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Paper Games and Why You Need to PLAYTEST
There are a million reasons why you can’t spend an extra hour running a playtest. You’re busy. You forgot. The game has to go live soon. You have to wash your hair. After 8+ years of gamebuilding, even I do it. It’s hard to spend an hour listening to everyone tell you everything that’s wrong…
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What’s a DESIGN DOC??!
PLUS: NEW GAME! Forest to Frigate at the USS Constitution Museum. Sometimes we build games that are mobile, sometimes location based, sometimes both. But there’s one thing that every game has in common and that is that it starts from a nice, clean, clear GAME DESIGN DOCUMENT! So what’s a Game Design Doc? It’s a…
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What’s a holodeck and what can we do with it??
This week my hubby and I got an invite that could not be declined: we were invited to try out Brown University’snew Yurt facility!!!! Who could resist a Yurt invite??! Not us, definitely. We would have gone at 2 in the morning on a Sunday if they’d asked us. We wanted to see this yurt!! So what’s…
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Who IS Building Stuff That’s as Good as Dave and Buster’s?
The last blog post, I whined a little and then I recognized an interesting design challenge: What can we in the Serious Play community build that’s as engaging as Dave and Buster’s– but maybe does something more positive for people than a say… a kid-friendly casino? I used my “goals/resources/restrictions” design process for sussing out…
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Dave and Busters…Can We Do Better?
Dave and Busters… can we do better? I’m not a huge fan of video games. I’m not totally against video games. I just like to move around and video games involve lots of sitting still so they’re not my jam. I do love a good arcade… like a boardwalk arcade where you can find an air…
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Games for Change Award Winners!!
What happened at this year’s Games for Change conference?? Swedish chefs, living Hamlets, new books, inspiring folks… all sorts of stuff. But here we’ll take a second to go over the three award winners from the conference… and attempt to edit video. Be kind.
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“These are a few of my favorite things”… of 2014
A Year in Review! Aka: my favorite games and culture stuff of 2014 HAPPY 2015!! I know… it’s February. I’m late… but I just want to talk about all of my favorite trends, projects and discoveries at the Labs of 2014 so I’m claiming February in-bounds! So, Green Door… what was new in 2014?? 1.…
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Modern Parlor Games! 6 of our favorite free games to play with group
A happy holiday season to everyone!! Whether or not you celebrate Christmas it’s very likely that you’re going to have time off and that you’re going to have to spend that time off with some people in a group. You may be indoors.. with museums, businesses and fun places closed and it being too cold…
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Dear Barbie, “coding is hard!” or… you CAN be a computer engineer but you don’t need to be to finish that game.
Dear Barbie, I know there’s been a lot of controversy lately about the cute puppy game that you designed and hired Brian and Steven to develop. You later claimed that you would learn to code because Barbie, you can do anything! Which is true, you can! But it’s going to take some time. I wanted…
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Location Based Games to Play in LONDON!
Cheerio!! I am BACK, blog! I was on a fabulous trip to London and Paris. While I was there I was on a hunt for games and activities that connected people with spaces and I have some great stuff to report! So read on to hear location-based, immersive experiences that you can play in Jolly…