Tweetakt – Leapfroglog

Week 181

And then all of a sudden there’s only a few more weeks left in the year. As is usually the case at such a time I’m trying to tie up as many loose ends as I can before taking a one-week break between Christmas and the new year:

I worked with Alper, Simon and Bernard to get the last PLAY Pilots addition out the door. I did a final assessment of the work my students did for Pampus. I worked with Wieger and Sylvan to tweak the very last test they’ll be doing for the Learning Lab metagame…

And then there’s new things, such as Maguro, for which I wrote a briefing and drew up contracts. And Tweetakt 2011, for which I had another meeting to go over production details of the various works on display. I also talked with Ianus and Alexander about the next editions of This happened – Utrecht. So 2011 is a lot on my mind already.

I don’t know if I will keep on keeping these notes next year. I want to free up some time to do other writing, and I think a better place for these status updates is the Hubbub blog, since I have more or less phased out my freelance practice this year and so don’t work under the Leapfrog moniker anymore. We’ll see.

Week 180

Last week was packed again. When a few last minute meetings get squeezed in, it usually means trouble. Week number 180 was no exception, which explains the absence of a weeknote on friday. A quick rundown of stuff that went down:

Wieger and Sylvan worked on a prototype of the Learning Lab metagame, which we presented on friday. Got heaps of feedback, now all that’s left to do is: do a last live test, document the design, write up things we learned throughout the project.
Together with Irene I spent time detailing a storyboard for a video sketch for project Buta. We met up with Hein on friday, to see if he could be assist us, since he has mad video and motion graphics skills.
Properly kicked off Maguro on thursday. More on that one soon.
Did a review of the Pampus project, which is coming along nicely. This friday I’ll do the final assessment of the project, and the week after it’ll be presented to the client so the heat is on.
We did a “pants down” release of the Bandjesland additions to the PLAY Pilots website. Shame’s a good motivator, so now we have a real incentive to tweak it so we can announce it officially this tuesday.
I wrote some descriptions of the interactive work that’ll be on display at Tweetakt 2011.

Week 179

Another quick weeknote, things are simply too busy. I was going to attend the STRP conference today, for example (which looks great) but have had to cancel. Too much to attend to.

So what’s up?

We ran This happened – Utrecht #8 last Monday. For a great impression of the evening read this report by Iskander. Video’s will be up soon at the event’s page.
Work with Alper, Simon and Bernard on the last of the additions to the PLAY Pilots website. The project is nearing its end as the last live game will launch tonight at Le Guess Who?
A full day of meetings and a session with the Pampus student team at the HKU. I also had the chance to discuss the next steps for project Buta (you know, the thing involving pigs).
A trip to the Graphic Design Museum to discuss the challenges of exhibiting games.
Some work with my interns at Hubbub on the Learning Lab metagame. They’ve built a great paper prototype; we’re going to play it today.
And some talk in between about what happens after PLAY Pilots, as well as about the interactive program for Tweetakt 2011…

Week 178

I have developed a sort of routine when it comes to writing these notes. I usually sit down on friday morning and bang them out in around half an hour. The trick to a lot of the things I do is developing habits. Others would call it OCD.

But whenever something other than the ordinary stuff happens on friday, it’s a challenge to still post weeknotes. This was the case last week. I was at Game in the City to see Keita Takahashi speak and also participate in an invitation-only workshop with him. A great experience all around, Takahashi-san turned out to be a bit of a philosopher, an interesting combination of a super-serious and very playful personality. The signed Katamari disk I took home is a perfect souvenir.

Week number 179 has taken off already, so I’ll have to keep this short now. The most important things to report are that I worked on the Bandjesland additions to the PLAY Pilots website with Alper, Simon and Bernard. The game had a test-run last friday and we’ll be doing a test of the data import this week so we can tweak and tune before the whole thing goes live coming friday.

Furthermore, I spoke at an event for middle school teachers on wednesday, where I proposed a traveling games studio that would partner with teachers and students to make games about a variety of subjects (anything really). Got some nice responses afterwards, which was heartening. Slides and notes will probably show up once things calm down a bit on the Hubbub blog.

Aside from this I worked on Maguro, the Pampus project, Tweetakt 2011 and the Learning Lab project, and took care of the last preparations for This happened – Utrecht #8. The latter took place last night and was a lot of fun once again. Bring on the rest of number 179!

Week 171 & 172

I have a lot on my plate at the moment. A bit too much it seems. So it’s a good thing I got to wrap up a few things in the past two weeks…

Most notably Maguro, for which we presented our design to the client last wednesday. We gave away quite a show, including music and spoken word performances. The whole thing was well-received.

