The Go Game UK Blog

Friday Links - 2 July

2010-07-02T07:42:00.000+01:00

TraIn the USA it's a bank holiday weekend. We're sure they're getting started early on their day off so you might as well join them. Here are some time-wasters to help you on your way.

Flash Game of the Week: Red Remover - Use your physics skills and game play knowhow to get past our best...level 18.

What We're Reading:
Travelers prefer to go south.
Starbucks is as good a way as any to get a sense of the economy [Wall Street Journal]
$10,000 in a treasure chest in [NYC this week [Refinery 29]
This Wimbledon live blogger got a bit bored...then the zombies came out [Guardian]
Original PacMan sketches [Refinery28[
Carrots of every color [boing boing]
The note from our bosses that noe of us want to receive [Mystery Blog]
More reading on AR and AR games [boing boing]

What We're Watching:
Violinist plays Mario in real time [boing boing]
American oil spill hits underwater cartoon characters [buzzfeed]

Other Cool Stuff:
Looooooong Wimbledon match [Cartoonish Ash]
Super creepy toys scanned through x-rays [Flickr]
Toothpick model of San Francisco [apartment therapy]

Friday Links - 25 June

2010-06-25T06:34:00.000+01:00

For those about to rock, we salute you. For those about to work, well enjoy these links to help you waste a bit of time on your Friday. Let's get to it!

Flash Game of the Week: Dolphin Olympics 2 - This week I am on holiday in the US. I went and saw a dolphin show at the aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland. Whilst the dolphins were doing flips and tricks the only thing I could think of was getting back home and putting together some sick twist combinations in this brilliant flash game. See if you can beat my high score of 3.5 million.

What We've Been Reading:
Epic Wimbledon match live blog devolves into zombie talk [Guardian]
Seven Marios made from household items [Joystick Division]
How social networking affects the brain [Fast Company]
5 Best Japanese kids toys [Wired UK]
4 strengths of a leader [Workplace Psychology]
Design a playground like a video game? Why not? [Telegraph]
Play IBM's new super computer Watson in a trivia quiz game [New York Times]
Game industry tax credits go bye bye [Wired UK]
Scavenging 24 classic video games for $24 in Tokyo [Game Life]

What We've Been Watching:
Super Mario Bros beatbox [Daily Expresso]
Gaming and the future of enegery [IEEE]
Vuvezela Doom II mod [Wired Fans]

Friday Links - 11 June

2010-06-11T12:24:00.000+01:00

It's World Cup Friday, so prepare for a weekend of sitting in front of a TV by ... sitting in front of the computer and catching up on what's good on the internet. Let's do this:

Flash Game of the Week: Not a Flash Game - Really it speaks for itself. Play at work without needing to shield your screen. See if you can make it to Section 3.1.2(c).

What We're Reading:
A critical analysis of contemporary couch fort architecture [Build Blog]
ARG designers should ... play ARGs. A revolutionary idea. [ARGNet]
Improv Everywhere makes some sidewalk modifications in New York City [Improv Everywhere]
Jim makes pancakes for his daughter. Our faves are the Tetris ones [Jim's Pancakes]
A blog of human misconceptions [You Are Not So Smart]
Coffee doesn't actually help alertness...or something. I didn't understand because I haven't had my coffee [Telegraph]

What We're Watching:
Time lapse Mario [NY Mag]
The five dysfunctions of a team [Workplace Psychology]
BP reacts to a coffee spill [Buzzfeed]

Other Cool Stuff:
Excellent ideas for modern gaming tables [Toxel]
Fingerstache temporary tattoos, future Go Game prize? I think so. [Gama-Go]
A city built from Rolodex cards...a house of cards you might say (but you probably shouldn't say that) [Jean Shin]
Hello Kitty Star Wars characters [Gizmodiva]
Icons writ large for your writing pleasure [Brigada Creativa]
365 shots of Stormtrooper action figures in action [Flickr]

Friday Links - 4 June

2010-06-04T10:12:00.003+01:00

It's a new month, but that doesn't mean we're changing anything on the blog. The Go Game UK is still serving up tasty links for your time-wasting pleasure.

Flash Game of the Week: I Love Traffic - Who hasn't sat at a traffic light and thought 'I wonder what moron programmed this thing? I could do a much better job.' Well now's your chance...although I found that causing accidents in this game was far more satisfying.

What We're Reading:
Will augmented reality change the way we watch football? [Telegraph]
Our good friend Sarbjit on the artistry of video games [TIMJ]
Remember the movie Space Jam? It might have been based on an ancient Mayan story [Chicagoist]
Can video games inspire altruism? This study tests with Lemmings (the game, not the animal) [Greater Good]
Interesting scholarly 2004 piece on video game-based learning [EDUCAUSE Review]
Family in Shropshire discovers a 300 year old church under their house [newslite.tv]
Some heavy reading: NESTA's latest report on arts and cultural innovation [NESTA]
Piece on Loopt's new "game" [NY Times] but Jane McGonigal disagrees [1,2,3,4,5,6]
Be a winning employer during the World Cup [Smarta]
US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor sayz video games can be teaching tools [Wired]
A scavenger hunt of famous television landmarks in New York City [Gawker]

What We're Watching:
Workplace birthday celebration for a lucky Danish bus driver [TNW]
What happens when you upload and download the same Youtube vid 1000 times? [Mashable]
Behind the scenes at Duck Hunt HQ [Joystiq]
The Apollo 11 launch in suuuuuuper slow-motion [PetaPixel]
A cool concept train that saves fuel and time...because it never stops [scitechie]
Dueling screeching iPhone apps (warning, autoplay) [Popgog]
Putting a swing on the Paris Metro [BoingBoing], like the swing at a London bus stop

Other Cool Stuff:
50 "Worst" inventions list is pretty subjective. Is Foursquare really worse than Nazism? [Time]
Salvador Dali eating a bowl of surreal [Howard Besser's T-Shirt Database]
Mario meets the oil spill [GamOvr]
A DIY Lego Mario [Luxology Forum]

Friday Links - 28 May

2010-05-28T11:09:00.002+01:00

Has it been another 7 days already? No need to respond to that in the comments, we already know the answer (it's "yes" btw). So stretch out those pointer fingers and get ready for some link clickin'.

Flash Game of the Week: Enough Plumbers - well why the hell not? It's multiplying Marios. Really, this is a good old fashioned waste of time. It's not like you have work to do today, it's almost Saturday!

What We're Reading:
Michaelangelo's secret message in the Sistine Chapel [Scientific American]
Rock on! Head and neck injuries in headbangers [British Medical Journal]
If you're the one person who didn't hear, Google did Pacman [Google]
Maps, Pics and Geolocation: What parts of London get photographed the most? [Londonist]
Mark Twain's autobiography to be published 100 years after his death [Independent]
Making cool, design-y things out of Legos [poppytalk]
Turn any song into a swing song [Music Machinery]
Russian Lord of the Rings illustrations [English Russia]
A History of Elephants in London [Londonist]
Holy Diabetes, Batman! Custom Coke machine lets you create your own flavours! [Asylum.com]
Online games, offline selves - Aleks Krotoski's thesis is now online [alekskrotoski]
15 most annoying levels in video games (I HATE #2, raaaage) [The Dorklyst]
Graphic history of social games [Kotaku]
A pattern of sibling risk-taking in Major League Baseball [NY Times]
NetHack, the greatest game you will ever play? [NetHack]

What We're Watching:
Walking on Water [Squat Rx]
An 8-bit desk [Alex Varanese]
Worst flash mob ever? Watching this makes me feel bad [Youtube]
Yikes, a wobbly Russian bridge [Neatorama]
Big Boi's crazy new music video [Videogum]

Other Cool Stuff:
Best news lede. Ever. [Filmdrunk]
Zombie meat beef jerky....braaaaaaaaaaains. [boing boing]
America! Man pleads guilty...to vomiting on girl at a baseball game [ESPN]
Finally, England: we're coming for you on 12 June [The Spoiler]

Late Night Go Game at Brixton Village

2010-05-24T18:12:00.002+01:00

Last Thursday, Mei and I trekked down to Brixton Village for a game at their Thursday late night series. You've probably wandered through Granville Arcade (as the covered market at Brixton is also known) without even knowing it. The market area has been around since the 1930s, but the number of shops had dwindled during the past decade.

These days, thanks in part to the Space Makers Agency, the place is making a serious comeback with delightful independent restaurants and shops popping up alongside the butchers, mobile phone stalls and Jamaican groceries. Most of the restaurants in Brixton village stay open until 10 pm on Thursdays and we were able to include many of them in our game.

For the game, teams could "pop-in" and play whilst they explored all the market had to offer. And oh yes, there were some terrific prizes from the local shops. In addition to the Go Game, there was a diverse musical lineup that played, and rapped all through the evening. Here are some of our favourite photos from the event...

Teams played around with perspective:

Made beautiful music:

Our top team even got into some Urban Twister:

The generous shop keepers in Brixton Village provided us with phenomenal prizes:

- Japanese tea party for 4 with Imayo, 82 Brixton Village
- Coffee and Cakes for 2 at Fed Coffee, 46 Brixton Village
- Meal for 2 at Etta's Seafood Restaurant, 85 Brixton Village
- A Pizza at Agile Rabbit, 24 Brixton Village
- Meal for 2 at Cornercopia, 65 Brixton Village
- Meal for 2 at Bellantonio, 81 Brixton Village
- £10 Gift Voucher for Leftovers, 71 Brixton Village
- Sustainability Goodie Bag from Community Shop, 6 Brixton Village

Come out and support local businesses...we'll be back to Brixton Village for another late night Thursday session. Hope to see you there!

Friday Links - 21 May

2010-05-21T03:11:00.003+01:00

We recovered from our game last night in Brixton in plenty of time to bring you another dose of your favourite medicine: Friday's Link Dump! You know our slogan around here: Helping you waste time on your Friday's since...2010!

Shameless Self-Promotion Department:
Come play Go Games this weekend in Brighton! Get a free pass simply by saying hello on Facebook [Battle of Brighton]
Read about our adventures last week at City Hall for the Go London Social Innovation Competition finals [Blog]

Flash Game of the Week: Mole vs. Lava - for those of you following along at home, know that I started writing this blog post more than an hour ago, but then I had to find the link to Mole vs. Lava on Played Online and ... well, that's how time gets wasted. Free life lesson: NEVER click on anything that is listed on Digg as "addictive."

What We're Reading:
With shades of Jessie Schell's great talk earlier this year, article on world-changing potential of games [Forbes]
Get over your fear of cockroaches with augmented reality [Neo-Academic]
To make up for that gross AR story, here's a tasty one: augmented reality cookies [Mike Clare]
Commuters choosing gaming over reading? [Guardian]
Ninjas save mugging victim (seriously) [BBC]
Boris sayz: London-wide free wifi by 2012 [Londonist]
A list of very, very random words. Learn them you gambrinous gongoozler! [tinyonline]
Nerd Cakes! [The Weekly Crisis]
Roller Coaster Tycoon movie off the tracks...and into theatres near you! [Wired]

What We're Watching:
Ghostbusters back in the NYC Public Library [Youtube]
Guy does Ian McKellen...doing the Fresh Prince of Bel Air [Vulture Blog]
Phenomenally beautiful coffee tour of London [Vimeo]
Two people see Top Gear in action...whilst driving on the highway. Cue shrieking [Youtube]
Cauuught in a cat romance [Mission Mission]
Most overhyped story this week: robot performs marriage ceremony. Oh noes! [boingboing]

Other Cool Stuff:
London places with twitter accounts [Londonist]
Mommy, where do cursors come from? [SwissMiss]
Explore the East London Line for f-r-e-e (that spells free!) this weekend [Londonist]
Keyboard bench! [Neatorama]
Bitmap video game fonts [Miffies]
New London bus design revealed [Londonist, again]
Space Invaders....toaster? [boingboing]

Go London Social Innovation Competition

2010-05-18T16:07:00.003+01:00

We headed to City Hall on Friday to participate in the Go London Social Innovation competition held by NHS and Future Gov. As one of five finalists in the contest we spent the day working with a team of experts in various fields to refine our idea.

The view from the top of City Hall is quite nice and the 9th floor conference room was gorgeous. It's great to see how Boris lives (at one point during the morning there were unsubstantiated rumours that he was making a phone call on the terrace).

Mei Searches for Boris

Amidst all the splendour we had an idea: run a series of Go Games for the public to help encourage physical activity and promote the NHS goals of 30 minutes of activity 5 days a week. With our panel of experts in tech, media, health and interactivity we added on the idea of creating open-ended games that were not location specific so that people could log in to play any time.

I ended up confusing people with my term of 'non location-specific location-based challenges', but the idea was to incorporate the everyday tasks (say, walking to the post office) and educate participants(check out this new leisure centre) whilst they played the game. The missions would be delivered on a mobile phone, the computer or from packs that could be picked up in public places like libraries.

That may sound confusing, but we wrote all of our ideas down...as Mei demonstrates:

Fun tip: demonstrate the legitimacy of ideas with Post It Notes

In the end we had 7 minutes to pitch our idea to a swelling room that included 9 judges. These guys evaluated us dragons-style and asked the tough questions. Luckily, thanks to our fantastic team, we were prepared for everything they threw at us.

Sadly, we didn't win, but there was free booze. Plus the idea the judges selected is phenomenal. In fact, they decided to combine two of the ideas to form a hybrid even more fierce than a liger.

