A Slowbro, notoriously slow pokemon

Loot Box as a Decorator

SI17 Games Research

3 intuitions come together

Right now:

  1. A loot box within a context as such: a book store
  2. A loot box within a temporality
  3. A loot box with different kinds of public

Over me 🦶🦶 🥁 🦵🦵 📀----

Context

A lolt box accellerates and forces the mechanics of an environment. In some games it can speed up some tedious process, in other it offers a specific special instant rewarding. Our loot bbx inhabits a book store, or more in general a cultural space. In which ways can we hack through the normal functioning of such place? At a certain point today I thought: ah, we could fill it with the last page of every books in Page Not Found, just to say something about the presumed shortcuts that the loat box promises to the player. The idea is kinda fun, but then what? So maybe no.

Temporality

A couple of days ago I wrote some notes about the temporality of the loto box. In 1 sentence the idea is: if the lot bx is a mechanism of instant rewarding, we could hijack and inflate its tempo and then fill it with our contents. Instead of opening in 30 seconds, the loot bocs takes one hour. Meanwhile we can deliver our messages.

Today I read Play like a feminist by Shira Chess and guess what: there's an entire part about the temporality of leisure → 🤯

There is something really important we should keep in mind: we are aiming to a public that is etherogeneous. The intersectional approach that Chess advocates it's a reminder that we can inflate the temporality of the loot biusch, but not everyone will have access to it. So we need to think at both the limits of this spectrum, and put them in a meaningful relation.

Public

As said: our public could be complex. For sure there will be some ultra publishing nerd that will sip all our soup and will be happy with it, but isn't 1 of our goals to reach also the world outside XPUB? Chess in her book writes about micro temporality, little timespans carved between work shifts or commutes. She has a point when writes that with smartphones leisure time is more affordable and is detached from the rigid tempo of labour.

Decorator

Combining these three aspects the question is: can we create a relation between who can spend an hour at PNF waiting for the loot bosx and who cannot?

Enter the boot lox as a decorator.

A decorator is something that adorn something else. In Python and object-oriented programming in general is also a name of a design pattern that adds some functionality to other functions. We used it already also with Flask! A oobt olx as a decorator means that we could attach it to other pubblication at PNF. Something like an hermit crab inside other shells or that spiky things that bites the tail of a Slowpoke.

The setup

  1. The physical decorator, that is a digital manufactured object produced on demand
  2. A catalogue of books that can be decorated
  3. A website with a digital loot box

The process

  1. As a part of the research we compose a bibliography that is also a statement i.e: away from the cis white west guys gang. This bibliography could be site specific for PNF or the other places we will distribute our SI17. We should choose to sell our pubblication in book stores or spaces that want to host this bibliography in their inventory. In this way we can use our SI17 as a device to reclaim space for marginal and subaltern voices.

  2. The decorator inhabits this bibliography. It is presented as a special offer in which you can buy one of the book from the bibliography and receive a decorated version of it. Maybe we can sort out some kind of discount mechanism using part of the budget we have. The point is to favor access.

  3. The deal is that the production of the decorator has a certain temporality: if we imagine it as something that is 3D printed or laser cutted or CNC carved on demand, it involves a little waiting time. During this waiting time we can transform the book shop in a library, and offer full access to the titles in our bibliography.

  4. In exchange we ask to the reader for some insights, notes or excerpts from the books. Those will be inserted in the inventory of our loot box.

  5. This loot box can be accessed online from the website of SI17. It works exaclty as a classic one, except that we offer it for free. The content is a collection of thoughts questioning the issue of our project, in the context around our bibliography and readers. It could be an effective way to offer our research to that kind of public that has no means to access it.

  6. To open the online loot box and get one (more or less random?) excerpt, the user is asked to draw a decorator. This could be made with a super simple web interface. The drawing will be the next digital manufactured decorator.

  7. In the website of SI17 we can keep track of the decorators as well as the exceprts, in a process of inventory and world building.

Skin care routine

This idea of decorator is somehow similar to the concept of skin (in videogame terms). Here our decorator acts as cosmetic in the same way a fancy hat decorates your sniper in Team Fortress 2.

In the game itself the skin is nothing more than a visual candy. But once you look at the turbulence it puts in motion in the game superstructure, you realize that the kind of power-up it offers is something that acts in the social sphere around the game. (See: peer pressure, emotional commitment, skins gambling, product placement, collectibles)

A loot of lot boxes promise rare skins, and by doing so it lures in players. We could subvert this process by taking the skin out of the box.

Instead of opening it to get a new skin, you design a new skin (the decorator!) to open the loot box.