Alex Fleetwood Director, Hide&Seek or unusual skills, so they invite participation from any interested passer-by. We developed a set of Tiny Games tailored to the outdoor areas of

INFORMATION PACK 2012/13

Hide&Seek came into existence with a live event: the UK’s first festival of pervasive games, held at the BFI over a weekend in May 2007. Since then, even as we’ve diversified into consultancy and digital projects, live events have stayed a core part of who we are, even as more and more live games have sprung up across the UK and the world.

These games make your heart race, change the way you see the world, create intense bonds of personal connection with people you’ve only just met. They turn passers-by into audiences, and audiences into players.

Alex FleetwoodDirector, Hide&Seek

GO LIVE!

Hide&Seek Live Events 2

The Sandpit 3

The New Year Games 4

Tiny Games 5

Hinterland 6

New Game Commissions 7

Team Building and Creative Consultancy 8

Contents

Photo Contributions From: Trigger, Paul Bennun, Peter Law, Sarah Butcher, John Need, Douglas Robertson,

Lloyd Smith, Alex Simmons and Matthew Hall

Hide&Seek is one of the most

innovative and creative game

design studios in the world, and

one of the core elements of our

output is the delivery of pervasive

live events.

Our live work includes large and

small scale social games,

participatory performances, and

playful experiences that can

happen anywhere in the physical

landscape.

We create, collaborate and

produce live events for clients in

the commercial, public and cultural

sectors. We work with cultural

organisations, artists, advertising

agencies, brands and

broadcasters.

Our values are centered around our

belief that play - as a theme, art

form, way of being, and design tool

- is integral to understanding how

culture will develop in the 21st

century.

Hide&Seek Live Events

2

Hide&Seek founded the UK’s first

festival of pervasive games in

London in 2007 and are currently

Artists in Residence at the

Southbank Centre.

We have worked on cultural

commissions with the BFI, Royal

Opera House, Tate Media, National

Theatre, LIFT, National Theatre

Wales, Livity, BBC.

Our corporate work has spanned

interactive marketing for Cadbury,

commercial events for PlayStation

and transmedia partnerships with

Warner Bros and Film4.

Our work has been supported by

Arts Council England, NESTA,

Technology Strategy Board, British

Council and the Jerwood Charitable

Trust.

We are also able to offer bespoke

team building events and creative

consultancy for organisations

wishing to explore play,

communication and interactivity.

We’ve helped organisations to win

awards, increase ROI, turn problems

into solutions and make clients

happy.

What can we offer you?

• A large or small game for your city, venue, festival or conference

• A brand new game designed for a particular project or space

• Team building events

• Creative consultancy

The Sandpit is a regular

programmed evening of social

games and playful experiences. It

has been running since February

2008.

Sandpits have taken place at dozens

of venues across London and the

country, from the V&A to the

Southbank Centre, the ICA and the

Barbican, and more venues across

London and the UK: in galleries and

railway tunnels, cinemas, mixed arts

venues, parks and public squares.

There have been more than 40

Sandpits since 2008, each one

different, programmed with games

that explore the venue, its

affordances and a particular theme.

We’ve invented games about spies

for the BFI’s James Bond

Weekender, played at shipping and

trading at the National Maritime

Museum, and explored translation

in association with the London

International Festival of Theatre.

The Sandpit

is both a

great event

for players,

and an

opportunity

for artists to

try out new

modes of

making

work. Most of the games at each

Sandpit are brand new and

developed specifically for the event,

curated by Hide&Seek. Each time

we invite ideas from our regular

network of designers, from

attendees of past Sandpits, and

from artists who are new to us, and

then work with them to develop both

their games and the overall event

into a cohesive whole.

The Sandpit offers the chance for

games designers, venues and public

players to

network, share

experiences,

engage in

dialogue about

games and

discover

venues in a

playful way.

The Sandpit

Want to host a Sandpit?

•Sandpits are a great way to open a new space or exhibition or to encourage your audiences to interact with your venue

•They are tailored to their context, with new games and a different theme each time

“Sandpits let anyone, everyone, create and play, even those of us

with no knowledge of game-creation. It's an extraordinary environment

that encompasses exploration, adventure and discovery, and best of all, it's collaborative and immersive.”

