Just like in games, we’ve leveled up National Gaming Day to be an even bigger event this year. We have a new name – International Games Day @ your library – and a new date (the first Saturday of each November). This year’s celebration of communities coming together to play at the library will take place on Saturday, November 3rd, and will include our traditional board game donation and national video game tournaments. However, this year we have some additional activities to add to the fun.
We’re excited to announce that we have three sponsors this year who are donating games to libraries – huge thank yous to PopCap, Ravensburger, and GameTable Online. We’re very grateful to their generous support of libraries, and we’re thrilled that our international participants will be able to sign up for some donations this year.
Official sponsor PopCap is donating 2,000 copies of their games Bookworm and Bookworm Adventures. Libraries can register to receive free codes to download each of these games to library computers.
Official sponsor Ravensburger is donating 1,000 copies of its board game Labyrinth. In addition, coupons for $5 off an order at the Ravensburger online shop will be distributed to libraries along with the game.
Official sponsor GameTable Online will be opening up all of the games on its site on November 3rd in support of International Games Day to encourage players of all ages to join in the fun.
The Ann Arbor District Library has again graciously agreed to run two national video game tournaments for Games Day. Participating libraries can battle for supremacy in Super Smash Bros. Brawl or Mario Kart time trials (both on the Nintendo Wii).
We’re also looking at adding some new activities this year, such as a global game of “Gossip” that passes information from one library to another throughout the day. We’ll be posting more details about these opportunities in the coming weeks.
To get you started with marketing, you can download the new logo and the new poster/flyer from the Library Press Kit [inactive]. Watch this space for more updates or sign up for email notices when we post new info. We’ll post the first version of the map of participating libraries in August, and we’ll have more marketing materials for you soon.
We can’t wait for this year’s event – game on!