LostGameArchive.com

We spend so much time archiving digital games but what about the games we played outside as kids? Capture the Flag, Kick the Can, Red Rover, Ghost in the Graveyard.\n\nThese games have regional variations, house rules, and local names that are disappearing as kids move indoors. Should we be documenting these too?

Absolutely. My kids have never heard of Sardines (reverse hide and seek) or Bloody Murder. These oral tradition games are the original folk gaming and they are being lost.

Water games too. Marco Polo variants, pool basketball rules, diving contests. Every pool had its own house rules and meta.

In my neighborhood we played a game called Werewolf Tag that was basically Among Us but in real life, 20 years before Among Us existed. Every neighborhood had unique games like this.

There is actually academic work on this. Folklorists have been documenting children playground games since the 1960s. The Opie Collection in the UK is a treasure trove. We could bridge the gap between their work and our archive.