05.22.06 Come Out & Play

I recently finished work on a magazine piece in which I traveled around the country going head-to-head with the most dedicated adult players of five choice kid games. I played tag in Kansas City, Mo., kickball in Norfolk, Va., rock paper scissors in Las Vegas, minigolf in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and a “watergun assassination tournament” in L.A. By the end, I was both humiliated and exhilarated and left with a profound new appreciation of the value of kid games for adults.

The experience also left me to wonder if the mysterious mass reclamation of kid games over the past few years would ever coalesce into something more unified. What if the tag players met the kickballers and the minigolfers? I began daydreaming about a national conference on kid games, a massive playdate for adults from all over to share their favorite pastimes and mix it up together.

Seems I’m not the only one daydreaming. Details are still sketchy, but a group of play enthusiasts has announced a three-day event in New York City to be called the Come Out & Play Festival. The festival isn’t geared toward kid games per se; the lineup so far favors more conceptual, technology-assisted street games like PacManhattan, I Love Bees and Conqwest. Organizers say they want to help promote the natural evolution of streetgames like stickball and scavenger hunts, games that transform cities into gameboards and “combine the virtual and real.”

Count me jazzed. Come Out & Play promises to be an amazing opportunity to sample a new form of gameplay with a group of highly creative playful adults. Four months and counting…