Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

What? Afternoon Play: boardgame larks in a lovely coffee shop
When? Sunday 7th November
Yes but when? 2-5:30pm
Where? Urban Coffee Company, 30 Church Street, Birmingham, B3 2NP

Inspired by our Midland neighbours over at Gambling Lambs we’ve decided it was high time to host a boardgame event of our own in the West Midlands so are pleased to announce our upcoming lazy afternoon of play on  Sunday 7th of November ‘Afternoon Play‘ (see what we did there ….. sigh* yes I know its not the best name, but we can work on that alright?)

We’ll be bringing along some German classics such as Catan & Carcassonne but you’re welcome to bring along your game of choice. Although we’re selling this as a boardgame afternoon if there is anything else you’re keen to play (safely) within the confines of a coffee shop then let us know.

You don’t need to sign up anywhere but as this is the first one (please note mild insinuation that if all goes well we might repeat said event) it’d be good to get an idea of rsvp numbers on this here facebook event page. So pack up your zocchihedron, bring your friends, meet some new ones and come join us on Sunday the 7th.

This event is brought to you in association with BARG http://barg.org.uk/

I’m not a core gamer, I’m not a casual gamer I just like to play and so the Eurogamer Expo looked to me a lot like the above diagram for the second year running. Yet just like last year I found sanctuary in the fuzzy embrace of Mudlark’s Indie Games Arcade.

This year I mostly liked Hohokum, B.U.T.T.O.N,  Nidhogg (aka ‘Stabby Stabby Game’) and of course Frozen Synapse (yes I’m biased, but still it deserves it).

And to reiterate: Kinect is a bit rubs.

All good…? now take 6 steps back and touch the thighs of the person stood next to you….

at the Urban Coffee Company. Full details and sign up is available at www.projectbrutal2.eventbrite.com

I’m finally putting my money were my mouth is and have organised a meeting to rally people around ‘Project Brutal’ an idea to create a series of events and projects that celebrate and capture Birmingham’s Brutal Library whilst we still have it. The initial meeting is being held on the 20th of April at the ever delightful Created in Birmingham shop and anyone with a passion for the library is welcome to attend.

Full information on the initial meeting can be found on the eventbrite sign up page… and there’s more info over on the tumblr I’ve set up to track the project.

Any questions then just drop me a line!

After ranting last November about the decision to not list the iconic Birmingham Library building, I’m back on the war path, albeit a creative and productive one. I won’t go into the full ins and outs on here, as I’ve set up a tumblr to help channel the project into one low monthly payment, or blog if you will.

Basically the idea at present is to find like minded people and creative networks/ groups keen to work together to organise a series of events and activities to celebrate, enjoy and capture the library before it potentially meets its maker.

I’m going to be joining the people dots with a meeting in mid-late March and will post the full details on here asap. So if you have any sense you’ll head over to the tumblr site and sign up!

pip pip

The workshops where pitched at a good level, not starting right at the bottom and assuming a basic understanding of electronics (an understanding I didn’t have). But I didn’t mind as this made the workshops more sociable as others who did understand helped us laymans muddle through together. I merrily ended the day knowing how to power and programme enough lights and buzzers to earn instant gratification and get thinking on how to implement this into something fun.

It was interesting to hear the more experienced hackers present their work at the end of the day, and that even at this level a lot of people felt compelled to apologise and confess that they hadn’t written all the code themselves or had copied circuits from others, as if it was somehow cheating to not be able to claim ownership to every step of the process.

I know I was suffering the same needless sense of guilt in the workshops and it was reassuring to hear those more experienced feel it too. It reminded me that most people aren’t experts, we all need to start somwhere and we’re all learning as we go along, sharing our ideas and projects so we can take and re-appropriate these to make them our own. Because I don’t want to be an expert….actually that’s a lie I secretly wish by some magical fluke I’d turned out to be a programming and electronics genius, but that’s impossible and besides the point…Because you don’t ‘need’ to be an expert to play, and now I can.

Last stop was the Eurogamer Expo in London. I won’t go into a highlights list as I’m sure the diagram above does a good enough job of summing this up. I’ll admit that I’ve been a light weight this week and was on game/play overload at this point so I’m sure the expo wasn’t just the incomprehensible brown blur of boys, bombs, boobs, blood and guns that I remember.

But what I do remember was the Indie Games Arcade upstairs, providing an eclectic respite and creative safe haven featuring titles such as Joe Danger, Time Fcku, Fig. 8. You can read about more of the games featured and the Indie arcade here (I’m particularly sad I didn’t get to see the responses elicited by the Happening Game, but David’s write up goes some way to consolling this)

Again its a shame that so much was overlapping last week, but on the plus side running up and down the country (okay so only from Nottingham to London) to events made it feel like the country was buzzing with excitement and love for games and I only hope this feeling lasts.

And on the 3rd day Marie uprooted from the Midlands and journeyed down to London for Playful 09. And it was good.

Highlights (in order of how legible my notes where)

+ Free red liquorish rope at registration

+ Kareem from Media Molecule talking in regards to managing a creative business/team by incorporating ideas of ownership, responsibility and encouraging personal projects.

+ Robin Burkinshaw talking about the history of Alice and Kev

+ @stml calculating the odds of Christ’s resurrection at 96 billion to 1, then going on to present his analogue matchbox computer that takes on players at noughts and crosses.

+ Learning via Russell Davis that the world’s largest model railway is in Hamburg (I <3 model villages & railways)

+ @rexbox ‘s retro projector presentation  (took me back to sitting at the front of assemblies at primary school and having to move the hymm sheets up and down  and usually back to front).

+ The way the lights reflected on the balloons at the end of the day creating evil smiles. Can’t find a photo to adequately demonstrate this so here is a doodle I did during the day.

I’ve had no intertubes for the past 4 days so my blog posts are suffering from a bit of a time delay.

Highlights (in order of when I remembered them)

+ Pretty much all of the GameU talks.

+ Wanting to bang my head against the table listening to Feargal Sharky’s variety of metaphors for piracy, chairs, trees and aids featured.

+ then Adam Atomic bringing some sense into the piracy discussion, and also stating that Canabalt’s iphone piracy levels were only 15%.

+ Hearing about Rex Box’s favourite childhood game (a cross between blob of dirt on a car window and space invaders)

+ Jon Burgerman agreeing to cry for  £1 at his sale on Saturday.

+ Deciding to stick around an extra hour to catch Robin Hunicke’s live projected performance of Flower in the Exchange Arcade.

image c/o Game City