It’s game on at Northeastern

There is only one response to hearing that Northeastern’s campus will be converted this week into a larger-than-life street arcade: “Oh heck yeah!”

The university’s Public Art Initiative is teaming up with OhHeckYeah, a Denver-based immersive street arcade, to bring custom video games to oversized LED screens on Krentzman Quad and Centennial Common over the next few days for a fun gaming experience never before seen on campus.

Starting Tuesday at 6 p.m., Krentzman Quad will be transformed into an outdoor arcade, with three different games available to play for free.

To celebrate Commencement on Friday, game design students in the College of Arts, Media and Design worked with OhHeckYeah to create “Graduation Day,” in which players must grab a diploma from a podium in order to become valedictorian.

Gamers can also play “Catchy,” for which their aim will be to catch good objects and avoid bad objects, and “TinkerBot” wherein two players will work together to align machine parts.

The games will be available on Krentzman on Tuesday and Wednesday, and on Centennial Common on Thursday as part of CommencementFest. The games will be open for play from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. each night, and no experience is needed. In fact, no devices or controllers are needed either. The games will respond to players’ body motions.

Launched in the summer of 2014 in downtown Denver, OhHeckYeah is a public benefit corporation that uses the power of play to strengthen the social, physical, and economic fabric of place.

Northeastern’s Public Art Initiative showcases Northeastern’s unique artistic perspective: innovative, dynamic, interactive, and entrepreneurial. It provides faculty, students, and artists from around the world “canvases” throughout campus—in highly visible and sometimes unexpected places—to display their works for the entire campus community to experience.

This event is being presented in collaboration with Northeastern’s College of Arts, Media and Design and the Northeastern Center for the Arts.