The winning idea is the combined brainchild of Danielle Ramsey's 10,000 steps plan and Ingrid Bergson's Pop-Up Fitness applet. The plan is to encourage teams of people to walk 10,000 steps in the workplace. Participants will be reminded to exercise via a pop-up on their computers that will suggest activities and provide feedback. Danielle and Ingrid will receive support from NHS, M&C Saatchi and a host of other business leaders.

Here we are saying goodbye to our day of big timing at City Hall. Good luck to the everyone who participated!

UPDATE: The official Go London blog has been updated with more info about the day...check it out!

Drop-In Go Game at Brixton Village on Thursday!

2010-05-17T15:43:00.011+01:00

We at The Go Game are all about cool urban spaces, fun and playful environments, partnerships with interesting people and organisations, and of course, tasty snacks. With a few of our favourite things in mind (no bright copper kettles or warm woollen mittens unfortunately), we're partnering with Space Makers Agency to put on a Go Game as part of their project at the indoor market at Brixton Village.

This indoor market, also known as the Granville Arcade, is chock full of cool shops and restaurants (selling delicious edibles from cupcakes to coffee to pizza to Filipino fried potato-covered chicken drumsticks...yum!) and art collectives and more. We'll be running a game this Thursday evening (20 May), from about 7pm-10pm. We'll be trying out a new drop-in style of gameplay, where you don't have to be around for an entire 3 hour game but can just come by our booth in the centre of the market and pick up missions and clues. That way you can come have a wander and meet some fun people, but if you want to stop for a snack we totally understand.

You'll be able to take the usual Go Game creative photos and videos, some of which we'll screen in one of the stalls and the rest of which we'll upload to our website. We'll be working with some talented shop owners and students and artists to plan the game, so come check it out!

Here's the info from the Facebook event:

'On Thursday 20 May, from 7 – 10pm, Brixton Village (aka Granville Arcade) will be showcasing some of London’s best interactive escapades and technology-fuelled fun as The Go Game hits the covered market!

As part of the new Late Night Thursday Market programme, Space Makers agency has invited The Go Game to produce one of their creative and innovative adventure games in the Night Market. Small teams will read ‘missions’ on a mobile phone, sending them to discover hidden secrets, seek out new shops, and create their own photos and videos in response to the quirks of this uniquely playful and DIY environment.

Players might encounter a local artist with a secret password, a vintage store proprietor with an intriguing secret, or a Jamaican chef with a delicious surprise! The creatively challenging location-based game all ends with a viewing of the photos and videos taken throughout the evening, where players will get to vote on the most brilliant submissions in a special one-night pop-up presentation room. You’ll make new friends, you’ll laugh, you will have the opportunity to eat at one of ten restaurants serving food from all around the world (bring your own alcohol), you’ll get a firsthand look at the magic and mystery of Brixton Village, and you’ll have a massive amount of fun. '

Come play with us and the rest of the cool folks of Brixton Village. Hope to see you there!

Friday Links - 14 May

2010-05-14T08:04:00.002+01:00

We're off today for the finals of the Go London competition, being held at City Hall by the NHS. Woohoo! To keep you occupied in our absence, we suggest you read through these links! Enjoy...

Shameless Self Promotion Department:
There's still lots of Go Game to play at Brighton Fringe [Battle of Brighton]

Flash Game of the Week:
Bloons Tower Defense 4 - Aaaah, please someone make me stop playing this game. I'm seeing monkeys throwing darts in my sleep. N.B. that last sentence will make sense if you play the game.

What We're Reading:
Ruh roh, Obama concerend about what gaming means for education [Edge]
Wired visits GameCamp '10 [Wired UK]
The ten maps that changed the world [Daily Mail]
Powerful people are better liars [Harvard Business Review]
Nerd alert! The ten largest databases in the world [Focus]
Fascinating US study about energy consumption and political party affiliation [New Scientist]
Creating a success culture [MSN]
The woman behind Sugru, the new crazy-strong adhesive [Wired UK]
How cul-de-sacs are killing your community [Infrastructurist]
Even more scholarship and WoW [ars technica]
Channel 4's latest educational in-browser game [Guardian]

What We're Watching:
Mini cannon! Aren't you the cutest/deadliest thing? [Youtube]
More volcano! Eyjafjallajökull timelapse [Buzzfeed]
Worst wedding DJ ever [Youtube]
Kittens on a slide. Why not? [Youtube]

Other Stuff:
Sleep inside of a shark! [Foolish Gadgets]
Mario and Peach, renaissance style [boingboing]
Anti-climbing paint at Oxford Castle [boingboing]
Mario art will never cease to entertain [galleries one nine eight eight]

Friday Links - 7 May

2010-05-07T10:33:00.002+01:00

I was off last week for a nice holiday in the country, so I hope you didn't lose too much sleep when the links didn't appear last Friday. Here's a list of what we've been checking out on the interwebs this past week:

Shameless Self-Promotion Department:
If you're in Brighton for Fringe, come play our first game this Sunday [Battle of Brighton]

Flash Game of the Week: Super Mario Crossover - Forget playing as Mario, can you beat SMB as Link or Bill from Gryzor/Contra?

What We're Reading:
Amazing story of one dying boy's dream come true: a city-wide superhero RPG [Seattle Times]
Brilliant and detailed, hand-drawn map of London [British Library]
What if Super Mario Bros was made today? [nerdbastards.com]
A Wiki Hunt game for the iPhone: nice execution of an old idea [Touch Arcade]
Video game badges for the Boy Scouts [GameLife]
We have met the enemy, and he is PowerPoint [New York Times]
There are solutions to even the hardest problems [imgfave]
City made from staples [Peter Root]
Legendary San Francisco street turned into giant Candyland board [Laughing Squid]
Parents use smartphones to entertain kids (they don't know how good they have it!) [CNN]

What We're Watching:
Great game from Converse using Google Ad Words [Converse Domaination]
TED Talk: Build a Tower by Tom Wujec [TED]
Man beats Bejeweled 2...after playing for 3 years [Joystiq]

Other Stuff:
Pencil vs. Camera - brilliant photos of modified cityscapes [Ben Heine's Flickr]
Dante's Internet Inferno [fukung.net]
Americans don't appreciate Banksy [Laughing Squid]
Einstein chalkboard belt [boingboing]
Zombie table! [Dread Central]
More video game propaganda posters, this time: Space Invaders [Steve Thomas Art]
Swimming pool illusion [WeLoveViral]
The illustrated elements of video games [boingboing]
The happiest elephant [Design Crush]
Experimental gummy bear surgeries [Like Cool]
This is...Spinal Tape [Copernicus Toys]
A sweatshirt every child should have [imgur]
(for my mother) Cutting libraries in a recession... [boingboing]

How are you spending your time online?

F Off Friday - 23 April

2010-04-23T07:34:00.005+01:00

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.

What We're Reading:
On the Roger Ebert 'Video Games can never be art' piece: [original] [Guardian] [rebuttal 1] [rebuttal 2]
Animated history of European mapmaking [BBC]
Hacking pigeons [we make money not art]
Hormones make men treat games like social competitions [ars technica]
Victorian infographics [BibliOdyssey]
Amazing story of a super-endurance athlete [New York Times]
Legal spying via mobile phone [cnet]
40 of the best guerilla and ambient advert campaigns [designtutorials4u]
Sure it's old, but with US and UK elections coming up, the Redistricting Game is still fun [Annenberg]
Sid Meier and the 48 hour game [rock, paper, shotgun]
New KFC sandwich the unhealthiest ever? [FiveThiryEight]
Sims founder Will Wright to do a series of shows on the Science Channel [Wired]
Get Spiderman to clean your windows [boingboing]
New game Sleep is Death where the players are story tellers [Wired]
A wiki-based game? [Farbs]
#898: Playing old school video games [1000 Awesome Things]
Sims 3 and Renault announce product-placement deal [Guardian]

What We're Watching:
Grand Theft Auto: Google Earth [todaysbigthing]
Who doesn't love a good Rube Goldberg? [Youtube]
Optimus Prime...in balloons [Youtube]
Humans vs. robots in American football [Youtube]
A homemade robot from television parts in Togo [afrigadget]
Barbershop quartet sings Ewok victory song [Youtube]
The only 4 chords needed for every pop song [Huffington Post]
Every alien invasion of London [Londonist]

Other Cool Stuff:
Hyperbole and a Half is always brilliant, but the 'Alot' post is internet supergenius [Hyperbole and a Half]
Remote control camera vehicle in the African bush takes great photos [the beetlecam project]
WANT: Oyster card wallet [david bruno & tom seymour]
Library phonebox [Offbeat Earth]
Virtual tour of early 1900s Algiers via postcards [Getty Research]
Minor league baseball promotions [ESPN]
Brilliantly designed website, fun to play with [magnetic north]
If I get an iPad, I want this on the back [boingboing]
N64 actually a koala bear [tiny cartridge]
Biscuit pocket [cartolleria]
Interlocking lego rings [boingboing]
Croatian girl wakes up from a coma speaking fluent...German [NY Daily News]

Good grief that was a lot of links. Congratulations if you made it this far in the post (hi mom!)...your password is 'octopus'.

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

2010-04-21T17:39:00.006+01:00

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

2010-04-16T14:15:00.003+01:00

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.

What We're Reading:
Rats and the Prisoner's Dilemma [The Scientist]
Evil Clown!!! [Metro]
Flags + Food = Go Game heaven [Flavor Wire]
How many words did Shakespeare know? [Maths!]
WANT: Vintage superhero posters [Michael Myers]
For Americans, a tax form for the 'marginally employed' [NY Times]
Tom the Dancing Bug comic strip...especially the astronaut [Go Comics]
Fake Goods promote unethical behaviour [Discover]
Arcade game propaganda posters, shirts [stevethomas]

What We're Watching:
32-Bit Problems [boingboing]
So. Many. Puppies! [GawkerTV]
A 6-million person Simcity city? Why not? [Youtube]
Tour the MoMA in 2 Minutes [Youtube]

Other Cool Stuff:
Brilliant time-wasting links here [Asylum]
Seat Selection (for all us hardened travelers out there) [xkcd]
Great photograph from Westminster Bridge [bitte ein kuss]
35 creative pillows [home tone]
It's all about perspective at the leaning tower [imgur]

Happy Anniversary To Us and Battle Brighton!

2010-04-15T14:34:00.008+01:00

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

2010-04-14T13:10:00.014+01:00

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.

2010-04-14T10:40:00.003+01:00

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

2010-04-13T09:33:00.005+01:00

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

2010-04-09T14:08:00.001+01:00

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!

2010-04-05T14:06:00.007+01:00

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.

Thanks to all the amazing folks who came down to the South Bank to chase down the Easter Bunny, eat hot cross buns off a fishing pole, show Jesus a magic trick, do an egg-and-spoon race with a very large chicken, reenact Noah's Ark through interpretive dance and so much more. We raised a ton of money for MIND, a very worthy mental health charity, and had ridiculous amounts of fun along the way.

We've picked some of our favourite photos from the game to showcase the creative brilliance of our many players. Almost 200 people showed up to partake in the holiday adventures, decked out in all types of Easter fancy dress. Here's the Very Happy Eggs in some Very Awesome Bunny Masks.

There were all kinds of HARE-brained antics with the Easter Bunny. She got a piggy-back ride from team Eggnostics...

...but got attacked by the Free Rangers...
...and got nibbled on by team Joy Division!

But she got her revenge by eating the entire team of Highland Lovers Make Better Snorers!
Los Sombreros prayed to Jesus, who was having a bit of trouble working his miracles...

...but his day vastly improved when he showed some leg to the aptly named Playboys and Bunnygirls.
The Bunnygirls also got a piece of the Chicken...

...who also butted up against the Nameless Bunnies.

We loved the fabulously facial-haired 6 Chocolateers posing for a photo with the Cardinal, who was bestowing all kinds of blessings during this holiday adventure.A bunch of you went fishing for hot cross buns, like this brave soul from Norfolk in Chance (one of our favourite team names!)

And a group meal for team ROAR!

Here's team Tourch with the salty sea dog fisherman who was testing out his new religious fish bait and leading the hot cross buns game.

We don't know exactly what Fans of Mankini Man (another awesome team name) were getting up to in this picture, but we like it. Fire! Synchronized moves! Balls flying at your face! Brilliant.

We enjoyed this fab photo from the Nameless Bunnies who went sailing away...

and we were quite impressed with 'Cassie Doing The Knowledge' from the Shortbus Shooters...
...but blown away by the dedication of Highland Lovers Make Better Snorers. We love you too. We're going to get your team name tattooed on our foreheads...we promise.

Congrats to the winners, the Wanstead Sox!

And the runners-up, the Mini Eggs!

Lastly, a special shout-out to team Gadzooks! They may not have completed the most missions, but certainly brought some well-lubricated happiness to the Big Kid London Easter Hunt.

An EGGSTRAORDINARY THANK YOU to everyone who came out and played the Big Kid Easter Hunt! Thanks also to all our performers and the Mad Hatter on Stamford Street for hosting our adventure. Bearded Kitten and The Go Game will be back with an even bigger and better game this summer, so sign up for our newsletter to get all the info and stay tuned for all the fun to come.

How excited are we to do this all over again? THIS EXCITED.

We'll see you then!

F Off Friday - 2 April

2010-04-02T18:00:00.002+01:00

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?

