The Watchers: A Game About Privacy

The Watchers is an augmented board game, co-designed by a team of kids, which teaches online privacy literacy skills to children 8+. Learn more at Gaming Privacy. A really nifty part of this project is that it is an augmented board game, as in you need the board game and iPad to play it.

Found this good little description of the game on their website:

The Watchers takes place in an inter-dimensional town called Union City. Tasked with protecting the city is a secret arms-length government agency, made up of the top agents from each dimension. The team must investigate a number of mysterious events surrounding the town’s hat-based augmented reality network, known as Hatnet. Through these investigations, players learn a number of real-world privacy concepts as well as developing their critical thinking and risk assessment skills.

The game comes out mid-May and I’m really looking forward to it!

Found via the great people at Atmosphere Industries.



May 7th, 2012 by admin

Board Game in Regards to Jam and Lessons


First off, a big congratulations to the Board Game Jam participants on creating over 20 board games in under 48 hours! The wrap-up post has more info on the greatness of the event as well as the media coverage the jam got.

Following the enthusiasm for board games I updated the relevant resources section.

Relatedly, I found in my archive (as I try to record more things here rather in nebulous locations) a podcast from Three Moves Ahead that looks at what lessons we can learn from board games.

Computer and boardgame designer Paul Sottosanti joins up Soren, Julian, and Rob to discuss how board games are evolving, and how their design philosophies differ from computer games. Is the popular success of games like Catan something that will lead to wider acceptance of board games in general? Why do Julian and Paul love drafting mechanics so much? How does the transparency of board games change our relationship to them in comparison to computer games?

Link.



March 1st, 2012 by admin

Famous Architecture: The Board Game

NEXT Architects have created a board game!

The game is focused on the great buildings and quotes from the world of modern architecture. It even has cute little model buildings that you use on the board.

The Modern Architecture Game is the second edition of the architecture game. The first edition was launched on 30 August 1999. It was the first project collaboration involving the four partners at NEXT architects and was distributed in the private environment of Delft University of Technology.

Ten years later, we’ve produced a revised version of the game, analytically unravelled and improved. This edition is an international version, in the sense that it is produced in English, but also that the questions range right across the breadth of modern world history.

Thanks to Charlie (who found out about it at TAXI)!



February 4th, 2012 by admin

Board Game Jam 2012 Will Rock Your World!

The second annual Board Game Jam is happening next month at George Brown College. It’s going to be an awesome time when you can start a board game on Saturday and play it on Sunday night with your friends.

Check out the announcement of Board Game Jam 2012.

Your going to want to get your ticket as soon as possible as the early bird tickets are selling fast!



January 24th, 2012 by admin

ePawn Merges Board and Digital Games

 Recently I wrote about the appeal of the physical aspect to board games compared to the equivalent game on the iPad.

It’s timely that I just found out about the ePawn, which looks to connect the digital and tactile realms of gaming in a cohesive experience. From their site:

Real objects
Get back to real feelings, touch real objects and use them as the most natural interface with a system.
Instead of having 3D screens, have real objects on a screen: is there any better 3D than real 3D?
Real Time
ePawn’s tracking solution is fast.
Objects are seamlessly tracked by the system and they can even be used as devices for action games

Check it out in action:

ePawn is looking for a release in the second half of 2012 and until then all we can do is speculate. There are so many questions I have for ePawn, well I’ll just have to wait. So it goes.

I was surprised to find out that they aren’t using RFID and have created their own propriety system of unit detection and placement.



December 15th, 2011 by admin
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