Games at the Southbank Centre’s Festival of Death
January 10th, 2012
On the 28th and 29th of January, we’re going to be running some games as part of Death: Southbank Centre’s Festival for the Living.
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Tate Trumps Anywhere
January 4th, 2012
We’re excited to announce latest version of Tate Trumps – our iOS game that pits works in the Tate Modern’s permanent collection against one another. The big new feature in this release is Anywhere Mode, which lets you play Tate Trumps wherever you are.
Edinburgh Playtests
December 3rd, 2011
In Edinburgh? Available some time over the next few days? Fancy having some free fun, and helping us out?
Dreams Of A Game, Pt 2.
December 1st, 2011
The power of games is the problem of games. As Tom wrote earlier in the week, games gate progress: if you want to feel successful or find out the end of the story or have better stuff or see wilder worlds, you need to complete tasks. This makes them powerful motivators, and people operate – well – dishonestly in their presence.
Dreams Of A Game
November 30th, 2011
I have spent a lot of this year thinking about what would happen if I died. I haven’t been doing this in a cafe, staring pensively at my reflection as I drink tepid, tear-tinctured tea. I’ve been doing it at my desk, on company time. I have been doing it in front of white-boards, in brainstorms. I have written Basecamp notes on the conclusions I’ve reached.
Here’s why. In a few days, Carol Morley’s extraordinary documentary, Dreams Of A Life, is released in cinemas. You might have been lucky enough to catch its debut at the London Film Festival or seen the admiring reviews that followed. You may have found your way to Carol’s haunted and haunting piece on the event that it explores in the Guardian. It’s a film which tries to unfold the life that lay behind a single, terrible discovery: the skeletal remains of a 38-year old woman in a flat in Wood Green in 2006. She had been dead for nearly three years, but was found only when the bailiffs broke in to evict her. The television was still on.
Hydrocracker and Infinity Ward: gating in action
November 25th, 2011
Last week I went to see The New World Order, a production by Hydrocracker that adapts several short plays by Harold Pinter into a promenade format. As a designer playing it, I quickly became fascinated by its approach to managing the audience’s progress through space – and how similar it was to games.
Announcing: Dreams of Your Life
November 25th, 2011
We’re proud, delighted and honoured to announce our latest project, for Film4. They commissioned us to create a unique multiplatform experience to support the release of Carol Morley’s feature film Dreams of a Life.
The New Year Games: officially launched
November 11th, 2011
We’ve mentioned before that we’ll be in Edinburgh playing games on 1 January, but we had to be a little bit secretive. Now it’s official!The New Year Games will be running from 2pm to 6pm, with giant totems, fairground stalls, a cathedral, a museum, a minotaur, a hopscotch trail, invisible musicians and more. You can [...]
The Show Must Go On: our new game launches!
November 10th, 2011
We’re delighted to announce that we’ve teamed up with the Royal Opera House to create The Show Must Go On, a game for iOS devices (iPad®, iPhone® and iPod touch®) that puts the player in the shoes of an intrepid stage manager.
NMM Sandpit Photos
November 2nd, 2011
If you weren’t at last month’s Sandpit at the National Maritime Museum, then maybe you should steer clear of these gorgeous pictures.
The New Year Games
October 28th, 2011
We at Hide&Seek are thrilled to announce our very first game for next year. Early next year, in fact. Very, very early next year.
On 1 January 2012, Hide&Seek will be running The New Year Games, an amazing afternoon-long game across Edinburgh’s Old Town, as part of the annual Hogmanay celebrations.
The expectations of festivals
October 26th, 2011
Hinterland – a game that turns into a poem, or a game about cities and language, or possibly a poem that you play – was a modest success, I think. We had 227 players in total, of whom 72 made it past Canto 1, and nine hardy, wonderful players made it all the way to the top of Calton Hill and the conclusion of Canto 4.
Designing Games for Telephones
October 24th, 2011
Hinterland – a poem that you play – ran for two weeks at the Edinburgh festival. Over four cantos, players would seek out strangers meeting particular criteria (which varied per canto), and get them to help answer a questionnaire. Then, players would phone the Operator, and hand over their answers. The Operator wasn’t a human being, though: it was a piece of software. I wanted to write a little about the technical design behind the game: how we wrote a game for telephones, and the design considerations that went into it.
Sandpit at the NMM: Thursday 13 October
September 23rd, 2011
On Thursday 13 October, from 6:30 to 10pm, we’ll be at the National Maritime Museum for the last Sandpit of the year! We’ve got the run of the whole museum, so we’ll be filling it with all sorts of strange games and exciting corners, in honour of the opening of the new Traders wing…
Take Me To Your Scientist
September 6th, 2011
Ever wanted to save the Earth from invading aliens? And/or: ever wanted to wander around part of the Science Museum at 11pm at night? Either way, now’s your chance: on Wednesday 28 September, we’ll be running a brand new game at the Science Museum from 10pm to midnight, as part of the Player live gaming festival.