See my comment at http://ludocity.org/forum/discussion/37/surveillance-playmakers-03/#Comment_161 for my suggestion about this... Plus your excellent IR beacons idea.

I am pro tying people together (!) with ribbons so that the team has to stay as a unit. Maybe wrist to wrist.

I think there also might be something in giving people responsibilities for another player on the same team. Maybe family roles - mum, dad, great aunt, godfather etc etc. This could be something to add a narrative if that is something you are looking for and give people characters to think about and indulge in. I think it could be a way of holding the team together and also help to avoid players leaving the game before it's over, as players won't want to disappoint the person who is looking after them or will be encouraged not to by their partner.

How about experimenting with some superglue :)

I played (and enjoyed) Playmakers at the BFI, but I do agree that there needs to be something to encourage inclusion of all - or most - of the players.

The main risk, as stated above, seems to be that brilliant as it is to get a whole range of ages involved a few adults take the camera at the start and bang! no one else gets a look in...

I'm not convinced that there was enough time/incentive to solve the puzzles set at the BFI playtest but I definitely liked the fact that there were mental as well as physical ways to contribute - if this can be retained I think it would be a positive addition.

Regarding possible amendments, I'm not sure where is it mentioned, but I like the idea of having an anchor in each shot, as well as the 'push to make' circuits - I can imagine that creating a lot of laughter.

I also think that you need something which ensures the camera is passed around as well as shared - would it work, perhaps, to keep back three different tream members at each phase in the game and give them responsibility for solving a set of puzzles?

Or, given this is already a fairly high-tech game, how about some sort of GPS tracking and have the comms officer/s (again, mentioned above I think) trying to guide their team by radio away from/towards the others teams, and perhaps even towards some moving film-targets??

That may shift all the power to the radio operators so (and apologies, I'm now thinking as I type) elements of the Capitain Madigan 'real computer game' in the East end last year but of that might work - perhaps if, instead of traitors, a few people were given radios/text devices, screens/pages identifying the teams' locations/target sites, with only minimal guidance? They would not know what the indicated sites actually were, and need to work out what team they were on, what the sites were etc with the teams themselves... If they worked it out maybe they could somehow give their team an advantage...

This is gorgeous! My goodness, you'd definitely want a big pedestrianised area to use them in, funny though it would be to make people try to play with them in Soho.

An interesting idea was suggested by the "storytelling" group during the Playmakers session - how about if the camera was on a trolley?

This was suggested as part of a potential Orwellian 1984 theme, where clunky technology would be thematically appropriate (so possibly the camera would be mounted inside a big old video camera shell, and there would be a teleprinter and so on attached). But using a heavy, clunky trolley would force the players to be more collaborative, avoiding the "drunk man steals camera" issue. Ideally, the camera would be on a motorised swivel and one player on the team would have a remote control to make it turn left or right.

If the playing area has stairs, you could even force the players to lay a ramp.

Or how about the camera is connected to base by a long "power cable", which the team have to keep from snagging?

The accelerometer idea is nice - and probably safer for the players than making the trolley really heavy/bulky.

While discussing how to play up the "dystopian surveillance" theme a bit more, I wondered if it might be interesting to have a second camera pointing backwards and recording what the players were doing (maybe even hidden so they aren't aware of it?). The footage wouldn't be for scoring, but just to improve the coverage of their reactions, making the edited footage of the game more interesting (and informative to game designers).