Last weekend we attended the #play14 Festival in Basel organized by Bernhard Sterchi. Thanks, Bernhard for organizing!
I don’t know if “festival” is the right term, but I like to call events “festivals”, where people are having fun, get together and do something together as a team. Actually it’s an unconference as described here https://play14.org/format/. You find all about the general details on that page.

My pre-festival assumptions

It was my first #play14 event and I was a bit skeptic about just playing games a whole weekend.

Playing the Giant Witch Troll game

How long does it take until I get bored by energizers?
What do I learn by “just playing” Lego for a whole weekend?
What “weirdos” spend their whole weekend just playing games?

TLDR: I was totally wrong 🙂

The Plan

It started Friday evening and we immediately jumped into playing games (mostly energizers and brain-twisters) as a whole group. It was fun, we talked what the game is about and how to use it in another context (workshop, meeting, large group gathering, …). Awesome!

Saturday and Sunday were also kicked off with full group games and from 9h-17h we did an unconference-open-space style game selection.

Sunday we closed off the event a little earlier so that everyone had enough time to head home

The Games

Here is a list of games I collected and could remember from my notes:

Friday

Magic Triangle
Giant Witch Troll
Running Through Hands
Squat in Pairs – Discomfort – What happens?

Saturday

1 Word Story Telling in Circle – Energizer, Associations
Samurai – Energizer
Count until 33 and clap for every 3 – Energizer
Predator, Protector and your Position – Complexity
„Hello Johnny“ – Brain Teaser, Warmup – https://play14.org/games/hello-johnny

OPEN SPACE Unconference

Transport Bomb
Smelly Situations Role Play
Game to learn about Technical Debt
Gordian Knot
Board Game Magic Maze
50min to build a game
Theory U

Evening

2 Detectives (find the 2 rules in the “system”)

Sunday

In pairs – Change 5 things
Silent counting in Circle (only numbers)
- 2 people say the same -> restart
The Human Machine
Flamingo Pinguins …

OPEN SPACE Unconference

How to celebrate Failure
Decisions in a complex environment
Little Games for Complexity
Taboo
Draw Guess Draw and see what happens
How long to write a Name
Toast Improv Game
Models with Lego
Tune In (Body exercise)
Agile Animal Farm

Ending

Whole Group: stone paper scissors (with fans)
Silent Goodbye

My Highlights

I really enjoyed:

The sessions about Complexity – Thanks Bernhard and all others
The idea of “Experimental Games” where you leave instructions open (or unspecific) on purpose
Taboo variation for workshop recaps – Thanks Kris
Lots of great conversations! Sorry I don’t want to start to name anyone here
Lots of little and great games to play with

The Experimentation

I didn’t realize it and was not prepared for it, but the cool power of the event is the people and the notion of experimenting with your games, workshop formats or whatever you need a group of VERY OPEN MINDED AND FUN people for.
If I would have known that I would have taken my game collection with me. For example “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes” game I have bought and never played.

I ran 3 experimental workshop games and we brainstormed ideas on how to improve these

#1 Smelly Situations

Roleplay a weird situation from your office
Change the behavior of 1 person in the play
Experiment with situations
Reacting to situations you find “smelly” / strange.
How do you react as a Leader?

I got lots of great input on what things to avoid and what things to make sure of. Safety is important!

Here the learnings for next time:

“Freeze” as a concept in an organization.

#2 Game to learn about “Technical Debt”

A short Game from Kris – Krzysztof Liszewski
Some theory around Technical Debt
Lots of suggestions on how to improve the game:
- The “Technical Debt metaphor” is not ideal for complex knowledge work -> How do you explain it then?
  Unhedged Call Option might be another term 🙂
- Technical Decisions are taken by the Teams or by Management -> What is the impact?
- How to deal with uncertainty?
- Conscious VS unconscious decisions?
- Reckless VS prudent decisions?
- Strategies to deal with Technical Cruft?