Extending our reach

Just a quick note to announce that Foxhound Urban Adventures Inc. is now an official partner with the San Francisco Travel Association (SFTA). Since we are interested in showing off San Francisco to visitors in our own unique way, and the SFTA is interested in making San Francisco the most compelling destination in the world, the partnership seemed like a great matchup.

It is our hope that the  SFTA’s various connections within the convention and travel industry will help make more folks aware of our Adventures and that we will use that exposure to delight, and excite everyone who participates in our Spy Adventure Jericho SF.

We are looking forward to a long and fruitful partnership!

—Bru

Ready or not…here I come!

If you’ve ever checked out the websites I list on the right side column, you might have seen a little festival that takes place in NYC every year called Come Out And Play (COAP). it’s a really quirky fun festival for urban street game designers to show their stuff and a great way to have fun outside playing games and interacting within the city (hence the “Come Out” part of the name). Through a lucky chain of events and meetings, I have landed smack dab in the middle of the planning cabal for that festival as it comes to San Francisco again this year in late October. I can’t tell you how exciting this is for me and I am so impressed by all the other folks that are organizing this. It truly is an amazing group. We are putting out the call for games and it could be your chance to get that game in the festival! Here’s the official letter.

Dear friends and colleagues,

This fall, Come Out & Play will bring big public games to the streets of San Francisco, and we’d love to have you be a part of it. I’m writing to let you know that game submissions for the 2011 Come Out & Play San Francisco festival are now open. Please pass this open call along to friends, colleagues, designers and artists who might be interested in organizing a game during the festival. The deadline to submit a game proposal is September 15, 2011. The submission form is here:

http://comeoutandplay.wufoo.com/forms/2011-come-out-play-festival-game-submission-form/

The Festival will run from October 28 – November 6, and will be based out of the Go Game HQ in the Mission District (Treat Avenue between 17th St and 18th St). We’re hoping to see games that make creative use of the Mission’s diverse spaces, and that offer players novel ways of experiencing the neighborhood. We will literally transform the streets of San Francisco into a giant playground, and some city-sized fun doing it!

This will be the second year running for Come Out & Play in San Francisco. We are building off of last year’s fantastic festival at Giant Robot, and have a great team working to grow the audience and get the word out. San Francisco is an amazing city for play and offers a multitude of wonders for game designers, so we hope you’ll be a part of it this year.

If you do not have a game or an idea for one, you can still be involved with the Festival by spreading the word, playing games, volunteering, or inquiring about sponsorship. Feel free to contact me with any questions: ian@comeoutandplaysf.org.

Thanks again and don’t forget:

(1) Please forward this email!

(2) 2011 Come Out & Play San Francisco Festival: October 28 – November 6

(3) Game submissions accepted through September 15 

 

All the best,

So  this is your big break, get cracking!

 

—Bru

 

Avoiding sorry

Playing games in an urban environment, where the city is part of the game board, has it’s own unique challenges. I get asked all the time if playing Jericho is safe in a big city like San Francisco, to which my reply is, “Yep, because I’m smart about the location & timing.”

Not to say that there aren’t other factors that contribute, its just that the two biggest ones for me have everything to do with the time & place. These two factors really play a huge part in the logistics of game planning. I realize that any part of the city may be safe at the right time of day, but certain areas have a better window of opportunity for playing games if the time is right. For example, even Hunters Point or the Dogpatch at 5:30 am is relatively safe; but really, who is gonna play at 5:30 am? So if the time of day is going to be in the evening, try to stay away from the seedier parts of town. The monthly Nerf Jericho game that we organize is adjacent to the Tenderloin, which can be a rough neighborhood in the evening, so I consciously avoid that area in all the missions that I plan. For the Jericho San Francisco games that are played in Union square, chinatown, North beach, and Fishermans wharf, these are very safe neighborhoods that have a big window of safety to plan with.

There are other factors that come into play of course, such as the type of game that is being played as well as individual player personalities.  Some can be controlled, and some can’t, but with the right place & the right time, you have gotten a huge start towards making a safe game in an urban environment.

