Somewhat to our astonishment, Matheson Marcault is now a year old! A year and two days, to be precise.

So, what have we done in this first year?

Well, we’ve made some games for festivals and events:

  • Frantic political competition Manifesto! (made for Frequency Festival, also shown at Beta Public)
  • Overhead-projector art game The Light Machine (made for the Barbican’s Serious Play weekend, also shown at Story Feast)
  • Drawing race The Racing Line (made for Here London, also shown at Wellcome Collection)
  • Sound-making challenge Foleyoke (made for Now Play This, coming up again at Game On! in Oxford)

We’ve curated some events:

  • The Wellcome Play Spectacular, a night of games for 1500 visitors in Wellcome Collection
  • The first ever Now Play This, a festival of games and play at Somerset House, in September 2015
  • Gamechangers: Football! at GameCity, ten days of reimagined versions of football running in Market Square
  • … and the second ever Now Play This in April 2016, as part of the London Games Festival

We made games on cards and paper:

We also consulted on some other people’s projects: for Chromatrope, on a prototype for a digital game; for Sesame Workshop, on design for some physical games; for Historic Royal Palaces, on understanding the potential for narrative physical games and formulating a brief; for Discover Story Centre, around the role of game design in encouraging play and storytelling; for King’s Cross Knowledge Quarter, for The Space, for Drive Agency. We ran workshops at the NFTS and Wellcome Collection; and spoke at venues including the V&A, Digital Week Bordeaux, Nordic Game, Videobrains, Digital Shoreditch and Nicer Tuesdays.

So, what’s next? Well, we’ve made an online game about the Hull-born aviator Amy Johnson for the upcoming Amy Johnson festival, which will be launching in July, and we’re planning some big physical games for September/October that we can’t talk about just yet. And of course, we’re planning for Now Play This 2017.

We’re interested in finding more places to show not just new games but games like the Light Machine and Manifesto! that we’ve already developed; and in getting involved in other people’s projects a little more often. So if you’ve got an event or exhibition that might benefit from a physical game, or a project that might benefit from some game design thinking, get in touch.

And we’re planning to do more writing – both about our own work and about other things happening in physical games and embodied play. Nothing huge – but more blog posts, more updates on what we’re doing, more reflections on other people’s work.

We’ll let you know how it’s going a year from now…