PacManhattan started as a class project in 2004 and ended as a worldwide phenomenon.
PacManhattan will open the Come Out and Play 2014 Festival starting at 3pm on Friday, July 18th. Reservations for play sessions are available here for all sessions before 6pm. After 6pm, play sessions will be first-come, first-served.
Frank Lantz and his Big Game students in NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program created and hosted a live action version of Pac-Man in the blocks surrounding Washington Square Park. The students broadcast the play on a Pac-Man board online, and communicated the locations of the players through cell phones, maps and coordinates which were chalked onto street corners (while dressed up as the characters, of course). The game was not only fun, but opened the imaginations of spectators and the world, as the videos became viral and were shared on major news outlets all summer. The game has since been played in over 30 different cities by amateur Pac groups that took the source code and made it their own.
Designer – Pete Vigeant
Pete Vigeant is a game, media and experience designer who creates large group live-action and digital interactive experiences. As a Senior Designer for ESI Design, Pete Vigeant draws upon his passion and expertise in game and youth-focused design to lead and develop interaction, media, concept, and game design for numerous ESI projects.
Pete also leads the ESI Game Lab, where he has created and launched a series of immersive live-action group experiences to promote collaboration through play, spectacle, and narrative gameplay. He has introduced ESI Game Lab experiences such as Super Bacon Grab 2, the Greatest Bacon Game Ever Played: The Return of the Bacon, Field Frogger, The 100 Games Everyone Should Play, and Field TD in public spaces, city wide festivals, and conferences around the country and the world.
Pete is a founding partner of The Completely Surrounded, a consulting group that has worked with camps, colleges and institutions to bring live action games and training to thousands of participants.