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"Own Up": A group privacy game

do you claim this post? A game designed by Mike Skirpan

A large group of people mill about playing weird art games at a performance of "Project Amelia."
Photo by Handerson Gomes.

Initially designed by Mike Skirpan for Project Amelia, "Own Up" is a game about being in public online. This game was developed with help from a dozen students and was also used in a class research project to study self-disclosure.

Introducing Own Up, the game where we dig into contestants online personas to expose their true selves to the world. Each round we’ll display a contestant’s old social media post for the world to see. They can either Own Up to their words or hide in shame. But beware, even if you don’t Own Up you might still be #exposed.

A group of players authenticate access to their public Twitter posts. Anonymized tweets would appear on the screen in rotation. Players could "own up" to their post and claim it, or silently let the tweet pass, leaving everyone guessing who wrote it.

Screenshot for a draft of "Own Up." Fake tweets are shown from Joey Fatone, Stacey Popstar, and Bob Dylan.
Mock screenshot from an early draft of "Own Up"

We somehow never made good documentation of the actual game during play, but it was played by hundreds of people over several weeks.

Hardware:

  1. Raspberry pi
  2. Projector + screen
  3. Monitor
  4. RFID scanner (for authentication and "owning up")
  5. Player RFID bracelets

Link to student research paper:

own-up-class-project-report
own-up-class-project-report.pdf
132 KB
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