Mischief Humor in Smart and Playable Cities

In smart cities we can expect to witness human behavior that is not be different from human behavior in present-day cities. There will be demonstrations, flash mobs, and organized events to provoke the smart city establishment. Smart cities will have bugs that can be exploited by hackers. Smart cities can also offer their data to civic hackers, who may create useful applications for city dwellers. Humor is an important aspect of our daily activities and experiences. In this chapter, we explore how humor can become part of smart and playable cities. We do this by investigating the role of humor in game environments. In games, we have accidental humor, for example because of bugs, and we have humor that occurs because a gamer wants it to happen. This latter type of humor can be produced by looking for bugs, by not following the rules of the game, or by intentionally creating situations that lead to humorous events in the game. This may certainly include humor at the expense of others. We investigate how such views of game humor can find analogues in the humor that may appear and be created in smart and playable cities.