—Bru

Once upon a press release….

For Immediate Release

San Francisco, CA October 22

Foxhound Urban Adventures: Be a Spy in the City!

Tourists and locals play a hi-tech spy game surrounded by the landmarks and attractions of San Francisco.

We all have a little James Bond envy, and who wouldn’t want to be ultra sly, ultra savvy, and acquire secret intelligence through exciting and sophisticated means? Why settle for living vicariously through a highly paid Hollywood action hero when you can take the excitement and adventure of Secret Intelligence and BE the spy!

San Francisco, known for its beautiful backdrops of waterfront skyscapes, street cars, and multi-national neighborhoods is the setting for Foxhound Urban Adventure Tours. Two teams, representing opposing secret agencies, set out on an adventure through the most sought after destinations of San Francisco equipped with high-tech spy gear that enables them to not only see the city, but EXPERIENCE it! Take covert pictures of enemy activity in Ghirardelli Square; sabotage enemy plans at Coit Tower , and collect intelligence information in the middle of Chinatown. When you tell others about your time in this beautiful metropolitan city wouldn’t it be great to have an action packed, Double O -YOU story to elaborate the sights and sounds of your visit.

Foxhound Urban Adventures gives you the opportunity to do just that. By creating a tour called Jericho San Francisco this sight-seeing high-tech spy game is one part walking tour, one part treasure hunt and one part lazer tag joined together to offer an exciting adventure story of espionage. The début tour is called Operation Rendition which embroils players in a story of two countries attempting to track down a mole who knows state secrets. One country is trying to kidnap the mole and the other is trying to help him escape. Customers are cast as secret agents for one of these two countries, given details of their specific mission and taken on a tour of the city; which include settings such as Union Square, Chinatown, North Beach and Fisherman’s Wharf.

To enhance and help the players complete their missions agents are given bags of spy gadgets which include: long -range walkie-talkies, rearview sunglasses, a map, and an Electronic Tag Unit (ETU), Foxhound’s name for a lazer tag gun disguised as a satchel. Each team is also given a secretly disguised video camera (e.g. hidden in a watch) to complete their specific missions. This spy gear is used for tactical surveillance, intelligence interception, mission execution and ultimately for victory! 

Each team, with their mission in mind, will then plot their strategy and go out into the streets and landmarks of San Francisco to use their inner action hero, and their ultra cool spy gear, to make this Adventure Tour THE highlight of their San Francisco vacation. Many people have participated in Urban Spy Games facilitated by the founder of Foxhound and have great things to say about it:

“This was my first game of Jericho and it was SO much fun. I’d highly recommend it. For those new to the city it’s a great way to explore the city, see how beautiful it is and meet new people. “

“Jericho is great! We had an amazing time playing spy games with a bunch of random people. My team lost every game, but it was still the best good clean fun I’ve had in a while. It’s fun playing games in the streets of San Francisco!”

About Foxhound Urban Adventures

Jericho San Francisco is the creation of Shannon Bruzelius, Owner of Foxhound Urban Adventures. Shannon has been designing and coordinating urban games in his spare time for over 20 years. He founded Foxhound Urban Adventures in 2010 to show San Francisco visitors the beauty of the city and create memories that will outlast photographs. His personal credo is, “An adventure is worth 1000 pictures.”           

For media inquiries, contact info@foxhoundua.com

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“Great” didn’t get that way by accident.

lugging around a suitcase full of water and snacks for my beta testers

It’s true in marriage, sports, and business. Anything that is worth doing doesn’t come easy. Halfway through round two of beta testing last Saturday I realized, “This isn’t going to be easy”. Only a handful of folks have turned an urban game into a business and I now know why. Taking care of your customers is the biggest job that you have when you are in the service business (which is ultimately what a game is) and that is something that requires going the extra mile, again, and again, and again. It’s easy to be a game designer. All you do is sit around all day long and think of clever ways to play intriguing games. Doing something that is wacky comes easy enough and maybe folks will help you out in your performance art for free just so they can have a unique experience. The best games are the ones that run themselves, but that makes for lousy adventures. The key seems to be emotional investment. Someone has to have it. If your players aren’t emotionally invested in your game, (i.e. paintball, snowboarding, geocaching, etc) they assume that you are. If you assume that people will beat a path to your door just so that you can hand out rules and say good luck, you might want to keep your day job. Emotional investment is the passion that you need to leak. It is the attention to detail that needs to go into everything. it‘s the excitement that is contagious when you are in the thick of the game. It can’t be faked, borrowed, or communicated through a pdf. And ultimately, it’s why there are lots of game designers and so few paying players

