This post explores the thought process behind the live action game, Radar Blip, created by Big Spaceship strategy intern Jim Babb.  You can play it this weekend as part of the Come Out and Play festival.  Any readers of Think are invited to join us June 4th at 9pm at the Brooklyn Lyceum.

We’re all too familiar with the expression “Thinking outside the box”.  In fact, you’ve probably heard it enough times that it inevitably elicits an audible sigh anytime it is mentioned.  For bringing it up, yet again, I apologize.  However, rather than tread on the old ground of thinking inside or outside anything, I want to describe a better box.  One designed for the purposes of play and excitement.

This is what game designers do.  We create boxes for people to play within.  Like cardboard refrigerator boxes that better allow children to play house, we mold our boxes out of rules.  A person’s play is free form until it is structured and directed by a system of rules.  Think of a child’s unstructured sandbox play as compared to an organized game of tag.  Both exist in the same space, but the rules change how the space is perceived and used.  What was once a jungle gym is now a fort that needs to be protected from the player who is “It”.  As game designers we can create new experience boxes or magic circles for players to reside in.  Designers don’t necessarily change the physical location; rather we change how it is experienced.

One approach to game design is from an experiential and emotional mindset.  How do I want the player to feel?  What rules can I create to make a person feel those feelings?  I personally love to start with a space or an existing set of rules and tweak them to create new meaning.  This is how I approached Radar Blip, a new live action night game that will be premiered at Come Out and Play 2010 (June 4th, at 9pm).  The game is designed to take the existing space of a baseball diamond and put it into a new context.  It does this by placing new rules, themes, and moods on the space.  For example in Radar Blip, a blindfolded player stands on home base and attempts to “shoot” other players with a beam of light from their flashlight.  The physical space of the baseball diamond is still the same, only now it is experienced with new eyes.  It is the rules of Radar Blip that make it feel completely different than baseball.  While playing, a player feels sneaky, cautious, and suspenseful.  The new rules transform the space from its traditional sport into a strategic game not unlike Battleship.

I am certainly under no illusions that Radar Blip will replace baseball; rather that it offers new ways for us to play using existing public spaces.  Games like this give players a new box to play and reside in. This technique of game design can also be translated from real world spaces into digital spaces and can also be applied to the rule structures of applications.  For example, think of how Twitter is different than Facebook; it is the innate programmed rules that create its uses and feeling.  How would Twitter change if it allowed 200 characters rather than 140?  How would it be used and how would it feel?  These are the questions that game designers must ask in order to tweak our rules, and only through playtesting can we find their answers.

I am fascinated by how rules  shape the way we perceive and use both digital and real world spaces.  The mechanics placed on a space can transform it from one emotion and experience into another.  This was my goal with Radar Blip, and I encourage you to join me at Come Out and Play 2010, where you can play it as well as many other fantastic games.   This will give you a first hand experience of how new rules affect your perception.  If you are able to play, please be sure to stop by and let me know what you thought.  If you are curious, the rules are attached here.  Also, feel free to ask any questions or comment below.

Radar Blip was designed for Come Out and Play 2010, by Jim Babb and Clay Ewing.