Adventures on the Streets of Newcastle

One of the best parts about The Go Game is getting the opportunity to produce events in random places all over the world. Chris and I have ventured, suitcases stuffed with wedding dresses and fake moustaches and oversized trophies in each hand, from Japan to Puerto Rico to Cancun to the most exotic destination of them all: Altus, Oklahoma.

Our most recent destination: the lovely city of Newcastle upon Tyne! Our mission: drink a brewery worth of Newcastle Brown Ale wearing these sweet unofficial Newcastle-themed Nike Dunks.


Ha. I wish. However, we did get to do the next best thing, which was design a fun training game for a really cool and innovative company and tour the lovely city of Newcastle in our bit of free time. Here's what Newcastle (right bank) and Gateshead (left bank) and the River Tyne look like from on high.


This impressive view of the Tyne Bridge and the structurally stunning Millenium Bridge comes from the Viewing Box of the BALTIC Contemporary Arts Centre.

Before our impromptu city exploration, Chris and I put together a sales training game that somehow incorporated ninjas, alien strobe blasters, and dinosaur robots into various selling exercises. None of your boring Death By PowerPoint sales training snoozefests going on here.

One of our favourite missions involved teams heading out to the streets of Newcastle city centre to interact with the public. Our client had asked us to design an exercise to explore work they do with organising Street Teams, so we had them create quirky little gifts from assorted bits and bobs and trade them to passersby they encountered on their quest. The teams came back with lots of random items, stories, photos, and smiles after spreading some Street Team love around Newcastle. They even got hugs from total strangers!

Awwww. The Go Game: Inspiring Hugs from Newcastle upon Tyne to Altus, Oklahoma.

Our energetic players were competitive, creative, clever, and up for everything we threw at them. Although only one team could take home the ultimate winning prize, they were all total rock stars. Seriously. See for yourself.

Chris and I had a fab time designing this game and getting lost in the winding streets of Newcastle upon Tyne. Give us a call anytime and we'll come to your city to spread some hugs AND defend you from aliens.

See you around!

F Off Friday - 5 March

Oh hi, fancy meeting you here. How was the week for the rest of you? Only a few short hours before we can all run out of our offices for the weekend. Let's hope for sunshine. For now, we'll bring some light to your dark existence with another link dump.

Flash Game of the Week: Sushi Cat. I had a tuna avocado roll earlier in the week, so this was right up my alley. Combining a gelatinous kitty with sushi and plinko? That's some Friday morning genius.

What We're Reading:
Ends vs. Means and Persuasive Games [Institute for the Future]
Urgent Evoke, Jane McGonigal's new game is live and online [Urgent Evoke]
Going to GDC next week? Watch the master try to break the Donkey Kong high score [Wired]
Increasing wireless connectivity in Afghanistan using recycled parts [Free Range International]
Space Invaders video game? What's next, Missile Command? Oh, really? [LA Times]
Showing our San Francisco roots: Petition to make 'Hella' the SI prefix for 10^27 [boingboing]
What if chess was designed by MMOG developers? [AKMA's Random Thoughts]
The Tao of Tecmo Super Bowl [FanHouse] [Play Tecmo Super Bowl]

What We're Watching:
New York City in miniature via brilliant photography in The Sandpit [Sam O'Hare on Vimeo]
The State of the Internet from our friends at Jess3 [Jess3 on Vimeo]
Video game wedding invite WIN! [Offbeat Bride]
Blind gamer beats Zelda [Huffington Post]
From Countdown, the classic 'wankers' clip (we couldn't resist) [Countdown on Youtube]
The new OK Go video (nice name gents) is a brilliantly pointless contraption [OK Go on Youtube]
This is either the best or the worst song of all time, there is no in between [Crystal Swing on Youtube]

Other Stuff:
Sex Dice [xkcd]
Find the Man In The Box and win £30,000 [Man In The Box]
We recommend the Math for Primates podcast [boingboing]
Pac-Man hidden in the LG logo? [Nintendo Everything]

F Off Friday - 26 Feb

It's been a long long week for The Go Game...just the way we like it! In between events and travel and games at Monday's Hide&Seek Sandpit we still wasted enough time online that we can bring you a full list of links for F Off Friday. Let's get to it!


Flash Game of the Week: "Pantry" by Amanita Design. This is a beautiful piece that has all the trimmings of style, colour and sound. Sure you can't beat a high score, but sometimes playing isn't all about winning. Amanita Design has a great group of beautifully-illustrated games on their website here.

F Off Friday - 19 Feb

Are you ready for a roller coaster ride through what we've been playing around with on the internets this week? Good. Let's go:

Flash Game of the Week: This Is The Only Level Too - You're an elephant and all you want to do is make it into the pipe so you can escape your graphics-deprived existence. Unfortunately for you, the crafty crew at Armor Games is conspiring against you. So annoying.

F Off Friday - 12 Feb

In a new feature here at The Go Game blog, we're going to help you waste time at work with 'F Off Friday.' It'll be a best of games (for the most part) link list that will give you a distraction from the florescent-lit workplace hellhole.

Flash Game of the Week: Unicorn Robot Attack - It's the sound that really makes this offering. From the soundtrack to the unicorn's tail, it will make even the most masculine man long for a fairy, dolphin, rainbow fantasyland.

Go Fishy - What I Learned From A Simple Flash Game

Played Online came out with its list of the best flash games of the past decade.As someone who wasted a great deal of time playing these games I was happy to see some of my favourites make the list. I spent countless hours learning how to best play Miniputt, Age of War and Defend Your Castle - remember when there was only one tower defence game?

The one game on this list that I spent the most time on was XGenStudio's Fishy. It was a simple, but difficult game that I would initially play to decompress. Before long, I would find myself obsessed. Seven years later, I can look back and determine that Fishy either taught me or reinforced various principles about game design, attention to detail and even life. Kinda intense.

More musings - and the game itself- after the jump...

Even More Playfully Awesome