Once I started playtesting in cemeteries, the design pieces fell quickly into place. I knew I would need a focused activity that, in some respect, had nothing to do with remembering death—that had to be the side effect, not the purpose, of the game. And since Texas Hold ’Em poker was a larger theme for the alternate reality campaign, it made perfect sense to bring the familiar game to the cemeteries.
But the poker needed to be site-specific and really needed to use the natural affordances of a cemetery—otherwise, you’d just play the game somewhere else, defeating the entire purpose. And that’s where the idea of using stones as playing cards came in. Tombstones are the single design feature that all cemeteries have in common, guaranteeing the game would be playable anywhere. And paying close attention to the content of the tombstones directly supported the goal of the happiness hack—each card you “decoded” meant literally staring death in the face, but in a way that wouldn’t provoke fear or anxiety.
As for the other design choices, I made it a partner game because this seemed like a good way to ensure that it was not just social, but also cooperative. Cooperation always provokes positive emotion and meaning in games, especially if a physical connection is involved. Meanwhile, touch is one of the fastest ways to build social bonds—holding hands, touching someone’s back, and patting a shoulder all release the oxytocin chemical that makes us like and trust each other. But, as Dacher Keltner’s positive-emotion research has shown, “We live in a touch-deprived culture.”25 To put it another way, as Michelangelo said, “to touch is to give life”—and I couldn’t think of a better way to enliven a cemetery than to unleash a flood of oxytocin in the crowd.26
When a game is in motion, there’s an air of happy participation that simply isn’t the norm for cemeteries. It’s a distinct break from the typical atmosphere, usually one of quiet, solitary reflection or collective mourning. At the same time, small pockets of conversation often break out, among friends as well as strangers—people sharing small pieces of their own experiences with mourning and loss. This has unfolded at every Tombstone Hold ’Em game I’ve been to—it’s almost impossible not to, given the setting. In this way, the game perfectly serves its purpose: it simultaneously activates positive emotions and social bonds while putting us in the perfect environment to get our recommended daily reminder that we are all dust, and to dust we shall return.
Which brings us back to the potential controversy. Tombstone Hold ’Em was featured in a number of news articles, and some online readers commented that the game seemed “disrespectful,” “insensitive,” or even “obscene.” Which raises the question: Is it appropriate to play games in a cemetery? Based on my direct experiences, absolutely. At more than a dozen trials I’ve organized of Tombstone Hold ’Em, participants have overwhelmingly agreed that this particular game feels right in the space—especially when the net result is that the tombstones receive more attention from the living and are better taken care of as a result.
Perhaps more than any other project I’ve worked on, Tombstone Hold ’Em has demonstrated one of the most vital powers of gameplay: it gives us explicit permission to do things differently. We are accustomed to being asked to behave and think unconventionally in a game. We’re used to being creative and playing outside of social norms when we’re inside the socially safe “magic circle” of a game. And the more people who come together to play an unconventional game like Tombstone Hold ’Em, the safer it feels. A crowd carries the social authority to redefine norms.
Does it really work as a happiness hack? I’ve played Tombstone Hold ’Em with hundreds of people and spoken with nearly every one of them about it immediately afterward. (The games are usually followed by social gatherings in restaurants or bars, a way to decompress after what can be an intense, emotional experience.) The most common reaction is that players felt “more comfortable” being in the cemetery after playing. Other words most commonly used to describe the experience were “strangely happy” and “relaxed,” as well as “grateful” and “connected” to the people at rest. I’ve even talked to visitors at the cemeteries who spotted some of our players in the distance and asked me about the game; just once did a visitor express dismay. Most often, I heard a variation of the following sentiment: that it’s nice to see a loved one’s final resting place not lonely and empty, but full of people running, smiling, laughing, and having fun together.
Since I first shared the rules online, the game has spread mostly by word of mouth—like most good hacks—and I periodically hear about Tombstone Hold ’Em games popping up in cemeteries around the world. It’s the best outcome possible for any happiness hack: a solution that’s been tested, proven, and shared, and now continues to be passed around to those who can benefit from it. Today, Tombstone Hold ’Em lives on as a viral happiness solution—it’s free to adopt or adapt, and no products or special supplies or technology is required. All you need are a set of regular playing cards, something to use as poker chips (some people use coins or colored glass stones), and a way to invite friends or strangers to play their respects with you.
HAPPINESS HACK # 3 : ACTIVATING THE DANCE SECRET
“As a happiness lesson, nothing could be more straightforward: if you get a chance to dance in a circle, get up out of your chair and do it.”27 That’s Jennifer Michael Hecht’s advice in The Happiness Myth, and with good reason. Dancing together has been used throughout human history as a reliable source of a special kind of euphoria, the dancer’s high.
Dancer’s high is what we feel when endorphins (from the physical movement) combine with oxytocin (from touch and synchronized movement) and the intense stimulation of our vagus nerve (what we feel when we “lose ourselves” in the rhythms of the music and are part of a crowd moving together). It’s an expansive mixture of excitement, flow, and affection that is hard to experience any other way.28
But dancing in groups also makes many people feel embarrassed or awkward. Everything from self-consciousness to social anxiety to a general disdain for any kind of group participation can prevent us from joining or fully enjoying a dance.