What We're Reading:
London's answer to the Eiffel Tower [Guardian]
Free tacos for the cost of a tattoo [Wall Street Journal]
iPad games go live, including Mirror's Edge, which The Go Game did a live, pre-release version of in August 2008 [Wired]
Gaming pioneer inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame [Wired]
Gadget-themed baked goods...sounds suspiciously like Mei's Wired article [Geeksugar]
Scenes with peeps - Peep Show IV [Washington Post]
Xbox game room pricing is complicated and potentially really stupid [Psychology of Video Games]
Podcast on Gaming with Jesse Schell [Spark 108]
5 gifts of being highly sensitive [Psych Central]

What We're Watching:
The Muppets - Stand by Me [Youtube]
Single Ladies devastation [Youtube]
'Toxic' performed for BBC's Radio 5...by a brass band [Daily Wh.at]
gifs of popular rappers [http://gifsofpopularrappers.tumblr.com/]

Other Cool Stuff:
11 funny graphs about Twitter [11 Points]
Google mail envelopes [Yanko Design]
How ideas get destroyed [Laura Scott]
The $1,625 designer T-shirt [NY Daily News]
Ping pong table door [Fubiz]

F Off Friday - 26 March

2010-03-26T15:05:00.001Z

Ooops. Almost forgot it was Friday. No, seriously. How did this happen? Well who knows, but it's time for another link dump brought to you by your friends at The Go Game.

Shameless Self-Promotion Department: The Big Kid London Easter Egg Hunt - Lots of people signed up already...come out and play with us on April 3rd! 3 hours, £3, all for charity! More details here.

Flash Game of the Week: Infectionator World Domination - The sequel to the wildly popular Infectionator game, but this time you're competing to take over various cities with zombies instead of just racing the clock. Our high score this week: 1.9 million. In other news, we have too much time on our hands.

What We're Reading:
Five alternate uses for Parrot's AR.Drone copter [Wired by our guy Micky!]
The Top 100 Indie Games [Game Tunnel]
Worth a read: The great posts at the Anderson Sabourin Leadership Blog [Anderson Sabourin]
Explore Disneyland with a free iPhone app treasure hunt [LAist]
Game Show + Millgram Experiments = Yikes [BBC]
How to make hot water freeze faster than cold water [Wired]
How TSA will inspect your monkey - minds out of the gutter people [boingboing]

What We're Watching:
The making of The Go Game's quiz for the BBC's Digital Planet at SXSW [Digital Planet]
The Estelle Getty Workout [Youtube]
Documentary Heaven! [Food for your brain]
RPG heroes are jerks [College Humor]
Music from a post office in Ghana [boingboing]

Other Cool Stuff:
Tour the Sistine Chapel without ~~fear of molestation~~ having to leave your couch [Vatican]
Cool concept: Youdunit, a game that travels backwards in time [boingboing]
The London Sperm Bank logo [boingboing]

F Off Friday - 19 March

2010-03-19T15:42:00.001Z

Yes, we've been faffing about today so there's a late Friday post. We know you've been waiting anxiously for it...F Off Friday. Let's do it!

Flash Game of the Week Loondon - The game has beautiful artwork and has a decent story. It would work a lot better in the hands of the guys from EchoBazaar, but overall it's worth a play.

From the Shameless Self Promotion Department:
The Go Game powers the BBC's Digital Planet panel at SXSW [Digital Planet]
Play The Go Game's Easter Egg Hunt for Big Kids! [Community Games]
Mei's post on her favourite radio adverts from the Radio Advertisers Hall of Fame [GG Blog]

What We're Reading:
A new train service from Kings Cross to Beijing is in the works. [Edmonton Journal]
Ohhhh, I get it. Amazing new game: Progress Wars [Progress Wars]
Sid Meier says that game play is all in your head [Wired]
New adventures in hiring [Positive Sharing]
reSTART the internet addition recovery programme...they're serious [reSTART]
What hardcore gamers need to know about social games [Ralph Koster]
Prof abandons grades for experience points [The Escapist]

Other Cool Stuff:
The eternal struggle of the video gamer [Kotaku]
The Art & Science of Seductive Interactions [Stephen P. Anderson]
Jane McGonigal's talk from TED posted online [TED]
Q&A with Loopt founder Sam Altman [Crunch Gear]

Our Picks for the Most Brilliant and Bizarre Radio Adverts

2010-03-18T08:41:00.010Z

It's time for a celebration! Why? Because it's the day after St. Patrick's Day and we are gloriously and joyfully un-hungover. The world is bright and shiny and new and full of happy furry puppies and immensely clever radio ads.

It may be a bit of a non-sequitur, but we wanted to share our best of the best radio adverts from the research we did for a training game in Newcastle last month (photos from our lovely little jaunt here). Listening to oodles of ads while designing the game got us realising how these brilliant clips can make you smile, make you laugh, make you curl your lip in distaste, make you want to stand up and cheer, and make you turn to your colleague and go OMG!!!! WTF!?!?!!!!?

They may even make you buckle your seatbelt. Hilarious, bizarre, uncomfortable, intelligent, amusing and revolting, all in these next few short clips. We highly recommend you have a listen.

To mark yesterday's day of Irish celebration, we'll kick things off with the best beer advert from, of course, Guinness.
Confession

Next up is a gem from the horrifying world of public service announcements. Chris got a morbid amount of enjoyment out of the sound effects involving small children in this one.
Death Calling

Another masterpiece from the brains behind public awareness campaigns. This is the creepiest bedtime story of all time. Screw the Big Bad Wolf and the monster under the bed, it's this radio ad that will have you losing sleep over driver side mirrors and soft-boiled eggs.
Peter Pan

Most terrifying/revolting horoscope I've ever heard. Let's just say it involves things that are unpleasant and burning. And Uranus.
Capricorn

Yes. I find this one quite amusing.
Women Drivers

And for my ultimate all-time complete and utter favourite - the incredible Diet Irn-Bru ad. Makes me want to move into a Scottish chip shop and sleep under the deep fat fryer.
Diet Irn-Bru

The Big Kid London Easter Hunt

2010-03-17T12:57:00.003Z

How come the little ones get to have all the fun every Easter? We want chocolate bunnies and egg hunts too!

So we're teaming up with the fabulously inventive felines over at Bearded Kitten to produce a Go Game full of funny bunnies, outlandish eggs, hilarious social games, and highly irreverent Jesus jokes. Come join us at 2pm at the Mad Hatter in SE1 for some serious springtime shenanigans.

£3, with proceeds going to charity! Sign up and get all the details here.

F Off Friday - 12 March

2010-03-12T12:46:00.001Z

Yeeehaw. It's Friday! Did you have a good week? We sure did, although the hangover from Chuck Norris' 70th birthday celebration hasn't worn off. Did you know that Chuck Norris can win a game of Connect Four in just three moves? True story.

Let's do this.

Flash Game of the Week: Home Sheep Home - We love physics-based flash games, but there are so many out there that are done poorly. Home Sheep Home combines great physics, delightful art and sheep with names. Can't wait until there are more levels added.

What We're Reading:
White House asks game developers what they can do for their country [Wired]
Headed to SXSW? Check out this delicious post on what to eat. Yummmm. [Boots in the Oven]
Remember the OK Go video from last week? Meet the makers. [Make: Online]
Are you a freelancer? The Pretend Office is for you. [Pretend Office]
5 creepy ways video games get you addicted. [Cracked]
7 ways games transform you into a superior human being [GamesRadar]
In case you didn't see the eleventy billion articles on it this week: Google Maps added bike directions [PC World]

What We're Watching:
The lament of video game bosses [CollegeHumor]
Girl identifies Star Wars legos with her mouth [boingboing]
Robots dance to The Nutcracker (cue Go Game sound effect shortcut 'X') [boingboing]
Girls Gone Wild...at the opening of a new H&M in France [BuzzFeed]
Never forget the Ad-Rock theorem: Beastie Boys + Battlestar Galactica = WIN [Youtube]
Movies we're excited to see: Tron [Youtube] and Robin Hood [Youtube]
Are you a member of the Handsome Men's Club? [Youtube]
Hey Jude sing-along in the NYC Subway [BuzzFeed]
Kids at PS 22 sing 'Lisztomania' [Youtube]

Other Stuff:
Google Maps should render every place in 8 bit. This is amazing. [8 Bit NYC]
Zamboni sinks in a lake at Keystone Resort. We've run games there! New mission for 2010. [Total Pro Sports]
Tube map of the body [Underskin]
Mario and Luigi in Manchester [Neatorama]
More physics-based flash games [Played Online]
Great parking sign [BuzzFeed]

Adventures on the Streets of Newcastle

2010-03-10T14:20:00.013Z

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

2010-03-05T10:32:00.003Z

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

2010-02-26T15:08:00.002Z

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.

What We're Reading:
Pet Rescuer Makes 120 mph Alligator [Wired]
Really bored at work? Build an mini weapon of mass destruction [boingboing]
Curious Displays LED project - [Cargo Collective]
Top 10 TED talks [GOOD.is]
Does Technology Really Benefit Our Human Rights? [Wired]
The UK Web Archive is live and the collection is amazing [British Library]

What We're Watching:
Jesse Schell's talk on the future of games, a must watch [G4TV]
Girl stuck in the Pittsburgh airport overnight entertains herself...and the rest of us [boingboing]
Stamping UV skulls on the Queen's face on the £20 note [Youtube]
McDonalds Fail [Fail Blog]
Revisiting an iconic Fed Ex ad, created by Finn's dad! [Youtube]

Other Stuff:
Guess how much we spent at Poundland, win a prize [Twitpic]
Flynn Lives...an ARG? [Flynn Lives]
Spitalfields Summer Music Festival is coming and we'll be there [Spitalfields Music]
Get your own QR code patch that will link directly to your website [boingboing]
WANT: ninja star coat hooks [Spinning Hat]
Jetpacks for sale [GOOD.is]

F Off Friday - 19 Feb

2010-02-19T11:26:00.007Z

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.

What We're Reading:
Using Improv to Teach Business Schools is No Joke [CNN.com]
Play with a football, light a lamp for 3 hours [changemakers]
We're not quite sure, but somebody's using the #gogame hashtag on Twitter [Twitter]
Interview with Jane McGonigal: Reality is Broken, Game Designers Must Fix It [Wired]
Designing a New Way to Interact With Your City [Good.is]
The Average Social Networking Gamer in the U.S. is...your mom [Switched]
The 2010 Independent Games Finalists [Independent Games Festival]

What We're Watching:
Disney's Robin Hood, over and over [Youtube]
From TED 2010: Augmented Reality Maps [TED]
Jumping off the roof...into a huge snowbank [break]
LARPing: Live Avatar Role Playing [Youtube]
Lightsaber flashmob in Bristol [Youtube]
Cute dog playing virtual football [Reactrix]

Other Stuff:
Nerd Merit Badges [nerdmeritbadges.com]
Amazing laptop cases [TwelveSouth]
At the Olympics, figure skating to Cypress Hill [Sports Illustrated]
Kinetic art: xyloexplosive device [boingboing]

F Off Friday - 12 Feb

2010-02-12T00:00:00.000Z

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.

What We're Reading:
Are Board Games a Threat to Video Games? [Joystick Division]
Aleks Krotoski's Challenges in Filming the Virtual Revolution [The Guardian]
How Social Gaming is Improving Education [Mashable]
Games, Storytelling, and Breaking the String [Electronic Book Review]
The Future of Gaming: The Hot Potato Experience [Technology Review]

What We're Watching:
Sandpit Tour 2009 [Hide&Seek]
Flip Book Animation - The History of Everything [Jamie Bell]
The Bollywood Game in Austin, TX USA [The Go Game]
Parisian Love Superbowl Commercial [Google]
Beaker's Ballad [The Muppets]
Water Ceiling Prank [Ray William Johnson]

Other Stuff:
The 10 Types of Crappy Interviewees [The Oatmeal]
Sport Pong [Neatorama]
Visualising 6 Years of Facebook [Mashable]
How To Levitate...on the Sidewalk [BoingBoing]
St. Pancras in Legos [Londonist]
ASCII Valentine's Day Present [bekathwia]
Strip Games [xkcd]
A Photo from Chris' parents' house in Silver Spring, MD in between this week's snowstorms. Total accumulation since Saturday: 43 inches [Twitpic]

Go Fishy - What I Learned From A Simple Flash Game

2010-02-09T15:37:00.003Z

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...
Fishy is a game with an incredibly simple premise: eat the fish that are smaller than you to get bigger. The physics are excellent, the soundtrack is relaxing and the colours are pleasing. Things I learned from Fishy:

'Don't Chase' - This was my mantra when playing Fishy. If you chased the smaller fish to the boundary you would often encounter a bigger fish which meant Game Over. For a while, this became my mantra in life, 'don't chase and let things come to you.' It was all very zen. I should probably follow that advice more often.
You'll never win just hanging out in one place - In Fishy you can't win if you spend your time as a bottom feeder. That's translates pretty directly to life in general. Again, note to self: don't be a bottom feeder.
Be patient, but take smart risks - You can't win Fishy without letting some of the fish go by and waiting for the easier ones to come along. Of course you should take a calculated risk once in a while if you want to win the game. Bam, pretty clear life lesson there too.
Simple is awesome - Fishy is an excellent example of KISS - keep it simple stupid. Easy colours, a short soundtrack and easy rules. When designing games or writing missions for The Go Game, it's always important to keep in mind simple principles...they're usually the most fun.

