If you have a chance, come check out Come Out & Play SF 2012, bringing city-sized fun to San Francisco this December 1st and 2nd at the SOMArts Cultural Center at 934 Brannan St.
The Go Game has been a key participant in Come Out & Play since its first festival in New York City in 2006, and Come Out & Play’s mission of bringing games and play to public space has always resonated closely with ours. This year’s festival will be a ton of fun, and any fan of the Go Game will find a lot to play and enjoy.
This year, members of the Go Game have FOUR games in the festival! Our co-founder, Ian, created Alphabet City along with his 10-year-old daughter Lilah. It’s kind of like I-Spy for letters, built on the Go Game’s real-world game engine. Players search throughout the surrounding area for letters to photograph. The photos are shown off in a rotating photo slideshow at the Go Game gallery. Classic gameplay with a techie spin — super fun for young kids!
Ian also created Pinkball with Heather Browning: a hilarious and energetic game involving enormous pink bouncy balls and long wooden sticks, and featuring the “slappyface rule”: each player on the team can opt to whack a teammate with the ball one time in the course of the 15 minute game.I (I’m Gabe! Hi world!) also have two games in the festival. The first, Undercover Assassins, went down this past Tuesday at the Trader Joe’s mall at 555 Brannan. Undercover Assassins is part of a local group I organize called Undercover Street Games that regularly transforms public spaces into “incognito playgrounds.” We run variants of well-known games like Capture the Flag, Assassins, relay races and easter egg hunts, in busy public places like malls, tourist spots, and plazas. All are for large groups: 40 to 150 players. And all are undercover: you can’t do anything to reveal you’re playing a game. No running, no shouting: players must remain hidden. This creates this incredibly blurring of game and reality, where you’re not sure who is in on the game and who’s just a bystander. Check us out and be sure to join our facebook group and email list for upcoming games! They’re all really accessible and family-friendly.
The second is The Hearst Collection, which was open for a public preview last week and is opening for private tours during the festival on December 1st and 2nd. I needn’t say much about this, as the reputation of the Hearst family surely precedes it, but we’re really lucky to have such a fine gallery of exquisite art joining us all the way from Hearst Castle in San Simeon. A special security system has been installed to protect these masterworks — the Hearst Security Group prides itself on having never had a painting stolen from one of its galleries, despite countless attempts.
There are dozens of other games in the festival, all worth checking out. Jericho, by Shannon Bruzelius, is a thrilling spy game with subterfuge and secret deliveries, along with a healthy dose of out-and-out NERF gun combat. Sixteen Tons is an elegant and striking installation game by Eric Zimmerman and Natalie Pozzi. Channel your inner cowgirl in WANTED by Catherine Herdlick, a text message based drama set in the age of the Pony Express. And be sure to check out the mind-bending Third-Person Outer Body Labyrinth by Jason Wilson, where you complete challenging puzzles while your vision is channeled through goggles that show you a third-person view of yourself. It’s wild. Hope to see you there!
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