So we’ve announced this on Twitter, Facebook and the newsletter, but as usual left the blog lagging behind lazily. What this means is: you probably already know what I’m about to tell you! But if you don’t, prepare yourself carefully. Because it’s quite exciting.
Okay, I’ll assume you’re ready. Our next event will take the form of a V&A Late. The Lates are a series of monthly events in which the Victoria and Albert Museum opens on a Friday evening and fills itself with a ridiculous range of exciting stuff to do. On Friday 26 March, from 6:30 onwards, the theme will be Playgrounds. The V&A and Hide&Seek have collected an absurd pile of games for the night: there’s parcels and hats and balls and headphones and dancers and music and secrets and sneaking and photographs and all sorts. So do come along!
Thursday March 11th, 2010 by Holly in blog | No comments »
In or near Manchester? Missed Larkin’ About last year? Oh no! But of course we wouldn’t be posting this just to commiserate with you and tell you what a shame it is you weren’t there - instead there’s a solution, which is to go to the second Larkin’ About instead.
Turn up at the Green Room from 6pm on Saturday 27 February (yep, that’s tomorrow), for a a mix of indoor and outdoor games, including Lumenatio, Congestion Zone, Privacy is Dead and The Forest Front Of Mancunia.
And then if that’s not enough to satisfy your game-things-in-Manchester desires, on 11 March, at Contact Theatre, it’s time for Play Space: The Beta Test. Play Space is a night exploring the potential for crossover between theatre and games (particularly video games). Details here; there’ll be a series of scratch performances of ideas related to the field, and one of them will receive £500 and a week of rehearsal space for further development.
(Not in or near Manchester? Then there’s nothing for you here, and the title of the post should have been a giveaway so you’ll get no sympathy from me if you read it all anyway.)
Friday February 26th, 2010 by Holly in blog | No comments »
Don’t forget - the next Sandpit is just a week away, on Monday 22 February on the Spirit Level at Royal Festival Hall. It’s themed around maps and territories, and there’s a huge number of great new games to play - for more details, see the event page.
Monday February 15th, 2010 by Holly in blog | No comments »
Are you in or near Manchester? Are you interested in pervasive games? If so, chances are you already know about Larkin’ About, a whole day of games running from midday to midnight, using greenroom as a base.
There’ll be a Journey to the End of the Night, plus quite a few games that Sandpit regulars will have encountered before, including another chance to play Nick Howard’s “Buttle”, previously seen only in Liverpool. More information on Larkin’ About’s Facebook group.
Tuesday December 1st, 2009 by Holly in blog | No comments »
One actor, moving in secret from town to town. Clues printed in a daily newspaper, letting people know where he would be. A substantial prize for whoever located him; hundreds and then thousands of readers following his exploits and trying each day to find him. Special trains from Victoria running to the seaside towns where he was due to appear! Fifty thousand people crowding into Richmond Park in a single afternoon, when his predicted route took him through!
The fugitive was “Lobby Ludd”, and his role was to drum up readership for the Westminster Gazette. Many thousands of players hunted him (and the spin-off Mrs Lobby Ludd), for many, many weeks, in surely one of the biggest pervasive games ever. The year was 1927.
The Lobby Ludd phenomenon is something we’ve been vaguely aware of for a while—it’s certainly one of the most remarkable precursors of the pervasive games movement—but I had no idea it was so huge until I stumbled across this astonishingly exhaustive article. Ten pages, complete with a recording of the special Lobby Ludd song, “sold as sheet music through the Gazette’s pages, and scored for a ukulele accompaniment”!
And while we’re boggling at pervasive games of the past, see also this article by the same writer, Paul Slade, on a 1904 Weekly Dispatch treasure-hunt that sent players digging up gardens across the UK—and other similar hunts, including a proto-ARG where the clues were concealed in a detective story!
“Before he could secure his prize, Randall had to narrow down the possible cities to Newcastle and Carlisle, rule out Carlisle by deducing that Tabritz’ foreign pronunciation of the city’s “Citadel” station could be mistaken for “the hotel”, find a district of Newcastle that sounded a bit like “Edward Green” and realise that the serial number Meggs had overheard must be attached to a lamp post. He then had to go to the Newcastle suburb of Jesmond Dene, find post number 6594, work out where the tube was buried in relation to that post, return to the site after midnight and – finally – dig it up.”
Wednesday November 25th, 2009 by Holly in blog | 1 Comment »
Just a quick reminder - there is a Sandpit TONIGHT, Monday the 23rd, at the Southbank Centre. Turn up from 6:30 to pick your games; play begins at 7pm, and the night winds on until, at least if the past is anything to go by, the dozen most persistent players get kicked out to finish one final game of Werewolf in the cold, cold winds outside.
