Badge Drop #1: The Countdown ENDS!

Fri, 06/15/2018 - 5:15pm by nicole

It's here, it's here, it's finally HERE! Summer Game 2018 is off and running!

Can you hear the sound of puns rolling off the conveyer belt?

Can you smell the smell of scavenger-hunting shoe soles burning up the hot pavement?

Can you feel the enthusiasm? CAN YOU TASTE THE CAPS LOCK?

GOOD, because the GAME is ON! A lot is changing this summer--including (but not limited to):

-The Summer Game SHOP, which will be CHANGING  PROFOUNDLY.

-TEXT CODES, which this year can be texted to our regular phone number (734) 327-4200!

-LOGGING, which will  get you 50 cool points for each day that you log something NO MATTER HOW MUCH TIME OR PAGES YOU SPEND! Plus, a future badge series for people who log a lot throughout the summer!

-POINTS-O-MATIC, which will be back this summer, and for the first time, POINTS-O-MATIC POINTS will count towards your Summer Game Shop Balance!

-NEW REVIEWER MODES, where you just might GET A BONUS FOR WRITING A REALLY GREAT REVIEW! 

-AND MORE!

All this, so that we can improve the WAY YOU PLAY!

We know you're thoroughly modern people. You're hip to the times. You're up for a change. But we also know what you've been waiting for. ALL. YEAR. LONG.

They're small. They're round. They start with B and end with you rolling in a pile of pretend points!

And honestly, what could possibly be more modern than investing your REAL TIME into a MADE-UP CURRENCY on the INTERNET?

NOTHING, that's what!

Badge Drop #1

So come spend some time doing made-up things with us! Have some fictional fun, learn some far-out facts, and then, of course, GET THE STUFF!

Still STUMPED  over GETTING STARTED? Try ANY or ALL OF these options:

-Visit each AADL location and collect codes!

-Head to the AADL catalog and review some things that kept you busy this winter!

-Check stuff out, read books, watch movies, listen to music, or USE YOUR LIBRARY any way you wanna! 

-Get started with our GETTING STARTED badge series! 

Now pick a direction, stop your waiting and your hybernating, and GET GOING! THANKS FOR PLAYING!

Summer Game 2018: Go Time!

Fri, 06/15/2018 - 11:07am by andrewjmac

It's time, IT'S TIME!  Some of you have waited 9 1/2 months for this and some of you have no idea what the rest of us are so EXCITED about!  Well, I'll tell you...

SUMMER GAME 2018 HAS OFFICIALLY BEGUN!

And this year's Summer Game has all of the great things you remember from previous games like CODES and BADGES and POINTS and BANNERS and EVENTS and SCAVENGER HUNTS and ALL THAT JAZZ.  How should YOU go about GETTING STARTED?

-Visit every AADL location and collect the copious codes! Westgate, Malletts Creek, Pittsfield, and Traverwood all have 10 codes hidden around the building, Downtown has 15 codes PLUS every building has a BIG code on the banner outside (all banners are going up as we speak)! 

-Head to the AADL catalog and get reviewing everything you can think of! 

-Read books, watch movies, listen to music, anything at all!  Just log the item you enjoyed (or didn't enjoy, in which case come to the Library, we'd be happy to recommend something) and get your points once per day! 

-Start getting started by starting with our GETTING STARTED series! 

Getting Started Badge Series

Are you EXCITED? Are you PUMPED? Are you even still reading this blog post or are you gone and playing? WELL YOU SHOULD BE!! Unless you still have NO IDEA what we are talking about, in which case you should head over to the Get Started page to figure out how YOU can...um...get...started. *ahem*

And this year's Summer Game has LOTS more in store down the road, including: -Changes to the Summer Game shop! -New ways to EARN POINTS! -Great new GAME MODES!

So what are you still hanging around here reading for? GO PLAY!

Summer Game 2018: Tell us what you REALLY think!

Fri, 09/22/2017 - 6:06pm by eli

It's a Friday. It's 90 degrees out there. It's 6 PM(ish). Isn't there just a VOID in your HEART? A BADGE-SHAPED HOLE where your SUMMER MANIA would go? A GAPING VOID that can only be filled with SUN-TINGED REMINISCENCE of BADGE DROPS PAST?!?!