Wanna play Fishy?:

Even More Playfully Awesome

2009-11-16T17:11:00.000Z

Over two weeks after the fantastic Playful conference and we're finally just getting to writing up our thoughts. It's cause we've been too busy playing! NOT. We've been too busy working. But actually, the lovely thing about The Go Game is that a large percentage of the time work is play and play is work and everything is fun and awesome like PANDA BABIES AT THE PLAYGROUND (except when it's not).

But anyway. I'm getting off the topic of this post, which is supposed to be the Playful conference. Or more specifically, the insightful, hilarious, creative, laugh-out-loud funny, drop-your-jaw cool, rock-your-world exciting thoughts and ideas spouting from the mouths and bursting from the slides of this year's speakers. I could go on for hours about all the fantastic things I heard but to make my life easier and your life awesome, the lovely guys at Pixel Lab have already done the full-on recap on the Playful Blog. Here are their links:

What Happened, Part 1. My personal highlight - Roo Reynolds talk, especially the Minesweeper movie. If, like me, you spent an embarassingly excessive amount of time playing Minesweeper instead of doing your homework in high school, you will find this roll-on-the-floor hilarious.

What Happened, Part 2. Personal highlights were an interview with the creator of Alice & Kev, a touching, honest, and brave story of a homeless family in the Sims 3, A New Theory of Awesomeness and Miracles from James Bridle which Chris mentioned below, and a great talk from Katy Lindemann on Game changing & Change Through Play, who later told us she was at the Go Game panel at SXSW! I wish we had met then so we could have chatted about fun things like cute robots and making not-fun things fun. Cause I'm all about that. She showed these two videos, which I very much liked.

On making communication with the government fun and full of dirty words as well as real messages:

On making recycling fun!:

Okay, I realize this blog post is getting long. If you're still with me, we're on the last part:
What Happened, Part 3. Part 3 included one of the most enjoyable talks I've ever seen (if that makes any sense), a series of drawings displayed on an old school overhead projector by the illustrative genius known as Rexbox.

He drew sheep, game consoles, funny pictures of himself as Tina Turner, and cool stuff like this:

I also really loved Simon Oliver's points on the tightknit, supportive, friendly, help-a-brother-(and-sister)-out world of game designers. We've definitely felt this love times a million since we moved to the UK.

So there we go. Some of our favorite stuff from Playful. Go dive in, click around, watch some videos, and prepare for the awesomeness.

Playfully Playing at Playful

2009-11-16T14:58:00.000Z

We've finally pieced our brains back together after they exploded from the brilliance of Playful 09. This who's who of UK gaming professionals overloaded us with networking opportunities and ideas - so many that we're just now getting back around to posting about the day.

The one day conference was organised by Pixel-Lab with the broad goal of 'highlighting the importance of play.' Well, Mission: Accomplished. There were nearly 20 presentations dealing with all manner of playful things. My notes are copious and full of pen-heavy drawings and musings that were incredibly profound at the moment but are now incomprehensible. For beautiful (and coherent) notes check out Nick Marsh's brilliant graphics (via ThisIsPlayful.com):

One of the overarching, if not explicitly stated, themes of the conference was the question of what defines the idea of 'play' and 'games.' Not surprisingly, the Playful umbrella covered a diverse range of playful things - from Leila Johnston's choose your own adventure book for nerdboxes like us to James Bridle's zomgawesome talk about the concept of awesomeness.

Back at The Go Game panel at SXSW in March (which seems like 9203482342 years ago) someone asked us what games we play. That question has bounced around my head for 8 months now and I still can't come up with a concrete answer - I play so many games! Sure there are the standard ones: the treasure hunt type team building events we do, the craziness at Hide&Seek's Sandpits (next one is on the 23rd btw), the video games I play (the current obsession is Redneck Rampage), the random flash games online, Connect4 with Mei and Prolific on Facebook (be my friend!). But there are so many other games I play with myself - just today for example I played the

- how many times can I hit snooze before I irrevocably ruin my day game (lost)
- can I make it to the coffee maker in under 10 steps from my bed game (WIN)
- can I swish the mouthwash in my cheeks for 30 seconds before it gets too tingly game (WIN)
- can I beat Mei to the comfy chair race (WIN)
- can I ignore the incessant jackhammering outside of the office game (draw)
- can I get the Playful post up by 3 pm game (lost)
- can I make this list longer than 6 bullets game (WIN)
- can I make this list longer than 8 bullets game (draw)

This is hardly a new concept, but it's always fun to see the world via games. That is, before we go nuts John Nash in A Beautiful Mind. Until then, want to play?

Busy Weeks, Boiler Suits, and Big Hands

2009-10-28T13:26:00.001Z

It's a busy week here at the Go Game UK office! We're running a promotional game tomorrow that will have teams sneaking and snooping through the narrow streets of London's Chinatown. We're excited to break out the orange jumpsuits and show off some Go Game magic!

But even though we'll be getting some orange jumpsuit action tomorrow night, we've decided recently that the full body boiler suits are not enjoying nearly enough time out and about. Which is why we'll be wearing them to what looks to be an absolutely fabulous event, an all-day conference on Friday called Playful: A Day of Cross Disciplinary Frolicking. What better way to frolic than in orange from head to toe?

Playful promises to be full of entertaining shenanigans, fantastic ideas, creative people, fascinating technologies, and all sorts of excitement. We know the speakers are going to be good because, first of all, the lineup features none other than our friends Alfie and Paula of Bus.Tops fame! In case you haven't heard of this amazing project, it was the winning submission for the Artists Take The Lead project for the London 2012 Olympics and the corresponding Cultural Olympiad. It's going to be a series of digital canvases of LED screens on top of Bus (S)Tops that lets the public submit art, graphics, messages, and games. Imagine hopping on the bus in the East End, climbing up to the top deck, and settling in for a ride across town. As you travel around the city, you spot all these unexpected little visual treats invisible to the passersby below - maybe it's a secret message or a cool design or even an interactive display that connects back to an interesting website built by someone from the other side of the world. Even better, maybe it's giving coded missions for a Go Game-style treasure hunt!

We feel pretty special because we got to meet with Alfie, Paula and some other visionary minds back in the planning process, and so we were beyond psyched to hear that the project won funding! Yay! We make games! We're the public! Woohoo! And Alfie wants to work with us too! He said so in print (okay, in print online) so we're going to hold him to it:) And of course it's just exciting on its own merits - we here at the London office are big fans of double decker buses (why don't they have them everywhere - seriously, why?) and surprising urban quirks and public art and basically everything that Bus.Tops stands for. Can't wait to hear Alfie and Paula talk tomorrow!

We're expecting to be wowed by all the other fantastic speakers at Playful too. Even just reading their bios wowed me a bit. And the following video, made by one of the speakers Chris O'Shea, wowed me a lot. Wowzerama. Wowielicious.

I think it's going to be that kind of day...

Hand from Above from Chris O'Shea on Vimeo.

Hooray For Game Makers!

2009-10-23T16:09:00.001+01:00

A gaming friend passed on this video of a super cool (and remarkably well-spoken and poised) 16 year old from Australia, one of the winners of an online tech expo for teens around the world called Digital Open. He created a game called Sneaky Card which 'uses social interaction as a platform.' More specifically, he made cards with instructions for fun or silly tasks or games which he would he would 'put-pocket' (the opposite of pick-pocketing) into the pockets and belongings of his classmates, teachers, and other people. Here's a fantastic video on his project:

It's great to see someone who is so engaged and aware of social interaction, especially a person who could just as easily be a typical whiny and self-obsessed adolescent like we were at his age:) I love this quote:

'I attempt to make people see the world in a different light...Life is almost like a technology. It's a platform. Just like the Internet. But it's REAL. And you only get one life. And no save points.'

Funny, engaging, inspirational, and altogether awesome work, Harry. Consider us impressed.

Check out the full article on BoingBoing.

PICNIC - Best. Conference. Ever.

2009-10-13T21:42:00.000+01:00

The Go Game has done quite a few conferences in our time. There was the 3200 person extravaganza in Dallas and the crazy 72-hour free for all at SXSWi this past March. But no conference we've been a part of compares to PICNIC, held just a few weeks ago in Amsterdam.

The organisers of PICNIC have tagged the event as 'Not Your Ordinary Picnic,' which is true, but doesn't give you the full scope of the event. In reality it's not your ordinary ANYTHING. PICNIC is a mash up of the finest tech and design minds in Europe that produced spectacular results. Life size Etch-A-Sketch? Check. RFID tags and games? Check. A DJ? Check. A twitter tree? Check. Free coffee? Check.

The conference took place at the Westergasfabriek, a converted gasworks on the edge of downtown Amsterdam. The hub of activity for the event was the Picnic Club which you can tour in 360 degrees to get a full scope of the crazy things going on.

We played The Go Game in the Picnic Club and integrated things like the Etch-a-Sketch and make your own collaborative music video booth into the game. Of course there were ample opportunities for teams to explore PICNIC's dining options and interact with the local wildlife:

If you are in the tech, arts, design or interactivity sector here in the UK or Europe I hope to see you at PICNIC 2010. For now, we recommend viewing the PICNIC Flickr photostream below:

The Go Game Does igfest

2009-09-15T15:23:00.000+01:00

We were in Bristol last weekend for the amazing igfest 09 games festival. Before the recap, we'd like to take a minute to acknowledge the wonderful people from Simon Games and Pervasive Media Studio. Special thanks should also go to The Simons, Richard and the amazing Helen.

Now let's talk about us! We created a modified Go Game that was shortened to 90 minutes and included almost no location-based missions. The modified format didn't do anything to hamper the creativity or the hilarity of teams like The Pretty Committee:

It's all about perspective. The Pretty Committee imagines a monster attacking Bristol

Recreating their favourite scene from the world's biggest blockbuster. Feel free to add a soundtrack.

For this next photo we're just happy that team Once signed a blanket waiver (they even have the wristbands to prove it):

Team Once doing something they've never done before. We love that the woman in the background is completely unconcerned that this bus is crushing a fellow human being.

But our winners, the family friendly The F*&ktards, managed to outdo themselves and everyone else with their 'Wrong Way Bidet' snapshot:

Surely this is something that none of us have ever done before. Hopefully the team all immediately went home and showered.

Thank you for playing, we'll see you again at igfest 10! As a bit of a bonus, check out The F*&ktards Stupid Human Trick (vid credit to Michael Corbett)

Games, Games, and More Games!

2009-09-08T16:26:00.000+01:00

Check out this awesome awesome video about the Hide & Seek Weekender featuring all our UK gaming friends like Alex, Holly, Simon 1, Simon 2 (sadly not Simon 3), our best buddy Tob, and a bit of The Go Game! We're at minute 1:30 and I am sounding particularly unable to speak the English language. But hey. At least we look damn good in our orange boiler suits.

Video is originally posted here with more info.

Hide&Seek Weekender 2009 from Hide and Seek on Vimeo.

Oh we almost forgot! Speaking of amazing games festivals, we're going to igfest in Bristol this weekend! We'll be running a specially encapsulated Go Game to make sure everyone has enough time to play all the other exciting offerings going on. So if you're in the area (or even if you're not...hooray for a good train system!) come to the festival of interesting games. It's going to be a blast!

Go Game Writeup on the Kiva Blog

2009-08-31T10:40:00.000+01:00

For some hilarious player perspective on the Kiva Go Game a few weeks ago, check out our friend Kieran's take on the game. His writeup (with photos and links and all that good stuff) was originally published on the Kiva Blog.

***

Kiva's most recent Go Game event in London was a huge success! I spoke with Kieran Ball, a former Kiva Fellow, and here's what he had to say:

"Come back! I love you! Will you marry me?!" This is what I found myself shouting across a busy-yet-soberingly-quiet pub on a sunny Saturday afternoon in central London. The teary-eyed girl in the white wedding dress broke into a grin and skipped towards me through a sea of open-mouthed onlookers.

Thankfully, I hadn't just 'done a Ross', and even more thankfully, nor had I splashed out the extorionate amount of cash needed for a wedding in central London. I was in fact taking part in a Kiva fundraising event organised by The Go Game, a San Francisco based innovator in technology-driven teambuilding games.

On Saturday August 15th over forty people gathered in an (almost) secret location near Oxford Circus to take part in the game. Described only as a "hi-tech treasure hunt", attendees were eager to find out what they'd got themselves into. We were rewarded with a hilarious, fun, and surreal afternoon chasing through the busy streets solving puzzles, completing photo and video missions, talking to total strangers, singing to pirates, and chasing cows, brides, and fairies.

The event culminated in side-splitting video and photo presentation of the highlights of each team's efforts. Notable pant-wetting moments included a frankly scary reconstruction of the evolution of man in a city park, the best/worst chat up line of the day ("Do you like my t-shirt? Yes. Do you know what it's made of? No. It's made of boyfriend material"), a business model based on carrying members of the public across the street for a small fee, too many people in a phone box, human speedbumps, and a mad cow galavanting around the streets.

A huge thanks to everyone that took part, and special thanks to Mei and Chris at The Go Game for giving up their time and resources for free, and to the actors for forfeiting their dignity. Also thank you to Ahkun.org for shipping over some original Cambodian Kramas made by Kiva borrower Kakeda Sun to give out as prizes. A big apology to the man with the eyepatch who was unfortunate enough to be on the same street as our unidentified pirate actor.

