Global Game Jam 2016 returns to Londonmet

48 hours of game production as part of the Global GameJam 2016, streaming live on twitch

Read about the weekend here: http://www.thinkmakeplay.co.uk/?p=688
and here: http://kavitakapoor.org/2016/02/game-jam-2016/

See pix here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/thinkmakeplay/albums/72157663983583452

See what the kids came up with here: http://goodomensgame.blogspot.co.uk/

Play our jam games here: http://globalgamejam.org/2016/jam-sites/london-metropolitan-university/games

CHI-Play 2015

Work in Progress presentation at CHI-Play 2015 - The ACM SIGCHI Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play.

"Designing Interactive toys for Elephants"
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2810327&CFID=551862082&CFTOKEN=78821018

Digital Toybox 2015

This year's Faculty of Life Sciences and Computing annual summer show, Digital Toybox 2015, took place on 11/12th June.

Information and photos can be seen here:
http://www.thinkmakeplay.co.uk/?page_id=10
https://www.flickr.com/photos/thinkmakeplay/sets/72157653057800024

Royal Society Summer Show 2014

Helping out at the Animal Computer Interaction stand at Royal Society Summer Show - the stars have arrived.  Dogs for the Disabled show their talents at using the specially designed door and light switches.

http://sse.royalsociety.org/2014/technology-for-dogs/

Londonmet FLSC Summer Show 2014

Amazing work from my students, who produced fantastic games and toys for this year's Digital Toybox  Summer Show:  www.thinkmakeplay.co.uk/show.

Life Project Exhibition at Space

Debut for "life but not" creatures in Space this evening, showing off their craftwork, flashing lights, squeaks and tweets.
http://www.spacestudios.org.uk/whats-on/courses/openlab-the-real-game-of-life-project
http://lifeproject.spacestudios.org.uk/

Creatures

Habitat

Playing with exhibits

Creatures tweeting

RAT RACE

Tested simple mobile app at the Digital Shoreditch Festival on Saturday 7th May, 2011.  Thanks to Chris Lane for organising the event since I was remote.

Rat Race links sms messages to a Flash client via SQL and PHP.  Players are represented by the constantly-orbiting rats, which they feed by texting the answers to clues.  This makes their rat grow bigger and faster.  The game screen also shows how many times clues have been answered correctly - represented by girth of small cheeses.

This screenshot shows the game in progress on Saturday afternoon.

The Real Game Of Life 2011

http://lifeproject.spacestudios.org.uk/


Interactive, living ecosystem of machine "life"
5/4/11 First meet-up

The Big Woolwich TXT Game

25th July 2009: Greenwich Heritage Centre, Woolwich Arsenal

http://bigwoolwichtxtgame.blogspot.co.uk/
Murder or misadventure? Be a time-travelling detective and contact the spirit world using your mobile phone. You have 1 day to solve the mysteries of 3 unexplained deaths at Woolwich Arsenal...
 
Commissioned by Stream as part of London 2012 Open Weekend in July 2009. This was a participatory art project that used story-telling and sms messaging to investigate the local area. Using mobile gaming technology, players took part in a game that invited them to solve a series of clues and discover an unfolding story along the way.

Facebook event: www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=117376467712

StreamArts Project: www.streamarts.org.uk/projects/big-woolwich-txt-game

HOW
Technically, setting up the sms system was fairly straightforward. I set up a txtlocal (http://www.txtlocal.co.uk/) account and used the developer API to send and receive sms messages using PHP CURL. The messages were then passed to an SQL database + site hosted for free on 000WebHost (http://www.000webhost.com/).
 
PHP scripts took care of all the logic - depending on which message was received, the ghosts in the machine would send back an appropriate response to the player.

The main difficulty with this sort of application is in designing the game itself. Messages sent by players need to be short and preferably one-word, aas the system uses simple string matching to discover what message has been received. Variations in spelling and lexicon are not recognised. Answers from the ghosts are limited in length by typical sms maximum - 160 characters. The system was deliberately designed to be used by anyone with the most basic mobile phone.

NARRATIVE
A huge amount of time and energy went into the story research.   Here are the initial instructions for players:

Detective, you are challenged to unravel the mysteries of three deaths connected with the Royal Arsenal over the last three centuries. You should have a map, a sheet of questions and a fully-charged mobile phone at your disposal.  There are some clues in the area, which we think may have been left by poltergeists, anxious to pass information to the side of the living.  If the spirits feel that you are a friendly presence, they may send you a message.

You can usually communicate with spirits directly, by texting a name, then waiting. (eg. BENJAMIN, GEORGE, ROSE)

They may ask you a question, in which case you should text back your answer in order to score extra points and receive more clues. They may direct you to another spirit, who you can choose to contact. They may direct you to a place where you might find a clue or provide you with useful information.


1777 Benjamin Blight died on board one of the hulks, huge prison ships moored on the Thames alongside Woolwich Arsenal. Prisoners doing forced labour were responsible for constructing fortifications at the Ordnance Storage Depot.
 
1833 George Bodle died in suspicious circumstances on his farm, but his son was acquitted of murder because of lack of evidence. James Marsh, ordnance chemist at Woolwich Arsenal, subsequently discovered a new method for reliably establishing whether arsenic was present in victim's bodies.
 
1916 Rose Clark was one of the "canary girls" who worked in munitions during World War 1 - so-called because the TNT they handled changed the colour of their skin to yellow and gradually poisoned them.

