F Off Friday - 23 April

Up and at 'em early this Friday. There's are Go Games afoot (afeet?) all over the place today...maybe you'll see us out and about! If you're stuck inside all day waste some time with another Friday Link Dump:

Shameless Self Promotion:

Coming to Brighton Fringe? Take part in the Battle of Brighton [More Information]

Did you see our April Newsletter? It's pretty [Newsletter]

Flash(-ish) Game of the Week: Hatetris - The ultimate measure of frustration...The classic game of Tetris, but this time the AI conspires to make you lose.

A Big London Melting Pot of Arts/Theatre/Technology/Games

Lots of cool events and projects going on in the interactive games/technology/arts/theatre worlds here in London. It's like fusion cooking - toss in a sprinkling of theatre, add a dash of gaming, mix in some technology, stir in some art installations, and let it simmer in a big interactive stewpot. Here's some stuff we're excited to check out:

On the games and technology side...Dr. Who: The Adventure Games - the BBC's largest interactive project. Only a downloadable online game, but it would be really cool to translate it into something playable in the real world. Hey BBC, call us, kthxbai!

On the theatre and technology combination...Such Tweet Sorrow - Romeo and Juliet in real time on Twitter!

On technology and art intersection...A L I C E at Battersea Arts Centre - a piece about the 'demise of analogue technology' from VHS to 8-bit.

On the art and games collision....Tate Trumps - a 'Who Would Win In A Fight'-style game (you know how much we love those) about artwork in the Tate Modern. Sweet. Soon to come from our friends at Hide & Seek.

To make those of you an ocean or an Icelandic volcano ash cloud away from London even more jealous, here's a video from some recent games shenanigans at the Victoria & Albert Museum from last month's Sandpit. Sadly, neither Chris or I could make it to this one and, but it's always lots of gaming fun and we can't wait for the next one! Video by the awesome Hannah Nicklin.

Playgrounds at the V&A from Hannah Nicklin on Vimeo.

F Off Friday - 16 April

The whole of The Go Game UK is out of the office today, but that's not stopping us from presenting our favourite links we found whilst procrastinating this week. Without further ado:

Shameless Self Promotion:
Come play with us at Brighton Fringe! [Battle of Brighton]
Faffing off with Augmented Reality [Blog]
Mei messes with the Nike Grid game [Blog]

Flash Game of the Week: Flaming Zombooka - Combining physics, zombies, damsels in distress and explosions? Sign us up.

Happy Anniversary To Us and Battle Brighton!

It's been exactly a year since the UK and Europe office of The Go Game arrived in London. Woohoo! Happy anniversary to us.

We're celebrating by taking several long-awaited trips to the seaside....it's off to Brighton we go! We've been wanting to visit that lovely city since before we moved to the UK, having heard how fantastic and San Francisco-awesome-like it is from friends like Aleks K. and other cool Brighton peeps we met back at SXSW Interactive last year. We can't remember exactly who, which we blame fully on the late night shenanigans on 6th Street in Austin.

Anyway, we're FINALLY making it down to Brighton for a very exciting reason. Three exciting reasons to be exact - we're going to be running 3 brand new games at Brighton Festival Fringe! The Brighton Festival is a curated and programmed performance and artistic extravaganza lasting several weeks in May and the Fringe is the open access festival that runs alongside it. We've long wanted to take part in these amazing cultural events around the UK and we're finally doing it. And it will involve clowns.

And wizards. And aliens. And superheroes, as every good Go Game does. Here's the deal..

GIRD UP YOUR LOINS, IT'S TIME FOR BATTLE BRIGHTON!

On three days in May, The Go Game will stage our fabulously fun technology-fuelled adventure games to explore three long-debated rivalries of yore: Wizards vs. Superheroes, Kids vs. Clowns, and Pirates vs. Aliens.

How would an Avada Kedavra from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named fare against the bulletproof-chested Superman? Can little Tommy fend off an attack from this terrifying real-life evil stalker clown? Could a swashbuckling Orlando Bloom wield his cutlass fast enough to avoid getting demolished by an acid-spewing xenomorph from Aliens? I'm going to go with a 'Highly Unlikely' on that one, but we leave it up to your creative minds.


