As with most days of the week, I have a crazy idea.

This one has been slowly growing in momentum. It isn’t fully fleshed out, but it does have some research behind it.

The idea’s history can be traced back to almost a year ago to during Desert Bus for Hope 3. At some point during this highly addictive to watch marathon gaming session telethon fundraiser, the organizers pointed out that a gaming podcast had interviewed them about their endeavor. The interview is the first 13 minutes. The podcast, “A Life Well Wasted”, is fantastic in the way it covers the stories of creators, users and games as an art form. Desert Bus happen be starting a fourth go at the fundraiser for Child’s Play on November 19th, and if past years are anything to go off of, should finish around six to seven days later! Last year they raised over $140,000 alone. Make sure to check them out.

Now that wasn’t the particular podcast episode that was the inspiration. The next episode, “Episode six – Big Ideas”(NSFW), is where this kicks off. Now as a note, the part that inspires me is safe to listen to, (24:35-40:00) but the latter part is “Not Safe for Work“. I cannot recommend listening to the Big Games part of the podcast enough. It is the single link you must follow from this article.

In summary, a group put on a city wide game, called The Big Urban Game, where everyone could participate by looking in the newspaper that day and sending in their choice. The game was three giant 25 foot high inflatable game pieces that raced about the city. The choice the public got input on was the route each of the pieces would make, which they could find in the newspaper. This creates a new way of thinking about your city since one would have to think out possible routes in light of hills, low overhangs, traffic and other potential obstacles.

This further developed into “The Big Games Manifesto” which tosses out the old paradigm of games in computers, for games with computers in them. Now Scouting has been doing mass real world games for years. Wide games. The interviewee spoke about how it would be interesting to even develop the idea of games for 200 people.

So this is what I want to do. A real life, city wide game. But with a purpose. That’s the Scouting way.

Fun with Purpose

So while this idea has been percolating in my brain for the past five months, I’ve come across more articles and videos that either back up this idea or have given me more clues to the final product. Continue reading →