Playful

Famous Last Words

2009-11-06T13:40:46Z

A bit of a nightmare situation with the wi-fi meant I couldn’t get on Wordr all day and feed my new monoblogging addiction. Frankie and the boys at Rattle fixed up Wordr especially for our little conference, and made a sort of one-word only event back-channel here.

What Wordr does, which is brilliant, is is collects everyone’s words into an event specific ‘vocabulary’ – a word cloud if you will. It’s pretty obvious that Wordr has a predominantly English user base since the public vocabulary consists mainly of the words ‘tea’, ‘tired’, ‘waiting’, and ‘beer’.

I’m really proud though, that as well as ‘tea’, one of the most frequently used words at Playful ‘09 was ‘eargasm’. Here’s the full vocabulary from Playful this year, and here are my favourites:

1. Eargasm
2. Competitive Picnicing
3. Barnestorming
4. Ageingnerdmarket
5. Fightingandkilling
6. Fingeredfromabove
7. Amateurormad
8. Dataporngods

You can join Wordr nice and securely through Twitter. Just click join here. Picking one word is harder than it looks…

Playful: An Illustrated Account

2009-11-05T15:36:42Z

Check dis (via Nick Marsh and his pen and notebook, and Flickr):

C’est magnifique! Although it’s gutting that Nick missed the last session. Partly because he should have been there, but also I would have loved to have seen his take on Rex. Possibly, that could have caused a paradox of live drawing, which would have been a first.

What Happened? [Part 3]

2009-11-05T16:33:24Z

21. Nicholas ‘Feltron’ Felton sent us a message in the early hours of Friday morning with the terrible news that his place had been grounded (he was flying in from New York especially, you see). There was a resounding “bugger” from all of us as he’d been on our list since before Playful ‘08. His Feltron Annual Report get more incredible every year, and we were looking forward to ‘getting off’ on graphs, and laughing. As a consolation prize, Nicholas has been kind enough to upload his presentation for us all to enjoy. Enjoy (zip). Enjoy (PDF).

22. So we moved Rex up to where Nicholas was supposed to be. He didn’t mind. And we presented him with a cake, which made him very happy. Rex did all the drawing for this year’s Playful ‘09 and we wanted to show him how much we love him for it. We also got him an OHP so he could draw his presentation, live. Probably the most original and funny I’ve seen, Rex talked about his love of drawing, and how it doesn’t matter if your drawings look weird. He also talked of selling his flock of sheep to buy an Amiga and getting into game design. If ther was ever one talk I wish I’d got a video of, it was this one. For an inkling of what it all looked like, look at the top of this blog post or go here for more pictures.

23. “Indie game creators live in a world of love,” says Simon Oliver – a man with a smile on his face, and the man behind one of the loveliest, simplest and addictive iPhone games: Rolando. Simon delivered a really refreshing take on game development, about not worrying about GAME DESIGN too much, but mucking around and experimenting and prototyping until you find THE FUN in the idea, and develop that.

24. Tim Wright went on a big adventure, and made me want to go on one myself. He picked out parts of his journey following the route of Robert Louis Stevenson’s book Kidnapped, mapping his journey on the web with GPS, a flip camera, and an iPhone. My favourite bits were the random bits – like the guy who turned up to follow the journey, and ended up riding across a lake in a boat owned by the landlord of a pub, the same pub where, in the book, the protagonist rides across the lake in a boat owned by the landlord. At least, that’s how I remembered it. Tim showed a picture of the guy looking so unbelievably chuffed in a way you don’t see everyday. Marvellous.

25. This is Chris O’Shea’s project called Out Of Bounds. Chris showed us some of his interactive digital art projects, which were duly wowed at by everyone who’d ever wanted e-ray specs. There’s a link here between Russell’s Power Of Pretending and Out Of Bounds. You know it’s not really real, but how big is the part of you that wishes it was?

26. A queue of people wanting to take balloons to the pub with them, and one person wanting a bunch for her Hallowe’en party. Cutting them off and handing them out, I felt like a clown at a party.

27. Going to the pub is always good at the end of a long day where your limbs hurt and your brain is full. Especially when you can talk to the people you only had chance to say a quick “Hello” to while running around a conference. I discovered Budvar ‘Half & Half’, which helps me skip over the inevitable “Oooh, shall I go for Premium or Dark Czech lager?” part of my evening.