Well, US TOO!



Even though we're already UP TO OUR EARS here at Summer Game HQ with work on the ALL-NEW AADL.ORG coming in early 2018, not to mention the IMMINENT ARRIVAL of our order of approximately 1,873 AADL T-Shirts, we can't help thinking about Y'ALL and SUMMER GAME 2018! You see, where the website is going, the current SUMMER GAME INFRASTRUCTURE cannot follow. We will have to rebuild it. (We have the technology.) But it's a good time to REVISIT some of the key TENETS of what make the Summer Game WORK... and NOT WORK, to make it BETTER and MORE FUN for everyone!



So, we've certainly got a ton of ideas, and we know for sure that everything players LURVE about the game will be returning... CODES & BADGES, POINTS & the SHOP... but there's a lot of room to innovate, to improve, to REFINE and keep Summer Game GROWING and bringing MORE SUMMER FUN to MORE PLAYERS!



But what do YOU think? What should stay? What should go? WHAT HAVEN'T WE THOUGHT OF YET? What would be COOL? What would totally STINK? And what would just BLOW YOUR MIND?!



LET'S HEAR IT! If you're still here, it's because you LOVE THE GAME. And we do too. Thanks in advance for helping us make it better... and THANKS FOR PLAYING!

Summer Game 2017: MATHEMATICAL!

Tue, 09/05/2017 - 1:33pm by andrewjmac

Well, Summer Gamers, it's September. Summer is but a distant memory now, after having celebrated the working man and woman by eating a hot dog, cleaning out your kid's backpack from last year, and trying not to get drenched. The evenings have grown chilly and you are maybe even dressed in LAYERS. But still you feel the pull to your computer or your phone, still something calls to you from play.aadl.org--or is it all in your head? Yes, it is. Summer Game 2017 is done.



BUT, it's the first day of school, and the first day of school means the triumphant return of MATH! To celebrate the glory of math, we here at SGHQ have done a little bit of number crunching to see if this year's game compared favorably or un to games of previous years. SO HOW DID IT GO? Oh, it went a little something like THIS:



Players

7,225 players scored points in Summer Game 2017! That's a 16.8% increase over last year and yet another all-time high!



Badges

Players earned 99,479 Summer Game 2017 badges this summer, up 10.2% from last year! SGHQ created a total of 196 badges that were possible to earn, so that means that each badge was earned an average of 508 TIMES!! This year's top three badges were the Josie's Walker badge (2,276 earns), the Super Summer Reader badge (3,412 earns), and the Track TheRide badge--which a veritable bus-watching army of 3,825 players earned!!!



Codes

Players redeemed 533,724 codes in Summer Game 2017! That's an increase of 16.9% over last year, which was already up 30% from the year before! This year we gave you 1088 codes that could be redeemed, which means that each code was typed in an average of 490 times! So not to get too technical, but that's, like, A BUNCH. Nobody hunts down weird puns like you do!



Read/Watched/Listened

This year was once again the BIGGEST YEAR EVER for reading, watching, and listening to things (at least, as far as we have data to see that)! 24,251,910 pages/minutes were reported this summer, which, again, A BUNCH. That means that, on average, summer gamers spent 3,356 minutes over the course of the summer just kicking back and enjoying a good book/movie/show/podcast/album/WHATEVER. You each read Anna Karenina 4 times this summer! Or watched a single cat video 13,424 times! WE DON'T JUDGE!!



Points

And, as always, we'll end with a WHOPPER of a number, this year's total points earned, a truly ENORMOUS 187,025,833 POINTS!! That's a HUGE increase of 38% over last year!! That causes us to raise our collective SGHQ eyebrows more than a little and begin to ponder if we've done the right thing in CREATING THE MONSTER THAT IS THE COLLECTIVE YOU!!!



So after careful analysis and deep thought, we put all of these various measurements together and decided that this year's summer game was pretty good...WHO ARE WE KIDDING, THIS YEAR'S SUMMER GAME WAS STUPENDOUSLY TREMENDOUSLY IN-NO-WAY-HORRENDOUSLY AMAZING!!!



