I just got in from iglab 7, or thereabouts, trying out the first go on Cargo, simon & simon‘s new game. I’m a bit sore from running, and my feet are wet, but I think it’s a winner – some sort of impossible mix of noir, paranoia and mission impossible films starring Tintin.

We started in a pub, as did other teams, with the location given to us by text message (“they know who you are and want you dead”), in which we had to find an envelope to get started. Our host was pretty into the whole thing despite knowing less than we thought she did: she was acting like she was playing us the whole time, though we found out later she was pretty much improvising and hadn’t been asked to do most of what she did. Watching us look behind pictures and barrels behind the bar must have pretty amusing for someone who’d been asked just to look after an envelope and hand it over when asked. But I’m ahead of myself.

The game started with a call to a specific member of the group telling them where the cargo we had to safeguard was, and where we had to take it: the envelope had more information. Specifically, there was a boat waiting for us at Castle Park, at 8.45, that would take us to safety if we had a florin each for passage, plus one more for the cargo with some ID. We had to earn the florins for the journey by scavenging them from various locations (hinted at by location-specific photographs) or by busking on Corn Street. Some of us went busking, hiring instruments from Mother’s Ruin with the tokens included, while the rest went scavenging or up to Stoke’s Croft to see about some fake ID.

Long story short, running down St Nicks Market playing your own chase music is pretty much good times, even if hanging out with an assassin wearing a Homburg called the Moose and trying to pass yourself off as some other people can get a bit nervy. After calling it a day busking, and taking a rain-soaked detour up to Trenchard Street to hang around the car park in a fruitless search for fake coins, we regrouped ready to storm the ferry point with our cargo protected by our sacrificial flanks. The thrill of being ambushed by the Moose, the diversionary conversations about Florence and shoes and who you can really trust, the sense of achievement when we finally reached the boat with our cargo in one piece – these were things left untouched by the constant rain. Good game, and tightly planned, though there were the usual first-run glitches. Nothing major, though, and it finished with a Watershed full of wet happy people talking about how much fun it had been.

What always amazes me about these sorts of games is how well they reveal the willingness of people to pretend and join in with make-believe: how ready everyone is to down tools and play as if they were in charge of themselves again. There was a real sense of jeopardy within the teams, a fear in those marked for death that’s hard to say is pretend. But more important than the thrills was the way it bent the line between what was real and what was not. Our landlady had handed us a coin we assumed was a game florin but was actually a florin from elsewhere that had found its way into the till. Boundaries between real and pretend are pretty fragile when you test them, and the ways coincidence or happenstance take on new meanings when you give them a new context are pretty unsettling.

Good times, as always from iglab and simon, and if you get a chance to play in February I’ll see you there.

What a blast. So much to see and do, didn’t manage half of it and what I did I’m still digesting. If they manage to do it again next year, get yourself down there. Look! Korean Lazer Ball!

And here’s Mercury, shortly after yet another rule change, this time one about making animal noises:

I’m still reeling from seeing the dedication of the iglab crew and their associated plotters. You are all superheroes. What an effort. Taking over the disused bar next to Watershed to use as a base, shipping props and people from Europe and the US, persuading people to run around like loonies making animal noises: play never looked like such hard work.

Personal highlights: txtFiles, Comfort of Strangers as usual, playing HipSync in the Lousiana, seeing the Moose come home, watching Mercury and KLB. Regrets: not making it out for Journey, which sounded as if it properly had people confused about the difference between reality and fiction (whole other post on this, I think: early AR stuff had people worried about the effect on people’s minds, but even this low-tech competition had people scared in police cells and clambering across Temple Meads roof), missing Rainbow Rain, failing to get three people together to try Dan‘s mScape game and generally feeling as if I was arriving ten minutes late for everything. Got to be in it to win it.

