A late entry reflecting on the goings on of Igfest.

 

The fact that Igfest was free to all was something we both took great pride in, especially when promoting and communicating the events to members of the public and volunteers alike. The pioneering nature of an event such as Igfest whose aims are to highlight public participation in street games whilst making both players and games designers more aware of the alternative uses of public spaces. I felt the offer of this to members of the public through the opportunity to take part in a variety of events over the weekend without the burden of a price affixed to that experience, consequently resulted in it being more accessible to them. This ethos was also transferred to the volunteers who did not feel like they were selling or forcing something upon people, everyone who was involved were beacons of positive energy who transferred there own positive experience on to others. The learning experience of the event was not just limited to member of the public, residents at the PM Studio, games designers and multimedia practitioners alike were also given the chance to experience different approaches to locative based experience, taking away with them an awareness of the alternative approaches to game play management.

Moving away from experience, it was fantastic to have such a diverse range of games, allowing people of all ages, all abilities and all attitudes the opportunity to embrace the philosophy behind the weekend. Not only have I received positive feedback from participants of these games, I have also had many of the volunteers approach me to tell my what a great time they had being involved in the operation of the weekend. For example binocular football at the wrap party was one of many opportunities made available to those involved in the festival; making sure that we all had fun and experienced the games first hand. I felt that the volunteers were easy to get on with, positive and reliable and their personalities helped the promote and further the message that at no age are we too old for fun. There was at all times an energetic, enthusiastic and affectionate attitude throughout the whole group, stemming from the top, again this was transferred to those who attended the events or just popped in to the Iglounge to see what was going on.

Due to the nature of the festival both George and I were limited as to the amount of games we were able to actively participate in, during the run up to the festival I assisted in generating interest in Call and Return and George mapped out two routes around Bristol for players of Locomatrix.

The Locomatrix treasure hunt used mobile telephones to track the route taken by the players and gave clues to the whereabouts of the final destination. The plotting of clues in the run up to the festival was as much fun as the game its self, as an author of a route it made you more aware of the local environment and pushed you to look at the city in a much more detailed way, as apposed to rushing to your destination, which seems to be the way in which, as residents we mostly use Bristol.

Call and Return, a game in which players communicate through an online micro blogging platform called Twitter, encourages creativity and expression through the linking of other social networking sites such as You Tube or Twitpix (a picture blogging application linked in with Twitter updates). The game was launched simultaneously in the UK and Japan and thus strives to combat issues prevalent in cross language communication and cross country collaboration. Call and Return is an emergent game, thus the rules of the game are as important as the freedom offered to the players; the freedom given to players breeds/develops the rules. Initially each player was set five tasks to complete during the Igfest weekend, however, as the weekend came to an end, the game did not, the game designers listened to the feedback from players (including myself) and missions were extended to allow those too busy at the weekend, or those new to the game to complete them at their leisure.

Call and Return's use of Twitter is similar to other experimental uses of micro blogging such as Small Places or Slice, both of which are novels written using the 140 character limitation of a Twitter update. The limitation of a micro snippet of information such as this encourages people to be more inventive in the way in which they communicate feelings and events, deviating away from a more formal approach to written language, resulting in sentences which are similar to language used in mobile phone texts where words are appended, purposely miss spelt and abbreviated.

I am able to talk about both Journey to the Middle of the Night and Sneaks and Blaggers first hand as I was involved as a Chaser in the previous and a bell wearing blagger in the latter. Both games used the surrounding environment as inspiration in addition to being key elements to the game play, most notably Journey drew on the environment as inspiration for check point clues and activities, 175 people searching through a sand pit in castle park was a sight to be seen! Sneaks and Blaggers drew on the quiet nature of the car park in which it was held and was popular with players because of the simplicity of the objectives and the similarity to games of which it was developed from; a giant game of hide and seek where you can only go up stairs and down slopes just like in Snakes and Ladders. Both games stand as testament to what you are able to do with public spaces, which as a result of the nature of their use tend to be used less after night fall.

The experience as a whole has motivated us to look at experience in a completely different light, a basis for our research and development here was to try and move our work away from the screen and keyboard, the events at Igfest have certainly whetted our appetite for this.