The Come Out and Play Festival is this weekend in New York, and if you don’t come out and play, you might be classified as an Enemy of Fun. It’s a big game / urban game / pervasive gaming festival. What does that mean? Lots of people playing games in unexpected places around the city. Some of them are high-tech, and some of them are just ways to change the way people interact in public. I’m volunteering, as well as playing a few games:

• (a persistent game which I’m supposed to keep secret)
• Journey to the end of the Night (I’m a Chaser - watch out!)
• Manhattan Story Mashup (the swanky Nokia ITP/Parsons game - I’ve been lent a $600 phone for the purposes of playing, and will be held under Finnish law for 2 hours tomorrow morning)
• (panel discussion)
• Conquer the Quarter

(I was going to post links to the game pages, but the COAP site is currently down because of the huge groundswell of interest.)

Photos and posts on Sunday/Monday.

There’s a lot of other cool things going on (including minigolf in the east village!) that I can’t go to or missed the signup deadline for. Public response to the festival has been amazing, so if you can’t make it this year, keep an eye out for the even-more-ginormous Come Out and Play 2 next year…Maybe I’ll even have a game to submit myself…