Another delivery of a kind was This happened – Utrecht #7. Never before did it take us so long to complete our speaker lineup. It’s an experience I would like to prevent in future, but we couldn’t really help it. As a result, I had very few expectations about this particular one, but it turned out great. We even managed to try out a few new things. A new clock, and a new “badge” (actually a button). Good stuff. Some nice reports have been written about it, too.

More deliveries, at the Netherlands Film Festival we had a good run with PLAY Pilots live game number two: De Stereoscoop by Zesbaans. We managed to get some nice publicity, we had it set up at the closing party and lots of people played on it. Good stuff.

Apart from this I have been busy finding projects for Tweetakt 2011’s interactive program, and managing the Pampus group project at the HKU.¹ My interns at Hubbub are also plugging away at the Learning Lab games, they delivered their second one last week.

Good grief. No wonder I was a little sick and had to take a day off yesterday. I’m hoping to take a it a little bit easier the coming period. No idea how, though. Any ideas?

The group is blogging, too, by the way. [↩]

Week 169

Fiona Raby once told me that the majority of her work with students at the RCA was about psychology. After a week like this, I can see where she’s coming from. Without going into too much detail, I had my work cut out for me with a new group of students who I will be working with on a design research project at the HKU. After a first meeting with the team and a kick-off with the client the next day, it became clear I was dealing with a group with some serious motivational issues. The trick was to figure out where it all was coming from. To do this it was vital to try and see things as they really are in stead of as they were presented to me by the group. After several additional sessions (messing with my schedule but that comes with the territory) I had it figured out more or less and have formulated a plan to deal with it. Psychology.

In between all that craziness my week consisted of:

Working with my two new interns at Hubbub. We reflected on their experiences at the Natural Networking Festival and presented a post-mortem of the first game to Thieu after attending one of the Learning Lab meetups.
Sketching out additions to the PLAY Pilots website necessary to support the Zesbaans installation for the Netherlands Film Festival. These will launch next week in time for the installation’s unveiling on Thursday.
Presenting my preliminary list of interactive works suitable for next year’s Tweetakt festival. This is my first time curating an event other than This happened. I am keen to mash up playful interaction design with the fringes of game design and it seems Tweetakt are up for it too. Happy days.
Another full day of work on Maguro. Best part of which was a few quiet hours to bang out a first playable paper prototype of the game. Convergence is a bitch but always rewarding when it happens.
Today, I hung out at BUROPONY and took care of a few odds and ends for their website. In return work has started on a last bit of Hubbub corporate identity: a design for the box to hold our business-slash-collectible playing cards.

And with that I am signing off. A train is taking me from Rotterdam to Utrecht, perhaps I will be in time to catch the tail end of friday drinks at the Dutch Game Garden. Never a dull moment there.

A quick look at Tweetakt’s playful installations

Tweetakt is happening in Utrecht at the moment. It’s a youth theatre festival, really pushing the limits of what we think that means. As an example, they’ve provided space for several installations at the festival centre on the Neude. I went over for a quick look today – even though I know most of the creators personally and am familiar with several of the pieces. They’re all free and open to the public, so if you’re in the area, you should go too.

Knikkerbaan

Made by a few principals at the Medialab Utrecht. Push a button and a marble starts rolling down a futuristic looking track. Halfway through it enters a scanner of sorts, and is converted into a virtual counterpart visible on a screen, only to emerge physically after some time again. At the end of the track, you get to keep the marble.

It’s hardly interactive, but does look kind of impressive and of course, marbles are always fun.

Kleurkamer

A new version what is becoming a classic by the troublemakers at Monobanda. A beamer, a white decor and wiimotes enable you to paint with light. It’s a simple premise, the execution is serviceable but the result is quite magical. The addition of white jackets for people that want to become part of the canvas is a real nice touch.

Blockblazers

Made by my friends at Fourcelabs, this is the one that hasn’t the benefit of a spectacular physical shape but is the most fun to play. It’s a competitive platform game playable with eight people at the same time with some clever social and physical touches. Scoring points is rewarded with a big photo of yourself that is shown for a few seconds, and the game wraps around two big screens that are back to back, forcing you to move around and compete with the other players for physical floor space.

It’s nice to see this kind of stuff at a theatre festival. I hope the pieces will do well – despite the fact that not all of them have been placed and presented to the public in the best way – so that we’ll get more of this stuff in the years to come.