International Games Day continues to grow and prosper with another successful event completed in 2015. This year 2,157 libraries registered for this free event.
Again libraries from around the world played games on or near November 21, 2015. It’s great to see the growth of this event each year.
Australia – 150 libraries
Bahamas – 1 library
Belarus – 1 library
Canada – 20 libraries
Chile – 1 library
China – 1 library
Columbia – 1 library
Denmark – 23 libraries
Egypt – 1 library
Finland – 17 libraries
Germany – 2 libraries
Honduras – 1 library
Hungary – 10 libraries
India – 1 library
Iran – 1 library
Italy – 28 libraries
Japan – 1 library
Kenya – 1 library
Mexico – 1 library
New Zealand – 1 library
Norway – 40 libraries
Poland – 1 library
Portugal – 1 library
Russian Federation – 8 libraries
Scotland – 2 libraries
Serbia – 1 library
South Africa – 1 library
Spain – 1 library
Sweden – 13 libraries
Taiwan – 1 library
Trinidad and Tobago – 1 library
Ukraine – 4 libraries
UK / Northern Ireland – 32 libraries
United States of America – 1787 libraries
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – 1 library
We appreciate everyone who took the time to reply to our after-event survey. We received 566 replies.
Attendance:
520 of our survey respondents gave attendance figures. The average per library was 40 attendees. The flat average for 2157 registered libraries equals approximately 86280 attendees. This is great!
There were some instances of low attendance and a snowstorm in the United States that hampered people’s efforts to get to the library to play, but as with any endeavor it will have its ups and downs. The IGD Committee encourages everyone to give your program some time to grow and flourish in your library.
We had an abundance of helpful and positive responses to our question: Is there anything else you’d like to share about International Games Day or gaming in libraries?
Excerpts:
I think games are an essential service that libraries should be offering whenever possible. Video games have become a more accepted medium used to tell amazing, immersive stories and, unlike a book or a movie, require us to be an active participant, not a passive observer.
Well we have a quite big gaming related part of the children’s library, and I can see a lot of patrons visiting our library JUST to be able to play with friends, randoms or just overall have fun with the people there. / Gaming SHOULD be a part of the library services. It creates life, people visiting and using the library at all times – a lot of fun will be had by playing in the library instead of staying at home playing by yourself, so there’s a big social part of playing in the library that hasn’t been explored 100% yet. / / (sorry for potato english)
Fantastic event! Looking forward to next year.
Thanks so much to everyone involved in organizing International Games Day 2015! This is always one of my favorite programs of the year, and your hard work makes it such a wonderful experience for everyone. Thank you too to the generous donors who give the kids the most wonderful games to play. We love IGD!
Thank you for promoting this wonderful events! The donations will serve us well in subsequent game day events that we hold!
I love how IGD brought everyone together. We have patrons who come simply to be on the computers for hours at a time. It was great to see them come share a game of Sorry! and have some breakfast while talking to us and just playing. I think it gave them a new insight to what the library can provide them with.
I’m trying to start a regular gaming group at our branch. I’m starting in January!
International Games Day was a great way to promote gaming at the library. We had a very positive response to our IGD, encouraging us to provide more gaming opportunities.
We’ve been hosting Catan days during ‘odd’ weeks when there isn’t much going on and we don’t want to pay for a performer in case no one shows up. We’ve had varying success, but it’s cheap to do and fun. We had an 8 year old and an 80 year old all learning how to play, it was excellent.
More libraries should get involved–or host their own–regional gaming conventions and bring in designers, reviewers, and all manner of geeky fun. Also, libraries must be willing to extend hours and work with their communities–our regular game program runs to midnight or later, even though we close at 6. We are fortunate to have a community room with an entrance separate from the main library to be able to do this after hours. A small branch could also get away with this. Meeting the population not only where, but when, has helped us grow our game community. Also, we have strong relationships with our friendly local game stores who help promote our events, and I in turn promote theirs.
We set up a variety of games in our courtyard for the students to play during their lunch break. We only had approx. 15 min. for them to play. The teachers played with the students and had a great time. Once the students saw the teachers playing they too joined in the fun. I will do it again.
Fantastic opportunity to share the library in a new light.
Games are a great addition to any circulating collection. Our patrons have loved trying new games and checking out their favorites. Game events are a great way to bring new patrons into your library.
IGD is the highlight of my library year! Thank you to everyone who helps organize this great event.
As a teacher librarian, I welcome the chance to validate the importance of learning through play and gaming by promoting a program like this that is so valued among the librarian community. It’s far easier to share with school administration and request support for programs like this with IGD as a tool. Thank you!
