It’s mainly a chance to get people together to talk game stuff, but in particular we’ll be looking to get people involved in making a Central Library project happen and programming some playful things for Shenanigans on Saturday 27th of February.
It’s completely free and all are welcome. It’s 7pm on Mon 15th Feb at the back of The Lamp Tavern, 157 Barford Street, Birmingham, B5 6AH.
Return of Pong | BARG – The brilliant Market Pong is back on Bank Holiday Monday, 31st of August in Birmingham Outdoor Market from 3pm ‘until we decide we’re exhausted and decide to go to the pub or something.’
Same deal as last time: you can buy a 2-paddle ping pong set from Poundland or similar; all welcome; the tables are sort of under-cover so we’re moderately weather-proof, but do bring plenty of fluids ‘cos it’s very energetic.
Ping pong is just the starting point: we’ll obviously be improvising and inventing as we go along, so if you have any other accoutrements that you think would be useful, please feel free to bring them along. The only restrictions are the basics like being nice, staying safe and not causing any damage to anything that doesn’t belong to you.
Cardboard Wars | BARG – Oh yes, Juneau Projects (Ben Sadler and Philip Duckworth) are ‘spoiling for a fight. With cardboard.’ And they want us to join in the fun at Eastside Projects on Saturday the 22nd of August between 1-4pm:
‘There will be a photoshoot and a tournament to see who has constructed the best cardboard weapon (i.e. the one that doesn’t break after clashing with the other cardboard weapons.) They will provide the materials, the refreshments and the amazing prizes. All ages welcome. No experience necessary.’
BARG #5: Market Pong – No, not the smell of rotting vegetables but a mammoth table-tennis tournament to be played on the Bull Ring outdoor market stalls whilst they’re empty on Sunday 14 June. There will also be cabbage-bowling, drinking, eating and Pindec’s Prototype Cake Orchestra. The usual BARG madness, then.
I spent Saturday running around playing games and picnicking, it was great fun. We met up with the BARG team in the Bullring at 2pm and got things going with Hat Snap, which had us donning numbered newspaper bonnets. We had to photograph other player’s numbers whilst trying not to get snapped ourselves, which made for some interesting situations, not to mention odd looks from passing shoppers.
The chasing took us down to the car park behind Curzon station, which is a great place for exploring – full of nooks and crannies and naughtily discarded sheds and terrapins to root around in.
The next game was The Lost Sport of Olympia, a 2500-year-old game invented by the Ancient Greeks apparently. It consisted of a blindfolded person walking around a chalked labyrinth, with their teamates forming the walls and guiding by humming. I had a go and it felt and sounded really weird.
Then it was picnic time. Some packed lunches were more appetising than others.
After lunch we played a few more games on the grass, such as bowls. But BARG encouraged us to throw creatively.
It was so much fun, I can’t remember the last time I spent the whole day in the great outdoors, playing and exploring. I really regressed into feral child mode and was kind of hyper at the end of it. So much so that I had to be calmed with a couple of pints down the pub.
nikki pugh » A game for Curzon Street would… – BARG will be hosting an afternoon of play and picnics in the Curzon Street area on the afternoon of Saturday the 9th of May. Nikki Pugh lists what the game may consist of.
Emergent Game playtest at BARG #3 – Here’s Nikki Pugh’s account of the Emergent Game playtest in The Lamp Tavern the other week. It was a brilliant game, where we all gained soft, cuddly toy alter-egos whose characters we shaped to interact with everyone else’s, writing each other postcards and setting group tasks.
The undoubted star of the show was Nick Lockey’s bloodthirsty Milo, who took a nasty shine to Ben Whitehouse’s soft touch octopus George:
When we were set a group task of taking other characters on an outing, my trouble-making bird Bobbity couldn’t resist taking the pair of them to the local abbatoir. Milo had fun but George seemed a little on edge:
The most interesting task was set by Michael Grimes, who asked us to all swap characters. None of us could do it – I personally felt I’d injected far too much of myself into Bobbity to be able to. Also, there was a question over whether that might break the whole game – would the points we’d earned thus far go with our characters to our new owners?
However, although we didn’t want to part from them that didn’t mean we weren’t capable of hurting them. When Milo instructed us to give our characters a haircut, Bobbity got a little nick:
But that was nothing compared to the poor snail’s Van Gogh-style makeover:
