NOT::Boston

NOT::Boston is a real-time, location-based game, that lasts for six weeks. During that time, players are assembled into three teams and they compete to create their neighborhood five years in the future. There are three main game components: weekly missions, where the game presents tasks to all the players; user-generated challenges, where individuals pose challenges to opposing teams; and Gawk (or a future version of Yelp), where players review what they would like to see in their neighborhood. In all game activities, players must organize their neighbors and form alliances to get things done. If someone always wanted a burrito shop in her neighborhood, she simply enters a review in Gawk and encourages her neighbors to do the same. If enough other people write positive things, then the map of Boston (5 years in the future) will reflect this desire. Likewise, negative reviews of a current business will have the opposite effect on the future map. NOT::Boston gets players out in their neighborhoods, talking to people and using the streets. Want to save a public park from being paved over? Get 10 people to gather in the park and submit photos of the gathering from your mobile phone. Want to know more about local shop owners? Then challenge other players to go out an interview them. The goal is to make a better neighborhood.

How might communities use it?
Alienation and isolation are often associated with life in many American cities. People don’t know or even recognize their neighbors. The average city dweller spends more time communicating with people on the other side of the city or the country than they do communicating with people on the other side of the street. NOT::Boston will enable local communities to organize around issues they care about, strategize about how to make their neighborhoods better, identify what's important to them, and cultivate identities that can persist beyond game play.

At what stage of development is it
As a prototype, NOT::Boston is seeking funding for full development and deployment.