Harpbeat went well, I think: enough people joined in, which I wasn’t sure about, and no-one left or looked fed up. In fact we had a pretty good time running around on Queens Square for half an hour (one girl said it was the best game she played that weekend, which from a six-year-old means something). So most of my fears about it not working didn’t come to pass. But I’m still not sure it’s very robust as a game: it seems to be a lot harder than I thought for people to move around, while the singing thing seems a little pointless in some ways. If people can do it then why not just sing a song? And if they can’t then it’s just frustrating. And as Lyndsay pointed out, people don’t think of their note as a particular note, more that it’s the one that comes between the notes either side: people define their note to sing in the context of the other notes in the harp. Which Frege ought to have told me, really.

So I’m looking at a bit of a change of direction, though I think it might involve a lot of soldering. Watch this space.

Thanks Simon! And Simon! And Duncan! And Clare! And Helens, both of them! And all the lovely stewards! And everyone who joined in! See you next year!

Spent the last couple of evenings playing games in the sun and the rain with Interesting Games Lab: snakes and ladders with a pantone twist in a multistorey car park, searching for lovers and dancers and hiding behind pillars around Harbourside, training human dolphins to do tricks using only applause, playing werewolf and standing in the square playing Geometry Wars on the side of a building. Fun fun fun.

The Comfort of Strangers game is playing at the Come Out and Play festival in NYC in a couple of weeks: I’m hoping they’ll bring it along to Hide and Seek in London at the end of June. There was something kind of magical about weaving a team together from nothing more than proximity, and playing a game outside gives you new eyes for a familiar landscape: in the end, though, I think I just like running around and hiding.

Spoke at geeKyoto yesterday: had a wonderful time and left feeling energised and inspired. Lots of different things to think about, a few changes I want to make to the way I live, and (hopefully) the start of some really interesting conversations: there were some really bright and talented people I felt privileged to be around. Full marks to messrs. Simpkins and Hammersley – thank you both!

I’ve got longer notes from the day that I need to digest before I put up here: broad themes that seem to stand out right now are a faith in the power of making the invisible visible (so a lot of talk about data visualisation and open data), the importance of community in effecting social change and a refreshing lack of faith in technological fixes that are unsupported by changes in behaviour. Two things that seemed to arise from a lot of people’s talks that I need to think more about: all the failures that people described (in regulating emissions, or in delivering aid or technology) seemed to be more about management and process than technology or access to data, despite this last point being a central article of faith for the conference, and I wonder if that might be a more productive (though more boring, perhaps) thing to think about. And the second was this idea of “community” – it seems to come loaded with a set of ideas about the sort of people in the community, that they’re nice people like us, whereas of course plenty of revolting people form communities as well. Minor point, really.

Anyway. My bit didn’t make anyone leave, which is my usual measure of success, but I think there were a few points that I might have offered people in a more structured and articulate way. It was a good experience to speak to a different audience, though, having spent the last couple of years talking mainly to education conferences and policy types, and I’ve got a few points to consider for the next time I talk in front of people. Learning, learning, always learning. For what it’s worth, I’ve put my slides up here if you’re interested. And I was really pleased to discover, during a vanity google, a twitter survey on a question that Ben posed afterwards, from Jemimah Knight: really interesting responses, will have to give them a bit of a mull.

So. Notes to come on speakers and ideas but short version: it’s brilliant, go to the next one.

In a proper panic about tomorrow: EasyJet baggage handlers were extra rough with my Nabaztag and now the button on top’s broken (does anyone have a screwdriver with a triangular head?), I haven’t written any of the code I meant to (been moving house and starting a new work project) and I’m steeling myself for a day of being snubbed by proper hackers and talking sadly to a powered-down rabbit in a corner somewhere. And now I have to run for the train.

Ah well. At least the talks will be fun. And maybe I’ll be struck by non-Nabaztag inspiration anyway (am brining my old 6680, so will see if I can use that as a Bluetooth discovery device somehow…). See you there if you’re going!