At a pervasive games lab

The other week, I was invited along to a pervasive games lab at the MAC. Fierce organised it and Hide & Seek hosted it. The other invitees were artists (of various stripes), filmmakers, webby types and developers of serious games.

Pervasive games might involve roleplaying, running about, technological doodads, funny hats, location-based tomfoolery and all sorts of other things. Often the games take place in the ‘real world’ (the very fact that it’s necessary to point this out is instructive). Games might last ten minutes or run for days at a time. It’s a broad church. Street games and alternate reality games are similar/related.

I’m consciously avoiding any proper sort of definition because no-one seems able to agree on one, leading to all manner of tedious hairsplitting.

Labs, just to clear this up, are workshops but… um… edgier. Maybe?

After some general orienting in the morning, we spent the afternoon devising games for Nikki Pugh’s whale hat which she explains here along with videos like this one:

All in all, it was nice to mess about with something a bit different for a day and to make some new friends. What’s more, Nikki’s gone on to develop the whale hat into a game called The Bloop which became something of a media magnet in the run-up to this weekend’s Hide and Seek weekender at the National Theatre.

Going all big picture for a bit, there seem to have been two motivators for the day; to give some WMers a kick up the backside and to get some cross-sector collaboration going in a growing market.

Reticent West Midlanders

Fierce had an event happening at Warwick Arts Centre on 26 June. They’d put out a call for proposals – offering cash for artists to come and do stuff . There was apparently loads of interest from around the rest of the country, but not much here.

This ‘lab’ was partly an attempt to coax out a few more applications and develop some games that could be tried out at that Sandpit event on 26 June. We didn’t quite get that far – half the group had to leave after lunch and many had brought projects they were already working on and couldn’t really give up to this process. That stunted things a little so hooray for the whale hat.

I hear this sort of thing from time to time. To pick two off the top of my head, the West Mids has/had the lowest number of bidders for upcoming Olympics contracts and a (Birmingham-based) BBC chap I met was saying that he gets pitched digital stuff all the time, but from agencies outside the region. It’s rather frustrating.

Getting all collaborative

There are a whole bunch of initiatives going on that are/have been trying to draw links between different sectors and disciplines. Hats off to Screen WM for being active in a lot of that, Producers Forum are working with others a bit, 4iP has been a beacon for that kind of thing, the TSB are trying (in their own mildly incomprehensible way) and there’s a new thing called Switchboard which is a next step in bringing together various creative industries strands.

As well as the general benefits that collaboration brings, pervasive games, transmedia projects and multiplatform approaches are all the rave at the moment. I imagine there’s a sense that the region could do quite well in this emerging area if people got their heads together. Where the best transmedia producers come from is a tricky one, but these sorts of sessions will help.

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Links for 15 July 2009

• D’log :: blogging since 2000 » Spezify – “Spezify has just launched with an impressive and different take on delivering search results. It’s primarily a visual search-engine aimed at designers and creatives, but also slips in relevant text and audio links”. Wow. This is nice
• blip.tv (beta) – You can upload videos to blip.tv using FTP and if the connection drops out then you can resume (within 10 mins). This may be useful when working somewhere with a potentially iffy connection
• Shift Happens by Mark Ball – “In January I was privileged to be invited to Perth by the Department of Culture and the Arts to participate as a Major Production Fund panel member and to meet with arts organisation to discuss the potential opportunities brought about by the rapid proliferation of Web 2.0 technologies, in particular Social Media tools”. Mark Ball, ex of Fierce and the RSC, now of LIFT talks arts and social media
• Chart: Who Participates And What People Are Doing Online – Plotting creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators and inactives across the generations. Not perfect, but interesting
• Melonz Magazine – Produced by 3rd year media students at Birmingham City Uni. There should be some actual real life copies around Birmingham somewhere

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End of week head-clearance

And breathe out… I’m taking a bit of time to reflect while I munch on some pasta. This past week has been hectic and brilliant for several reasons:

• I’ve been invited to a recruitment day for MediaSnackers.
• I’ve been hired by BCU to blog on their New Generation Arts Festival, covering the ‘online interactive’ aspects of the work being presented.
• The Fierce Festival stuff I’m working is amazing
• I picked up my new bike
• I fixed my broadband connection, which had gone a little wonky

Music-wise I was less hectic than the previous week, only seeing Duffy and Foals.  Duffy was ok – very talented but a little bland.  Foals were fantastic though, despite being fashionista magnets the atmosphere at the gig was great.  I’m off to see Infadels tonight and then that’ll be it for a week and a half.  I’ll be posting up the reviews from the past couple of weeks soonish, so you’ve been warned.

Tomorrow I’m off to the Punch Records music marketing course. We’ll be covering radio promotion in the morning and partners &  sponsorship in the afternoon. It’s the last one I’ll be able to make it to because unfortunately it’s going to clash with some frenetic Fierce-related activity – the website goes live on Thursday.

On Tuesday I’m off to Alton Towers for a conference called ‘Using Digital Media in Marketing and Communications’ which is being organised by the folks at ideasforlife.tv.  Speakers include Dr Adam Rutherford (science journalist), Anthony Lilley (from Magic Lantern) and Dr Jon Salkeld (from QinetiQ).  There seems to be quite a strong corporate slant to the programme so it’ll be interesting to see where they take things.  Plus they’ve left time for rollercoasters afterwards.  If it’s worth blogging my notes I’ll do so.

At some point I need to fit in some presentation planning, content writing for my new website and my birthday.  One thing at a time though – I’ve got a gig to get to.

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