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After Oberlin
You Go,
Finn Kelly!
Peter Meredith '02
May 27, 2004 –
"We want to re-create the way you recreate," says
Finn Kelly '95, sitting in his home office in San Francisco's
Mission district. He is explaining the Go Game, a high-energy,
scavenger-hunt style game that challenges teams to interact
with each other and strangers on city streets.
"It's not about finding something the fastest, but about
being creative and enjoying the performance-art aspect of the
game," says Kelly. "You don't have to just run around
and find a matchbook or a pinecone, but you might have to convince
a stranger to let you dress them up and document it in five
photos."
The Go Game, which Kelly founded in 2000 with friend Ian Fraser,
is an afternoon-long competition in which multiple teams of
five are given a series of missions and a digital camera with
which to document them. Each time a team completes a task, they're
given a new mission via a cell-phone text message.
The missions are not typical scavenger hunt fare; a team might
be challenged to break a stranger's New Year's vow, find a suitcase
hidden at the top of a tree, transform something using string
and tape, or act out a movie scene in a crowded restaurant.
Points are awarded for creativity and gusto at the end of the
game, when teams gather to share their pictures.
A psychology majorat Oberlin, Kelly is cofounder of the database
Wink Back, Inc., and has seven years of technical expertise
in the Internet field. He launched his web career in 1995 in
San Francisco, and soon became an expert in database applications
and mobile technology. In 1998 he was the lead technical director
for Spin the Bottle, Inc., where he conceived, designed, and
implemented the entertainment web site for the company's immensely
popular Pop-Up Video TV series.
Kelly started creating the Go Game when Fraser told him about
a dream in which he was guided through a futuristic game mysteriously
called "the go game." Convinced he could help make
his friend's dream a reality, Kelly moved to San Francisco
to design a wireless user interface and a web application to
run the game, while he and Fraser lived on credit cards and
cheap burritos.
Since then, the business has become a remarkable success, largely
through word of mouth. Businesses like Microsoft, UPS, and Toyota
now use the Go Game for corporate team-building activities.
Kelly and Fraser recently hired their first full-time employee
and plan to hire another. The two have taken the Go Game to
cities across the U.S., and plan to bring it to Oberlin for
Kelly's class reunion during Commencement/Reunion Weekend 2004.
"I've been wanting to have my Oberlin friends play,
but since they don't often get the chance, I thought I'd
hold a game at our reunion" says Kelly, who will run the
Oberlin game pro bono. The game, tentatively scheduled for Sunday,
May 30, at 2 p.m., will accommodate up to 130 players, and anyone
in the Oberlin community is invited to play.
Kelly has grand ambitions for the game's future, and is
preparing to pitch the Go Game to television producers and cell
phone companies. His idea is to create a mass-marketed game
that people could play anywhere.
"Anybody with a digital camera and cell phone can play
the game, whether they are in Iowa or Denmark," explains
Kelly. "Players would be given missions, and they'd
have to figure out how to make them interesting and fun. They'd
send digital pictures to our web site, and the best would make
it to our television show."
Though he occasionally works 12-hour days, Kelly says he loves
his job. Coming from a family of entrepreneurs, he says, he
was encouraged to do what he loves. "It's one of the best
feelings in life, being able to work for yourself and have
people
seek out your ideas. Every day is exciting when you run your
own ship."
For information on the Go Game that will be held during commencement
2004, visit www.thegogame.com.
Cotnact: info@thegogame.com,
info@thegogame.com,
or call (415) 206-0586.
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