''The Go Game'' is a competitive

game A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (su ...

put on by a

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

company of the same name. Players race through the game zone solving clues and performing tasks with the aid of a cell phone and

digital camera A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile devic ...

in an effort to earn the most points. The Go Game advertises itself as “the future of corporate play,” and was voted “Best Way to Rediscover Your City” by the

SF Weekly ''SF Weekly'' was a free alternative weekly newspaper founded in the 1970s in San Francisco, California. It was distributed every Thursday, and was published by the San Francisco Print Media Company. The paper has won national journalism awards ...

History

In 2001, Ian Fraser and Finnegan Kelly started running interactive street games for friends that used cellphones as part of the game, an original concept at the time, based in the Mission District. Fraser said that the idea and name had come to him in a dream about a journey. They then ran larger games and started charging players to participate in the game, which grew into The Go Game as a company. In 2009, they started a game office in the United Kingdom. In 2010, they had 11 employees and noted the company was self-funded. As of 2011, they had run more than 10,000 games, mostly team building games for companies, and they had $3 million in annual revenue, with games costing $50-100 per player to run. At the

South by Southwest South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, ...

conference in 2011, they released an iPhone application for creating and participating in local scavenger hunts, which was compared to the SCVNGR app.

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called the app "an interesting example of the

gamification Gamification is the strategic attempt to enhance systems, services, organizations, and activities by creating similar experiences to those experienced when playing games in order to motivate and engage users. This is generally accomplished thro ...

of work", since the target use was teambuilding exercises. They have also organized games that teach

disaster preparedness Emergency management or disaster management is the managerial function charged with creating the framework within which communities reduce vulnerability to hazards and cope with disasters. Emergency management, despite its name, does not actuall ...

as well as serving as entertainment, such as a "zombie survival" game run in coordination with the city of San Francisco. The Go Game also ran a "heroes" themed game with the city to encourage preparing for natural disasters; a city representative's blog connected this to themes of gamification and "

Government 2.0 E-government (short for electronic government) is the use of technological communications devices, such as computers and the Internet, to provide public services to citizens and other persons in a country or region. E-government offers new ...

Gameplay

Players receive customized cellphones that provide location-based clues about missions and puzzles to complete, and actors participate in the game as characters.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Go Game, The Alternate reality games Mission District, San Francisco