Keith (one of our acquisitions crew) posted a link on our library blog today to an amazing, spontaneous, accidentally educational, treasure hunt game that some person (I’m still trying to work out if she’s actually a librarian or just an interested student) created in her local academic library.

Coreopsis Major left clues in the form of call numbers at her library, at first on tables, then leading to books at various locations around the library, to take the finder of these clues on a treasure hunt around the library. Eventually, there’s treasure at the end.

(I borrowed these pictures from Coreopsis Major’s page on SFZero, go check out her project!)

Coreopsis was playing SFZero, a kind of Alternate Reality Game. In this game, players create “Characters” who perform all kinds of “tasks” out in the real world in order to obtain completion “scores” when they report back their progress on the website. In many cases, the tasks, submitted by other players to the game, are simple, yet ambiguous, designed to allow players to exercise huge amounts of creativity. (more…)

Today I visited my very first Digital Media Design class: the wonderfully talented people from DMDN285, Game Theory.

Doug Easterly, the course coordinator, invited me to say a few words to the students who are just beginning group projects in which they will work together to create their own original flash videogame title. (more…)