Game catcher: playing, recording and archiving playground games

This chapter is a case study in the design and development of the Game Catcher - a prototype computer game developed by Grethe Mitchell and Andy Clarke as part of the AHRC Beyond Text Programme large grant project Children's Playground Games and Songs in the New Media Age. The Game Catcher allows the recording, playback, archiving and analysis of playground games in 3D. Here, we examine the technology behind the Game Catcher and the key academic and editorial challenges in making it both enjoyable to children as a game and useful to researchers as an archiving tool.