SO WHAT NOW?! We know you've been asking yourselves that question since midnight on September 1. You now have to begin the annual journey of self-discovery wherein you try to remember who you are without the summer game. We're doing the same thing...sort of. Or...WE'RE ALREADY TALKING ABOUT SUMMER GAME 2018 AND HOW TO MAKE IT EVEN MORE AMAZINGLY AWESOMER THAN THIS YEAR WAS!!! You've probably seen some vague hints in the comments that some changes are coming to summer game along with the NEW LIBRARY WEBSITE in 2018. It's a little early to reveal to you what those changes will be (mostly because we haven't really figured them out ourselves), but we can tell you for sure that YOUR SUMMER GAME WILL KEEP BEING YOUR FAVORITE THING ABOUT SUMMER!



How can we be so sure that the game will stay AMAZING? How do we know that any changes we make will be able to maintain the HIGH LEVELS OF AWESOME to which you've become accustomed? How could a changed game still be guaranteed to be INCREDIBLE?? Because we're ABSOLUTELY SURE that the GREATEST thing about Summer Game will never change, and that's YOU! We are constantly ASTOUNDED by you players and we're sure no matter what we do, you will still make the Summer Game GREAT! THANKS FOR MAKING THE SUMMER GAME A FUN THING TO MAKE EVERY YEAR!! AND THANKS FOR PLAYING!!!

It's here.. the great RESTOCKENING! Also, T-SHIRTS!

Fri, 08/25/2017 - 5:34pm by eli

THIS IS IT, PLAYERS! The Final SHOP DROP of Summer Game 2017! In addition to a heaping pile of shiny new AADL T-SHIRTS, we've got a bit more of ALMOST EVERYTHING YOU MISSED THIS SUMMER!

We want to get these items into as many hands as possible, so please SHARE NICELY and leave some stock for your fellow players! Excessive orders will be edited and points refunded.

Also please know that the AADL T-Shirts are MADE TO ORDER and won't be ready for pickup until Late September. You'll be notified when they're ready for pickup!

The Summer Game Shop will close for the season at Midnight on Sunday, September 10th. You won't lose your unspent points. Summer Game Shop Orders must be picked up by Sunday, October 8th. Orders not picked up by 6 PM on Sunday, October 8th will be canceled!

So, what do these T-shirts look like? A slight adjustment to last year's design, but with 3 new colors: SKYLINE BLUE, HURON GREEN, and PIONEER PURPLE! Check it:

And what, the most hardcore among you may ask, about those GOLDEN BUNDLES? Well, you'll find them at the very bottom of the shop, in 5 amazing sizes, from SUPER to SUPREME! They are so choice. If you have the means, we highly recommend picking one up. And when we say ONE, we mean it! One GOLDEN BUNDLE per player, please!

We've had such a blast filling the Summer Game Shop for you. As we've been hinting, Summer Game will change COMPLETELY for 2018, but your favorite parts, from the codes to the badges to the points to the shop, will be there waiting for you. We'll have a whole discussion right here on PLAY.AADL.ORG with you after the game ends about how we can make Summer Game even better for you, so don't disappear come the Gala! Stick around and help us SHAPE THE SHINING FUTURE OF THE SUMMER GAME! Thanks for your patience, feedback, and understanding all summer, and as always....

THANKS FOR PLAYING!

Badge Drop #11: Master Blaster

Fri, 08/25/2017 - 4:19pm by andrewjmac

Well, players, Summer Game 2017 is winding down, moving inexorably toward its inevitable end. It's sad, but we can take consolation in one thing: IT AIN'T OVER YET! And if it's FRIDAY and the GAME IS ON, that can only mean that tomorrow is Saturday...ALSO THAT THERE'S A BADGE DROP!



Since this is the FINAL BADGE DROP of Summer Game 2017, this is a very special drop, the biggest drop of the summer, the drop to end all drops: THE MASTER BADGE DROP! Every badge in this week's drop can only be obtained by earning other badges first, stacking them up, and seeing if they stack up high enough to turn into the MASTER BADGE for each series. If you've been keeping up with your badges all summer, chances are you just got a BUNCH OF NEW BADGES and BONUS POINTS just for your latest scoring event (Note: if you feel like you should have gotten a master badge and you don't see it showing up yet, try doing something to score some points (a tag, a review, a comment, anything) and it'll probably show up).