There’s a translation theme, and a pile of new games - including a few from designers that are new to the Sandpit - so do come along and join in!
Monday November 23rd, 2009 by Holly in blog | No comments »
A pervasive game with an actual prize? Surely not! But yes: Hodder and Stoughton are promoting Stephen King’s new novel Under the Dome with a fortnight-long pervasive game where you can actually win real things.
The prizes (an advance copy of the book, a night in a luxury hotel) are all very well, of course, but what about the game? Slightly unusually for a pervasive game intended for promotional purposes, it’s really nicely executed. 300,000 words of the new novel have been divided into fragments; players can sign up to receive a fragment, and hide it wherever they like—online, physically, whatever they feel like.
Meanwhile, seekers are looking for the fragments, guided by clues on a map, working to piece together the book (or a version of it). The physical clues are mostly in London, but there are plenty of hidden fragments online as well, and if you sign up to receive one you can hide it wherever you like.
The game runs until the end of the week, with a live event (warning: facebook link) on Friday.
Monday November 2nd, 2009 by Holly in blog | No comments »
i heart tree by jonny2love.
Nothing planned for tomorrow (or today, if you’re reading this on Saturday)? Never fear: London will be home to not two, not three, but four pervasive-ish game-ish events from designers and artists you might know from the Sandpit.
Worried that your loyalties are going to be divided, and you won’t be able to decide what to do? Don’t fret - that’s covered too! Fire Hazard’s Dead Reckoning (zombies, nerf guns, Hampstead Heath) is comprehensively sold out, as is Coney’s Small Town Anywhere (hats, secrets, beautiful lighting). That leaves only two events you can actually go to, and those two don’t even clash!
Herne Hill, hunts, prizes and tunnels
In the afternoon, there’s a hunt around Herne Hill from Gethan Dick and Myles Quin (who brought Pulgar Libre and The Reality Reality Helmet Experience to Sandpits earlier this year). A specially produced map will send players around Herne Hill, uncovering clues at each location, and leading eventually to a final… enigmatic something… and a party in a tunnel.
The hunt is free, there are excellent prizes, and we’ve even heard rumours that the tunnel party will involve dancing to ukeleles, which is surely everything anyone could want from a Saturday afternoon.
Locks, keys, theatre and mystery
In the evening, on another side of London, Tin Horse Theatre will be putting on their new piece, Lock With Key, at the Pirate Castle Halloween Party. If you’ve been to a recent Sandpit you may know Tin Horse from The Interpreter; if not, rest assured that it’s a wonderful game and Lock With Key promises to be just as beguiling — albeit somewhat more mysterious, as we’re not actually allowed to tell you any more about it…
Friday October 30th, 2009 by Holly in blog | No comments »
Red Bow Tie by cspiegl.
This post was written by Nick Howard to share his experiences of running Buttle at the Liverpool Sandpit. Nick’s new game Manifesto will be running at the BAC Sandpit on Monday 19 October.
I’m honestly going to start this by saying that if I can run a Sandpit game, anyone can. Plenty of what I’d planned for my game (Buttle, at the Liverpool Sandpit on the 24th September) ended up changing before or during the show. I didn’t plan to wear a cummerbund and drink brandy. I didn’t plan to ruin a fictional engagement. I certainly didn’t plan to present anyone with a plastic leg.
I’m an English student, in my final year, at the University of Liverpool. I’ve directed a little student theatre—enough to know that bossing actors around is good fun. It’s probably no wonder then that my first game for a Sandpit involved bossing around the audience as well.
The idea was simple. Four actors pretend to be 1920s Wodehouse-style aristocrats, while fifteen players pretend to be butlers (complete with bowties-on-elastic). The actors give tasks to the butlers (’get me a drink!’, ‘find my umbrella!’) and, for their pains, the players receive tips: vast quantities of play money. The player with the most cash at the end of the game is the winner.
(more…)
Friday October 16th, 2009 by Holly in blog | No comments »
Photo by edmittance.
After a whirlwind tour of Sandpits from Cardiff to Edinburgh to Brighton, we’re back in London on 19 October for an exciting schedule of new games, old games, and games designed by some of the people we met on tour. Come along to BAC to form a bickering political partie, become a piece of bacon or a side-order of beans, enter a group therapy session, plot to denounce your enemies, and much more. There’s a full schedule here, so take a look, and do come along on the 19th if you can make it!
Monday October 12th, 2009 by Holly in blog | No comments »
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