And that’s it, I think. My Playful in 27 points. Here are some more folks talking about what they got from the day:

Libby Davy
Suw Charman-Anderson
Roo Reynolds
Leila Johnston
Lawrence Chiles

Also, it’s just occured to me that it would be impossible to recount EVERYTHING that was good that people said on stage, so instead I’m gathering up all the presentations and will find a way to present them on here very nicely…

What Happened? [Part 2]

2009-11-04T17:20:13Z

11. Robin Burkinshaw & Matt Locke. Blimey. I heard a lot of gasps and little OMGs from the crowd behind me during this one, as Matt Locke read excerts (beautifully) from key points in the Alice & Kev story, asking Robin to give his personal reflections on the project, the process, the meaning, and the future. It turns out that Robin wants to work on more ways to explore homelessness through games, and that Matt (who commissions for Channel 4 Education) is after a project on the subject. Big win for both, and big applause from the crowd. Massive applause, with a couple of “whoops”.

12. James Bridle makes books and the internet into friends. He was going to talk about that, but then realised that James Wallis did so at Playful ‘08. So instead he took us on a journey into ‘Awesomeness’. And the journey was awesome, in which we learned that it is possible to make a computer that plays Noughts & Crosses out of 304 matchboxes, but that to make the same machine play Go would end up rather large. Explore for yourself at the wonderfully rendered A New Theory of AWESOMENESS and MIRACLES (Being NOTES and SLIDES on a talk given at PLAYFUL 09, concerning CHARLES BABBAGE, HEATH ROBINSON, MENACE and MAGE). Here’s a photo of James with MENACE (Matchbox Educable Noughts And Crosses Engine) taken by Roo Reynolds:

13. Katy Lindemann hit the spot while talking about changing behaviour using play as a catalyst. Lots of fine examples from the artistic (little robots lost in New York) to the big brand stuff like Fiat’s driving data interface or VW’s recent FunTheory experiments. Katy admirably resisted talking for the entire 20 minutes solely about robots, but robots played a big part in everything, which isn’t a bad thing.

14. Tassos Stevens is a veritable magnet of a man, and without the aid of visuals, talked to us all about cricket being a very ambient, punctuated game unlike any other sport. I don’t like cricket, but I know for a fact I’m not the only one who’ll be tuning into The Ashes whenever it’s next on. The theory is, that it’s a very long game…played over days, so you can’t watch the whole thing anyway. Once you’re over that hurdle, you can dip in and out. You can listen to it on the radio, or tune into a live blog of the action and engage with the audience. Also, the way that cricket is scored means that the end reult can be unpredictable. If a game of footie is 82 minutes in and one side is 3-0 up, they’re generally going to win. But in cricket a good bowler could be a crap batsman, so it could be up to him to save the entire game. It was clearer than that when Tassos said it, honest.

15. Lunch – I was starving by the time lunch came around. There was a bit of jiggling to be done on the laptop to get the Playgroup showreel working properly with the projector versus screensaver, but we got there. There were raffle tickets in each lunch bag, and the winner has been picked here. It wasn’t my number. It never is. Also, apologies to the people on the balcony who got blasted with the new Do Make Say Think album – I didn’t realise how loud the speakers were up there compared to downstairs. Sorry.

16. Russell Davies is known far and wide in the land as a very very interesting chap. His talk was more like stand-up, with the biggest laugh of the day coming from his observation about the Bourne films being only very little about Fighting & Killing, but being mostly about Moody Commuting. Similarly, this is the pie chart representing what you do when you buy a really expensive pilot’s watch:

The key phrase that hit me from Russell’s slot was “High Pretending Value”, because you can’t go to work dressed as an astronaut, but you can wear lots of velcro and nobody notices you pretending.

17. Molly Ränge came all the way from Stockholm to talk about the Scandinavian serious games scene. This is something I knew nothing about, but it seems that there are groups over there doing great social and political things using playful experiences as the catalyst for public engagement with issues.

18. I really really like old TV. I find most modern TV utterly crap but with high production values. Old tele (and by old, I mean late eighties/early nineties for me) had just the opposite. Low production values, but great and immersive stories. So, when Duncan Gough started talking about how game narratives and game worlds could benefit from being more like Press Gang or Kes, I was hooked. As Leila has since said, “Gough talked about how to render and realise a fictive world so perfectly absorbing that it feels like it’s carrying on around you, even if you stop playing.” See also: Archer’s Goon, Moondial, Watt On Earth.

19. Above is what 40 or so bus stops around London will look like in 2012 when Alfie Dennen & Paula Le Dieu have had their way with them. They’ve just got the go ahead from the Artists Taking The Lead project to turn 40 bus stops around London into a networked LED display system for social art and gaming experiments. They told us about their plans, and made a call out for interested parties to get in touch.