The event raised $1000 for the Kiva Fellows Program and generated some great publicity. If you missed it, don't fret, just make sure you come along next time!

Kieran Ball (former Kiva Fellow)

Go Game for Good: Saturday Night Kiva!!!

2009-08-17T12:58:00.000+01:00

To be precise, it was more like a Saturday afternoon. But it was certainly a smoking hot, disco ball-glittering, early John Travolta suaveness, flashing dance floor kind of extravaganza when we put a Go Game together in support of Kiva this weekend.

For those of you who don't know, you need to know about Kiva. In their words, 'Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.' But an even better way to learn about Kiva is to read our friend Kieran's short blog post about Kiva and watch his even more amazing video. Kieran was a Kiva Fellow who recently returned to London from Cambodia and helped us organise the game. Thanks dude!

We had a seriously kickass group of players come together in the Oxford Circus area for an afternoon of shenanigans. To make their experience even better, we had an incredible cast of actresses sprinkled around the game zone causing all sorts of Saturday afternoon trouble. Check out Bessie the Mad Cow who had quite a difficult day:

We hear the teams also had a lot of fun with the bride, pirate, chat-up fairy and naughty wizard, but we can't share all their secrets.

Now Kiva does a lot of work to assess the borrowers applying for Kiva loans and making sure they have a viable business model. Just for fun, we did a creative mission where teams had to come up with the WORST possible idea for a business to apply for a Kiva loan. Here, Team FoxForce Five shows off their ingenuity without even having to humiliate or endanger themselves in the photo! Would you want to send your kids here? Not so much..

On the other hand, the team members from Thank You Mr. Moussaka are no strangers to public humiliation and disregard for personal safety. Attention Health and Safety Association: No Go Game players were harmed during the taking of this photo. We promise.

This ridiculously creative team also submitted a phenomenal historical ballet on the Evolution of Man. We'd show it but there's just...not quite enough clothing involved:)

Thanks to everyone for putting so much creativity and energy towards supporting Kiva! We raised over £600 (almost exactly $1000!) for the Kiva Fellows Program! And one of our players will soon be heading off to San Francisco as one of the newest Kiva fellows. Good luck, Nicki!

If you're interested in lending to Kiva, we'd love for you to join our Lending Team. And check out The Movie Game in support of Kiva that happened back in San Francisco!

Check back here for more info on the next Go Game for Good, coming soon!

Go Game at the Hide and Seek Weekender at Southbank Centre!

2009-08-04T14:48:00.000+01:00

What do you get when you combine over 2000 people, 75 games, thumb wrestling, huge balloon sculptures, werewolves and monsters, sleazy politicians, and The Go Game? Welcome to the truly fabulous Hide & Seek Weekender 2009, a 3 day festival of social and pervasive games that took place at the Royal Festival Hall, part of the Southbank Centre on the Thames.

We had an absolute blast running the video screens and watching all the gaming go down right before our eyes. After two days of observing high-speed parcel passing, massive multiplayer video gaming, and the adorable antics of stuffed animals, we got the chance to show off The Go Game on Sunday!

Since we knew we had a die-hard group of experienced and up-for-anything players, we emphasized team interaction and public performance a bit more than usual. To that end, we created missions where people had to sing to strangers, shake the hands of random passers-by, create a 'thank you' dance for the Hide&Seek volunteers and, of course, play Ring-Around-The-Rosie in a public fountain. We had 14 wonderfully hilarious teams stage all kinds of creative exploits. Here are some of our personal favourite photos from the day:

Team CrazyGoNuts (pronounced with a thick Italian accent) went crazynuts in the fountain and had the highest scoring photo in the 'Cliche' mission, a hilarious rendition of 'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.' I don't even want to know how they got that pigeon involved.

They may have had the cleverest photo, but Team OMG!!! won the adorability contest with a photo starring the cutest player of the day. Here they give us 'Navelgazing':

We loved the all-ages team of the Geek Squad, who did a fabulous Indiana Jones finger movie as well as an absolutely awesome reverse rendition of Torvill and Dean winning Olympic Ice Skating gold. Here's their team enjoying a lounge on the outdoor furniture on the Southbank:

One of my favourite parts about the Southbank Centre was the multiple rooms filled with foam furniture and beanbags that you could move around any way you liked (I happen to really like soft things). We had a mission to set up a scene that everyone would recognise using these blocks and pillows and we particularly liked Team Talde's rendition of the London Eye:

Lastly, this intrepid soul from the Pink Tomatoes really took one for the team with the 'Bad at Hiding' Mission. Well done, you.

Fantastic job, everybody! We had such a great time running the game and hope to see you all again sometime soon!

Cheers and happy gaming from Mei and Chris.

Monday Music Club: One Hit Wonders

2009-07-21T23:58:00.000+01:00

Well hello there. Fancy meeting you here. Sure it's been a couple of weeks and we know that you've been waiting for a new Monday Music Club. Well here it is...on a Tuesday. You see, we took a week off to mourn the death of Michael Jackson. One week of mourning and dance parties turned into two weeks and...well...here we are.

Picking one hit wonders is hard work and here are some of our favourites!

Mei's Choices

1. Divinyls - I Touch Myself: This song is nonstop entertainment.

2. Lipps, Inc. - Funkytown: My list is essentially the best 80's music from bands whose names you would never remember. I guess that's the point of a One Hit Wonder, right?

3. Soft Cell - Tainted Love: I can't stand the way you tease me.

4. Toni Basil - Mickey: Immortalised thanks to Wayne's World. Toni is now a judge on So You Think You Can Dance and man, she is a weird one.

5. K.P.& Envyi - Swing My Way: Found this on a One Hit Wonder list and simply reeks of high school memories.

Chris's Choices

1. Skee-Lo - I Wish: I wish for a lot of things. A '64 Impala is very close to the top of the list.

2. Primitive Radio Gods - Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand: Any song that references Maryland and New Orleans has my vote. But it's also got that B.B. King sample - um, yes please.

3. Deee-Lite - Groove is in the Heart: I think it's humanly impossible to listen to this song and not smile. Well, almost impossible.

4. Edwyn Collins - A Girl Like You: The fuzzed out guitars and the lusty singing combine to make this one of my favourite songs ever.

5. King Harvest - Dancin in the Moonlight: It's a sexy song with a toe-tapping beat and delightful instrumentation. Basically all you need for a one-hit wonder.

What are your top one hit wonders? Tell us in the comments!

The Go Game UK Update!

2009-07-17T11:46:00.000+01:00

In case you're wondering just what we've been doing over here besides sipping tea and wearing fascinators to Ascot, here are some photos we just discovered online. Good photos, Katz!

First up, here's a photo of us speaking at the bTWEEN conference in Liverpool last month!

And here's us looking bright and cheery at our booth. Doesn't all that candy make you want to play The Go Game?

And for some more fun shots...Chris and I have been getting into a bit too much trouble over here in England, faffing about in our orange boiler suits.

Oops! Guilty as charged.

Thanks to the incredibly talented Seamus Ryan of Sunday Shoots for the totally serendipitous occurrence of the mugshots. After all those prison jokes...

Community Game Recap: The Super American Spectacular Go Game!

2009-07-06T01:20:00.001+01:00

WOOOHOOO! AMERICA!!

The Go Game UK and Europe hosted the Super American Spectacular Go Game this weekend! As a community game open to the public, it was a fantastic Saturday getting everyone to get together to have a good time. For the U.S. expats in the crowd, it was a chance to honor the 4th of July and American independence back home. For everyone else, it was a unique opportunity to take the piss out of those bloody Americans by celebrating the best and the worst of the good old U.S. of A.

Teams wandered the back alleys of Shoreditch solving puzzles and meeting our undercover foreign spies, brought all the way over from across the pond. We had American actors facilitating all sorts of ridiculous themed challenges - meet your very own George-Bush loving hillbilly, or experience your first American frat party! The teams also showcased their creative chops and let loose with what they REALLY think about America with some hilarious photos and videos.

We had spectacular dancing moments of American history, from iconic moments like the fabulously danced death of JFK as well as the recent Roddick vs. Murray Wimbledon triumph as performed through ballet in a pub. We're pretty sure the other pub patrons hate America now. We also had teams stage a photo of a stereotypical American scene, perform a video about the next US invasion, and of course pay tribute to a recently departed American icon – the King of Pop.

Following the tradition of showcasing our favorite missions from each community game, we now present the highlight photo and video from Saturday's Super American Spectacular!

From The Professionals, our only group of all Brits, we have a stereotypical American scene entitled 'The Patriot.' I was quite impressed that this team held their own amongst all the rowdy American flag-wearing, beer-chugging Roddick fans in the house. Nicely done, Professionals!

Our favorite video came from the team that ultimately took home the big prize - Team Uniform Sierra Alpha. We asked them to film a short movie showing America's next invasion and they came up with a hilarious video: 'America vs. Hogwarts.' Ingenious idea, special effects, great acting, and Chris even throws in an intro and soundtrack. I can't even tell you how spectacularly happy this movie makes me.

We had a fantastic time celebrating the Fourth of July with both Americans and non-Americans, but most importantly with lots of Budweiser and a whole lot of 'F*@% YEAH AMERICA!' Thanks everyone for playing and we hope to see you next time!

Monday Music Club: Our Favourite Michael Jackson Songs

2009-06-29T15:48:00.001+01:00

Well we had a different Monday Music Club all set to go, but MJ dominated our hearts and our Twitter feeds. Michael has been on constantly at The Go Game office since last Thursday so there were a lot of tough choices here. Without further ado, our favourite MJ songs. Get some rest Michael!

Mei's Songs - Ed. note: sure she's away on holiday, but she still brings you her thoughts!

1. Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' - Discussions over this song resulted in a date with the dj once.

2. The Way You Make Me Feel - If I ever had a theme song, this would be a top contender.

3. Don't Stop Til You Get Enough - Internal debate raged whether to include this, Blame it on the Boogie, or PYT for the essence of danceability, but the intro to this song just can't be beat. also including songs from off the wall, bad, and thriller demonstrates the breadth of Michael's work - who has this many spectacular songs on so many excellent albums anymore? you don't become pop royalty for nothing, obviously.

4. Dirty Diana - Intense.

Chris: Reminds me of Keanu

5. Human Nature - Most MJ songs I love because they're pure pop perfection. Here Michael gets all reflective and imparts some wise life lessons. RIP MJ.

Chris's Songs

1. Blame It On The Boogie - I was at a table singing this at a Turkish restaurant with a group of friends when we got the news about MJ's death. (sad face)

2. Man In The Mirror - In my first year at University my roommate would wake me up each day with this song. It can still motivate me to great heights. Thanks Trevor!

3. Rock With You - A phenomenal song for the dance floor when you need to slow it down. Hopefully they'll play this at the MJ Tribute.

4. I Want You Back - My fav of the Jackson 5. The best of Motown AND Disco AND Funk? Yes please.

5. Billie Jean (Live) - There really isn't any other way to end than with my favourite Michael Jackson song. This performance at the 25th Anniversary Motown Tribute is stellar - he debuts the Moonwalk! Even without the dance the song is legend and The Guardian sums it up far better than I ever could here.

What are your favourites? Comment below!

Monday Music Club: Our Favourite Beatles Songs

2009-06-22T11:14:00.001+01:00

We were in Liverpool a few days ago for the bTWEEN 09 conference and have been on a Beatles kick ever since. Attempting to narrow down my top 5 Beatles songs was the toughest Monday Music Club challenge for me thus far. Mei disagrees and wants you all to know that:

This list formed itself pretty easily with three all-time favorites coming to me instantly and two favorites-of-the-moment that have been on serious iPod rotation for the past few weeks.

Good luck making it through all of the commentary. Yikes.

Chris's Songs

1. I Saw Her Standing There: Not just my favorite Beatles songs, but one of my favorite songs ever. Go ahead, I'll let you roll your eyes (like Mei did), but it doesn't get much better than 'one, two, three, FAH...'

2. While My Guitar Gently Weeps: This song has it all: critical acclaim, Eric Clapton, a continuation of the 'Paul is dead' meme and, most importantly, my love.

3. Ballad of John and Yoko: So simple it only took two of the Beatles to record it yet so good it winds up in my top 5. I still don't like Yoko though.

4. You've Got to Hide Your Love Away: I've always enjoyed the way John sang "heyyyy" in this song. It's not unlike the joy Juvenile brings when he says "unnhhh" in Slow Motion. Comparing John Lennon to Juvenile? I'll accept my nobel prize now thank you.

5. She Loves You: This bubblegum pop is so sugary and so tasty. This tune always reminds me of summer and makes me want to roll down the windows of my car and sing along as loudly as I can. Plus the only words I know in German are Sie Liebt Dich.

Mei's Songs

1. I Me Mine: This one’s a new favorite. Yes, it’s super cliché, but I listened to the Beatles the whole way to Liverpool, and the dreaminess of the first part is perfect for watching the English landscape pass by out the train window.

2. A Day in the Life: One of my favorite songs of all time. I read in one of the few authorized Beatles biographies that a number of the lines were inspired by actual headlines. I also like the addition of the funny little section by Paul in a primarily John song, as well as the massive orchestral randomness bits. Apparently they got a whole orchestra together and just told them to start at one note and then just improvise playing up the scale to all end on E at a certain time. So many moments of genius in this song.

