Monthly Archives: April 2014

Team Building can come in all shapes and forms. At The Go Game, we find opportunities to casually build community wherever possible. Regardless of politics, one of our favorite office activities is commandeering our A/V gear for big screen showings of historic events. Above you can see Sasha and Zach in our “Go Game casual” dress enjoying the inauguration of America’s 44th President. Actually, they happen to both be working in this particular photo, but we’re sure some small part of their conscious was enjoying the proceedings. Other events that have brought us all closer together have included: The 2008 Presidential Election (on a related note) Josh Hamilton’s 28 home runs in the 2008 home run derby The Webby’s

We here at The Go Game love bringing our innovation to other folks offices. We might not be quite at Dr. Seuss’s level (see awesome Lorax chocolate statue below) but we think we’re pretty close. We also, of course, love bringing innovation to our own office. For a while, we were stocking a bowl with local treats as a reward for hard work. Of course, you end up eating a piece everytime you pass by, and soon you find yourself eating 10 pieces of delicious San Francisco chocolate a day. We’ve since switched to local treats of a different kind – organic fruits and snacks! We are a San Francisco business after all… if we weren’t biking to work and then creating corporate chaos over a bowl of biodynamic almonds, it just wouldn’t seem right.

Today Chris and I ran a game for a bunch of kids from Berkeley CA and they single-handedly restored our faith in people under the age of 21. Not that we subscribe to the belief that all kids are rotting their brains on GTA and The Hills, but today was proof positive that the youth of the East Bay have some serious chops. There were 5 teams playing, and each of them basically tore up The Go Game. All the scores were HIGH – they played hard, and smart. But even more impressive were their creative missions. The videos rivaled anything we’ve seen from big name ad agencies or high-powered law firms. These kids came up with some fantastic ideas and executed them to a T. Right from the beginning of the game, we knew it was on — they mastered the technology in like 2 seconds, read the missions like they were Jon Stewart and took off in a dust storm of positive teamwork. Amazing stuff. So…thanks guys. You made our weekend in a Big way. Here’s a photo of Team Bossy — the winners. WOOOOOOO!

We meet every Monday morning for a State of the Company meeting. If you’re ever in the neighborhood at 10 AM you should come visit! In what promises to be an exciting recurring feature we went around this morning and talked about what songs were stuck in our heads. Naturally this lead to The Go Game Monday Morning Meeting Music Club! Here are the songs that were trapped in our head this morning:
Roxy: The Wire Intro Song (Season 4) Chris: Dead Milkmen – Punk Rock Girl Finn: Juana Malina – Un Dia Lisa: Anita Ward – Ring My Bell Erin: Hot Chip – Ready for the Floor Zach: Notorious B.I.G. – Going Back to Cali Ian: Los Pollitos Melanie: The Killers – Human Alli: The B-52’s – Rock Lobster Sasha: Journey – Don’t Stop Believing Andrew: Bloc Party – Always New Depths
Andrew’s selection is particularly funny given that Always New Depths is on The Go Game’s “Young Hip Mix.” It’s a part of our sound effects package put together by the incomprable former Go Gamer Brent Schulkin. It usually starts off all of our judging ceremonies so it’s a pretty good bet that it’s stuck in at least one of our heads at any given moment.
We’ve put together a Youtube playlist to help you waste more time at work…enjoy!!

If you live in the bay area and you didn’t make it out to our San Francisco Community Game this last weekend then you sure missed out on something special. I even participated myself and our team was the first losers or second place, but that’s not really worth mentioning, the real people worth mentioning is team Treehaus. Their shenanigans helped their team bring home the prize of a $100 gift certificate at Poleng Lounge and the coveted Go Game 1st place trophy.
Also if you haven’t noticed our blog has been updated so we can hear from all of you lovely people out there on the inter-web. Just sign up using the link on the left and you lovely people can prove you’re wittier than our finest go game minds (please don’t make us look too bad). You can also subscribe to our RSS feed for anyone that uses readers out there.

