It’s not clear at this stage whether the points will have any value other than prestige but the concept of “levelling up” smacks of World of Warcraft and other role playing games and seems more likely to put people off than encourage play.

Another problem is the missions themselves. Some of them don’t make any sense to me and there’s no accompanying text to clarify. “Read a blogger, feed a blogger” What? “Wild mission card” Does that mean I just make something up? “Donate an hour of your time” To whom? And who do I give the card to afterwards?

Finally, a key point of the game is “playing it forward”. Each mission card has a unique ID which players are expected to be key into the website upon receiving a card. This allows you to see how long a card has been in circulation, how many times it has been played and trace where it has been in the world. That’s pretty neat but unfortunately I suspect the vast majority of cards will make exactly one hop before being forgotten under a pile of papers on someone’s desk and eventually binned. Additionally players must supply an email address in order to register having received a card and that’s likely to dissuade quite a few people. I’d like to think anyone receiving a card would jump at the chance to get involved but, for the reasons above, I just don’t see it happening.

What would I change?

I’d get rid of the karma points, that’s easy. I think the fun in playing a game like this is the unexpected connections and interactions it leads to, not the points and “levelling up”. The missions also need clearer descriptions. Solving the other two problems is harder.

Perhaps you shouldn’t have to give the card to the person you did the act of kindness to. Perhaps you could give it to anyone who witnessed the act. And perhaps there should be more of an incentive to act for first time players who receive a card. Perhaps you could encourage people who don’t like the idea to “pass” the card and give it to someone else who they think would enjoy it without playing the mission themselves.

I’ve only played one mission so far and I’ll persevere for a few more before giving up. The concept behind the game is laudable (they’ve been nominated for a Crunchie) but I think the implementation needs a bit of a rethink.

So, you’ve read my blog. Now feed me dammit!

Update – 9th Jan

Benoit from Akoha played a “Thank someone” mission with me today thanking me for my constructive criticism in this blog post. This seems to imply that I was wrong about having to give the card to the person you play the mission with. I didn’t really know what to put in the “Location” field since he is in Montreal and I’m in London. I tried entering “The Internet” but Akoha auotcompletes it to “The Internet, Nieuwendijk 30, 1012 Amsterdam, The Netherlands”! In the end I left it blank.

It turns out the website also displays more complete descriptions of each mission when viewing a mission card online. I don’t know if this is a new feature or if I missed it previously. Either way, I think that info should probably be on the card itself.