International Games Day @ your library Game on November 16, 2013!

Special guest post: IGD inspiration – live Pac-Man anyone?

Posted on July 29, 2013

This is a great idea for an IGD activity from Amanda Bradley of Aulds Library in Bossier City, LA - a live game of Pac-Man! Just be careful to remind the players not to actually eat the dots...

Bringing Pac-Man Back to Your Library

I will have to start by saying I am very excited to be writing this blog and I hope everyone gets something, rather it be motivation or inspiration, out of it. This is my first year participating in the International Games Day at my library and I truly cannot wait for November. In the spirit of complete honesty I got this idea from the wonderful world of Pinterest. I was browsing in my normal fashion and stumbled across this picture of a Pac-Man game taped out on the floor and was super excited. I just knew I needed to make this happen at my library and knew just when it needed to happen: International Games Day!

pacman

I am actually hosting my IGD event on Thursday November 14, 2013 from 9am to 5pm. I will be using the library meeting room and creating a giant Pac-Man game. The maze portion of the game will be mapped out and laid down with another all-time favorite: duct tape. The little dots are coins laid on the floor. I have just begun prepping for the library’s fall activities, but I am pretty sure I will just use foam circles or something similar.

I have already had some library staff express interest in helping out that day. They will become the ghosts. I am going to get some colorful sheets for them to throw over themselves or even make ghost cut outs from cardboard. I have not decided which would be more awesome to use. In addition to the giant Pac-Man game I will have some board games and snacks for people to enjoy in the meeting room as well. Patrons will be able to come in and enjoy the games and snacks throughout the day.

Thanks Amanda! Sounds like a simple, low-cost way to give your patrons some out-of-the-ordinary fun!

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  1. This looks like a blast! Amanda – there is no contact info in your blog post, but if you could share your plans for game mechanics, rules, etc. it would be great. I’m a librarian in NJ and we’ve done a couple life size board games with our teens. They would love it if Live PacMan were our next program.
    markle@bccls.org

    • Latricia,
      To be quite honest, I have not thought that far ahead yet, but guess since that is only a few months away I should get on it. I would have no problem emailing you the entire plan once I finish it. This is our first time doing anything like this and I am super excited to be a part of it. I think our teens (and the adults) are gonna love it. Is that your email address at the bottom of your post? I’ll shoot you an email and touch base. Would love to hear more about things you have done/are doing if possible.

      • I’ll leave info here in case anyone else also wants to check out our teen activities.
        Our facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/tenaflylibrary) has photos of some of our teen programs. We’ve found our teens love arts and crafts, especially things involving clothing design. We’ve done t-shirts and jewelry so far. We also did a Hunger Games program where they had to design a outfit for their tribute. Photos of the giant paper dolls they used for models should be in our facebook photos!
        In Teen Summer Programs 2012, you will find the single photo that managed to get taken of our life-sized board game. We asked a local carpet store for carpet sample. They gave us a ton of discontinued swatches already bound. We added some print outs of special spots, two giant dice, and a stack of cards printed on cardstock with SRC logos for the back. It was a fast play, 10 mins tops. Up to 4 at a time. They played again and again and again. Players swapped in and out and those not playing would hang out and chase the run away dice. The popularity was second only to our Hunger Games Challenge. That one was 2 hours and involved 8 challenges from ID-ing poison plants to building a bow and arrow set from Popsicle sticks and q-tips.

        Our current programming can be found on our Google calendar at tenafly.bccls.org

  2. This sounds like a great idea! I’ve printed your blog post out as consideration for future gaming (or halloween!) programming. I’ve already got quite an event planned for this International Games Day and have already sent for the graphics to be printed, so adding this isn’t a possibility for this year. I’m actually an Adult Services librarian, but I’ve had really great success planning gaming, comic book/graphic novel-related events for Adults (while allowing Teens to attend, of course). I recently organized the Cincinnati Library Comic Con, which had circa 570 attendees (a good mix of adults, teens, and children)! I think Adults need fun programming at the library, too :) . I hope you don’t mind me snagging this idea for a future program.

    • By all means, snag away. I think the best thing librarians can do is share ideas regardless of what area you work in or where in the country you are. I love hearing ideas from other places and talking to other librarians about what they are doing. I am fairly new to programming and implementing ideas in my library so I always say I can use all the help I can get. I hope that you can use it later on in the year or next year. I will be more than happy to touch base with you on how the event went and get you all the rules and instructions that I used on that day. Thanks for posting a comment.


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