Keynote Speech: Big Fun, big learning: Transforming the world through play

Good morning! Another live-blog from the land of Gaming, Learning and Libraries, this one by Gregory Trefry from GameLab (created Diner Dash- cool game!).

Held Come Out & Play Festival in NYC last year.

Real-life city-wide games, like Human Pong

Alternative Reality Games: large online games (like I Love Bees)

Big games are also partly social experiment: Huge pillow fight in a square in Toronto

The Canon:
PacManhattan- people strap Pac Man suit on and run around Washington Square with ghosts chasing you, marked off areas and used cell phones to call when he arrived in
Mogi-Mogi- people pick up virtual objects using cell phones
Big Urban Game- people took big balloons around city, anyone could join (in Twin Cities)
The Beast- tie-in with movie AI. Microsoft thought they designed 6 months of content, people on online bulletin boards solved in 3 days
Space Invaders- projected on a building in Manhattan, used motion-detecting cameras for movement (could we do this on the side of Jackson Library? AH)
Journey to the End of the Night- Kind of like Zombie Tag. People had to run all over NYC and try to avoid capture
You Are Not Here- paper with NYC map on one side and Baghdad on the other, had to hold paper up to sun and find places in Baghdad by going to places in NYC, when people arrived they learned about a place in Baghdad
Payphone Warriors- Identified 30 or 40 payphones in the city and people had to make a call from each one. Like Capture the Flag.

His Trip to the Library: Hadn't been in a while, went to NYPL (it was closed)
Library Assets: many locations (game board!), Collections (photos, etc.), Spaces (built-in territory to capture), Content, Persistence, Unique Identifiers (scanners would be cool), Referees (librarians), Tools (copiers, computers, wifi), Display (to keep track of the game), Refreshments

5 Ideas:
Secret Agent (scavenger hunt)- secret meeting spots, ask referee a question, avoiding detection (to avoid disturbing others, say if referees catch you, you'll lose points), collect codes (like DaVinci Code), Level Up (higher level after a certain number of tasks)
Then and Now (citywide photo hunt)- take old photos and ask students to take pictures of what it looks like now
Rent Control- the real real estate game- uses old rent maps
Abolish (ARG)- narrative about ending slavery
Babel! (Code breaking)- students in teams have to figure out a message
Dewey's Demons (collect creatures generated by codes)- web-based game where checking out books give them codes which can give them characters

Process: Look around the world, Give normal activities goals, Simple ways to track moves, Playtest, playtest, playtest

My summary: I want to create a big game for our library. Now. That would definitely improve the fun quotient of our freshman library tour.
Oh yeah, and project an old arcade game on the library tower.

Come out and play, September 28-29