Background

Brooklyn, The Game grew out of work on a feature-length documentary titled My Brooklyn, which follows Director Kelly Anderson’s attempt to understand the forces that have reshaped her neighborhood over two decades.

In January of 2011 we were invited to participate in the Bay Area Video Coalition Producers’ Institute for New Media Technologies, a week-long workshop that connects independent media producers to emerging models of storytelling and distribution. It was through discussions with game designers and technologists at this workshop that we conceived Brooklyn: The Game, a series of interactive, game-based walking tours organized around specific themes relating to the history of Downtown Brooklyn, as well as to current debates unfolding about changes taking place as the result of large new development projects.

Brooklyn, The Game makes use of several key emerging technologies including augmented reality, game-based learning and learning analytics, and marries them with rich content on a mobile platform in a way that has not been done before. When completed, it will be open source and easily replicable, making it a unique tool that will be immediately useful for other institutions and organizations.

We are currently in the design phase, and hope to complete Brooklyn: The Game by the Summer of 2013.