For those of your who haven't been keeping up with this year's badges, and we know who you are (seriously, we have a whole database behind this thing), we have GOOD NEWS! This year there are an unprecedented 6 DAYS after this Master Badge Drop before the end of the game! Nothing new is happening here, we didn't decide to just give you more days, it's just the way the Fridays fall (so if you've got a problem, take it up with Pope Gregory). But that means you have an extra 6 DAYS to try to get all of the master badges you can by completing as many series badges as you can. That means you've got to get on that catalog and get searching, turn on those Ann Arbor Stories podcasts and get listening, and head out to every library branch to get branch exploring and goblin gaming! You've got this!

What about AFTER you've earned all of those master badges? What else could you possibly do? How about taking a look in the Summer Game Shop and SPENDING SOME OF THOSE MONDO MASTER BADGE BONUS POINTS? What, you say you've already bought everything you are interested in? Have you gotten one of the GOLDEN BUNDLES? You haven't even heard of them? Guess you'll have to watch this space later today to learn about the INSANE and RARE items you can find as part of this year's exciting game end packages!



And after that? Once all of the points have been SPENT? HOW ABOUT A BIG HUGE PARTY WHERE YOU CAN HANG OUT WITH OTHER SUMMER GAMERS, GEEK OUT ABOUT YOUR FAV SUMMER ACTIVITY, and, oh yeah, EARN A WHOLE BUNCH MORE POINTS?!?!! This year's GAME OVER GALA happens next Thursday, August 31 from 6 to 8 pm at the Downtown Library! A special GALA-ONLY GAME, a photo booth, even COOKIES!



So let's finish Summer Game 2017 with a BANG and see just how many MASTERS there truly are out there! See you at the Gala!



AND THANKS FOR PLAYING!!!

Badge Drop #10: *STARSTRUCK*

Fri, 08/18/2017 - 6:16pm by Sara W

Summer Game 2017 may have put STARS in your EYES, but stay tuned for some excitement from the STARS in the SKIES!



There's some AWESOME ASTRONOMY afoot on Monday, 8/21! The only thing that can eclipse the AWESOMENESS of the Summer Game is AN ACTUAL ECLIPSE!!! Join us at the Downtown Library on Monday, 8/21 from 1-3 pm for our SOLAR ECLIPSE VIEWING PARTY. There will be solar eclipse viewing glasses (the must-have accessory of the summer) available to share!



But BEFORE you look up, LOOK BELOW! Hey! BADGES!!!!

Now think of a number. NO, another number. Did you think of 13? Well, think of it now. THIRTEEN!!!!!! It's important because....



THAT'S HOW MANY DAYS OF SUMMER GAME REMAIN! Just 13 more days of CODE HUNTING and POINT GATHERING, SG hunter-gatherers! Gotta get out there and FORAGE for FUN while there's still FUN to FORAGE!



Time's a-tickin'! Collect those codes! Create those comments! Procure those points! BADGE THOSE BADGES!



As always, THANKS FOR PLAYING!!!

At long last... CHOCOLATE! Plus CRAY CRAY CRAYONS and FLAT FLYERS and MORE!

Fri, 08/18/2017 - 6:10pm by eli

We're almost there! Just one shop drop yet to come after tonight! But tonight we've got the long-awaited return of AADL LOGO CHOCOLATES by our friends at Schakolad Ann Arbor, plus some other NEW and NOT SO NEW items, plus more COFFEE and TEA!

With T-SHIRTS and the mysterious GOLDEN BUNDLES still to come in the final drop on 8/25! Stay tuned, and as always....

THANKS FOR PLAYING!

COFFEE! TEA! OWLS! TOOLBELTS! and MORE! ...Okay, also a hat.

Fri, 08/11/2017 - 7:28pm by eli

YOWZA! Summer Game is ROARING towards its triumphant completion, but the SHOP DROPS DON'T STOP! Check it, players:

With T-SHIRTS and the mysterious GOLDEN BUNDLES coming in the final drop on 8/25, there are still a few more surprises in store for next Friday! So, stay tuned, and....

THANKS FOR PLAYING!