After Shock
What Happens Next is Up to You
As part of the drill, Institute for the Future, the US Geological Survey (USGS) and Art Center College of Design created After Shock— the first Massively Multiplayer Collaboration game focused on a natural disaster. This alternate reality game, After Shock engages players around the meta theme of a major earthquake in their city and invites them to respond to this crisis using tools like video, blogs, wikis, twitter and more to collaborate with their community and find solutions and answers to challenges that help move them forward in the game. The game runs for 3 weeks, starting on November 13, during which time players will receive new information and challenges to propel them toward solutions. At it’s culmination, data will be collected and analyzed to help us understand how Southern California citizens might respond to this type of disaster and their degree of preparedness.
Building on IFTF’s expertise with collaborative forecasting and data from the USGS on natural disasters, After Shock aims to prepare residents not just for the few moments during a quake, but also for the days and weeks afterward. As with many IFTF projects, the After Shock is a public, online simulation game designed to encourage the literacy of futures thinking in the broader public while also educating players about disaster preparedness. Jason Tester, the lead game designer at IFTF believes that a game setting like this gives people the fullest sense of what a real disaster feels like and by encouraging the use of open collaboration tools creates a sense of community that most closely mirrors what life might be like in the real world after an actual quake. It will attempt to bridge the engagement gap between expert science and real people in an accessible way to help people think critically about the days after an earthquake, and how they can be a grassroots leader in their community. Playing the game is contingent on surviving the earthquake, but continuing survival depends on smart decisions. “One of our main goals with this game is to empower and inspire people toward future leadership in a real disaster because they will have had this simulated practice and experience,” says Jason Tester. “Playing the game is contingent on surviving the earthquake, but continuing survival depends on smart decisions.” Jason will be on the mainstage, along with partners and other civic leaders, at the Get Ready Rally on Friday, November 14 at the Nokia LIVE Plaza in Downtown LA from 4–9 pm. This rally will be the culmination of the USGS's The Great Southern California ShakeOut week. For more information visit www.artcenter.edu/getready.