I’m sure you are saying, “That’s all well and good, but you have barely started your business, what makes you think that you know anything?” I only know where I’ve been, and I’ll tell you that the last 9 months of starting a business has been the hardest of my entire life. Although time will tell about how this goes, I’m in it for the long haul. I’ve planted my stake in the dirt because I know that people are interested in adventure in San Francisco and I want to be the one to give them their chance.

—bru

One small step for Foxhound…

The test team at the end of the day in Ghirardelli Square.

We finished our first round of Beta testing today and man, was it productive (and tiring)!

 Big shout out to our small team of testers that came to help. You will be handsomely rewarded!

We spent 4 hours running all the missions for Jericho SF: Operation Rendition which goes all the way from the Contemporary Jewish Museum in the south to Ghirardelli Square in the north winding its way through Chinatown and North Beach. Here are some observations and lessons from the day.

1. The best walkie talkies don’t hold a candle to the most mediocre cell phone for clarity and reception. I shouldn’t be surprised, but I still am.
2. Running around SF playing Jericho isn’t easy! I’m not sure you knew this, but this city has a lot of hills! I feel like I hiked 10 miles today. The mission with Coit Tower in it just about killed everyone.
3. Food and drinks are absolutely necessary after the first couple of missions. If I don’t want people passing out, I need to supply both.
4. Better maps are essential to the best gameplay. Some need to be specifically made for each team for every mission.
5. Street Festivals really add to the feel of the feeling that “I am in my very own spy movie!” mental note to incorporate as many as possible. 
6. The guy working at City Lights was pretentious and rude enough that I’m convinced they aren’t worth the time or money I’ll spend to send people there. Buh-bye!
7. Phoenix LTX guns go to sleep after 15 minutes of activity. I need to remind players to hit the trigger once in a while to keep their gun on. Maybe there’s a way to bypass that…hmmm.
8. We need to stage a skirmish in Union Square before we start the first mission so that everyone is familiar with how the guns & scopes work.
9. Knowing where the bathrooms are at the end of all the missions is super important for customers. I need to put these on their maps.
10. I need to give my customers a response to the everyday people who will ask, “What are you guys doing?”
11. Giving my customers a cable car ticket to get back to Union Square seems like a good idea right now, but after seeing the waiting line, I’m interested to know if it will be good or not.
12. Tailing people and getting action shots is gonna be the workout of a lifetime for some eager young photographer out there. Where are you? Drop me a line.
13. One hour missions are a good length because you really need the time to go slow, catch your breath, and formulate strategy. If this were San Jose, we could do this in ½ the time.
14. The range of these guns is fantastic! You can shoot a good 200 yards (1/2 block away) and register hits without being seen. This makes the mind swim with possibilities when thinking about things like setting up sniper positions or ambushes from storefront windows (BTW, works through windows too!)

That’s the top line for this wrap up. I’ll put out the part two after next weeks testing. The parting quote is from Cari, “That mission in Chinatown was like being in your own action movie!”

—bru

TANSTAAFL, but there is such a thing as a free tour!

We are ready to begin! The funding has been granted, the equipment has arrived or is on the way, the missions are planned out and the team is excited!  Almost everything is in place except for the fact that we need to do some dry runs of our tours to flush out any kinks and iron out some bugs.

This is the part where you come in! We are offering free tours as part of our beta test of  Jericho San Francisco – Operation Rendition, our 1st adventure tour! Normally valued at $75 but free for two days. The tour starts in Union Square and ends in Fishermans wharf and covers approximately 3 miles. We will equip everyone with their very own spy gear, brief them on their mission, and set them loose to play jericho the way it was meant to be played.
If you are available on sep 18 or sep 25 from 10 to 2. Let us know at info@foxhoundua.com.

