About

Hide and Seek

Hide and Seek is the first pervasive games festival in the UK. It ran for the first time in May 2007 out of the BFI Southbank. It was supported by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation.

The Sandpit

The first Hide and Seek festival was based around online collaboration.
Numberous groups and individuals came together, uploaded ideas for games, and built a great festival with only a handful of physical meetings. This was partly because we didn’t have very much money but hey, it worked.

The Sandpit is the public version of that ethos: a social hub where anyone into games can share ideas and engage in an open design process.

Anyone can submit a ruleset, and games will then be selected for playtesting at a monthly event at The Shunt Lounge. Players can provide feedback on the game (in any media format) and the designer can iterate the ruleset to improve play.

The website will also be a forum for game news, event publicity, essays, and related chat.

As the name suggests, we aim to foster a sandpit culture where all are welcome as long as they play nice. International designers, artists, media organizations and brands will all be invited to come and play.

Pervasive Games

Pervasive games, also known as augmented reality games, city games or big games, are old forms of play fused with new technological possibilities. They can vary from scavenger hunts to imaginary tours of Baghdad to games of benevolent assassination. Most share these principles:

• Integrating real-world play with digital technology
• Engagement & social contact through game narratives
• Using the city as your playground
• Transforming urban spaces into cinematic & theatrical stage-sets

More soon at hideandseekfest.co.uk.