To really dance your heart out in front of others, to not hold back at all, is a daunting proposition for many (although certainly not all) people. It requires letting go, and showing people a side of yourself—exuberant, unguarded—that you might ordinarily keep hidden. For some, revealing that side requires a lot of trust in the people around you. And, in fact, according to positive-psychology researchers, the necessity of trust is one of the reasons why dancing is such a powerful happiness activity.
When we dance, we’re forced into an emotionally and socially vulnerable state in which we have to hope and trust that others will embrace us, rather than judge us. At the same time, we’re given the opportunity to embrace others and help them feel more comfortable dancing. In other words, dancing with others is a chance both to receive and to express our compassion, generosity, and humanity. As a result, Dacher Keltner writes, “Dance is the most reliable and quickest route to a mysterious feeling that has gone by many names over the generations: sympathy, agape, ecstasy, jen; here I’ll call it trust. To dance is to trust.”29
But first, we have to have both the desire to dance and the nerve to do it. Many of us are missing one or the other.
Some people, as a rule, just don’t like “getting involved.” And group dances in particular set off all kinds of hokiness alarms. It’s no coincidence that one of the best-known group dances is actually called the “hokey pokey.” If you’re not in the mood for dancing, when a big group dance breaks out at a wedding or a street festival, for instance, being dragged into it can feel incredibly forced and inauthentic.
Others have the desire, but simply lose the nerve.
The more I kept hitting up against the same happiness advice—dance more, in large groups if possible—the more convinced I became that there had to be a way to make it easier for introverted types who were more likely to watch from the sidelines to participate, and to give people who are
already willing to dance together more daily opportunities. After all, even people who are ready and willing to dance anytime, anyplace, don’t get nearly enough opportunities. We simply don’t have a lot of everyday venues for dancing together. I began to wonder: how could we all sneak a few minutes dancing together into our everyday lives, not just the occasional weekend?
My solution: take all the basic mechanics of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, and swap in real-life dance quests and dance-offs for traditional role-playing quests and raids. I called it Top Secret Dance-Off, or TSDO for short, and I launched it as a stand-alone social network site dedicated to the adventure of dancing together.
ADVENTURERS WANTED. NO DANCING TALENT REQUIRED.
Welcome to Top Secret Dance-Off, an underground network of otherwise ordinary people seeking to activate the dance secret—an elusive power said to be hardwired into our brains, and requiring highly unusual dance experiences to unlock it.
Top Secret Dance-Off is an adventure you can undertake anywhere in the world. No dance skills or talent is required. In fact, you may find yourself rewarded more for awkward dancing than for a virtuoso performance. Activating the dance secret isn’t about being a good dancer. It’s about being a clever dancer, a brave dancer, and occasionally a stealthy dancer.
Adventures will involve undertaking a variety of challenging, top secret dance missions on video, sometimes in the privacy of your home, and sometimes in the most unlikely environments. You may play alone, or with your friends. Mask wearing or other disguises are required.
As you try to activate the elusive dance secret, you’ll earn points by completing dance quests and participating in dance-offs. As you earn more points, you’ll level up. The higher the level, the more dance secret you’ve activated.
For every quest you complete and every dance-off you enter, you’ll also be earning choreopowers, such as style, courage, humor, and coordination. Your choreopowers reveal your personal strengths as a top secret dancer—and all choreopowers are awarded by other members of TSDO, in the comments on your videos.
Full activation of the dance secret occurs at level 100. How do you get there? Just complete twenty-one increasingly challenging quests and win at least a dozen dance-offs, and you’ll be fully activated for life.
Dance Quest #1: Disguise yourself.
Your first mission is to disguise yourself. After all, this is top secret.
But we’re not talking a full disguise. That would make dancing . . . difficult. So, to keep your TSDO identity a secret from the rest of the world, you must create a lightweight disguise that covers at least part of your face. It might be a mask, a scarf, modified sunglasses, face paint, a wig, or . . . ? It’s your face. You decide how to hide it. But make sure you really like your disguise—because you’ll need to don the exact same one for all future quests and dance-offs. Batman and Wonder Woman didn’t make new suits every time they went out to save the world, did they? So pick something you like, and stash it somewhere safe—and secret. You’ll be needing it.
Now: Make a video introducing yourself to the TSDO world. You must be 1) wearing your disguise and 2) dancing. Pick any song you like. BUT—and here’s the tricky party—keep your secret weapons in check for now. That means no moving your feet. Dance, but don’t move your feet. Like they’re locked in cement. Got it?
Keep the video short—less than thirty seconds. Upload it to the TSDO site when you’re ready to unleash your top secret dance identity and start earning your choreopowers.
Admittedly, this is not exactly dancing together, at least not in the traditional sense. Most of the dance quests and dance-offs involve dancing alone, then uploading a video to the Top Secret Dance-Off social network site. But the game serves two important purposes toward making it easier to dance together.
