BARGBARG.ning.com

Many thanks to everyone who came to the first BARG meeting last week.

As suggested, pindec has put together a ning site for us to use for discussion and planning between meetings: www.bargbarg.ning.com.

Anyone interested in games and play and social mechanisms etc is welcome to sign up and join in the conversation, although the events will (initially, at least) be directed towards people who can get to Birmingham.

We’re aiming to have a regular meeting once a month – probably in the Old Lamp Tavern as before – that has a few structured activities as well as space for banter and serendipity. These will be complemented by other events and shenanigans taking place elsewhere such as games held in the city centre or visits to completely different cities.

Last week several people were suggesting things they’d like to make happen at BARGs, ranging from organising marauding gangs of razor-bladed hoodlums chasing consenting adults across the forgotten corners of Birmingham, through to person-sized board games. There were also murmurings relating to things like getting 10 people simultaneously playing the same computer game and explaining a card game we discovered several different people played. Hopefully, given time and an ecosystem to support them, projects involving pervasive technology or massively multiplayer narratives will start to emerge too.

Let’s start with what we can get our hands on now and get the momentum going.

Anyone interested in BARG should sign up to BARGBARG.ning and those within striking distance of Brum please add your thoughts to this thread where we’re talking about when to have the regular meeting.

I’m also keen to get people down to Bristol for an iglab so you can experience some of the possibilities for general BARGiness. The date of their next meeting is unconfirmed, but drop me a line if you’d like come.

Here are a few things investigating swarming mechanics to have come from that direction:

Comfort in Union Square from Simon Evans on Vimeo.

holler lu lu from iglab on Vimeo.