Photos from BARG

It looks like Alternative Reality Games are going to be big in Birmingham this year. Here's a handy primer. See also <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game">Wikipedia's entry</a>.

A Tetris clone for OS X. Should you need a major distraction. OMG, what have I done...

is a cool looking iPhone racing game that you play by tipping the phone from side to side. But as someone who doesn't really play games (for the same reason I don't use heroin - I'd never get anything done) what interests me is the part where it can take the raw data from your game and create a video which is then posted automatically to YouTube. The potential application of that sort of process is mindboggling (GPS + Google Earth = video flythrough of your walk, for example.)

Missed this at the time, but last February Nine In Nails ran a game that has striking similarities to the Lost Experience, dropping absurdly obscure clues around their gigs and waiting for obsessive fans to pick up on them and share the knowledge. Fascinating stuff.

A really simple and all the better for it platform game where the objective is to RUN to avoid extinction.

The redoubtable Nikki Pugh goes to an Alternative Reality Game conference and compares her notes to the experience of running The Emergent Game last month. As always with her a lot of good stuff to digest.

"a festival of social games and playful experiences" encompassing "everything from fine artists making location-based work to huge flashmob games within the public spaces of the Southbank Centre." Looks pretty mental and fascinating.

D'log investigates