Pervasive games aren't new, in fact they are the oldest form of games (I'm paraphrasing Pekko Koskinen from our role playing game theory study group last night).

This, coupled with very interesting view-points on political / educational / world-changing games (by Maija, Vili and other members of our study group) have inspired me to (kind of) continue working on my L'il Game Chef game To Elysion. And by continuing to work on I of course mean throwing it all to the rubbish bin and starting all over again.

Main themes for a new pervasive game to affect the world in not so subtle ways:

1. Encourage Real Action (Don't show, don't tell, don't encourage to solve problems in fiction level)
2. Anchor the Game on Everyday Life
3. The Boundary-Drawing is Built in the Player (don't sweat that, every people in society is programmed to do it)
4. Provide incentives and stimuli to return to the game action (Bascially same as #2, but cannot be emphasized enough)
5. Do not burden the Player with too much cognitive workload (fiction, rules systems, complex interfaces)

The rest, I think, is just basic level game design 101. Just like the social games we're seeing today.

I'm at the moment focusing on defining the theme of the game. There are a couple of bold ideas that I have, but it is probably too early to discuss them here. More to come later and I think I really need to talk about this with a few people.