Friday Links - 2 July

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

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

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

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.

Friday Links - 28 May

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!

Late Night Go Game at Brixton Village

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

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]

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!

Drop-In Go Game at Brixton Village on Thursday!

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

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.

Friday Links - 7 May

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?

F Off Friday - 23 April

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

Shameless Self Promotion:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

F Off Friday - 16 April

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

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

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

Happy Anniversary To Us and Battle Brighton!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Worktime Fun with Augmented Reality

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Nike GRID explained. Mostly.

The official info on the Nike GRID game...

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

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

Interactive Nike Running Game Takes To The Streets

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

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


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


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

Only 2 problems.

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

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

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

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

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

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

F Off Friday - 9 April

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Big Kid London Easter Hunt is EGGstra EGGcellent!

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