Hi there! Nathan here with a quick update on what we’ve been up to lately, and what we’ve got on the horizon.
Last month we ran a couple of events in Canberra and Sydney, showcasing games from recent projects and showing off the wonderful design work by Julia Johnson. Thanks to everyone who made it out, and thanks to Events ACT for helping make the Canberra event possible.
One of the projects we were showing off was Canberra 2060, which was commissioned by Canberra Theatre Centre in late 2020. In this game, players worked together to safeguard the city of Canberra (and their own suburbs) against hazards of the 21st Century, by building different types of resilience for the city.
Pic by Anna Mayberry
We also ran a couple of games from Get the Kids and Run, our collaboration with Earth Observatory Singapore and the Singapore Science Centre. We played Busy Mayors, where incumbent mayoral teams have to balance election campaigning against the threat of a typhoon, and Volcano Town, which explores how cities come to be in areas prone to disaster.
Pic by Anna Mayberry, with Julia Johnson defending her mayoral decisions
We got to try out a couple of games we made with the School of Cybernetics, including CAPTCHA Game, where players are young artificial intelligences learning what constitutes a fire hydrant, and The Wild Temptations of Olympic Village, where players navigate the ethics of biometric data to guide the Olympic water polo team to gold.
Pic by Anna Mayberry
And lastly, we got to share a game from A Week in the Bush, our collaboration with The Lowitja Institute creating games about ethical research practice in Indigenous communities. In the game New in Town, players were tasked with investigating a failed health research project in a remote community, and finding out what people really needed.
Pic by Anna Mayberry
We were also lucky to be joined in Canberra by Dr Ben Swift, who led a fascinating chat about feedback loops and structures of power.
Pic by Anna Mayberry
Outside of those events, we’ve been developing new workshops, suitable for teambuilding or as a primer for systems thinking and disaster preparedness.
We’ve given Best Festival Ever an update, with new bands, a couple new challenges and a fresh coat of paint. Last week we ran it for the Masters cohort at ANU’s School of Cybernetics, which was an absolute pleasure.
On top of that, we have a brand-new workshop called Save Grandma, drawing on our collaboration with Earth Observatory Singapore. This workshop explores disaster preparedness, resilience and decision making in times of crisis.
Pic by Anna Mayberry
We’re available to run these workshops and more between now and the end of June. If you’d like to book a session, or have a conversation about collaborating on something new, get in touch!