ActionQuest: ATL - Atlanta Big Game Merges Activism with Play

On the Mad Housers Quest, players, accompanied by trained volunteers, will search through wooded areas, along train tracks and underneath bridges looking for homeless settlements and campsites such as this one.
(Courtesy: Salma Abdulrahman/Mad Housers)

This looks like an important event for all playkind. If you can't be there in the flesh, at least you can share the spirit:

Georgia Tech's Emergent Game Group headed up by Celia Pearce, in collaboration with the Design Studio for Social Intervention will present ActionQuest: ATL, an activist Big Game being produced in conjunction with the US Social Forum, taking place in Atlanta June 27-July 1. Built on the premise that "Play is a renewable resource," ActionQuest: ATL takes players around Atlanta for a hands-on experience of what it might be like to realize the USSF's vision that "another world is possible." Players discover and uncover past successes in local activism, and perform activist actions to help make the world a better place in both the present and the future. In the process, they will be delighted and rewarded by this encounter with "serious fun" that dynamically fuses real-world activism with socially engaging cooperative play.

ActionQuest: ATL runs daily from noon to 8PM, June 28-July 1, 2007. Players can register online or in-person at one of two base camps at the Little Five Points Community Center (1083 Austin Ave. N.E. 30307) or Renaissance Park (Piedmont & Pine). Details can be found here and here. For more information or to volunteer as a Game Master, send e-mail

Celia sent me this to share with you. She is a remarkable woman who has dedicated her powerful intellect to bringing more fun into the world. I tend to endorse everything she does, because she brings so much passion and understanding to it. She is also a friend, and advocate, who has written a wonderfully insightful review of my book, The Well-Played Game (which, of course, makes her a wonderfully insightful friend).


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith