www.briancorrigan.net

Gaming is serious work.

Not just for kidsand not just for video game nerds—for everyone. Think about it. What is play? What does it mean to game? Why do we do it?

Johan Huizinga, one of the historical authorities on thesignificance of play in the human experience, wrote about this back in the 1930’s. In his most significant work, HomoLudens, he claimed thatany activity considered play mustshare the following characteristics:

1.     Play is free, voluntary, and can’t be forced

2.     Play isn’t directly linked to “real life”

3.     Play creates, requires, and is defined by order

4.     Play is limited in time and space; it must have a beginning and end

Well, I’m here to tell you that this Johan “Mr. Historical Authority on Play” Huizinga character doesn’t know squat. Seriously—are we really going to let some guy from nearly a century ago define the significanceof how we play in 2015? I’m not.

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It’s obvious thatnowadays, with new innovative programs, Internet, and other technologies, gaming can be directly linked to “real life”and how we learn to function as a society. So, let’s go back, cross off number 2, and I’ll explain.

2.     Play isn’t directly linked to “real life”

Great.

Now, to be fair, let’s give the guy a little bit of credit here. He gave us a pretty thorough definition of what it is to play and, for the most part, makes a lot of sense. He said that play precedes culture, is a part of culture rather than something within culture, and without it, we would basically go insane.

But I can’t get past the whole “play happens in some sacred sphere outside of life” thing—and here’s why:

There’s a new authority on play and its significance. Someone who is actually putting his theories to work on a large scale. Someone who is right here in Denver.

His name is Brian Corrigan.

We met Corrigan several months ago at COIN 2014’s Xfinity Innovation Think Tank, where he described himself as a creative strategist, an innovator, and a community change agent. Corrigan’s efforts towards community change specifically challenge the idea that play is outside of real life by bringing the play to real life and abruptly dropping it right on top us in the streets of Downtown Denver.

Hailing from rural Anaconda, Montana, he really saw a parallel between the community collaboration necessary to live in the “wild west” and the collaborative atmosphere of Denver as an entire city. In rural Montana “you had to work with your neighbors to stay alive,” he said “it’s part of the culture. My brother-in-law and his family still ranches. They all come over when it’s branding time – they all help out.”

Collaborating is part of his nature and his approach to problem solving is simple:

·      Develop smart strategies

·      Build partnerships

·      Create shared value

·      Do great work

We see places like arcades and other gaming spheres work to connect strangers and foster meaningful relationships in real life all the time. So why not take this concept and use it to grow and build a better community? That’s why Corrigan coordinated Oh Heck Yeah—to turn the streets of Downtown Denver themselves to an immersive, interactive street arcade and to see if these connections and relationships can be fostered on a mass scale.

Corrigan’s Oh Heck Yeah website contends that “play of any kind makes us more creative, curious, happy” and “even contributes to helping build trust between strangers” making it a kind of social glue that brings us together as a community.

As home to more than a quarter of all Denver jobs, and a location that sees anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 people at the 16th Street Mall per day, Downtown Denver makes for the perfect location to put this theory to the test.

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So put some games in the streets and see what happens. Simple enough, right? Wrong. OhHeckYeah is a carefully coordinated place-making project that used art and culture to represent cities and video games to transform streets into interactive street arcades.

This past summer, June and July 2014, Champa Street in Denver, from 14th Street to the 16th Street Mall, was transformed into a street arcade powered through a combination of social media and custom video games built by the Denver-based, award-winning creative team of Legwork Studio and Mode Set. The games would allow players to use their bodies as controllers while playing on the huge Denver Theater District LED screens.

Oh Heck Yeah Street Arcade. Photo.

The project, as Corrigan described it, was overall a great success.

“You really just needed to get one person to start playing – then all of a sudden you had a line. We had really amazing volunteers. People were open to playing with people who are not like themselves… I don’t think that is going to change the world, but it is a small step in the right direction.”

All in all, Oh Heck Yeah proved to be a culmination of developing a smart strategy, building partnerships with the community, creating shared value within the community, and doing great work in revitalizing the community—proving the power that play truly has to affect real life.

“When you connect people you make the street safe and make the city more resilient” Corrigan added.

So—to go back to the original definition of play and tweak it a bit for contemporary gaming, we can say this:

1.     Play is free, voluntary, and can’t be forced

2.     Play IS directly linked to “real life”

3.     Play creates, requires, and is defined by order

4.     Play is limited in time and space; must have a beginning and end

And what is innovation?

Innovation is Brian Corrigan taking such a primal facilitator of interaction as play, blending its digital and physical forms, then applying it to Downtown Denver on a large scale as a way to bring a community together.

Now what’s in store for Corrigan an Oh Heck Yeah in 2015? Are they going to be back in Denver this summer?

We hope so, but we’re unsure. As of now—we’re happy to report that Corrigan and Oh Heck Yeah are currently one of 126 finalists that have been named from 7,000 applications for the Knights Cities Challenge. If selected, Corrigan could be awarded a grant from a pool of $5 million that would allow Oh Heck Yeah to roll out in cities all across the country.

Fingers crossed.

by Joseph Afton