Week 156

I’m writ­ing this on a train back from Berlin after a won­der­ful few days mak­ing games with Alper and play­ing games at Play­pub­lik.

Last week start­ed with some work with Tim on Cer­e­mo­ny of Sur­prise. We’ll be run­ning the game at Hide & Seek’s Week­ender. I’m huge­ly excit­ed about this. We’re tun­ing the game a lit­tle and mak­ing some adjust­ments so that it is suit­able as a drop-in game.

On Tues­day I head­ed to the Uni­ver­siteitsmu­se­um with Stef to show him the cab­i­net of curiosi­ties where Beesten­bende is played. Stef will be mak­ing a short pro­mo video for the game, so a site vis­it was in order. He can now come up with a plan for the video.

I did­n’t do this for a while, but on request from the Dutch Game Gar­den I post­ed the slides for my Sum­mer Talk to SlideShare so they can be includ­ed in the forth­com­ing report of the talk on their website.

On Wednes­day, I hopped on a train to Berlin and en route reviewed stu­dent papers.

That after­noon, I Joined Alper at his stu­dio. After a late lunch we got crack­ing on the final fix­es for Beestenbende.

Work on that con­tin­ued the next day, cul­mi­nat­ing in a ver­sion that is all ready for sub­mis­sion to Apple. So we can now for­mal­ly wrap up the project. Of course we’re not done as such — we’ll help the Uni­ver­siteitsmu­se­um with launch­ing the game and the PR around it.

Hav­ing reached our mile­stone we then rushed off to The Com­put­er­spiele­mu­se­um for the open­ing of Play­pub­lik. The fol­low­ing days were a won­der­ful mix of meet­ing with like­mind­ed play­ers and mak­ers of street games, lis­ten­ing to talks and of course play­ing games. High­lights included:

• Our Bro­ken Voice by Cir­cum­stance
• This Land is Your Land by Coney
• Star­ry Heav­ens by Eric Zim­mer­man
• Hit Me! by Kaho Abe
• Tiny Games Tour by Hide & Seek
• Charge of the Rub­ber Ball Brigade by Greg Tre­fry

If you get a chance to play any of these, don’t hes­i­tate to grab it.

I con­tributed to the fes­ti­val with a talk on Pig Chase, and par­tic­i­pat­ing in a pan­el dis­cus­sion on gam­i­fi­ca­tion. Mean­while, work con­tin­ued on Pig Chase. Alper was hack­ing away when­ev­er he got the chance.

So now I am on my way home feel­ing a bit tired but at the same time ener­gized. Eager to get keep push­ing ahead on the games we’re making.