我好奇故我在

資料來源: Jane McGonigal的pdf簡報 以及她的論文研究 Why I Love Bees : A Case Study in Collective Intelligence Gaming

前言：在2004年塑造Halo 2遊戲中的2552年虛擬未來。
In the summer of 2004, the commercial game design company 42 Entertainment launched I Love Bees, a Web-based interactive fiction that used websites, blogs, emails, jpegs, Mp3 recordings, and other digital artifacts to create an immersive back-story for Microsoft’s sci-fi shooter videogame Halo 2. I was the lead community designer of I Love Bees, and in this role, my primarily responsibility was to oversee the emerging collective intelligence of its players.

在2004年夏天， 42 Entertainment 公司發動一個以網路為主的互動虛擬故事，使用網站、部落格、電郵、jpegs、Mp3錄音檔，和其他的數位物件，來替微軟科幻遊戲Halo 2，創造一個浸入式歷史故事。我是I Love Bees主要的設群設計師，我主要的責任在於監看所有玩家的集體智慧發展。

The distributed fiction of I Love Bees was designed as a kind of investigative playground, in which players could collect, assemble and interpret thousands of different story pieces related to the Halo universe. By reconstructing and making sense of the fragmented fiction, the fans would collaboratively author a narrative bridge between the first Halo videogame and its sequel. As the project’s lead writer Sean Stewart explains: “Instead of telling a story, we would present the evidence of that story, and let the players tell it to themselves.”
I Love Bees 的設計像是一種調查遊戲場，玩家在那兒可以收集、組合，以及詮釋跟Halo世界相關的數千個故事片段。玩家重建零碎的故事片段，以及試著賦予意義，集體當作者敘述出第一個Halo跟第二個Halo續集的故事怎樣連繫。

As lead community designer for I Love Bees, I had the job of monitoring the interpretive and problem-solving efforts of the player community so that we could adapt the game to their evolving collective profile. Each day, after scouring player forums, blogs and emails, and lurking in their chat rooms, I reported their most interesting new theories and strategies to the other lead designers. In turn, the other designers crafted ongoing game challenges, as well as the climax of the interactive story, in response to the skill sets and the investigative framework the players themselves had developed. Through this real-time, flexible design, we worked to encourage the existing Halo fan base to hone and strengthen their CI powers.
這種類型的遊戲是60%預先規劃好，其他40%是規劃了部分但是開 放，隨著玩家反應即時修正。我身為 I Love Bees社群設計師，我的工作就是監控這些互動以及玩家社群解決問題的努力，所以我們可以隨著集體智慧的演化來修正遊戲。每天，當我偵察完玩家論壇、部落格、跟電郵，或潛伏在聊天室中，我會跟其他主要的領導設計師報告玩家最新、最有趣的理論跟策略。接著，其他設計師會繼續精心修編現在進行的遊戲挑戰，以及互動故事的高潮點，以回應玩家已經發展的技能和調查工作。透過這個及時、彈性的設計，我們鼓勵現有的Halo愛好者來練習和加強他們的情報能力。(萬一玩家太厲害，會設計一些稱之為relay mission)來阻撓集體智慧。)