See you there,
—Bru

Jericho for the rest of us

Organizing your own game of Jericho can be done in as little as 10 minutes or as long as several hours, if you‘re an overachiever. Here are the essential elements for every Jericho game to be successful.

Let’s start with the necessities.

1. Minimum number of players is four. Since you need a courier and one other player on the offense, you need two defensive players. Anything less and you are playing a cooler version of schoolyard football with someone being the all-time-quarterback, and that’s not cool.
2. Dart guns. Every player needs a toy dart gun. We say “Nerf gun” because everyone knows what that is, but it could be a non-Nerf gun. The point is, everyone needs a gun that won’t leave wounds, or put an eye out. Paintball guns are only for Anthony Edwards, so don’t even think about it. If some players have dart guns and some don’t, the ones who don’t are just being sent off to a vacuous death. Remember, this isn’t zombies vs. humans.
3. Hats. Every player needs a hat. We have bent the rules to include hoodies, but don’t stray too far here. Allowing one guy to put his jacket on his head is just inviting attention you don’t want.
4. Public places with lots of foot traffic for the Pickup & Delivery points. Jericho is a spy game and spies are usually trying to be lost in a crowd. You can’t play Jericho in a field or your backyard. The reason the full title is Jericho-the urban spy game is because urban settings lend themselves to places where crowds congregate, so pick as public a place as possible. Also be sure to choose the right time of day. Midnight in NYC looks very different from Midnight in Denver.

If you have the necessities down, then it’s time to start planning. Here is a short checklist that you can use when preparing for a game

• Decide on the game time and place.
• Decide on number of missions and mission time.
• Decide on the type of game you will have. Will it be “deluxe” (you do everything ahead of time) or will it be a “pick-up” game. Finalize mission dossiers and documents if you are making a “deluxe” game. For a pickup game, everyone brainstorms on the spot.
• Remind players to get a gun & hat before they show up.
• Know where players can find a local store to get supplies if they arrive empty-handed.
• Get the official rules to everyone ahead of time and make sure to run through them when the group meets.
• Bring a watch or have someone be the official time-keeper for every mission.
• Bring a camera.
• Breathe. Its gonna be great.

Some parting tips from a Jericho planning vet

1. Keep your locations in public spaces as much as possible. Try to avoid placing them in the middle of a store or a restaurant. The nature of this game is essentially a bunch of people running around shooting each other. Even the most suave and nonchalant of your players will whip out their gun and take a shot if the opportunity presents itself. If it’s inside a store or in front of a security guard, somebody could get in trouble or trigger a police call. A shootout in the line to see Santa is definitely falls into the “bad things” category. Try to pick places that have a lot of foot traffic (e.g. in front of stores, in public plazas, at bus stations, in parking garages, outside the post office, etc.) In other words, pick someplace that you won’t be under the watchful eye of a security guard. That being said, malls are great for this game, especially on Saturdays between Thanksgiving and Christmas. (Just don’t get caught.)
2. Familiarize yourself with the mission locations a day or two before. If you haven’t seen them in a while, something may have changed. Nothing is worse than showing up at a location that isn’t there anymore.
3. Space out your locations. The tendency will be to have your locations too close together when picking them, but that makes for very short games. The rule of thumb is to take the average game time (e.g. 30 minutes) and multiply by 2/3 (e.g. 20 minutes). This is the amount of time it should take to get from start to pick-up to delivery if traveled without interruption at a reasonable pace. If you are on foot for the mission, try to have each point separated by 3-4 blocks. If you are using cars, they could be several miles apart.
4. Know your players. Are most of the agents going to be teenagers? If so, they may not have super expensive cell phones to navigate and email with. Are most of your players 30-something professionals? They may not know where to get a Nerf gun. Does the game area have a scary population (homeless, etc), according to your players?  Knowing the average player will help your planning.  
5. Don’t be afraid to turn someone away who doesn’t have the right equipment. Guys like that won’t stop with just bending one rule. Nip it in the bud.
6. Emphasize that this is a game played “for fun” when you start. Do this and you should be golden. At the very least, you’ll have a bargaining chip if something happens and you have to confront a cheater.
7. Don’t forget to play. Just because you’re in charge doesn’t mean you can’t have a ton of fun too!