We'll explore these intergalactic and fantastical matchups as part of Festival Fringe on May 9, 22, and 23, all starting at 2pm at the Caroline of Brunswick. More info here and book tickets here. Unfortunately, the event is 18+ because it's being held at a pub, but that means more pints and more cheeky behaviour from the rest of you lot. As usual, all teams will need a mobile phone with a web browser and we'll combine teams if necessary. Get in touch with any questions and we'll hope to see you there!

Worktime Fun with Augmented Reality

There's nothing better than having a fun office environment. It's something we at The Go Game pride ourselves on, with a company motto like 'Play Like It's Your Job'. We played monthly tester games in our SF office, had random fancy dress moments in the costume closet, built forts out of packing boxes in the living room, and set up multiple projector screens for occasions from Movie Game showings to presidential inaugurations to NCAA championships.

Of course, it's always best when the fun in the office has an actual work-related purpose and isn't just running around putting Mentos candy in Coke bottles to watch the resulting explosions (at the office?! Us?! Never!). Today, Chris and I have been keeping ourselves highly entertained whilst playing around with these really cool augmented reality pictures from Nokia and GE. We sometimes get asked by people if our games are augmented reality and it's an area we're keen to explore a bit more. So when I noticed tweets from some of our friends at 1000heads and WOMWorld Nokia sending out pictures of themselves with one of the new Nokia devices, I thought it would be fun to test out. I didn't really get how it worked, but clicked the link and decided to try taking an augmented reality photo here in the office. The basic idea is that you print out an icon and hold it up to your webcam in the 3D experience page of the Nokia website.

Looking into the screen, you see yourself holding up a bit of paper. Not exciting. Sad monkey-dejected panda face.


Then all of a sudden...the paper's a 3D phone! Wowza!

Fold it and it's back to paper! Phone! Paper! Phone! We were like preschool children with a shiny new toy. The giggles and excitement level might even have approached that of the alleged Mentos-Coke explosion incident. We took photos with our office Super Mario wall both as regular paper:

And with Mario jumping up for a brand new mobile phone. That's a 1UP for sure.

Excited by all the possibilities for games and interactivity, we did some more poking around on the interwebs. Chris found this augmented reality digital hologram from GE, which starts off looking like a boring piece of paper...
But hold that paper in front of the webcam on the GE page and see what happens:

Ummmm DOPE. HELLA San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge with wind turbines kinda dope. We tested another one that even had little birds flying around the screen. Definitely gets the brain working on all sorts of cool ideas for integrating augmented reality into our games and events. We're going to do some tinkering here at the office and see what we can come up with. Stay tuned to this space and we'll come back at you when we've got some stuff to show. That is, if we manage to tear ourselves away from the exploding soda bottles in the backyard...

Nike GRID explained. Mostly.

The official info on the Nike GRID game...

Curious to find out how they're going to score and track all the runners, plus prevent cheating. I guess there could be a minimum time set between each phonebox, then if you clock in at a faster time you're obviously cheating. Like if you're claiming to have run between 2 checkpoints faster than Usain Bolt at his best, you've obviously hopped a ride on your cycle or jumped the night bus.

Let us know if you're going to play, we want to hear how it goes!

Interactive Nike Running Game Takes To The Streets

The text message came that afternoon. It read: Mei L. It's Time. Grid is Waiting. Be at the Village Underground at 7:15pm tonight. Show txt for entry.

Curious. I'd responded to a friend's query via Twitter about London-based people interested in games and running. Soon after, I'd been contacted by an event organiser to chat about my experience with interactive street gaming (an activity I often produce and very much like) and running (an activity I do quite poorly and kind of detest). But, interested in running more often and having an incentive to do so, I sent along my details and then received the mysterious text. Last Thursday, I followed the instructions and made my way down to the Village Underground - home of the super cool tube car office of our friends at Inspired Flight - to find out what was up.


Along with about 100 other people, I filed into a smoke and flashing-light filled warehouse space to watch a few performances and a video on the upcoming Nike Grid game. Here's the deal. It's an all-night, all-out 24 hour running game across London from 8pm-8am on 23 April. 40 postcodes, 10 each for North, East, South and West London. You run between phone boxes in the postcode and type in a secret code to prove you did it and earn points for speed and stamina. Exact details aren't out yet, but the idea is to win your postcode for fame, glory, and hopefully bountiful prizes of Nike gear.