3. Golden Slumbers: This is one of those songs that I love with a passion, a song that transports me somewhere every time I hear it. I’ve included Carry That Weight as well because the two were actually recorded as one piece. Ideally, I’d like to include the Polythene Pam/She Came in through the Bathroom Window lead-in, but those are technically separate songs, even though they were generally performed together, and that would be cheating. So my fourth song is one I’ve been listening to a great deal lately...

4. She Came In Through The Bathroom Window: For some reason, I am currently obsessed with this song. As I’ve already mentioned, it hurts to hear this song without the Polythene Pam intro. Abbey Road is one of my favorite albums of all time and the latter part of the record flows so perfectly as a cohesive unit. I feel that all the songs really need to be heard in context or there’s something missing. However, this isn’t really the case for the songs at the beginning, which brings me to what may be my favorite Beatles song, one of the few written by George Harrison...

5. Something: For a long time I wondered about the similarity between this song and another song I love, James Taylor’s ‘Something In The Way She Moves.’ Turns out it was initially based on Taylor’s song. I guess there’s just...something about both those songs. This one reminds me of sunny days in my kitchen in San Francisco. It’s so beautiful that it’s hard for me to talk about without sounding ridiculous so we’ll just end this here.

Monday Music Club: Songs That Make You Wanna Do That Weird Move You Always Do

2009-06-15T16:47:00.000+01:00

Everyone's got those songs that they connect to a certain dance move. It's like a logic puzzle: every time you hear Song X, you have to do Move Y. Maybe it's a little finger waggle to a certain line or maybe it's an all-out-get-up-offa-that-thing-and-shake-your-body dance to the chorus (see Chris's choices #1 and #2). Maybe you do the move because the song explicitly tells you to, maybe it's in the music video, or maybe it's just a quirky thing your friends made up that has now infected your brain(see Mei's choices, #4 , #3, and #2). Whatever it is, we know you have one. Check out our songs and the accompanying descriptions. If you want to see them in person, follow us around with a boom-box. The dance moves will come...

Mei's Choices

1. M.I.A. – Galang: Wussup London calling? Yeeeah it’s the M.I.A.-knock-kneed-80’s-spandex-crazy-alien dance. I’ve seen her do this dance in person a bunch of times in ever-increasingly insane outfits and you can now see it for yourself in the video. I have to do this dance every time I hear this song or every time I wear 80’s spandex. Visual proof here of me and Annie doing the M.I.A. dance while alien Gina looks on at Bay2Breakers ’08.

2. Modest Mouse – Float On : I owe both my love for this song and the corresponding dance to two of my best friends, Annie and Olivia, who returned from Coachella music festival senior year of college with a special dance move. It’s a little hard to explain, but basically involves jumping around with your wrists at right angles and hands pointing inwards as if you’re rhythmically trying to dry your nail polish. Yeah…you probably have to see it to understand. Anyway, every time I hear this song, the dance move must be done, even if I am alone in my bedroom. That’s just how it goes.

3. Janet Jackson– If : Welcome to my first ever CD purchase. This song and the associated music video are pretty…explicit. I’m surprised they even let it on MTV, but they obviously did because the dance moves are ingrained in my head. Well, not all of them (thankfully my 11-year old self wasn’t busting out the simulated sex acts), but most definitely the part at 3:03 of the song where they move across the floor doing a complicated windmilling arm-head-feet combination that’s like trying to pat your belly and rub your head at the same time. I'll show you sometime, it's awesome.

4. Terror Squad – Lean Back : Life Rule #2349852: When Fat Joe tells you to do something, you DO IT. My friend Rach and I also have a funny associated dance move to Remy Ma’s verse. You know how we walk around the metal detectors….

5. Jay-Z featuring Ja-Rule and Amil – Can I Get A...: I knew Chris and I were kindred spirits when he made a reference to this song in his first-ever staff Go Game and I knew the answer from the song lyrics without even needing to find the clue. The dance move? Just...bounce.

Chris's Choices

1. Coolio - Sumpin' New (1234): Just in case you aren't sure of how to count, I like to hold my fingers up and help Coolio sing 1..2..3..4. I also have a little hip dip when he says "gotta go to get up to get down." That phrase is so true - does that make Coolio an artist, a prophet or a philosopher?

2. Sugar Hill Gang - Apache: Yeah, I did just do this. I like to go back to my roots for Monday Music Club. No, not my ancestral Irish roots or my angsty alternative rawk roots, but rather my Catholic boys high school roots. Needless to say, we all did the hand-up-lasso-jump-whilst-turning-in-a-circle maneuver quite well. It's also a popular meme on YTMND and that's OK by me.

3. Christina Aguilera - Genie in a Bottle: Who would have seen Christina emerging from the Britney-Jessica-Christina debate as the least crazy and filthy? Not me. This song still makes me do a little I Dream Of Jeannie.

4. Beyonce - Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It): Yes, there is a video out there of me, Andrew and Ian attempting to replicate this dance on a street corner in Austin, TX. No, I'm not going to show it to you.

Mei – I was the lucky videographer of this drunken event at SXSW. I’ll just make the statement that there is nothing more entertaining than three men in orange jumpsuits trying to shake their booties like Sasha Fierce. HILARIOUS.

5. Beastie Boys - Intergalactic: The kid in this video (all of 12 years old) has obviously seen my Beastie Boys Intergalactic robot dance and TOTALLY copied off of me. That being said, he does a far better job than I ever did. PLANETARY!

BONUS VIDEO!!

MGMT - Kids: Mei and I have noticed a fascinating phenomenon here in England (both London and Liverpool) with this song. When this tune comes on in the pub the ENTIRE place stops and sings 'do do do do dodododo doooooo.' Sometimes people will alternate poking their index fingers in the air on each 'do.' A bit of that can be seen here.

So, all of you reading this: you got any songs that make you do that weird move you always do? Tell us about it! We wanna know. And then we want you to come over and do it. We’ll show you ours if you show us yours...

The Go Game at b.TWEEN 09

2009-06-12T15:20:00.007+01:00

The Go Game is up in Liverpool simultaneously satisfying our Beatles obsession and producing a game for the b.TWEEN 09 Conference. We worked with the lovely and talented Katz Kiely (conference director extraordinaire) to write a new game centered around FACT in Liverpool. The conference is a meeting of the best and brightest minds of the creative, media and tech worlds.

We've got lots of thoughts on some of the sessions we attended, but let's see how creative these creative types really were during our Go Game. We asked the teams to take a photo of something they had never done before...

Team: Conco da Jones
Title: Dip Skiving

Team: Dead Red
Title: The Mannequin Team

Team: The Cool Kids
Title: Licking a Wheel

We ended the game at the bTWEEN 09 after party at Chaya. There was food, drinks, cheering and a healthy dose of team pride. Well done bTWEEN, well done indeed.

Monday Music Club: Favorite Cover Songs

2009-06-08T14:13:00.001+01:00

In previous Monday Music Clubs we've explored our deepest psyches and revealed songs that exposed our obsessions, our happiness and high school. We're going to give our team of analysts a break this week and just go with a basic theme: cover songs we like. There are lots of cover songs out there (77,000+ according to some databases) so we listened to ALL of them* and narrowed them down to our ten faves. Enjoy!

*may not be 100% true

Mei's Songs

1. Earth, Wind, and Fire – Got To Get You Into My Life: This video is hilarious, especially the Bee Gees dressed up as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in a musical of the same name inspired by the album and fake musical group invented by the Beatles, watching Earth, Wind and Fire perform a song originally by The Beatles. WHAAT? I am confused, but love this song in both versions.
(Original - The Beatles)

2. Iron and Wine – Such Great Heights: Amazing song, originally by The Postal Service. I didn’t know that the song had such widespread popularity/street cred/sellout factor/mainstream marketing potential, having appeared in four TV commercials, two TV episodes, one major motion picture soundtrack, and covered by artists like Rilo Kiley and Ben Folds. Apparently, Ben’s version includes piano, forks, tin foil, and glass. Right.
(Original - The Postal Service)

3. Feist – Inside and Out: Back to the Bee Gees! So much interconnectedness. I loved this song and video before I knew it was a Bee Gees cover, which I find entertaining. This song has at times been immersed in my head for days. If you like Feist (or muppets or counting or happy awesomeness) you mustmustmust watch her Sesame Street video . It is my goal in life to be on Sesame Street someday.
(Original - The Bee Gees)

4. Aretha Franklin – The Weight: Originally by The Band, this song rocks and reminds me of my SF sister Annie. I don’t know if Aretha is saying Annie or Fannie in this song, but this song kills it all the same. The name Annie appears in lots of other songs too – ‘Annie Mae’ is a good one for us, as well as the most famous ‘ANNIE ARE YOU OKAY?’ from Smooth Criminal by MJ. I have been known to get drunk and dance about while asking her this repeatedly. I like to think it’s endearing, not horrifically annoying. Miss you and your iPod mixes, Nyborg.
(Original - The Band)

5. Alicia Keys – How Come You Don’t Call Me Anymore: Fantastic breakup song, originally by The Artist Formerly Known As/That Skinny Dude In A Purple Bodysuit/The Genius Behind Purple Rain And So Many Other Good Songs/Where Did He Come From, Is He An Alien??!?/The Man Himself, Prince. Alicia Keys is immensely talented and does a bang-up job communicating the emotion of this song. Interestingly enough, one of the most famous breakup songs of all time, Nothing Compares 2 U by Sinead O’Connor, is also a Prince original, which not a lot of people know. Thought about including that one, but it sort of makes me want to slit my wrists, and that would be messy. It’s depressing-as-hell breakup song, not soulful breakup like Miss Keys. Sing it, girl.
(Original - Prince)

Chris' Songs

1. Smoking Popes - Pure Imagination: My good friend Justin introduced me to this song after our first year in college. It's brilliant and way less creepy than the original.
(Original - Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)

2. Save Ferris - Come on Eileen: Any band that names themselves after Ferris Bueller's Day Off is alright by me. Save Ferris does a service to Come On Eileen which, in my adolesence, I ranked as my 62nd favorite song (no joke).
(Original - Dexy's Midnight Runners)

3. Cake - I Will Survive: This may be blasphemy, but I like the Cake version better. Sure it doesn't make you want to disco on down like the original, but it does contain the F word. Regardless of the artist, next time we're on the dance floor I'll sing along at the top of my lungs.
(Original - Gloria Gaynor)

4. Jimi Hendrix Experience - All Along the Watchtower: I suppose that it's a tribute to Dylan that his songs hold up so well when covered by others. I love the aggression in Hendrix's version - making it far superior to the passionless rendition on John Wesley Harding. Cue Dylan defenders in 3..2..1..
(Original - Bob Dylan)

5. Johnny Cash - Hurt: I get a lump in my throat each time I watch the music video for Johnny Cash's version. I never really liked Trent Reznor's original, but in the hands of The Man In Black it is a masterpiece.
(Original - Nine Inch Nails)

Go Game For Good and Unhappily Ever After...

2009-06-01T19:35:00.001+01:00

Woohoo! We ran our first Go Game for Good in Soho on Saturday and it went off with a serious bang. Go Game for Good is a game that we run for the public every so often where the profits go to support a certain charity. A little over a week ago, we were contacted by Dan, Amy, Ali, and Andy, a group of people helping to raise money for two organisations that support young people called Raleigh and the Prince’s Trust. To help support their goal of raising £10,000, which you can read about here, we decided to run our first Go Game for Good with them over the weekend. Nothing like having a good time for a good cause!

We had eight amazing teams gunning for the gold whilst getting sloshed in Soho’s many fine pubs on a gorgeous Saturday. In addition to the time spent drinking at the pub, they solved clues hidden all over the quaint cobblestoned streets of Central London. Of course, we also had our four fabulous organisers/fundraisers/actors get all suited up as a mad cow, a bawling bride, a hungry pirate, and a manic depressive Spiderman to facilitate challenges for the players. Impressive work, guys! Nothing says Go Game shenanigans like a mooing cow and a team of gung-ho Go Gamers running past confused tourists.

We also tossed some of our favorite creative missions at these teams and they proved themselves ready for anything. Teams filmed romance movies with a twist, took photos of people biting everything in sight, and staged various shots of themselves caught in inappropriate breakdancing scenarios on the bus, in the bookstore, and in the gent’s loo with Spiderman. Hilarious.

We don’t want to give away too many secrets, but we’ve uploaded our number one favorite video from the day for your viewing pleasure. In fact, it’s one of the best Romance-Movies-With-A-Surprise-Ending that I’ve ever seen. Team Donkey, we are slayed by your brilliance.

It's always the little touches that win the best votes in the Go Game judging - note the farmer's hat, the ketchup, the shrink-wrapped beef, AND the ingenious setting in front of the Hamburger Restaurant. Did they hire a costume designer, a special effects technician and a location scout to put this video together? No, it's just another example of classic Go Game creativity at work. Great job, ladies! (the cow says so too). Everyone else, you did a fantastic job as well and we're so happy to have run such a fun game for you all. Thanks for supporting Raleigh and the Prince's Trust and playing The Go Game and we hope to see you again next time!

Monday Music Club: Songs We've Been Obsessively Listening To

2009-06-01T14:27:00.001+01:00

We’re back with an actually-on-Monday version of the Monday Music Club! This week’s theme is ‘Songs We’ve Been Obsessively Listening To Since Arriving In London. Check em out, kids.

