It’s now the weekend after the week before – 5 days of energy, collaboration, creativity and no little mental and physical effort that was Crossover Play this year.
I just wanted to give just a brief write up of my week and of the 7 main pitches that were given – all of them brilliant in their own way; and something that I think all 24 delegates should be collectively proud of. These ideas were everyone’s babies.
In no particular order…
Peggle and Pooples and You
A console based ‘learning through play’ game for pre-schoolers. Using a small camera mounted on top of the TV, children were projected into Peggles world were they were invited to trace out forms and shapes. (Huge respect to Mark Sorrell of Freemantle Media who in the pitch played the most convincing 4 year old I have seen in many a day.)
Writer’s Block
Game installation with RFID enabled cubes that represented different (and ever changing) words. Players had a limited time to build a sentence before their cubes were shaken off. A fun and involving activity with a serious point – helping people to understand what it might be like when Alzheimer’s strikes and you lose understanding of forms and your short term memory.
GagTag
SemaCode encrypted clothing and other wares, containing secret messages that were only revealed when photo’s of the tag were MMS’d to the decrypting shortcode. Players could stitch up their friends or more subversively make making trouble by getting their tags out at political rallies, celebrity events or any other places people will be with camera’s. (Thanks to Andrew and Jeremy, my partners in crime on this job)
GroundHog Day
IPhone-based ‘ARG-style’ game where players are trapped in the same space and ‘day’, coming across the same characters and scenarios again and again, where a change in their actions of decision in any one sessions can dramatically alter their whole ‘day’.
Talkies
Recordable, RFID-enabled pet toys which could be programmed (and reprogrammed) to play audio files to a pet when they come in proximity with their toy, either to provide just fun, provide comfort or give a warning.
I’mDivorcingYou.com
Top-Trumps style card game where the aim was to try to win the most ‘stuff’ by trumping the other players with your ‘gripe’ cards. ‘Stuff’ won can also be used as weapons to vindictively destroy the other players earnings. Online, users could create their own personal deck with their real stuff and gripes, and a social network module allowed the turn-based game to be played globally.
These were just seven of literally dozens of initial ideas created during the first half of the week. Apologies to the final ‘project owners’ if I have scrambled any of the ideas a little – that comes from a scrambled mind – I am sure all of us experienced that to some degree over the week.
Other projects that didn’t get finally developed (including some of my personal favourites) included:
- Goat vs Goat – a goat-racing game (obviously)
- I am Cancer – Isometric browser game where the aim is to smoke yourself to death by persuading other sprites in the game to take up the evil weed.
- Big Bounce Off – Using the big BBC screens to play games of volleyball (and other motion games) directly against other cities across the UK.
- A Mile in Their Shoes - App that reconfigured Facebook to appear for us all in the same way as it does to sufferers of dyslexia, colour blindness or many other learning or sensory issues; with the aim of en-masse usability testing and interface requirements to make the service more accessible.
A big thank you to all the other Crossover Players who were at Cranthorne last week, an amazing mix of talented people who allowed me to get some new and very different perspectives on how to approach thinking about and then creating/developing new ideas.
And of course, a big thanks to all the mentors, Frank, Heather, Margaret, Matt, Peter, Matt and also Adam Cassels who helped us regularly late into the night on making our often vague ideas come visually to life.
Thank you to you all.
