Poly-pervasive playgrounds and pitfalls: a deployment autoethnography of what we take with us

What We Take With Us is a “poly-pervasive” game played on three playgrounds – an online alternate reality game, a physical room-based game, and game-based workshops – based on my personal experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. The scope of these playgrounds is discussed, followed by an analytic autoethnography of my experiences running the game. Themes from these accounts are analysed with reference to existing research to suggest challenges and opportunities for consideration when deploying such games. This includes targeting and community issues, struggles around the presentation of pervasive games and the labour involved in making them, the dissonance felt as both a designer and researcher on personally-situated projects, and the issues deploying such games in a post-pandemic era. Notable opportunities are also discussed, including the use of social media algorithms for advertising, the effect of the lusory attitude on games research participation, and how success can be defined in such projects.