Chris's Choices

1. Weezer – El Scorcho: Like many of my songs this week, I loved this song long before I came to London. It holds a special place in my heart currently because after each of my attempted sales I've been singing: I'LL BRING HOME THE TURKEY IF YOU BRING HOME THE BACON!

Mei - Lovelove this song. Definitely have a specific memory of doing a loud and drunken acapella rendition of this ENTIRE song with my friend Olivia at a Vietnamese restaurant in New York's West Village. I blame it on the unlimited wine. We did get the next table singing along though. And actually, we plan to start the world's first all-female Weezer cover band called either...get this...She-zer. Or Weez-her. HAHAHAHA. If any of you steal our idea we will come kill you. Or just destroy your sweater.

2. Sheena Easton – My Baby Takes The Morning Train : I blame The Breakfast Club - Hoxton for this one. It had been YEARS since I'd heard this song until I popped in for breakfast last week. It didn't quite get stuck in my head until the next morning when Mei and I met with Sanderson Jones...and they played it AGAIN (Sam). Then I sang it all weekend annoying all the people at BAFTA.

Mei - You know you’ve got a song stuck in your head when you go to a swanky networking event and start serenading people you’ve never met. This may have happened with this song last Friday. We didn’t even have the excuse of being sloshed (like the above time I started serenading strangers). By the way, next time you see Chris, ask him to do his finger-snapping hip swivel move to this song for you. It’s priceless.

3. The Verve – Lucky Man : I had totally forgotten about this song before I found it again on Youtube. Sadly, my friends back in the US didn't remember how amazingly frawesome it is.

4. Daft Punk – Something About Us : - Mei can probably see right through this choice, but I don't care. My iTunes (which hates my taste in music I'm pretty sure) says I've played this 25 times in the past three weeks.

5. Kings of Convenience – I’d Rather Dance With You : - Well well well, fancy meeting you here old friend. For those followers of Monday Music Club, you may remember that this showed up two weeks ago. Of course it's reappearance just speaks to how much this song has been stuck in my head over the past few months. Like the time I listened to it 40 times in a day. Or that other day where I heard it 22 times. Seriously.

Mei's Choices

1. Leona Lewis – Better In Time: Gotta give some massive big ups to my girl Leona, who used to work here in Hackney before winning Pop Idol! Thanks for the inspirational message, as well as the randomest music video ever. Seriously, what’s up with the horse and cloak? Shout outs to Liv and Kell and our obsessive Italian listening getting me going on this one.

2. Kanye West – Say You Will : This album has been a fixture in the overseas Go Game office since landing in Londontown. Maybe it’s cause he’s our American Boy? I’m feeling your 808s and Heartbreak, Kanyeezy.

Chris - I'm surprised your list didn't include 100 Kanye songs.

3. Keri Hilson featuring Kanye West and Ne-Yo – Knocks You Down : Another thanks to Liv, one of my bestest friends ever, for this song. It’s a powerhouse with up-and-comer Keri Hilson, my boy Ne-Yo from Monday Music Club V.1, and everyone’s favorite Mr. West. Love it.

Chris - Hey remember that time you were playing this so loudly on your iPhone on repeat that everybody on the 55 bus heard it four times? Good times..

4. Chaka Khan/Rufus – Tell Me Something Good : Always loved this song, happily discovered it on Chris’s iTunes once we got here, and now can’t stop listening to it. Chaka Khan is a GENIUS. Very much enjoyed the old school soul DJ who played this song during at a random Brazilian restaurant in Shoreditch on Saturday. Chris, Dave, Taylor, Ryan, and Paraag and I all sang along really loudly to Chaka, Aretha, Stevie, and all the other best artists of the century in our own little drunken karaoke wonderland. Chris even threw in the heavy breathing parts. Pretty spectacular evening if you ask me. BTW, Ryan writes a blog for Glamour mag, and although he didn’t mention our group sing-along on his European adventure blog post, I still know how much he cherished the experience.

Chris - A shout out to Sasha who introduced this song to me a billion years ago. This probably would have been on my list too.

5. Kanye West – Robocop : I know, I know, enough Kanye, right? Can’t help it. ‘Say You Will’ is the emotional one, ‘Robocop’ makes me laugh every time. Haha, that was a good one. Your first good one in a while.

Thanks for listening, peeps! Keep an eye out for a post on our super amazing Go Game for Good on Saturday, coming up next!

Monday Music Club: Songs That Remind Us Of High School!

2009-05-27T00:21:00.000+01:00

Remember how we started this Monday Music Club last week? Don't worry, we didn't forget about it. It's just that Monday was a bank holiday, Tuesday was...busy, and it's still Wednesday in the States right now. So anyway, without further ado, we present....Songs That Remind Us Of High School!

Instead of critical commentary on each other's songs like last week, this post will feature our own thoughts on the songs and the associated memories. Well...and maybe just a few added thoughts, cause Chris and I enjoy critically commenting on each other whenever possible. Enjoy the trip down memory lane circa 1996-2000!

Chris's Choices

1. Toadies – Possum Kingdom: I would always turn this song up on the radio and sing along as loud as I could. I'm sure my neighborhood appreciated it.

Mei: I feel the exact same way about this song. Who didn't LOVE singing along to this, even though it's seriously freaking creepy. No, I don't actually want to see your dark secret behind the boathouse, that's just weird.

2. Mighty Mighty Bosstones – The Impression That I Get : The supposed hidden meaning to this song made it sort of taboo at my all boys school. Doesn't stop it from having a sweet horn hook though.

Mei: Is it because I went to a coed public school that I have no idea what Chris is talking about?

3. Everclear – Santa Monica : Ah my best friend from high school (hopefully my other high school friends aren't reading this) and I have a thing about Everclear. Oh how I long for those carefree days when we didn't have any taste in music.

4. Counting Crows – Mr. Jones : This reminds me of a trip to the outer banks of North Carolina in 1998 when we listened to this album, August and Everything After. On repeat. For a week.

5. Sublime - Santeria : Oddly, this song reminds me of Easter becuase that's when my parents bought it for me. I'd like to think that they missed the camouflaged Parental Advisory sticker on the album cover.

Mei's Choices

1. Method Man and Mary J. Blige – You’re All I Need To Get By: I’m noticing that many of the songs chosen this week, as well as some from last week, remind me of one of my best friends, Rachel. Unsurprisingly, we spent a lot of time together in high school making mix tapes and carrying them around with us in old boomboxes. Cassette tapes? God, we’re ancient. Anyway, this is one of our classics. I had a biiig thing for Meth and I particularly enjoy his facial expressions in this video.

2. Outkast – 13th Floor/Growing Old : This song also reminds me of Rachel and our friends Kris and Kyle. We spent many a night sitting around, listening to this song and…uh…playing Monopoly (that’s a code word in case my mother ever reads this).

Chris: Well, let's put aside the 19th century theological leanings of the spoken intro and note that a 14 year old Mei was far more emotionally advanced than I am even today. Also, I always skipped this song on the album, it always brought me down.

3. Gravediggaz – 1-800-SUICIDE : This song reminds me of my brother, Andy. I owe much of my (fabulous) music taste to him and all his good hip-hop CDs back in high school. It’s kind of a weird song, but it’s awesome, especially the Ferris Bueller shoutout. Love you Andy!

4. Destiny’s Child – Bills, Bills, Bills : This song is all about my friend Lauren. A major high school activity consisted of driving around Brookline and Boston in her old school black Jeep Grand Cherokee, blasting music and sometimes stopping at red lights to get out and dance around the car. She always had the newest CDs and the best dance moves. I remember a particular instance of dancing to Eazy E outside the movie theater in Cleveland Circle…that song is so graphic it makes me blush now.

Chris: I get it Mei, you don't want me leeching off of you. Seriously though, can i have £100?

5. Backstreet Boys – I Want It That Way : Truly a high school classic. Another blaster for the car rides for sure. I have a specific memory of driving down my street with all my friends in the car singing at the top of our lungs, especially Rachel going ‘Yeah-eh-eh.’ Those were the days….

Chris: This song will now be stuck in all of our heads for days. Thanks Mei. I have to give you some credit though, it DID give us one of the better webcam videos of all time.

Hope you enjoy the songs! Either it'll take you back to your gawky adolescent phase, or it's just an insight into the twisted psyches of Chris and Mei. Enjoy!

Go For Good!

2009-05-26T07:58:00.001+01:00

The Go Game is proud to announce our first London charity event. We have teamed up with Raleigh International and The Prince's Trust to raise awareness and money for a wonderful project that helps youth bring positive change to our world. For more, please read all about the project and its 2009 objectives here.

To help them achieve their goals The Go Game is producing Go For Good. We've run charity games all over the United States for causes as diverse as education and cancer research. Now it is time to turn our attention to the UK and play for a good time...and a good cause! Here are the details:

LOCATION: Soho
DATE: Saturday, May 30, 2009
TIME: 12 - 5pm
COST: £10

So get a team together and sign up!

First London Community Game

2009-05-19T11:40:00.000+01:00

Man oh man oh man. Saturday's community game was, in my humble opinion, SERIOUSLY FREAKING AWESOME (frawsome!). Around 120 of the most energetic, most creative, most irreverent, most wannabe-nudist people in London showed up in the City to get their Go Game on and it turned out to be one of the funniest and FUNNEST community games we've ever had the pleasure to run (yes, I know that's not a word, but it deserves to be). Chris and I are so psyched that the first London Go Game went off with a bang, thanks to the contributions of so many cool people. Here's a quick recap of how things went down, and few of our our favorite creative submissions from the day. Get ready for some hilariousness.

We kicked things off a little after one at CosmoBar, a cool little spot in the City with squishy couches and bike wheels hanging in the windows. Thanks to the lovely folks over at Hide and Seek (I see you Rosie, Puyan and Abigail!), the check-in went way more smoothly than expected. We ended up with 20 teams of raring-to-Go gamers, some who were friends beforehand and some who became fast friends after showing off their talents AND their naughty bits.

Chris and I sent them off to explore the neighborhood of St. John Street, St. John's Lane, St. John's Square, and some other main streets and back alleys that had nothing to do with that dude who baptized Jesus or whatever. We had location-based puzzles hidden all over the place as well as a few of our secret actors stationed in pubs nearby, including a hungry pirate, a space age air hostess just in from Neptune, an undercover spy with a secret mission, and a weird psychic lady. Can't tell you any more privileged information, or I'd have to do something unspeakably horrific to you.

We set up some head-to-head challenges between teams that showcased the knowledge, the ingenuity, and the random and totally useless talents of players. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see these since we were holed up in CosmoBar pulling strings behind the scenes, but we heard some great stories about trying to get pubs full of people to serenade a random stranger, group handstands in the plaza, and a geography trivia smackdown.

The best part though: the INCREDIBLE creativity and willingness-to-really-and-I-mean-REALLY-go-there demonstrated by the players in the judgable missions. Chris and I were cackling embarrassingly loudly to ourselves while preparing the photos and videos for presentation and a bunch of them truly brought the house down. We'd love to show them all to you here, but that would take a loooong time. So we're forcing ourselves to narrow them down, which is like picking your favorite child, but we've selected for you The Go Game Team's Top Five Video Submissions from London's First Ever Community Game (TGGTT5VSfLFECG).

A quick note to keep in mind: despite what the impressive dance moves, Spielberg-level video production, ingenious plot ideas, and Oscar-quality acting might have you believe, all these incredible videos were created on-the-spot in about fifteen minutes by teams in the Go Game based on an open-ended prompt from HQ. You might view these and think, 'I could never be that creative.' Well, you'd be wrong. We've seen literally thousands of teams come up with photos and videos that are just as hilarious and smart and entertaining. The Go Game challenges players to put their brains together and come up with something brilliant, and we're never disappointed. The only thing we've done is add sound effects, which we do as part of the ending presentation anyway. Chris also added a few visual effects just for fun, which wouldn't happen in a real game. But they were already perfect beforehand. And now enough with the blather, on to TGGTT5VSfLFECG!

In no particular order, our Top Five:

1. Team Quartette Tres Bien channels their inner Tom Cruise and recreates the Ides of March through dance. Julius Caesar was never this cool.

2. Team Go For It recreates the infamous scene from Dam Busters! I'll be honest - I had absolutely no idea what was going on here, but all the Brits in the room went wild. We immediately ran home and watched the original. Major kudos go to the "bomb" in this movie; he was THE BOMB.

3. Team A Question of Thought killed it with this submission in the video game category. They didn't just do Double Dragon, they went with the Industrial Sector level. Chris went immediately home to play hours of Double Dragon.

4. Team Band of Badgers created this truly epic production of NosfINGeratu, which took us a little while to realize was spelled to highlight the FINGER in the middle. Duh. Anyway, I'm not sure if I've ever been so impressed by a Finger Movie. Check out the black and white video mode and the lightning flashes special effects. Incredible.

5. We'll end with another wow-factor video game submission from Team The Magnificent Six and a Half who did this ridiculously awesome recreation of the Doom video game. Chris went a little wild with adding the special effects, which is funny to see although it was great without it too.

Just because we love you, we're going to add in a bonus video that didn't make it to the judging on Saturday because we only had time to show one submission from each team. But going through the media afterwards, Chris and I were extremely entertained by the sexy moves in this dance recreation of Henry the VIII and his six wives by Team Sajjx. LOVE it.

