Go London Social Innovation Competition

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!

Nike GRID explained. Mostly.

The official info on the Nike GRID game...

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

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

Interactive Nike Running Game Takes To The Streets

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

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


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


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

Only 2 problems.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our Picks for the Most Brilliant and Bizarre Radio Adverts

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

Adventures on the Streets of Newcastle

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

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

Go Fishy - What I Learned From A Simple Flash Game

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

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

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

Even More Playfully Awesome

Playfully Playing at Playful

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):

Hooray For Game Makers!

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: