Showing posts with label playark. Show all posts
Showing posts with label playark. Show all posts
Friday, 4 November 2011
playARK - christmas game
We have a great christmas game in store for people. If you are interested you can find out more and buy tickets at http://jokulfrosti.eventbrite.com/
Sunday, 23 October 2011
playARK - Games & Talks
So at the heart of thinkARK we wanted to do projects that hopefully helped us explore social issues within our community. We also wanted to then share knowledge between the group of skills and expertise. More so in the last few projects we have made this aspect of shred knowledge being part of the actual projects we have created.
I think this has been at the fore more than any other event than at the recent playARK festival. As this was our first event fo this kind both in terms of thinkARK but also in terms of games we wanted to explore what play, creativity and games was to people and rather than keep the learning internal why not share the knowledge between as many people as possible? And then for those who have this knowledge or have just learnt this knowledge through the talks how about them practicing certain aspects of game and play through the second day of games.
I think the idea of a multi-discipline event if you like is something that I would like to explore more. In some ways as well I wonder if it could be incorporated and integrated even more. A lot more work i know but I wonder how much more people would get out of it?
HHHhhhmmmm I will have to have a think.
Everwake a social breakdown
I think alot of people struggle to see how a ghost story could be in anyway a FOR GOOD pervasive game. There has been loads and loads of things written about how games can be designed to make people aware of climate change and also others about how through a game you may do good things.
But what if you want to do this kind of project but think the audience maybe quite small at this kind of game and also the knowledge of how games and games mechanics work needs to be looked into?
Option 1 - You wait and don't do the project because you never quite have the right amount of experience/skill
Option 2 - You start to create games and slowly bring more and more social issues into the game.
Well I guess by now you know I took Option 2. So the initial everwake game has a very small social element (most of these being the intrinsic nature of pervasive games). The social aspects being people coming together to meet talk and share. These are some of the most powerful aspects of pervasive games and what set them apart from other experiences such as theatre and film.
Secondly there is an environmental aspect to the game with people 'experiencing' a place they thought they knew and a places being revealed to them. There was also a re affirmation with everwake of good and bad, which while quite broad still seems relevant to bring up.
So as everwake is hoped to be a series of episodes the questions is can we develop the game to have more and more sophisticated ways of introducing other socially good elements?
Well simply for me yes. We are working on an over arching story line for everwake as we speak but we have already broken it down to 6 episodes. With each episode slowly gaining more and more 'socially good sophistication'. It's an experiment and something that in time we will be able to give some idea of how it is going.
But what if you want to do this kind of project but think the audience maybe quite small at this kind of game and also the knowledge of how games and games mechanics work needs to be looked into?
Option 1 - You wait and don't do the project because you never quite have the right amount of experience/skill
Option 2 - You start to create games and slowly bring more and more social issues into the game.
Well I guess by now you know I took Option 2. So the initial everwake game has a very small social element (most of these being the intrinsic nature of pervasive games). The social aspects being people coming together to meet talk and share. These are some of the most powerful aspects of pervasive games and what set them apart from other experiences such as theatre and film.
Secondly there is an environmental aspect to the game with people 'experiencing' a place they thought they knew and a places being revealed to them. There was also a re affirmation with everwake of good and bad, which while quite broad still seems relevant to bring up.
So as everwake is hoped to be a series of episodes the questions is can we develop the game to have more and more sophisticated ways of introducing other socially good elements?
Well simply for me yes. We are working on an over arching story line for everwake as we speak but we have already broken it down to 6 episodes. With each episode slowly gaining more and more 'socially good sophistication'. It's an experiment and something that in time we will be able to give some idea of how it is going.
Friday, 14 October 2011
everwake
Well I have not posted here for a while. Mainly due to us setting up a personal blog on Hoffi.com. I think however with the production of everwake it might be an idea to reopen this blog. So I have somewhere to discuss and think about the idea of game and what I am really interested in.
"How technology story and game come together in physical and non physical spaces."