We hope you enjoyed our Top Five. We really enjoyed running this game and getting blown away by the creativity and ingenuity of the players. Sign up on our mailing list for news of the next community game and you can star in your own Go Game video too! Thanks for reading everyone!

-- Mei and Chris

Monday Music Club - Songs That Make Us Happy

2009-05-18T14:29:00.002+01:00

In the first of a series of what we hope will become a recurring feature, Mei and Chris welcome you to THE MONDAY MUSIC CLUB!

Each Monday we will post a new 10 song playlist that will help get you through the week. Depending on how creative we're feeling they may even have awesome themes. Without further ado we present the first Monday Music Club: Songs That Make Us Happy.

We each made five selections this morning and are currently listening to the playlist. I'm so happy! But now it's time to embark on a critical analysis of our selections. I will review Mei's choices and she'll write about mine.

Mei's Choices

1. Escort - All Through The Night: A great choice if, for no other reason, the video makes me so happy. You could put the Muppets in anything and it would turn me into a giggling fool. In fact, let's do it: here, here, here, here and here.

2. Lil' Wayne - Mrs. Officer: First of all, way to steal my Weezy pick. Of course Mei and I have a history with this song. If you check our text message logs they frequently look something like:

Mei: mrs. officer, mrs. officer
Chris: weeeeeeoooooowwweeeeeeeeoooowwwweeeeeooooooh
Mei: weeeeoooohweeeeeeeeooooohwwweeeeeeee
Chris: weeeeoooohweeeeeoooooohwwwwwwwwwwwwweeeee
Mei: have you done any work today?

3. Neyo - Sexy Love: Mei loves Neyo. Just loves him. Her room is covered with his posters and she keeps a bag of his hair in her bedside table.* All I have to say is, what do you think of your precious Neyo now?

4. Luther Vandross - Never Too Much: This video makes me as happy as the song does. I'm glad to see that the tradition of filming footage of people walking down the neck down because you didn't get them to sign release forms was alive when this video was made.

5. Shanice - I Love Your Smile: Well Mei takes the gold for "Song Most Likely To Get Stuck In Your Head." The dododos from this song rival other legendary ear worms like this one and this one and this one and this one and, of course, this one.

*this may not be 100% accurate

Chris's Choices

1. Van Morrison - Jackie Wilson Said: As Chris says, 'White people know this song.' This is why I don't know this song. I'll choose to comment on the appropriateness of the South Park cop, Officer Bar Brady, as Chris's choice for a random-photo-to-use-as-placeholder-when-you-upload-copyright-protected-music-to-Youtube. Having worked in copyright law in the past, Chris is expert at now finding ingenious ways to get around it. Anyway, I feel Office Bar Brady really epitomizes the voice of that white dude who sings Brown-Eyed Girl.

2. Kings of Convenience - I'd Rather Dance With You: One of my very best friends, Rachel, once put this song on a mix for me and I also fell in love with it. But I'd never seen the video before and it's seriously adorable, especially the money shot of the skinny dude doing some booty-shaking in front of a crowd of little girls. Just go watch it.

3. Dandy Warhols - Bohemian Like You: Definitely a fun bopping-around-the-house kind of song. I particularly like the addition of the LOLcats-esque lyrics in the YouTube video.

4. Johnny 'Guitar' Watson - Gangsta of Love : This guy is a baller. Look at that outfit! I want him to be my friend.

5. Bill Withers - Lovely Day : Bill Withers is a big favorite here at the Go Game UK office. A great way to end the 'Songs That Make Us Happy' Mix because this song can't help but improve your day. I sing it to myself sometimes when wandering our amazing Hackney/Tower Hamlets/Bethnal Green neighborhood on sunny days and all seems good in the world.

Thanks for listening everyone, and hope this leaves you with a Happy Monday!

--Mei and Chris

Community Game Countdown - Volume V

2009-05-15T11:48:00.001+01:00

Well here it is boys and girls, our favourite Community Game photo. But some business before we get into that. We've reached our max capacity for tomorrow's Community Game! Yaaaay! That means lots of fun, but lots of organisation. So some details:

1. Check your emails from something from info@thegogame.co.uk - that has detailed instructions!
2. Be at the CosmoBar (Google Maps) tomorrow at 12:30 PM! If we don't get you registered because you're late, you can't play. And we keep your MASSIVE £4 donation.
3. Be cool and be creative. But you didn't need to hear me say that. Instead, you could just look at all of our best Community Game photos!

To recap:

Photo #5 -

Federally Naked

Photo #4 -

A Pokey Lunch

Photo #3 -

Desperate For a Drink

Photo #2 -

Crying Over Spilt Milt

THE TOP 5 COMMUNITY GAME PHOTOS OF ALL TIME: #1

Mission: Famous Image
Location: San Francisco
Team: The Superlasers
Explanation: We get quite a few poses of Rodin's The Thinker, but rarely are they so nude. This game featured not one, not two, but THREE full on nude thinker poses and Team Superlaser's won out as the best. Notice the strategic hand placement and the fact that he's posing on top of a trash bin - perfection!

Community Game Countdown - Volume IV

2009-05-14T16:43:00.000+01:00

It's getting to be the weekend. What are you doing this Saturday? Maybe you're on your way down to Brighton or maybe heading west to Bath. But if you're bored and in London and want to have the. time. of. your. life. Then you should come out to The Go Game Community Game. We will guarantee two of the following things:

1. You will be attacked by a bear
2. You will meet your future spouse
3. You will win 10 million dollars*
4. You will have the time of your life
5. The Queen will be there

*Zimbabwean dollars

So we'll see you Saturday, but if you're feeling Winehousian and just need a fix - We're back for another exciting installment of....

THE TOP 5 COMMUNITY GAME PHOTOS OF ALL TIME: #2

Mission: Cliche
Location: Oakland, CA
Team: The Italian Job
Explanation: Sometimes a solid, creative photo will get you way further than taking off your clothes and rubbing up against strangers. SOMETIMES. These guys decided that it was no use crying over spilled milk and made a phenomenal photo to prove it. That's using your noggin!

Previous Piccies:
Photo #3: Desperate For A Drink
Photo #4: A Pokey Lunch
Photo #5: Federally Naked

Community Game Countdown - Volume III

2009-05-13T16:07:00.001+01:00

All aboard the Community Game game train! There are only 3 days left to sign up, so what are you waiting for? Do you need a reminder? Something for your Calendar? A photo of a sad kitty :(? What about an obnoxious banner with blindingly annoying text?

That still didn't do it for you? Well maybe you should check out...

THE TOP 5 COMMUNITY GAME PHOTOS OF ALL TIME: #3

Mission: Daredevil
Location: San Francisco
Team: It's All Good
Explanation: Sometimes things happen during a Go Game that manage to revolt AND impress you at the same time. Drinking from a puddle on a San Francisco street corner is gross, but it does score well in a Go Game judging. This gentleman has no fear and no shame. What he DOES have though, we're guessing, is just about every disease known to man.

Previous Piccies:
Photo #4: A Pokey Lunch
Photo #5: Federally Naked

Community Game Countdown - Volume II

2009-05-12T12:09:00.000+01:00

I know all you loyal blog readers out there are constantly hitting refresh to find out what sort of craziness the 2nd installment (see the first photo here) of

BEST
COMMUNITY GAME
PHOTOS
EVER

will bring. I'm happy to oblige. For those n00bs, a Community Game is a Go Game that is open to the public. To celebrate our London Office's Launch we're offering a mind blowingly low, hide-the-women-and-children-please-don't-tell-our-accountants rate of just £4 / player. For more info check it out at the Community Game page. But enough with the shameless self promotion...on to:

THE TOP 5 COMMUNITY GAME PHOTOS OF ALL TIME*: #4

Mission: Bite Me
Location: San Francisco
Team: Kirkalicious
Explanation: The man in the photo above, is a good friend of The Go Game. He's played multiple times and shown us what true gamesmanship is all about. In short, he's a Go Game hero. He's also my hero. Specifically because he's willing to do anything for a good photo.

*family friendly of course

Photo #5: Federally Naked

Mario (and The Go Game) Goes For The Gold!

2009-05-12T11:19:00.000+01:00

Chris and I are big nerds. We're not afraid to admit it. While trying to add a little character and personality to our flat/office/two floors of awesomeness, we stumbled upon something that made us both jump up and down with excitement in a store called Supernice just a block away from us:

THE OLD SCHOOL O.G. NINTENDO SUPER MARIO BROTHERS BLIK WALL GRAPHICS. ZOMG!!!

Both of us have serious lifelong attachments to this particular game. One of my happiest childhood memories is from Thanksgiving, age five, when my brother and I received our first Nintendo from our aunt and uncle.
Last Christmas I sat down at a friend's house and played her old school Nintendo for so long that another friend actually bought me my own for Christmas. Chris played Nintendo so much when he was little that once he actually sleepwalked into his parents' room and told his mother that Mario couldn't fly. Suffice it to say that the two of us strongly connect on this topic and have been known to occupy quite an unnecessary amount of time playing old school Nintendo on Chris's emulator. And by 'playing old school Nintendo' I mean 'working really really hard,' right Go Gamers?

Upon discovering this bit of joy-in-a-box, Chris and I took one look at each other, threw down some pounds, and immediately rushed home to deck out our geeky game paradise. We spent a delightfully entertaining hour (or two) determining the layout of our scene and how it would serve as a visual metaphor for our company's UK launch. We also debated the proper formations of coins, the appropriate spacing between the bricks on the 'ground,' and the maximum height of question marks in relation to Mario's jumping ability. Did I mention that we're big nerds? Anyway, take a look at the finished scene:

Pretty sweet, huh? To explain what I mean by the visual metaphor, note how Mario is placed in the scene mid-jump. He is leaping across a yawning chasm to move forward in his adventure, similarly to how Chris and I have jumped across the Atlantic Ocean to launch our UK office. He could have stayed behind and grabbed a mushroom overhead and gotten bigger, as we could have remained in the U.S. and helped our SF office expand towards total domination. However, Mario is surging ahead in the hopes of grabbing more coins (PROFIT!) and experiencing new lands and higher levels of play. He is also desperately trying to avoid being ensnared by the piranha flower in the green tube, which represents the British bureaucracy that we must jump over to reach the next level. Note: Everyone here is EXTREMELY nice, but wading through the red tape of proving our identities, providing utility bills, passing British credit checks, and completing other difficult tasks which all require proof of each other, feels a little bit like frantically jumping over a voraciously hungry oversized plant with T-Rex teeth trying to swallow us whole.

However, since Chris and I are Nintendo and Go Game superstars, we will survive the flowers, the koopa troopas, the goombas, and anything else they want to throw at us. We'll successfully complete the jumps and grab some serious money along the way! Our perch at times may be precarious, and there may be blocks that we have to bash our heads against before they release showers of coins, but we will reach that castle at the end of the level and we will most certainly enjoy ourselves along the way.

Here's a larger view of the wall along with a peek at the main office/living room (aka where the magic happens).

You'll notice there is also an invincibility star bouncing ahead of us, which represents imminent British superstardom. Soon the paparazzi will be chasing after us to put our photos in the tabloids along with Kate Moss and Posh Spice and their kind. Finally, all the way on the right, a biq question mark block. What's to come for Mario and the UK office? No one knows, but Chris and I have controllers in hand and a lot of video game practice under our belts. Send out the big boss, we're ready for anything...

Community Game Countdown

2009-05-11T07:14:00.002+01:00

Your first task this Monday is to define Community Game

Community Game: n. - a rip-roaringly, pants-soilingly exciting public Go Game that's the most fun you can have legally.*

*Please keep it legal, our lawyers will thank you.

To experience this one-of-a-kind madness come out this Saturday for The Go Game's London Launch. To ensure that you get a spot, make sure to register online here. The game is limited to the first 150 people to sign up...so bring 149 friends. Check-in and registration on Saturday begins at 12:30 PM at Cosmobar at 50 Clerkenwell Rd EC1M 5PS (Google Maps, "Double True").

In honor of our first Community Game in the UK we're going to count down the top 5 photos from the US Public Games over the years. Well, the family appropriate piccies at least. We'll release one per day this week, to tease you a little bit and get you all primed and ready to go for Saturday. So without further ado:

THE TOP 5 COMMUNITY GAME PHOTOS OF ALL TIME: #5

Mission: Pile of Clothes
Location: Los Angeles
Team: All Fired Up
Explanation: In this mission we ask your team to make the largest pile of clothes they can...using your own threads! Then, you have to take a photo of your team with the clothes. All Fired Up decided they wanted to strip down in front of the US Post Office. We're not sure if it's a federal offence, but it should be.

Hello London!

2009-05-09T11:58:00.005+01:00

The Go Game has hit the ground in London and is ready to R-O-C-K your socks off! The incredibly talented Mei and the impossibly attractive (if I do say so myself) Chris are here for all of your team building, marketing and training needs.

Your Newest Heroes

We've got a London office all set to go and will be kicking off our London existence with the Greatest. Day. Of. Your. Lives.: the first London Community Game.
The wonderful folks at Hide&Seek and The Go Game are teaming for an afternoon of mayhem and an evening of delight. More will follow in this space, but for the time being find everything you need to know here.

For now follow these handy tools to find us and make friends!

Twitter: Mei and Chris
Facebook: Mei and Chris
Email: Mei[at]thegogame.co.uk and Chris[at]thegogame.co.uk

So come say hi on 16 May or, if you fear normal human interaction, online! See you soon and remember to always "play like it's your job!"