20. Afternoon tea. Can’t beat it. I’m having one right now.

Coming up in Part 3: What happened between Part 2 and the end of the day.

What Happened? [Part 1]

2009-11-04T12:53:28Z

I’ve now been sent more than a handful of accounts of what happened last Friday…so I’m going to do my own version with some links in it here…

1. Unwrapping the newspapers, as I’ve already said, was brill.

2. A line of people out of the building and up the road. Rather than the usual drifting in and finding coffee, there was a massive line of people. It was like being at HMV at midnight when some hyped up rubbish is about to come out and let everyone down (but not rubbish, or a let down, obviously).

3. Roo Reynolds. There he is in the picture at the top of this blog post. Roo talked about films and games, and games and films, and why the transition one way or the other is never quite as good as you’d think. Highlights from this talk were:

a) Being reminded how awful that game sequence in the film version of The Beach is, compared to how good it is in the book.
b) Mocked up covers of Withnail & I (XBox Live) and The Big Lebowski DS (subtitled: Somebody pissed on my rug man)
c) “Tetris: It was a time of WARRRRRR”
c) Minesweeper: The Movie (see below)

True to form, Roo was the first to clock in with his version of events which you can read here. He also announced his new games podcast with Leila Johnston entitiled Shift, Run, Stop. We’re going to check it out right now.

4. “One thing I’ve realised is that the web doesn’t smell.” New technology wisdom from Toby.

5. Leila Johnston. Leila read from her book Enemy Of Chaos and focused on the aspects of “entropy, disorder, and cryogenics, and therefore death.” Leila’s book sounds very funny. I don’t think Waterstones of Derby will be cool enough to stock it, so I’m going on the internet for it when I get me pay through this week. Leila also takes away the Shrewd Observation Award for looking out at the crowd and noting that “there is such a thing as an ageing nerd market”. Leila’s thoughts, and further inspired musings on some of the other talks can be enjoyed here.

6. “There are no funny games.” Controversial, I know. Toby said this after Leila’s talk. I’m not so sure. I thought the first two Monkey Island games were funny for a start. Discuss.

7. Kareem Ettouney. No slides, and no script, Kareem’s talk was a bare bones, honest, and mainly improvised exploration into why it’s really important to step back from a project, do your own thing for a while, consider the low points as a necessary part of the journey of creating something big and new and brilliant, and give other people ownership. Kareem is the Art Director for Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet – one of the most cuddly, customizable and collaborative games (in both development methodology and end product) ever, so hearing him speak about his emotions in this role was really interesting and made me feel okay about having personal-creativity-low-points from time to time.

8. Daniel Soltis. From tinker.it, Daniel showed us some of the playful things his tinkered with and made fun. The highlight was a wedding gift he’d made. The gift was inside a beautiful wooden box with a silver push button on it to open it. Push the button, open the box – but only if you’re in the correct place in the world. If you’re not, the LCD display tells you how many miles you are away from the correct position. The correct place in the world was a place of emotional significance for the married couple, thereby taking them on a journey to rediscover a part of their relationship together. Magical.

9. That first tea break, and realising that our volunteers were so damn good that there was literally nothing for me to organise apart from myself. The wi-fi was really bad, so we couldn’t get Wordr on screen like we’d planned…but hey ho.

10. Lucy Wurstlin talked about 4ip, and the things they’re doing. There’s a new game on the way that is supposed to be the most terrifying and immersive text-based experience yet created in the world. Lucy also said “thankyou” using a picture of a tank and a yew. Nice.

Coming up in Part Two, other things that happend parts 11-20.

Chip Wrapping

2009-11-03T13:21:09Z

As we’ve ranted on about loads over the past few weeks, we got a newspaper done for Playful with the kind and gracious help of the folks at Newspaper Club. This was exciting for loads of reasons…we like those chaps, we’ve been collecting the papers they’ve been doing and watching closely for Alpha invites in our inboxes, and we like doing stuff.

I think the Playful programme was the first EVENT paper they’d done (we were closely followed by The Rebel Alliance who did one for Saturday’s Spurs and Arsenal game) and we thought we’d weigh in having a newspaper versus a paper programme…

Designing a newspaper is fun. Really fun. There are big pages and the knowledge that this pure white InDesign background will come out slightly faded and inky and everything that’s good about physical stuff.

Designing a newspaper is hard. Pretty hard. Those big pages can be hard to fill. Luckily, we had lots of great speakers to nick material from that we copied and pasted in. In hindsight, my favourite page was the Jim Rossignol page seen here:

I think the Newspaper Club super-auto-website-power that they’re building will be a bit like the way this page was produced – take a big load of copy, fit it onto the page in a way that looks good and reads well, put a nice headline in a big font, print. It’s simple and, because of that, I think it’s the most effective.

