Output details

Space Invaders

played as part of a bigger gaming and music festival at St Johns Centre in Old Trafford

Space Invaders was a £60,000 project funded by Mediabox and Trafford Housing Trust’s Community Panel’s Major Grants scheme. Lets Go Global Youth project engaged with young people in Manchester and Lancaster to develop a pervasive game project beginning in August 2010. Weekly workshops were guided and designed in order to deliver a final game for a “Festival Day of Gaming and Music”.

This was a partner project with folly in Lancaster. Both groups worked with Lead Artists – my role - in their local environments to design pervasive games that were later presented at a public event in Old Trafford, Manchester, February 2011.

Workshops were to introduce young people to the practices of pervasive games, street games, location-based games, flash mobs, interactive or immersive performance and environmental improvisations. Smart phones became central tools of communication and creativity given that the workshops took place, for the most part, outside of the youth center. The group used the phones to document their journeys, do research tasks, find and receive information, test ideas of simple hide and seek games by using Google maps, GPS, Bambuser and geographical clues .Introducing mechanisms for gaming like SCVNGR, QR Reader, Google Maps and Live Streaming apps (Bambuser) were played with in order to give the young people a ‘site’ for interactive play and to discuss accessibility and ease of use for the game structure.

Space Invaders was played as part of a bigger gaming and music festival at St Johns Centre in Old Trafford. More than 200 people visited the event from Manchester and Lancaster. Both games from LGG and Folly headlined the event.