Global Game Jam LONDON 2009

48 hours of innovation, creativity and experimentation: the first ever Global Gamejam comprised 1600 participants in 23 countries including USA, France, Denmark, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, South Africa, Venezuela, Norway, New Zealand, Spain, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Israel, The Netherlands ... We hosted the London event.

"In a Game Jam, participants come together to make video games. Each participant works in a small team on a complete game project over the course of a limited time period, usually over a weekend. With such a small time frame, the games tend to be innovative and experimental.

"The Global Game Jam (GGJ) is the first of its kind: a Game Jam that takes place in the same 48 hours all over the world! The Global Game Jam will start at 5:00PM Friday, January 30, 2009 through 5:00PM Sunday, February 1, 2009, (all times local). All participants in the Global Game Jam will be constrained by the same rules and limitations, with each time zone having one distinct constraint."

from GlobalGameJam conceived by IDGA and its Games Education SIG

DETAILS
Shoreditch Building, 35 Kingsland Road, London E2 
30 Jan - 1 Feb 2009

You are a developer, a student, a programmer, a designer, a thinker, an artist, a musician etc etc. Come by yourself and form a team when you arrive.

Fri 14:00 Registration and social entertainment
Fri 17:00 Keynote and brief
Fri 18:00 Form teams and start jamming
Sun 15:00 Deadline for handing in - games uploaded to globalgamejam
Sun 16:00 Show-off and chill

We supply refreshments and snacks, breakfast on site, access to kitchen area, tokens for delicious lunches and suppers in Shoreditch. Bring your own laptop and software, wireless Internet on site.  Sleep? Forget it - go home or crash with a friend if your stamina runs out. Bring a fresh t-shirt. Open-access 24/7.

PHOTOS http://www.flickr.com/photos/thinkmakeplay/sets/72157613294689027/
VIDEOS http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=EC54B9F62CFC0CF5
DOWNLOAD GAMES http://globalgamejam.org/games  Filter for London
BBC ARTICLE http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/articles/2009/02/13/global_game_jam_feature.shtml

Grl Gmrs Tournament

www.thinkmakeplay.co.uk/grlgmr

The Rocket, Holloway Road - Saturday 25th Oct 08
5 games, 5 winners, 1 champion

Inviting all female gamers to an action-packed celebration of prowess in the virtual arena - the Grl Gmr tournament will kick-start the annual London Games Fringe, a week-long festival where you can enjoy all that is great about games and interactive entertainment.

Winners 2008:

- Wii Tennis - Simone
- Tekken 5 - Jennevive
- Unreal Tournament - Andy - Supreme Champion
- Kuri Kuri Mix - Andy
- Mario Kart - Jennevive

The event garnered positive press coverage from Dollymix, BBC London, Islington Tribune.  It also provoked an extreme reaction from dozens of game fan sites as soon as the press release went out. Thousands of posts protested about the very idea of holding such an event, siting reasons such as the inability of women to play computer games with any competence, the sexism inherent in a "girl-only" event, the poor choice of games on offer and the strange design of the flier...

On the other hand, Nintendo TV covered the event for their channel and the footage appears to show a mixed crowd thoroughly enjoying themselves.

Flickr pix

Dr Zoogles Bestiary

http://www.txt4treasure.com/

Dr Zoogle's dangerous bestiary escaped into Central London but intrepid treasure hunters tracked down some of the fiercest beasts over the weekend, during the London Games Festival Fringe.

The treasure hunt ran on Saturday and Sunday 27/28th Oct 2007, from 11am. There was no time limit, and everyone who reached the warm and exciting finish received a goody bag. Some teams started hunting on Saturday and came back on Sunday in the rain to finish. Dr Zoogle was impressed.

Winners and runners up have been sent a selection of games, including Sims 2, Fifa 08, Wii Boogie, Burnout, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell and Ghost Recon.

This event was sponsored by London Games Festival Fringe; developed in conjunction with Gamelab London (http://www.gamelablondon.com/) and Genius Telecom.

Gunpowder Park

A development for Lee Valley Country Parks, which was part of a range of projects under the banner "Fatband Revelations". This treasure hunt was designed for school groups and park visitors - to entertain, practise team skills, simple orienteering and promote environmental awareness.

Who took part?

Three teams from Ponders End Youth Centre in Enfield. The teenagers had to find out information about the Gunpowder Park site, using a combination of techniques.

Teams started at point X on the map. They had to find code numbers, which they texted to the game server. Then they received a message which comprised a direction + a question or an object to photograph.

They had to text an answer back to the game server and/or take a photo of the specified object. Then they followed directions to the next clue/code.

Rangers from Lee Valley Parks were acting as guides and providing information about wildlife in the area.

The game server kept a note of team scores. Extra points were added at the end when teams showed their photos.

Team kit:

Map of location, mobile phone, compass, polaroid camera, idenitfication sheet, answer grid.

The main aim for the youth group was to provide an activity for members that would be fun and encourage their team-building skills. Players were given feedback forms with their tea and biscuits at the end of the treasure hunt.

The experience made everyone talk to each other a lot, the team aspect was very positive, as were solving clues, being made to think and also taking pictures.   They did not like being outside - the youth centre participants were not warmly enough dressed for the circumstances and their enjoyment (especially the girls) was impaired by the weather.

Technical issues 
Oh yes, the server went down... so we had to replace technology with a human being.  This slowed things down somewhat, as one person was responsible for dealing with multiple text messages and had some thumb problems (only two).

PUBLICATIONS
French, F. (2003)  Revealing what is hidden: an environmental treasure hunt,  presented at ISAGA 2003, Kisarazu, Japan