First, by providing a goal-oriented, feedback-rich, obstacle-intensive environment for dancing, it makes dancing more motivating, fun, and addictive. In other words, it increases a person’s likelihood of dancing at all. Second, TSDO puts dancing, even dancing around your apartment alone, into a collective social context. It still takes nerve to share your dancing with an online community—and it’s a real opportunity to express compassion, generosity, and humanity when we cheer on other players in the comments. In other words, the game is a hack for group dancing—a way to dance together alone, and make people more likely to dance together for real, in the future.
The heart of the TSDO experience is the never-ending list of potential dance quests, each of which adds a unique, unnecessary obstacle to dancing. By putting an obstacle in your way, TSDO makes it much harder to be self-conscious about dancing: you’re focused on completing the challenge, not necessarily on how you look. It also gives you permission to dance badly, by restricting “normal” ways of dancing. The first dance quest—to dance without moving your feet—is a perfect example of this design strategy in action: it automatically rules out pretty much any kind of traditional or obvious dancing. Excelling at stationary dancing requires silliness, creativity, or just plain enthusiasm—not necessarily grace, sexiness, strength, or whatever else we might associate with natural dance talent.
Other dance quests include missions like “Dance upside down,” “Dance in a crosswalk,” “Dance with a tree,” and “Dance to whatever was your favorite song exactly seven years ago.” In each case, successful dancing means creatively dealing with absurd limitations—including time limits, which are designed to make the quests easy to fit into your day. It’s meant to be like brushing your teeth—a little dancing every day goes a long way.
Meanwhile, the dance-offs—in which players form teams and earn points for every team member who submits a dance—require players to synchronize their efforts, even if they are dancing alone. In one of the most popular dance-offs, for example, called “Steal my bad move,” players invent a signature dance move and upload a video demonstrating it. Their team gets points for every player who successfully learns and repeats the same move in their own dance-off video.
What else makes the game work? Some of the supporting design choices I made for Top Secret Dance-Off were simply twists on very traditional strategies for getting people to dance. Masks, for example, have always been an important part of persuading people to let down their guard, and play and perform. They free us from the constraints of who we think we’re supposed to be and how we’re supposed to behave. For people who don’t see themselves as natural dancers, their TSDO disguise is meant to free them from that limiting self-identity.
A Top Secret Dance-Off player completes Dance Quest #1, dancing in disguise.
(Top Secret Dance-Off by Avant Game, 2009)
But the “top secret” theme isn’t just about practical considerations like obscuring player identity. It was also a lightweight way to create a kind of superhero mythology around dancing together. Dancing in front of others, after all, is an act of courage. And it’s a proven powerful force for good when you inspire others to dance. Treating players like top secret superheroes just for dancing is one way to playfully recognize the meaning that dancing holds for us, and the real individual strength required to do it.
Finally, perhaps one of the most effective design elements of Top Secret Dance-Off’s design isn’t even about dancing specifically—it’s actually an adaption of Keltner’s jen ratio to the online environment. I knew that in order for TSDO to work, players would need to feel comfortable posting potentially embarrassing videos of themselves. But on most video-sharing sites, the comments section is not exactly the kindest or friendliest place on earth. Criticism, rather than support, is the general method of feedback there, and it’s often personal, ugly, and mean-spirited. So I designed the comments feature of TSDO specifically to inspire players to leave positive feedback, or none at all.
Whenever you watch another player’s dance video, you have the option to reward them with a plus-one of any choreopower you want. Some choreopowers are traditional dance qualities, such as beauty, coordin
ation, and style. Others are less traditional: humor, sneakiness, imagination, and courage. The range of choreopowers allows players to develop a unique profile of dance ability and strengths, regardless of their “natural” dance talent (or lack thereof). Perhaps my favorite choreopower is exuberance, which can be awarded to anyone who is obviously joyous and carefree.
As a result, TSDO is an environment with an off-the-charts high jen ratio. It’s a place where anyone can feel safe dancing together. Indeed, more than one player has professed in the TSDO chat room that their dance quest videos were the first time anyone has seen them dance publicly in years.
Top Secret Dance-Off is a more formal hack than Cruel 2 B Kind or Tombstone Hold ’Em. There’s a single, central game site, and everyone plays as part of the same online community, leveling up in the same database. But it’s still an incredibly lightweight solution, from a development perspective—I launched the game within a few days of starting to design it. It’s built on top of the inexpensive service Ning, which lets anyone start their own social network, much the way YouTube enabled anyone to share videos online and Blogger enabled anyone to start their own blog. There aren’t fancy graphics or Flash sequences, just good mission design and community support.
I created TSDO as a happiness hack for my own life, and I hoped to play it with a few dozen friends and family members. It wound up attracting a much larger group than I’d expected. The extended social network grew to include coworkers and colleagues, acquaintances and friends of friends—all in all, about five hundred of us in total played the game together for eight weeks during its initial trial run in early 2009. (And based on its early success, a commercial version of TSDO is now in the works.)
Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World Page 23