If Sasha and Malia, with alllll the resources of The White House at their disposal, chose to do a Game to meet the White House Staff and explore their new home… we think that speaks for itself. Of course, “Scavenger Hunt” is a dirty word around these parts. It’s a 13 letter word, along with Sl****k****ed and Pre**********, and my favorite: Qu*********** . To be clear – we don’t make Scavenger Hunts, we make High Tech Urban Adventure Games . Scavenger Hunts are like, so 80’s. Like most of the people who work here !
In conclusion, we can sum up what we do (fittingly enough) with just one photo:

So when I’m writing a new post I like to think of it as my own personal journal entries. I like to picture myself as a modern day Mr. Belvedere. Well, minus the moustache and sweater, but I’m working on that moustache part. A month of not shaving and I’ll have a stache that rivals that of a fourteen year old.
Actually now that I think about it they aren’t my own personal journal entries since everyone can read them and I’m not the only person that can post things here. But anways, today was a big day for us, we ran our largest game ever today, with about 3,000 players we took over downtown Dallas. I’ll wait to talk on that later once absolutely everything is wrapped up, but the judging should be commencing soon. And speaking of big days, just earlier this week I became an uncle! My sister had an adorable little girl named Zoey. I can’t wait to get out to meet her soon.
Some other big things that are happening this week: Today is Abraham Lincolns 200th Birthday, Singles awareness day is celebrated this Saturday Feb. 14th, and this month is also Black History month.
(Edit: I have also discovered that this is Bacon Stupidity Month! Mmmmmm… Bacon.)

Greetings, Go Game blog runners from Southern California’s most perdurable game runner. Now in my fourth year, I just pulled off a first-ever game, along with my rookie (eg only 2 1/2 years) colleague Greg S. We created a tailor-made community service themed Go Game for a client. Based on our #1 game zone down here, Santa Monica 3rd St Promenade (still featuring clues written by Ian and Finn from way back in the day!), the game had all the usual Go Game hallmarks like goofy location based puzzles, local attractions, and hilarious camera missions. But we also sent our teams to spots around the area where they helped pitch in. Here are the places our players volunteered:
Heal the Bay (picked up trash on the beach– heaviest bag gets the most points, but no fair tipping the scale with derelicts) National Resource Defense Council – helped environmental action group by adding names to mailing list Ocean Park Community Center – offered aid to those down on their luck in Santa Monica, helped sort mail and cleaned out clothing room Friends of the Library – followed the librarian’s directions… quietly… and helped shred mounds of documents Santa Monica Shelter – kitchen patrol! Mopping, cooking, chopping, mooking (?), and whatever else Chef Craig told them to do Westside Foodbank – teams had to make Amazing Race-style deliveries, dropping off care packages to Step Up on 2nd and other charitable organizations around the promenade Find the Children – hand out leaflets with missing kids to passersby on the Promenade Santa Monica Senior Center – square off against a real live senior in a game of Boggle. Beat the senior for bonus points, you young whippersnapper
It was a big project that required a lot of organization (which I don’t mind) and a lot of getting permission (which is a drag; there’s always someone higher up who has to green light it). But we pulled it off! It didn’t hurt that the client was eager, gung-ho, and really nice. I can’t remember the last time we had such a success as measured by the compliments from the players, and considering how many things could have gone wrong that was a big relief. So now that we know it works… why doesn’t your company try it?

The internet is a brave new world – need we say more? I travel all the time (one of the many cool parts of this wonderful job) and I often find myself in need of a restaurant recommendation in a strange city. And when I do – there’s pretty much one place I turn, to yelp.com We recently had a chance to come in contact with these lovely, intelligent (and unfortunately impossible to bribe) folks, and they of course used yelp to review us… publicly. Which is a little scary, to be sure – but freedom of information is what the internet is all about, right? So, if you don’t believe our sales “pitch”… if you don’t believe your friend/coworkers who played and had a great time… maybe you’ll believe the people who’ve taken the time to yelp us?

Go Gamers Andrew, Chris, Finn, Ian, Mark, Mei, Melanie, Myles and Roxy faced a dilemma at 1:30 am last Thursday. You see, we had just finished packing all of our gear up from the 3000 person event (which you can read about below) and had to be ready for a 4 am ride to the airport. Did we sleep? No! Did we sit around and talk about the game? No! Did we hit the bar? Sort of! Actually, Myles grabbed his jump rope and, capitalizing on his status as “The Most Popular Man At The Conference,” he got the attendees to show their moves. We posted up outside of the hotel bar (Silhouettes) and, made lots of new friends – like Double Truck, Tara, Lil’ Boots, Kali, Gravity and, of course, Tony Tuesday. One thing is guaranteed, if you bring us to your convention we’ll keep it jumpin’ jumpin’.