Photos come out a bit dark. I made some fake polaroids for the speaker pictures and boosted the colour to make them less digi-polished. These came out the best. The digital photos and screenshots used elsewhere came out a bit darker than expected. Again, this might be something that will be fixed behind the scenes when you press PRINT on the Newspaper Club web-machine. Or it could be my fault.

Getting 500 newspapers delivered is really cool. I had a morning paper round, and an evening one, and occasionally a Sunday one. I also worked in a petrol station where I had the distinguished responsibility of counting newspapers when they were delivered, snipping the lethal plastic wire stuff that they come wrapped in, and putting them in piles for display. All the best bits about this history came back to me on the morning of Playful. Maybe this is a personal thing, perhaps even a stupid thing, but it’s a good thing. I don’t think I’m alone in this one.

Newspapers are expensive. Well, custom niche ones are. We couldn’t have done the Playful newspaper on our budget without the help of Newspaper Club. The chaps have written on their blog frequently about thinking very carefully about doing a newspaper. I’m really really looking forward to seeing the price list for the different launch options. I hope that the deals they’re doing with printers make it possible for more people to use the newspaper medium for their print projects. I’ve designed magazines, zines, books, posters, record sleeves, stickers, t-shirts in the past, but nothing has ever equaled the feeling of chuffed-ness that I got from unpacking the Playful newspapers, handing them out, seeing people read them. There’s something about the newspaper that makes it more portable than other print formats. You can fold it and screw it up and drop it and leave it somewhere and pick it up again and, somehow, it’s still there, it’s still readable…

Massive thanks to Newspaper Club for working with us on this. Massive.

A Million Times Dank Jij

2009-11-03T11:42:56Z

Seriously, thankyou so much to all the speakers, sponsors, volunteers, attendees, groupies and roadies that were involved in this year’s Playful. It was a grand old day, and we’re now wading through the tweets and blog posts and generally walking around with a “pat on the back” kind of glowy feeling. To quote Katy Lindemann:

Stonking

Things on the to-do list this week include gathering up all the presentations that our speakers are uploading to their blogs and Slideshare, emptying our cameras of photos, uploading the photos to Flickr, talking about what we’re going to do with Playful in 2010, and resisting the fresh packet of Milk Chocolate Digestives currently sitting opposite me on Toby’s desk…

There is also an imminence of blog posts. Is that a word? Imminence? Do blog posts have a collective noun to describe a group of them? If not, from now on a group of blog posts shall be referred to as an ‘imminence’…

The Order Of Things

2009-10-28T17:36:03Z

And there it is, and that’s what’ll happen and when. We can’t bloomin’ wait. We’ve also made a nice Google calendar programme here. Take note!

Live This Friday, Sold Out

2009-10-26T09:23:08Z

On Sunday afternoon somebody bought two tickets for Playful ‘09. They were the last two tickets. Well done that man. Achievement Un-flipping-locked!

So we’re all set for the big day on Friday. The newspaper is nearly ready to go to print, the stickers are on the way, Rex has his Over-head Projector to draw on…all that’s left to do is lock-down the details so that there’s no panic in the car on the way south on Thursday afternoon. Cripes.

But, hang on, there’s a couple of e-mails waiting for me this morning. Seems there’s a few folks a bit gutted about missing out on tickets…and Conway Hall does have a balcony…and these people have asked really nicely.

We don’t like saying “No”, so we’re making some more tickets available. But only a few ya hear. And you have to sit on the balcony. Ok? Deal. Go here for the very very very last few tickets.

Holy Molecules of Media Batman!

2009-10-23T09:06:59Z

For the past umpteen months we’ve had a slot in the programme reserved for Media Molecule – one of our favourite companies in the games industry. Their game ‘Little Big Planet’ came out the week of last year’s Playful, and since then we’ve watched them build and build on the most love-able game-world around.

The other day we got an e-mail letting us know who from the company would be popping along to talk to the ever-growing mass of Playful people. Safe to say, we’re chuffed over the moon to play host to Media Molecule Artistic Director, Kareem Ettouney:

Kareem’s passion for the possibilities of user generated levels and all the other wonders Little Big Planet offers is really inspiring. Check this interview in Edge. We’re not exactly sure yet what Kareem’s going to talk about but frankly we don’t care – whether it’s developing an art style for LBP, the way they go about creating sticker packs, or his new book. He’ll be on early in the day as he’s got to bop off to the Golden Joystick awards where he’s also speaking…and probably presenting as well as receiving awards.

Grand.