At the outset of I Love Bees, however, we explained none of this to the players. We kept secret the project’s intentions to serve as an interactive back-story, and we did not disclose the search and analysis mechanics we had designed. In fact, we never officially announced the launch of a new Halo-related online game—instead, we simply hid the game in plain sight on the World Wide Web. We hoped the mystery would generate buzz about the project. And by requiring the players to discover the existence, secret purpose and patterns of the game themselves, we also took the first step toward gaining the players’ constructive participation in the project. The only clue we gave that a strange, new game was afoot came in the form of an unassuming url, which flickered briefly across the screen in the final frames of a theatrical trailer for Halo 2. The hidden url pointed sharp-eyed viewers to www.ilovebees.com, the real, working website of a fictional character—an amateur beekeeper named Margaret, who seemed completely unrelated to the Halo mythology. As Halo fans wondered what on Earth beekeeping had to do with Halo’s futuristic alien wars, they were drawn into a mystery: I Love Bees clearly was no ordinary website. It had been hacked, and its webmaster desperately needed help figuring out why—and what to do about it.
在I Love Bees一開始，我們並沒有跟玩家解釋任何東西，我們對專案的意向保密，因為想要引發一個互動的back-story (a narrative providing a history or background context)。我們並沒有揭露我們所設計的搜尋以及分析機制。事實上，我們從來就沒有正式地宣告有一個新的跟Halo相關的網路遊戲上市。相反的，我們在網路上在輕易可見處隱藏了遊戲。我們希望藉由這種神秘性可以創造buzz。我們也第一步先取得玩家對此專案的有建設性的參與。我們只有給一個線索，即一個奇怪、新的遊戲正在進行中，有一個不很顯眼的網址。在Halo 2預告片中的最後一幕，出現了 www.xbox.com 字樣然後短暫閃爍出 www.ilovebees.com 字樣再返回到 www.xbox.com。有些眼尖的觀眾會發現這個網址，並且發現是真實的。這是一個虛擬人物的工作網站，一個叫Margaret的業餘養峰家，看起來跟Halo的神話故事十分不相關。當Halo迷會覺得到底養峰這件事跟Halo的未來式外星人大戰，有什麼關連？他們被這個神秘事件給吸引了。I Love Bees很顯然不是一個普通的網站，它已經被駭客侵入，而網站的經營者急迫需要幫忙，來瞭解為什麼被駭入？以及該怎樣作？
The hacked home page blasted visitors with cryptic warnings of “system peril” and “network throttling.”  It promised: “This medium will metastasize” and displayed an ominous looking timer marked “Countdown to Wide Awake and Physical.” Players quickly performed calculations and realized that the timer was counting down the hours, minutes and seconds to a specific date four weeks in the future: August 24, 2004. They immediately began a massively- multiplayer investigation: What would happen on August 24?
這個被駭客侵入的首頁用一些隱祕的警語，像是「系統危機」「網路調節」轟炸受訪者。網站承諾「媒體將移轉」，並且預兆方式呈現倒數。玩家很快計算以及理解出這個以小時、分鐘、秒數的倒數，是指向未來四個禮拜後的一個確定日期：August 24, 2004。他們立即開始了一個廣泛、多人參與的調查。到底在8月24日什麼事情會發生？

The players soon discovered another clue: on the same website, the hacker had replaced the beekeepers’ favorite honey-based recipes with 210 unique pairs of Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates. Each of pair of coordinates—such as a latitude of 38.891883 and a longitude of -077.026117—appeared directly above a matching time code—such as 06:07 PDT. The 210 time codes were precisely spaced apart three or four minutes each, so that they stretched across a 12-hour period: from sunrise to sundown in the Pacific Daylight Savings Time zone. A smaller countdown on the recipe page, marked “Axons Go Hot”, was counting down to the same date as the homepage.
玩家很快發現另一個線索：在同一個網站上，駭客已經將養峰人喜愛的蜜蜂食譜給改了，改成210個獨特成對的GPS座標。這些成對的經緯度座標，有直接相對應的時間密碼(以太平洋夏令時間表示)，請見下圖示意。這210個時間密碼很精確的彼此之間間隔三到四分鐘，所以總共延生成12小時時間長度：從日出到日落。在食譜頁有一個小的時間倒數，寫著“Axons Go Hot”(軸線發熱)，其跟首頁的時間倒數是一樣。


8月10日，一連串“全球衛星導航”座標出現在該網頁中，這些座標位置全部指向公共電話，而且還列出8月24日當天特定時段將會透過每一支公共電話傳 達訊息。追蹤這條線索的人會在電話中聽見一段機械化女性語音，詢問關於ilovebees.com這款遊戲的問題以及ilovebees.com管理人潛 逃出境的消息。問題必須藉由網站、傳真資料、電話、電子郵件、剪報、電視廣告、甚至是名人所說的話才能解謎，而答案跟“地球將遭到星盟攻擊”有關，這正是 《光環2》的遊戲內容。一旦成功回答了777個問題，電話會開始由真的接線生來接應，給接聽的人一些秘密指示。

