So the Thing I’ve kinda-sorta talked around for the last couple weeks is this: I want to make games that can be played as part of daily life, integrating themselves seamlessly into your walk to work, time spent waiting for the check at the diner, train ride, or whatever else you happen to be doing. Quick and easy to play, with simple rules and little or no equipment needed, they should ideally be the sort of thing you begin playing by deciding to play. You make a choice while coming out of the station at 14th to start following a certain set of rules, and suddenly your walk to work is a little more interesting than everyone else’s. Provided they’re not playing as well, of course.

Taking a page from experimental-game-a-month guy Petri Purho of Kloonigames (and having finally read the same excellent Gamasutra piece that started him down this road a year or so ago, ‘How to Prototype a Game in 7 Days’), there are certain rules this project is going to follow:

Each game will take a week to make. Each prototype should be “done with bugs” in seven days. The rest of the month can be spent testing and tweaking, if necessary, but the heavy lifting should be wrapped up.

Each game will be based on a theme. At the start of each project (except for the first one), I’m going to draw that game’s theme out of a hat. If you’d like to suggest something, drop it in the comments for this post.

Each game can be played in the real world. Each game should be something you play in physical space, either alone or with others. They don’t have to be outside – if I can make a card game, I’d love to – but the idea of changing mundane spaces into games is one of the prime motivators at work here.

Each game will be available to play once it’s complete. Games are meant to be played, so after each one is wrapped up the rules you need to play it yourself will be posted here under a Creative Commons license or something similar. Even the bad ones. Which leads nicely into…

Failure is an option. This is less of a rule, and more of a mantra for myself – I have a whole crippling fear of embarrassing myself in public thing going on, and this is the next step in the on-going struggle with it. Even bad games can lead to better ones down the road, and nothing helps me think about what works better than seeing what doesn’t.

And that’s it, mostly. More rules may come as they become apparent, but for now I think that’s a pretty solid base to launch from. I don’t know if this sort of things needs a name, but the phrase “Opportunities For Play” has been rattling around in my head since the notion first struck, so why not call it that? It’s as good a name for what I’m hoping to create as anything else – I’ve been more than a little in love with the French Situationist idea of the Dérive for a few years now, and this is just another way of rethinking the way people use the urban spaces around them. I’ve no idea where it’s going to go, or if it’s going to work at all, but even watching it all crash and burn is such a better alternative to just sitting on the idea that there’s really no choice at all. The first game, the one that started this whole thing, starts soonish. Watch this space.

Filed under: Opportunities For Play