DeltaLecture: Hybrid Ecologies

What are hybrid ecologies? And how do locative based media affect the way we live
together in metropolitan areas. Christian Licoppe, social scientist and Head of the Social
Science Department at Telecom Paristech, spoke about this subject during the second
lecture in the International Perspectives lecture series organized by Deltametropolis and
the University of Utrecht.

According to Licoppe, location-aware media like Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places
reshape encounters and proximity in urban space, who conducted research after diverse
location-based and proximity-based real life games in Japan and France. To find out what
these new locative games could mean for contemporary urban culture and spaces, Licoppe
had to connect with geeky Japanese subcultures.

 

Sure-Chigai Tsuushin
With over ten million users worldwide, Foursquare is the most famous location-based
game for smartphones. Players check in on ‘venues’ that they visit in real life while earning
points, badges and even so-called Mayor titles. Licoppe, however, has studied the popular
Nintendo DS game Dragon Quest 9. The game model is based on sure-chigai tsuushin, or
‘passer-by communication’, which means that two players who are close to each other in
real life can play. This makes the so-called ‘proximity game’ a brilliant concept for densely
populated cities like Tokyo.

 

Affecting physical and digital presence
In Tokyo players of Dragon Quest 9 will meet about ten other players while traveling by
subway from the suburbs to the city center. This leads to diverse, spontaneous and digital
encounters with strangers, states Licoppe. Players, however, do not only meet each other
by coincidence. They also leave each other in-game messages about their travel plans.
In front of the giant Yodobashi-Akiba department store in Tokyo’s Akihabara district,
hundreds of gamers gather for hunts for virtual treasures on a daily basis. Players focused
on their devices are sitting and standing next to each other, having close contact in digital
space, while ignoring each other in real. A fascinating new urban spatial typology emerges,
coined ‘hybrid ecologies’ by Licoppe, as they are affected by both physical and digital
presence.

But will these ‘hybrid ecologies’ also affect low dense urban conurbations like Randstad
Holland in the Netherlands and the Ruhr Area in Germany? Perhaps they will, says
Licoppe. In Paris gamers choose parks for their digital encounters, mainly to avoid
contaminations of crowds and commercial interests. In polynuclear metropolitan regions
transportation nodes or shopping malls seem to be the most logical spots for future digital
events. Here a lot of people cross-pass each other and the change to meet other gamers is
biggest.