Good luck and let me know how it goes.

—Bru

7 months gone…

We just finished the July installment of Jericho with the Meetup group here in SF and things are looking very positive. Attendance was about 40, which was just slightly smaller than the June Meetup, which was our biggest ever at around 45. The turnout is a good mix of locals in their 20’s to 40’s. Attracting Men & women from every ethnic background. Heck, even their kids are playing. Approximately 75 people are part of the group, but I’d say less than a third attend on any given month. We have tried some great mission variations with the group that have been fun and it seems that we have started to gain momentum with having a group that is active in the discussion boards.

The most interesting part of having so many people playing is that there are so many successful playing styles and so many kinds of tactics that work. We have super sneaky folks that try their hardest to blend in with the crowds (how I like to play) and there are people who just walk around holding their Nerf Maverick™ at the ready for all the world to see. Each can work in certain situations. As I said, it’s really a fantastic group and I’m proud to be a part of it.

Also in the next month, I’ll be debuting Jericho SF – Operation Rendition through my adventure tour company Foxhound Urban Adventures. This will be a deluxe version of Jericho that equips each player with real high-tech spy gadgets like “secret service” walkie talkies, camera watches, laser tag guns in urban camouflage, sunglasses & hat, etc. We just completed another round of fundraising and will be purchasing the rest of our equipment very soon! I’ll then be running beta tests with all the equipment in the weeks that follow. If you’d like to take part, drop us a line at info@foxhoundua.com .

More to come in the next few weeks!

—Bru

Spies love us!

I am really floating on Cloud 9 right now and I’ll tell you why.

Last night was the date for the April meeting of our San Francisco Jericho Meetup group. It’s a  meetup group that I started so that locals could play Jericho in all its Nerf gun wielding goodness for free. 12 people RSVP’d through our group page in the past few weeks, which I thought was an amazing number considering that the March meeting was cancelled due to low numbers. Imagine my surprise when people started showing up, and kept showing up! By the time we started the first mission, there was about 35 people! I wasn’t at all ready for this many folks! I had only printed out 10 copies of the rules for crying out loud!

Needless to say, I was extremely perplexed about how all these people found out about this, but I didn’t have the chance to find out until the end of the night. So, we split into two huge teams and started the game. I have to tell you that this was an amazing sight. There were so many people playing, that they couldn’t recognize each other when they walked right up to each other. Seeing 10-12 people bum rushing the defenders of a pickup point reminded me of some of the Penn State Zombie Vs. Human skirmishes I’ve seen online. I mean it was so amazing to walk down any street and see someone trying to hide a slightly-bigger-than-your-jacket Nerf gun.

I ended up being more of an official game observer than  a participant, but that’s just fine by me. Having this much exposure was phenomenal.

I also should mention Alex, who was  a student reporter for SF State who showed up to get some video and photo footage and who conducted interviews at the end of the night. he went everywhere we did, and even got shot once. that’s a war correspondent experience point in my book!

At the end of the night after the last game, I was standing around talking with some of our agents for the evening and I learned that they found out about the event from none other than the Guardian newspaper. I was just a little shocked! It’s not like anyone tells me these things ahead of time, our event just shows up in the event section of a major newspaper in SF. I’m not completely surprised because I had submitted my event to FunCheapSF last month, but I was still a bit awestruck.

And there you have it, the most successful Jericho game ever. I’m pretty sure this beats any other game for sheer numbers alone. I met so many fun crazy people (I knew you were out there) I can’t wait for May’s game. Next time, I’m gonna prepare some mission dossiers so that we can get right into it without so much shouting. I’m also gonna have to reconsider the courier verification because its way too easy to email photos to a phone.

Next month should be a hoot, and Foxhound is almost ready for its world premier.

—Bru