In this awesome new street game, small teams compete to collect Kensington properties and develop them into expensive lofts and swanky coffee shops. But watch out for the team of angry locals, bent on thwarting your efforts in an attempt to save the market from certain doom.

What: With your teammates, you’ll run around Kensington market, scouting properties, strategizing, and negotiating with other teams. Your objective? Build fancy stores, raise property values, make $$$! Or, if you are super lucky, you will be the secret team of locals, charged with protecting the market from these evil developments. Along the way there will be art, vicious debates, and possibly an Apple Store.

When: 2pm, Saturday March 6, 2010

Where: Bellevue Square (that little park in Kensington market), around a sidewalk chalk map of the surrounding neighbourhood.

How long: The game will proceed in 5 rounds, lasting about an hour.

What to bring: A digital camera (camera phones are cool too, as long as they aren’t super low res)

Questions? kate (at) k4t3 (dot) org

[RSVP here] (Facebook) or email kate (at) k4t3 (dot) org

Stick around afterward to discuss the game, and help improve it!

(We’re preparing this game for Come Out & Play 2010 (http://comeoutandplay.org/), the awesome street game festival in NYC!)

Shared Patio just reached 20,000 thoughts, so this seems like a good moment to say something about.

Sharedpatio.com is a concept site that kind-of sort-of explores the ideas that (a) no thoughts are unique, and (b) everyone is sad and alone, especially people who use the internet. The site tells you that someone, somewhere is thinking the same thing as you (maybe); just between you and me, though, this is probably not true unless you’re thinking “god does not exist” or “I love you.”

I generally don’t pour through these whisperings, as that would be a profound abuse of my position as well as probably pretty boring. But it is interesting to look at a few and get an idea of how people are using the site. Which is interesting, because this is people typing into a textbox without a clear practical function. This is not like sharing a confession, or searching for something, it’s… whatever someone wants to think. But the interface is familiar, and that it makes it easy.

What do people type into the textbox? Disregarding the trolls, the two popular behaviours are to declare something to the world, and to desperately seek an escape from destiny. The popular words in the lower left of the homepage (which have varied only slightly since the site began) are also fairly illustrative.

In any case, why not try it out?

Come join us again as we play the Sport of Kings/Queens on the streets and footpaths of central Fremantle! It’s just like normal Capture the Flag — except in the middle of town. Hurry through the cappuccino strip, evading the other teams’ guards. Run with flag in hand past King’s Square. Plan ambushes with your teammates, using Freo’s malls, laneways, nooks and crannies to your advantage.

Why? To have fun, of course!

SUNDAY AUGUST 2, 4PM

KING’S SQUARE, FREMANTLE (see map below)

If you’d like to come, an RSVP on the Facebook page is appreciated.

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This is a cross-post of the guest blog I wrote for Pervasive Games: Theory and Design.

Come Out and Play, an annual festival of pervasive games, was held last weekend in NYC. I was lucky enough to attend in three capacities: as a game designer, as a volunteer helper, and as a player. Though this meant I didn’t get to play as many of the 33 games as I would have liked, it was a great joy to get a multifaceted look at a pretty fantastic event.

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This year we had the honor of running a game at the Come Out and Play festival, and the game we made was Paparazzi. Forty players turned up to run around through Times Square — in the rain, no less!

The winning teams:

First place: Red Jaguars

Second place: Bay Area

Third Place: High Fructose Corn Syrup

We owe a big thanks to our volunteers in New York, especially since the game design required a high level of involvement from them, and thus could not have done this without their help:

Aaron Krasnov
Catherine Blanksby
Christoph Schmaltz
and particularly Emily Kornblut

Also a huge thanks to our Toronto play test volunteers: Luke Walker, Istvan Dugalin, Helen Li, Jo-Anne Raynes, Raymond Goldie, Wes Handren, Eddie Farrell and Trevor Haldenby.

See you next year, Manhattan!

Come join us as we play the Sport of Kings/Queens on the streets and footpaths of central Fremantle! It’s just like normal Capture the Flag — except in the middle of town. Hurry through the cappuccino strip, evading the other teams’ guards. Run with flag in hand past King’s Square. Plan ambushes your teammates, using Freo’s malls, laneways, nooks and crannies to your advantage.

Read the rest of this entry »