Pretty sweet idea. I'd love to duck out late night on 23 April, clad in all black like a deadly running ninja with a band of roving marauders to claim E2 for the win. I have visions of myself dashing through the streets, hopping fences and parked cars, dodging rival gangs, and feverishly dialing up secret codes in phone boxes like Jason Bourne with a bag full of semi-automatic weapons.

Only 2 problems.

1. I suck at running. More likely, I'd be the one huffing and puffing on the street corner shooting dirty looks at the other marathon-fit competitors speeding past me with smug smiles on their faces. But I'm trying to run more often, so I'd risk the humiliation and do it anyway, except...

2. I'll be in Paris on the 23rd of April. Not running. More likely, eating my way through a mountain of croissants.

Even though I can't play, I'm definitely going to keep an eye on the game since I'm excited to see what happens with it. I wonder how many people will play and whether you'll be able to see other people playing out on the street. I wonder whether they'll have people stationed around the game zones as random characters or helpers or authority figures. I'm envisioning live-action video game on the streets of London, but I'm also wondering if it'll be likely that you even run into any other players during the course of the evening.

But beyond the game itself, the main topic of conversation on everyone's lips was: How do we cheat? I chatted with some serious gamers from Capcom and Zoe Mode and all sorts of questions came up. What's stopping you from driving/hopping the bus/skateboarding/biking/horseback riding/unicycling while juggling flaming chainsaws instead of running? Or dispersing all your mates via text message to be at specific phone boxes throughout the evening? It's interesting to poke holes at it from a game design perspective and brainstorm ways to cheat your ass off as well as ways to prevent people from doing so. The organisers claim to have cheating covered, but I'm sure a lot of curious folks will do their best to beat them at their own game. So I'll be interested to see what happens...

Here's a brief video (of a video) from the launch event:

If you feel like taking part in a city-wide 24 hour street game, check out their Facebook page and website for more information. Time to lace up those trainers...

F Off Friday - 9 April

The sun is shining and it's a beautiful day here in London, so we're sorry if you are stuck indoors on your computer. To help you pass the rest of the day, here's a link dump with some great articles and videos!

Shameless Self Promotion Department:
The Go Game does Splinter Cell [xbox pulse]
Read a recap and see the photos from our Big Kid Easter Egg Hunt [Go Game Blog]

Flash Game of the Week: ...but there were cannons - Developed by Armor Games, it's fairly simple. We're going to use the 'but there were cannons!' excuse for most things from now on.

What We're Reading:
The City as a Platform [shareable]
Is WOW too big to fail? [gamasutra]
Harness the Power of Happiness [Times]
Get offline to be productive [digitalself]
Dark Side of the Moon....and video games? OK [Wired]

What We're Watching:
How Video Games Build Leaders [Washington Post]
Video games take over New York [Vulture Blog]
Amazing business card throwing - yeah we know it's an ad, but still! [Youtube]

Other Cool Stuff:
Amazing urban camouflage [Web Urbanist]
East London van graffiti [Hookedblog]
If Calvin took ritalin [Laughing Squid]
Circuit board shoes [boingboing]
Wu-Tang pizza [slice]

The Big Kid London Easter Hunt is EGGstra EGGcellent!

Sorry, we can't stop ourselves with the Easter puns. We know everyBUNNY is HOPing we'll stop, but we're just so EGGcited about how EGGstraordinarily fun the Big Kid London Easter Hunt was on Saturday! We're pretty EGGstatic about it.

F Off Friday - 2 April

Bank Holiday? Schmank Holiday. We've been working hard to procrastinate and bring these links to you. On with the show!

Shameless Self Promotion:

The Go Game Big Kid London Easter Hunt is sold out. Woohoo! See you tomorrow.

We're finalists in the Go London Social Innovation Competition [Go London]

The Go Game Spotify playlist for this week [Spotify]

Flash Game of the Week: Mushroom Madness 2. Hooray for hitting cute woodland creatures with a mallet. What could be better?