I just finished running Into the Woods in Bristol at igfest and it went really well. The game mixes street games and social games with a bit of theatricality to hopefully deliver a compelling experience. I envisioned the game as a series of linked fairy-tale games. I had playtested all of the elements of the game at Eyebeam and as The Duel out in COaP SF last fall. But I had never run them all together as a theatrical experience. MCing the game as the character of Robin Goodfellow was an exciting challenge.

I really wanted to deliver all instructions for the game in narrative as the character. In order to do this I had to keep the games simple and focused so that we wouldn’t get bogged down with players asking questions about rules and how to play. Instead I wanted them hurled directly into the game where they had to figure out what to do. For the most part it actually worked in play. Plus the games are short enough and repeated several times, so players have a couple chances to watch and figure out what to do.

Here’s the description of the game:

Into the Woods takes players on a fairy-tale like journey into the darkness of the forest and their base instincts. The event is suite of five short interconnected games that pit a group of Villagers against a pack of Wolves in a contest for control of the forest. Players will find themselves exiled from the village, cast into a whispering forest and blindly dueling one another as they try to shepherd their kind to safety or hunt down intruders to their dominion.

At the beginning of the game players will be assigned roles, which they act out over the course of five games. Some games find players working alone, while others involve the cooperation of the entire village or pack. In the end though, only one player will be crowned king of the forest.

To read the script of the game download the the full script here :Into the Woods Script

Some photos outlining the play of the game:

Before the game, I talk to each of the players and stamp a claw or bone into each player's palm. This is the player's identity.

Little Devils gather players for the start of a round of "The Bell in the Forest"

The Children hunt the Wolf in a round of "The Bell in the Forest"

The circle collapses on the Children chasing the Wolf in a round of "The Bell in the Forest"

The Wolves and the Villagers strategize before a round of "The Whispering Forest"

Player navigate the player trees in the "The Whispering Forest"

Watch a video of a round of The Duel at COaP SF. The Duel is the climactic final game of Into the Woods. It can play like a slow burning terror for the blindfolded shepherd or a fast-paced almost martial arts-like game, depending on the players:

I recently wrote a piece for the casual game website Gamezebo about MyTown and Foursquare and the state of real-world game mechanics.

Being there is playing there: Checking in on the emergence of location-based games

Right now most of these games/services revolve around check-in mechanics. And I can totally see why, check-ins are the atomic unit of location-based data–”I’m here.” With Foursquare you simply raise your hand and state your location. MyTown offers some further gameplay beyond your hand-raising with players collecting rent on properties they’ve visited. They may seem overly simple, but these casual mechanics are what’s required to get the average player used to real-world gaming, easing them into more complex and demanding games.

Read the whole article.

New York University / Interactive Telecommunications Program – Spring 2010
Greg Trefry
gtrefry at iamtheeconomy dot com
646-644-1995
Office Hours: Friday after class, 6-6:30 PM or by appointment
Download Syllabus

Class Description

What happens to games when they escape the boundaries of our tabletops and desktops and TV screens and living rooms? From massively multiplayer online games to networked objects that turn the city into a gigantic game grid, new forms of super-sized gaming are expanding at an alarming rate and opening up vast new spaces in which to play. Whether these games are measured in terms of number of players, geographical dimensions, or temporal scope, they represent a new trend in which the ‘little world” created by a game threatens to swallow up the “real world” in which it is situated. This class is a hands-on workshop focused on the particular design problems of large-scale games. In this class students: develop a foundation of basic game design understanding from which to approach the specific issues particular to big games; analyze existing digital and non-digital large-scale games, taking them apart to understand how they work; as interactive systems; and work on a series of design exercises that explore the social, technological, and creative possibilities of large-scale games.

The class will be broken into three sections: People, Time and Location. The first section People will focus on games that bring together large numbers of players into one game. The second section Time will focus on games that stretch over long periods of time and begin to integrate with our everyday lives. The Location section will examine ways in which games can utilize specific spaces and integrate with the world around us. For the final we will bring all of these ideas together to create games that challenge established notions of gameplay.

Assignments

• Game Presentation on a Big Game
• People Game: a game for a large number of people
• Time Game: a game that spans a large amount of time
• Location Game: a game about a location
• Final Team Project

Expectations

• Attend the class and talk – For every two absences your grade will be lowered one letter grade
• Do all of the reading
• Turn in all assignments on time and complete. For each week your project is late you lose one letter grade.

Grading

15% In-class discussion and weekly blog comments
10% Game Presentation
15% People Game
15% Time Game
15% Location Game
30% Final Project

Class Schedule

January 22 / Class Intro

In Class
What are Big Games
What do people think they are
My expectations for the class

January 29 / Game Design Basics

Readings
- Marc LeBlanc, MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research, http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/pubs/MDA.pdf
- Tracy Fullerton, Game Design Workshop, Chapter 3, pages 49-81

In Class
- Play Poker
- Play Mafia

February 5 / Role-Playing

Readings
- Start playing World of Warcraft
- Waskul, Dennis; Lust, Matt (2004). “Role-Playing and Playing Roles: The Person, Player, and Persona in Fantasy Role-Playing”, http://www.colorado.edu/ibs/pb/thornberry/socy5031/pdfs/waskul_lust_role_playing.pdf

In Class
- Play The Pool

February 12 / People Game Due

Readings
- Richard Bartle, “Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players who suit MUDs,” http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm

In Class
- We will play each team’s People Game

February 19 / All the Time

Readings
- Play What to Wear, http://apps.facebook.com/what-to-wear/
- Play Parking Wars, http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=31435010008
-Byron Reeves & J. Leighton Read, Total Engagement, selection

In Class
- Hand out water guns to play Assassins over the next week

February 26 / Alternate Realities

Readings
- Jane McGonigal, “This Is Not a Game: Immersive Aesthetics & Collective Play,” http://www.seanstewart.org/beast/mcgonigal/notagame/paper.pdf (if for some reason the link doesn’t work, Google the paper title. You’ll find it)
- Montola & Waern, “Ethical and Practical Look at Unaware Game Participation,” 2006

March 5 / Time Game Due

In Class
- Teams will introduce players to their game.
- Each game will be played over the following week

March 12 / Everywhere

Readings
- Linda Hughes, “Beyond the rules of the game, Why Are Rooie Rules Nice?,” Game Design Reader, page 504-517
- Raph Koster, A Theory of Fun, Chapters 2-3, pages 12-47
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s TED talk on flow, http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.html

In Class
- Play a Scavenger Hunt
- Play Capture the Flag

March 26 / Location

Readings
- History of Grand Central
- Henry Jenkins, “Game Design as Narrative Architecture,” http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/games&narrative.html

In Class
- We will all meet at Grand Central by the clock

April 2 / Location Game Due

In Class
- We will play each team’s Location Game

April 9 / Sports

Readings
- E.H. Gombrecht, In Praise of Athletic Beauty
- Dave Hickey, Air Guitar, “The Heresy of Zone Defense,” pages 155-162

In Class
- Play Touch Football

April 16 / Managing Big Projects

Readings
- Ken Birdwell, “The Cabal: Valve’s Design Process for Creating Half-Life,” http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19991210/birdwell_01.htm
- Rory McGuire, “Paper Burns: Game Design with Agile Methodologies,” http://gamasutra.com/features/20060628/mcguire_01.shtml

April 23 / Playtest Finals

In Class
- We will playtest each team’s game

April 30 / Finals Due

In Class
- We will play each team’s Final Game