Amidst all of this confounding content, a single FAQ at the bottom of the hacked homepage posed an explicit opening challenge to the Halo fans: “Q: What happened to this site? A: Help me find out here.” Players who clicked on the Web link “here” found the blog of a young woman named Dana, the beekeeper’s niece and website administrator, who was soliciting the public’s help with fixing www.ilovebees.com. But in a frantic post titled “emergency exit”, Dana told players that she was contemplating going into hiding. Indeed, after exchanging nearly one hundred personal emails with the players, she disappeared, leaving them to deal with the countdown and its looming threats on their own.
在這個混亂的內容中，在被駭客的首頁下方，有一個FAQ，點選就會連到一個叫Dana女生的部落格，她是養蜂人的姪女，以及網站管理者。Dana尋求大眾幫忙來修復www.ilovebees.com。但是在一篇標題為「緊急離開」的文章中，她告訴玩家她想要躲起來。後來，在經過跟將近一百多個玩家交換email之後，她消失了，讓玩家自己處理這個倒數，以及自己應付這個即將到臨的威脅。

The players received no further instructions. The I Love Bees game did not articulate a specific goal, a win condition, rules, or any of the other formal guidelines traditionally associated with games. Nor did it offer any obvious choices to make, or sequences of buttons to press, or virtual objects to collect. Instead, the players had only a call to action, a very complex data set, a few seemingly random threads of story—and the freedom to respond to them however they wanted. In the end, this single core mystery of the hacker and its GPS coordinates took more than 600,000 collaborating players—largely high school and college students—nearly four months to solve.
玩家沒有收到更進一步的指示。這個 I Love Bees遊戲沒有講一個明確的目標、怎樣贏的規則以及情況，也沒有一般遊戲會有的傳統正式指引。玩家只有被告知要行動，有一堆複雜的資料、以及不多的隨機故事線頭，但是玩家有自由可以回應他們想要的。最後，這一個單一核心的駭客神秘事件以及它的GPS座標，花了60萬集體玩家，大部分是高中生跟大學生，總共約四個月的時間來解出。



By the time the countdown hit zero on August 24, the players were ready for far more than we expected. They showed up at the GPS coordinates laden with every form of digital communications technology and personal media devices you could imagine. They were prepared for virtually anything. They had compiled databases of each others’ cell phone numbers in case they needed to relay information to or from the field. They had stationed significant numbers of players online in case real-time research was necessary to complete the mission. They brought large numbers of friends and family with them in case a group performance was necessary.
到了8月24日倒數截止當日，玩家的準備超我們所預期的。他們已經整理好玩家的手機通訊資料，已方便傳遞訊息，或是來去指定點。他們甚至部署了一些玩家可以即時作線上研究，如果任務有需要，就可以派上用場。他們帶了大量的家人跟朋友，萬一需要團體表演時，可以派上用場。



At each coordinate, at the appropriate time, a payphone rang. If players located and answered the ringing payphone, they were asked a pre-recorded question by Melissa, the Operator. (The first question: “Who is the enemy of mankind?” The answer: “The Covenant”, the enemy alien race in the Halo games.) If they answered correctly, they heard thirty seconds of a War of the Worlds-style radio drama. Their mission? To intercept as many pieces of the drama as possible and to report back to other players what they had heard. Players heard 30 different bits of drama that day; all were successfully intercepted in at least one location, and players met back up online to put the narrative pieces together. They fulfilled their mission perfectly.
在每一個座標點、在一個適當時間點，有一個付費電話會響起。如果玩家找到電話，並且接了電話，會被問一個由總機 Melissa事先預錄好的問題。第一個問題是：「誰是人類的敵人？」答案是：「The Covenant」(這是Halo遊戲裏的敵軍)。如果玩家回答正確，將會聽到30秒的像 a War of the Worlds(世界大戰)的廣播劇。他們的任務？盡可能詮釋這些眾多廣播劇，並且回報給其他玩家他們聽到什麼？在那天，玩家聽到了30個不一樣的廣播短劇，所有廣播劇都被成功的詮釋出來，然後玩家在網路會面，開始一起拼湊出這些描述性的故事片段。他們成功的達成使命。


說明：在1938年廣播是唯一即時傳播媒體，劇作家Orson Welles把科幻小說家HG Wells在1898年描寫火星人入侵地球的作品War of the Worlds(世界大戰)搬上收音機，用新聞播報的方式把故事呈現。在二戰前的社會，一般上都把收音機的新聞當真；當時很多沒聽到開始的解釋話語，在中間收聽的都以為這個一小時的播報是真實的故事，造成社會的恐慌。

延伸閱讀: 从微软全新宣传模式得到启示
PDF檔案下載:
i_love_bees.pdf
A Case Study in Collective Intelligence Gaming.pdf