Jeni Toksvig, musical theatre writer

3

On 1 January 2012, Edinburgh’s Old

Town was transformed into the

home of The New Year Games.

With games spread across the city

and 12,000 players, it was the UK’s

largest ever pervasive games

event.

Created with Edinburgh’s

Hogmanay and produced with

Unique Events, The New Year

Game's pitted two teams – the

Uppies and the Doonies – against

one another, inviting everyone to win

tokens and then bring them back to

their team’s giant wicker

sculpture: the Silver Eagle for the

Uppies, and the Red Stag for the

Doonies.

Many of the games were devised

with local artists, and took place in

indoor cultural spaces across the

Old Town. Players became remote

radio controllers or sightless human

agents at the National Museum of

Scotland; hurled paper airplanes at

an invisible band at The Hub; leapt

through a series of three-

dimensional hopscotch courses in

Dance Base; and tried to sneak to

up on the Minotaur at the centre of a

labyrinth in St Giles' Cathedral.

Outdoors, the Grassmarket became

the city’s playground, featuring street

bands, a fairground, a giant screen,

and everything from Helter Skelter

Bingo to blindfold Giant Jenga.

The game culminated with a 4,500

player finale: drummers, giant balls,

flags, poetry, the Lord Provost of

Edinburgh and fireworks.

The New Year Games

Go Large?•Large-scale games can

transform a venue or take over a city

•They look spectacular and draw in passers-by by providing something for players at many different levels of engagement

•They can involve anywhere from 1000 players to 10,000+

“Tiny Games” is the name we give

to a collection of small,

straightforward, site-specific

games that run as an installation.

The rules to a Tiny Game sit in the

real world, perhaps on a vinyl on the

ground or a small sign stuck in the

grass. Their rules can be

summarised in just a couple of

sentences, and need no special

equipment or unusual skills, so they

invite participation from any

interested passer-by.

We developed a set of Tiny Games

tailored to the outdoor areas of the

Southbank Centre, to run during

the 2011 school summer holidays.

These ten games sat in place around

the site, where passers-by could

encounter them and play.

Tiny Games can be drawn from

our existing collection, or

designed for a particular space.

They can run for long periods of

time without moderation or the

need for on-site equipment. They

can be tailored to any space and any

event. We’ve developed Tiny Games

for Christmas, and Tiny Games to

play in a queue: the format is very

flexible. For instance:

Eye Contact

A game for two or more players.

Race from one end of the terrace to

the other. You’re only allowed to

move while you’re making eye

contact

with someone else.

Go Small?

“The paving slabs became our chess board, working our way up and down different levels of

the outside space engaging with the

environment in completely wonderful

ways.”Clairey Ross

5

Tiny Games

•Tiny Games work well in festivals, city centres and cultural venues

• They can go indoors or outdoors

• They are easy to understand, and encourage people to play without the need for expensive installations or moderation

Hinterland is a game that turns into

a poem, a collaboration between

Hide&Seek and performance poet

Ross Sutherland. It was initially

workshopped in a week-long

residency at Battersea Arts

Centre, and then presented for the

first time at

Forest

Fringe,

Edinburgh

in 2011.

Hinterland is

a game

about

language

and cities.

Players

venture out into a city armed with a

booklet of questions in a foreign

language; they need to seek

answers from strangers who can

help them to translate. The player

and their new acquaintance then

answer the questions together and

telephone them into

the Operator: an

automated robotic

voice.

At the end of each

quest, the player

receives their

reward:

a canto of poetry

to listen to,

personalised to

reflect their

answers to the

set of questions

and sent direct to

their phone.

The player can then return to the

Hinterland Waystation, a physical

space within the city, to move onto

the next canto, picking up a new

booklet of questions and moving a

physical representation of

themselves within a sculptural

installation.

As the poem progresses, the player

finds that their answers to all the

Operator’s questions become

increasingly significant; answers that

they gave appear in the text,

sections of the text branch out

depending on the responses. This

means that each player creates a

completely unique poem from their

individual experience. The poem is

not just customised for them: it is

about them.

Hinterland

6

Want to be part of the tour?