It was very enjoyable to watch families playing games together. Interacting through reading, learning, and laughing together. Thank you for the work and dedication you have shown to libraries for this program.
What a fabulous event! A lot of our students are interested in games and gaming, and it was inspiring to see them working and learning together.
We will be holding a game day seasonally now! We can’t wait for next year. I can’t imagine the work this takes to organize. Good job, guys!
Thank you for all the publicity tools, like graphics for flyers and for making it it so easy for us to do social media about it. Loved the support. Effortless event with your help aside from our minor issues getting the Hunger server. We appreciated everything immensely!
We’ve been trying to get gaming afternoons started for years, but it hasn’t been successful. The support, encouragement, publicity and influx of fun, age appropriate games has been really helpful. I think we have finally reached a group of teens who will help us make this a regular part of our programming. Thank you!
I’m glad that this event exists so that I can make a good argument to my library management about the importance of gaming in libraries.
Thanks for all of your hard work! The event was a lot of fun, and the information provided for Minecraft Hunger Games and Global Gossip was so organized and helpful. Great event!
As someone who has always loved (and still loves) playing all sorts of games, this is an amazing event and I am proud to get to host it at my library.
Created great camaraderie. Planning on having board game events approximately every 3 months in 2016. Will keep these events very simple.
It was awesome. It’s a great way to bring new people into the library and make people aware of the fact that libraries provide many more services other than just books. My teens love International Games Day and we will continue to participate in years to come.
IGD Outcomes:
Global Gossip Game
The Global Gossip Game had 1070 players playing the game in four languages (English, Finnish, Norwegian, & Swedish). The game lasted for 30 hours at 84 libraries in 11 countries! Here are a few comments from participants:
This was our first year participating in GGG…. it was such a blast, we are going to try to get a game going with our local businesses… and see how that goes… even with only 11 people playing our phrase changed so much, I was laughing the entire time! What a great way to get folks involved and the kids were amazed that they were playing a game with the WORLD!!! They can’t wait to see what the phrase was originally and what it was at the end of the game!! Thank you and I can’t wait for next year!
Patrons loved playing this game and actually came back later in the day to try to play again. People were very intrigued by the idea and couldn’t wait to find out the first and final phrase.
You can download and read the final report for the 2015 Global Gossip Game here in A4 paper size, and here in US Letter. (And you should… it’s pretty funny.)
The only other thing to note is that Phil (the organiser) says that the event has grown to the point where manually organising everyone is no longer feasible, and he may be looking to run a crowdfunding campaign to make something that would automate it – meaning next year could be even bigger, more international, more complex, and sillier. Not only that, the plan would be to make the tools freely available to anyone who wants to organise similar sequential events! So keep an eye out for that campaign, and if you’re so inclined, start dreaming up ways to use the tool yourself.
International Minecraft Hunger Games
Winner of the Australian Regional Finals was John Cena from the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney.
College of Coastal Georgia students Mitchell Hodzen and Eli Golden won the US/North American Regionals and International Finals. http://www.ccga.edu/page.cfm?p=534&newsid=216
The winning library was JuWel, Stadtbücherei Münster – Stadtbücherei Münster, NRW, Germany.
The infrastructure remains available to interested libraries, just contact gtsystem@aadl.org if you’d like to try your own event anytime.
2015 Donors and Donations
The International Games Day Committee would like to thank our donors for making this day great with their generous donations. This year our donors were Asterion, Good Games, Konami, Looney Labs, Paizo, Steve Jackson Games, USAopoly, YummyYummyTummy, BallyHoo, and Dryden Press. Many times these games are the foundation for a library collection.
Here are a few of the many thanks for the donated games:
Thank you so much for your generous donations to our library. We appreciate sharing new and different games with our families.
Thank you so much for your generous donations to libraries. You rock!
Thank you for making it possible — I have a small non-book budget and couldn’t have provided games without donations.
Thank you very much for the donation of games for International Games Day. We use these donations to facilitate gaming in the library throughout the year!
Thank you for donating games to libraries. We would not be able to provide games during for this event or during the year without the donations. Students have told us they have purchased games because they liked playing them at the library.
Keep Gaming
IGD is a great way to start your game program. The after-event survey shows that 57% of libraries had offered gaming programs in 2015 in addition to IGD (311 of the 542 respondents) and that many offer 10+ programs a year. It’s a great way to start a game program in your library.
A great year was had by all. The IGD Committee is already getting ready for next year’s event on November 19, 2016. We hope to see you there!