We Live Here: Games, Third Places and the Information Architecture of the Future

Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, Aug/Sep 2006 by Hinton, Andrew

I first heard the phrase in 1997. I was in a vast, strangely decorated chamber filled with catwalks, ledges and a red flag rustling on a dais surrounded by a pool of water.

I was on the Internet, logged into a game server running a version of Quake called Capture the Flag. By now the screen, keyboard and mouse had disappeared and I was "moving," not mousing; "talking," not typing.

Through my headphones came the sounds of two other players running, jumping and harpoon-grappling through the hallways. I was new to this particular map and clumsily learning its intricacies - shortcuts, hiding spots, hidden health and ammo packs, while they were doing virtual wind-sprints, practicing for a tournament. We were chatting over a public channel within the game, and I was joking how they seemed to know the map so much better than I. One of them replied: "Ha-ha, yeah... we live here!"

I was a recovering philosophy major who tended to overthink everything, so the words struck me as deeply resonant. And in the ensuing years, many of which I've spent practicing information architecture, the resonance of this phrase has not decreased, but has come to me often in the midst of my work. The fact is, it isn't hyperbole anymore to say "we live here" about an online environment. Our daily contact with simultaneously shared digital environments is only increasing and deepening with time. And I have come to realize that my early experiences in this game, and in the online community that emerged around it, have been a significant touchstone for how I understand my work as a practitioner of information architecture.

This realization causes me to ask myself certain questions: Do game environments prefigure where we're headed with conventional software and networked experiences? Do they represent in some essential and prototypical way how the Web functions culturally? Are there lessons to learn there?

The Web/Game Hybrid

In 1996. when Quake arrived, there were already many multiplayer games on the Internet - digital environments with game characteristics that allowed many players to interact in them simultaneously. There were MUDs and MOOs. as well as some graphically rendered role-playing games. (For further definition and information on MUDs and MOOs see the Wikipedia articles about them on www.wikipedia.org.) But Quake was the first major three-dimensional computer game to use a set of open standards that allowed anyone to host a game server and create content and modifications for the game engine. In many ways, it gave birth to a sort of game/Web hybrid.

When I say "Web" here. I mean the Internet's "Web-ness" - that is, the characteristics envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee when he proposed the World Wide Web: hyperlinked. peerto-peer content creation and publishing using open standards. It's strange how easily we forget that when Lee created the first Web browser, it could publish pages as well as read them. He also specifically believed in hypertext as a democratic antidote to the hegemony of hierarchy, and he purposefully released his invention as an open architecture upon which others could easily build without impediment.

Quake was Web-like because, although its core engine was proprietary, its designers released it with a set of tools and open standards that allowed the user community to make it into something infinitely bigger than original game itself. The Capture the Flag map, for example, had been beautifully designed and rendered by a regular user, and its virtues outstripped those of many of the maps that came from the publisher. Much like the meritocracy of the Web, this map was made by a user, published by that user and made a favorite through the collective consensus of use. Even the version we were in was a modification of the original game code. Everything from the game rules to the graphics, sound and physics were customized by a community of game coders. Modifications have spawned a huge, mainly non-profit, cottage industry of game and map design and communities of designers. And this is in addition to the many thousands of players who didn't build anything, but spent many hours playing and socializing in the game and outside it in chat rooms and discussion boards.

As a result, the vast majority of actual user activity around the game of Quake wasn't even playing the game itself - it was in the massive web of relationships, conversations, teamwork and collective creativity that happened in its orbit.

The Game (and Game Culture) as Designed Experience

This phenomenon may sound like accidental anarchy but it wasn't. Because of what they'd seen happen with their previous hit game, Doom, the folks at id Software knew that their game would spread if they just created the right conditions and then got out of the way. The thousands of game servers that sprouted up almost overnight proved them right.

Some of the conditions they created:

* A game with open standards that allowed anyone to create new maps and game modifications

* An open language (called QuakeC) that turned anybody with rudimentary C programming knowledge into an immediate game hacker