•Hinterland is available for national and international touring

•There are many possible incarnations of Hinterland

•For more information on the work and a tour rider please contact us

“Hinterland just got better and better, each exchange more

pleasant than the last. Completing the final Canto, it

felt like a religious experience” Dan Canham, Hinterland Player,

Edinburgh

Battlefield is a playground game

designed to teach children about

the Norman invasion. It was developed as part of the BBC’s

Normans season, as part of the

Hands On History activity packs.

We were asked to create a

playground game that worked for

children aged 7 to 11, required

minimal equipment and taught its

players about the Normans. It had

to be expressed in a simple

ruleset that could be distributed to

teachers and play leaders, and it

had to work in a wide variety of

contexts: schools, organised groups, after-school care,

anywhere ten or more children

might gather.

The final game, Battlefield, is a fast-paced active game that

simulates the Battle of Hastings,

introducing children to the idea of

the Norman invasion and to the

tactics of the opposing armies.

Take Me To Your Scientist was a

brand new game developed for the

Science Museum, London. It ran in

the closed museum from 10pm to

midnight, as part of the week-long

Player festival.

The game sent a hundred players

sneaking and scurrying through the

museum, decoding messages,

creating fake placards and trying to

defeat the bureaucracy of the

fictional Intergalactic Threat

Assessment Committee.

The brief from the Science Museum

was to create a game that helped

get people excited about the Player

Festival; that would run for two

hours or less; that would sell out its

capacity; and that had some

scientific content, all whilst taking

advantage of the museum space.

New game commissions

The Normans (BBC)

Games for all occasions...

• A specially designed game can work for all sorts of different contexts

• We’ve made games for everything from conferences to playgrounds

• Gameplay helps to encourage participation, sidestepping the “why should I join in?” impulse

• A game developed in response to a tightly-focused brief is a great way to teach, energise, encourage or explore

7

Take Me To Your Scientist (Science Museum)

The WonderLab is an opportunity for

world-class practitioners to come

together and explore new ideas

around digital tools, playful

structures and their own work. Ten

participants come together to share

their expertise and insights, moving

through a carefully structured

three-day process, guided

by experienced facilitators.

The first Lab followed on from

the Hide&Seek Weekender, a

weekend of social games and playful

experiences which ran as part of the

London International Festival of

Theatre. During the Lab, participants

heard a series of short, vibrant talks

from an array of informed voices and

shared insights from their own

practice. From these inputs, the

group were encouraged to rapidly

prototype new project ideas and

experiment with new

approaches. The Lab is designed

for expert practitioners and is

intended to refresh their vision,

create high-level connections and

inspire radically new forms of work.

The first WonderLab was supported

by the Jerwood Charitable

Foundation.

Games at Huddle formed part of a

day-long team building workshop at

Mindshare, involving around 500

people from different companies.

We ran a mix of drop-in games for

people to play throughout the day,

and scheduled games that groups

could sign up for. All of the games,

from physical-smuggling game

Checkpoint to parlour-game classic

Werewolf, were designed to get

people talking and making

connections with each other.

The games added an element of

interaction and energy, providing a

different type of experience

among a day of talks and

workshops.

Team Building and Creative Consultancy

8

Games at Huddle (Mindshare)

What are the benefits?

•Games are uniquely powerful tools to unlock creativity and communication

•They get people talking to each other and making strong connections quickly

WonderLab

5 Hatton WallLondonEC1N 8HX

020 7242 [email protected]

If that’s whetted your appetite to learn more, we’re pleased to offer a range of live events to suit your space and budget.

Tiny Games

A call to play in installation form, tailored to your space: vinyls, signs or secret postcards, either selected from our library of tiny games or designed specifically for your

needs

Cost indication: £1k-£4k

The Sandpit

An evening or afternoon of new games from exciting designers, curated to a theme chosen in discussion with you, sending players around your venue to run, hide,

negotiate, discover, create, sneak and more

Cost indication: £4k-£10k

Team Building and Workshops

A session of games designed to get a team playing together, or a workshop that mixes live games with game design exercises, helping to teach the principles of making,

analysing and understanding games

Cost indication: £2k-£5k

A New Game Commission

A new game created in response to a brief from you: anything from a game for the playgrounds to a game for the whole city

Cost indication: £10k upwards; get in touch with us if you’d like to discuss an idea

To book a session or to talk the possibilities over in more detail please drop us a line at [email protected]  or call us on 020 7242 306.