Everything begins at Barcelona Challenge Canodrom,  a pioneering innovation event organized by the City Council in co-operation with Sónar+D which aims to involve the creative sector of the city in the creation of public policy.

With this idea, the project led by Arsgames and named “Juegos del común”, passed the first round of the Barcelona Challenge Canodrom achieving the highest score among the 60 different approaches that where presented. The projects were valued according to their suitability to concepts such as citizen science, collaborative economy, social and artistic innovation, technopolitics and use of open data. The participants of the selected project enjoyed tutoring by the Barcelona City Council.

What is Juegos del común and who are Arsgames?

Juegos del común is a project of data gamification based on the concept of data games, aiming to introduce a new approach in the reuse of open data rather than the mostly know uses such of apps, visualizations of data and data journalism. This interactive experience arranges game structures in order to leverage citizens’ participation.

Arsgames, on the other hand, is a cultural association which thinks of and experiences with videogames, organizing events and undertaking new projects.

In this context, they develop an API relating 4 different datasets from Open Data BCN in order to allow users to navigate easily and effectively through the data. The datasets used are the Average area of rented housing, the Average monthly rent,  Tourist housing in the city of Barcelona, and finally one dataset about Cultural festivals data in the city of Barcelona.

The API created was offered to artists and developers so that they could make videogames out of it. 4 different projects originated from it:

  • Rambla Rush: A runner in ‘La Rambla’ of Barcelona.
  • Flatsweeper: A minesweeper about renting in Barcelona.
  • PinPamPoom: A pinball where you need to win in order to be able to pay the rent.
  • Last Hope: A simulation about the daily life of a homeless.

All those games have been presented in Sónar+D.