So for as long as I can remember me and Allie have been working on everwake. It's now pretty weird that it's all over. I think because we did it at the same time as the playARK talks and games festival then in retrospect we probably bit off a bit too much, as I still havn't recovered a week or so on. But what I have been really shocked by is the emptiness and almost depression of the event being over. I am slowly coming around but the first few days were really very challenging.
What it chowed me was that everwake had obviously touched a nerve in an area of my brain that i have rarely accessed. I remember the last day of uni I had a similar reaction. The moment it's over there is silence and then nothing. The world moves on and the event is gone. Well at least for you anyway.
So back to everwake this is about the third tim eI have tried to sit down and write about it. I got pretty far on some occasions but then lost interested and either deleted it or forgot where I wrote it. I think everwake is something that has always been there for the last 10 years. The need to develop something that is an experience for people in many levels. A story first and foremost that you participate in rather than merely just view. A hybrid between story and ARG and a pervasive game. None of them really seeming to fit the description of it.
The idea of leading with a strong story a narrative people can be drawn on to create culturally understood rules. An ability to bring people together who may have never met and to give them an experience of a lifetime with an element of empathy and genuines choice. So many things were thought and planned during us creating the game that it was clear we would not be able to do it all. curating it down to something manageable was key to us creating a great game and also keeping within a very veyr very tight budget (thank you all the volunteers :-) ). This realisation led us to realise that an interesting thing was possible. Why dont we do a serialised pervasive game with story and online content?
Why don't we use the routines and language that has been established through television to create a six episode series? exploring the abilities of each platform/media such as audio, paper, blog, video, physical, app to best bring narrative to the players and viewers or lurkers.
but what about the reason I started doing games. What about the social good? what about the exclusivity of the game (only having 60 people being able to play the street game for example). Well while the initial game it is not immediately obvious there are huge amounts of commentary built with in the game. The good and evil the choice of should I shouldn't I and also the more basic social aspect to the game have all started a small community centred around everwake.
What we have really done however and more what we now hope to do is we hope to develop more and more social aspects within the makeup of the game to bring more obvious signs of good and effect. So as the player develops within the game so does their understanding of the issues that surround us. As it has been said 1,000's of times a journey starts with one step. I guess we hope that the steps are so easy that they do not really notice and they develop as the game develops.
But I think what has come back to me again and again. Although this is so hard to do when it is your work. We have come to realise that failure is good. Testing, prototyping and developing are the key elements of developing stuff that works. This kind of goes beyond the game word. In everyday life for example come back again and again and you will succeed.
I realise that has not really covered anything about what everwake was in terms of story and perhaps I will write that up in another blog. But what I have realised on this project. I have realised that there are some people in Cardiff that are truly world class at what they are doing in their fields. The skills and creativity we have available within Cardiff is really quite staggering. Also creative integrity is a really interesting paradox its a pain in the arse when you want to move forward but you know that it's key to listen adapt and develop or you lose exactly what you are paying for. Let the people do their job.
Which I think for this blog gives me my final thing to talk about. That is basically management and producing a story like everwake. Basically its huge. I think in the future there is indeed something to be said for the development of what a producer really does. Traditionally on one platform a producer would pull all the threads together about the same story told in the same way through the same channel.
But now we have the producer developing a project on multiple platforms using multiple types of media to create fragments of a single story. Each being pulled together so as a whole they can be consumed and totally understood. Yet also consumed individually and still seen as enjoyable and worth while. And finally the biggest I think of them all working with 'real' and non real. So basically on and offline line content and as it develops further how things like apps bring a further step in complexity.
This has been one hell of a ramble but I hope it has given an insight into initial unedited thoughts on everwake.
"How technology story and game come together in physical and non physical spaces."
So for as long as I can remember me and Allie have been working on everwake. It's now pretty weird that it's all over. I think because we did it at the same time as the playARK talks and games festival then in retrospect we probably bit off a bit too much, as I still havn't recovered a week or so on. But what I have been really shocked by is the emptiness and almost depression of the event being over. I am slowly coming around but the first few days were really very challenging.
What it chowed me was that everwake had obviously touched a nerve in an area of my brain that i have rarely accessed. I remember the last day of uni I had a similar reaction. The moment it's over there is silence and then nothing. The world moves on and the event is gone. Well at least for you anyway.
So back to everwake this is about the third tim eI have tried to sit down and write about it. I got pretty far on some occasions but then lost interested and either deleted it or forgot where I wrote it. I think everwake is something that has always been there for the last 10 years. The need to develop something that is an experience for people in many levels. A story first and foremost that you participate in rather than merely just view. A hybrid between story and ARG and a pervasive game. None of them really seeming to fit the description of it.
The idea of leading with a strong story a narrative people can be drawn on to create culturally understood rules. An ability to bring people together who may have never met and to give them an experience of a lifetime with an element of empathy and genuines choice. So many things were thought and planned during us creating the game that it was clear we would not be able to do it all. curating it down to something manageable was key to us creating a great game and also keeping within a very veyr very tight budget (thank you all the volunteers :-) ). This realisation led us to realise that an interesting thing was possible. Why dont we do a serialised pervasive game with story and online content?
Why don't we use the routines and language that has been established through television to create a six episode series? exploring the abilities of each platform/media such as audio, paper, blog, video, physical, app to best bring narrative to the players and viewers or lurkers.
but what about the reason I started doing games. What about the social good? what about the exclusivity of the game (only having 60 people being able to play the street game for example). Well while the initial game it is not immediately obvious there are huge amounts of commentary built with in the game. The good and evil the choice of should I shouldn't I and also the more basic social aspect to the game have all started a small community centred around everwake.
What we have really done however and more what we now hope to do is we hope to develop more and more social aspects within the makeup of the game to bring more obvious signs of good and effect. So as the player develops within the game so does their understanding of the issues that surround us. As it has been said 1,000's of times a journey starts with one step. I guess we hope that the steps are so easy that they do not really notice and they develop as the game develops.
But I think what has come back to me again and again. Although this is so hard to do when it is your work. We have come to realise that failure is good. Testing, prototyping and developing are the key elements of developing stuff that works. This kind of goes beyond the game word. In everyday life for example come back again and again and you will succeed.
I realise that has not really covered anything about what everwake was in terms of story and perhaps I will write that up in another blog. But what I have realised on this project. I have realised that there are some people in Cardiff that are truly world class at what they are doing in their fields. The skills and creativity we have available within Cardiff is really quite staggering. Also creative integrity is a really interesting paradox its a pain in the arse when you want to move forward but you know that it's key to listen adapt and develop or you lose exactly what you are paying for. Let the people do their job.
Which I think for this blog gives me my final thing to talk about. That is basically management and producing a story like everwake. Basically its huge. I think in the future there is indeed something to be said for the development of what a producer really does. Traditionally on one platform a producer would pull all the threads together about the same story told in the same way through the same channel.
But now we have the producer developing a project on multiple platforms using multiple types of media to create fragments of a single story. Each being pulled together so as a whole they can be consumed and totally understood. Yet also consumed individually and still seen as enjoyable and worth while. And finally the biggest I think of them all working with 'real' and non real. So basically on and offline line content and as it develops further how things like apps bring a further step in complexity.
This has been one hell of a ramble but I hope it has given an insight into initial unedited thoughts on everwake.
Wednesday, 7 September 2011
playARK - Games festival and talks - 30 September - 1 October
As most of you know thinkARK have been meeting at Cardiff Arts Institute every wednesday for nearly two years. During that time we have created loads of events and projects that have tried to bring the people of Cardiff together. You can see some of the projects on our website. This year to celebrate our second birthday we are putting on a great event centered around games, learning and play called playARK. The day is split up into two days. The first being a series of talks surrounding games and storytelling and how people are becoming participants as opposed to mere spectators. The speakers, are a great range from Alice Taylor (formerly channel 4), Matt Locke (founder of storythings), right through to Dan Dixon who will be talking about games for good.
The event is perfect for anyone wanting to know about the latest thinking in interacting with customers and how storytelling is key within that.
On the second day there is going to be a great event where people will be able to actually play a load of games. You can see a video of a similar day we did last year that will hope fully give you an idea as to what the day will be like below. But this year it is going to be alot bigger. As well as the street games you will also be able to play the latest board games, and digital games and even relive your youth by playing retro games.
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