A few weeks ago, international adventurer Flat Stanley took time out of his busy schedule to visit GAMBIT. He kindly agreed to be a guest blogger and write up his impressions of the lab. Take it away, Stanley!

May 24, 2010

Today, I went to go visit Marleigh in Boston. She's my friend Maddie's cousin. Marleigh took me to work with her, which I thought would be kind of boring, but it turns out her work is a really cool place! She works at the GAMBIT Game Lab and studies and makes video games for a living. I took pictures at her office.

	This is Marleigh. Except I'm hanging from her hat, so you can't see her very well. She's the Lead Interaction Designer at GAMBIT. I don't really understand what that means. She said that's ok, no one else does either, but to trust her because it's very important.
	Marleigh let me sit in her office chair. I guess she likes pirates.
	Studying video games means they play them too. Some people were playing games from a really old computer called a TI-99. I liked Q*bert. It was fun.
	Across the street, they're making a new building for curing cancer. One of Marleigh's projects is to make video games to help people understand how cancer works. When the games are done, people will play them in the new building.
	This is Sara. She does lots of things at GAMBIT, but one is Quality Assurance, which means making sure the games all work and are fun. Her office is cleaner than Marleigh's, but she says that's only because it's a new office and her daughters haven't visited much yet.
	College students work at GAMBIT too. Sometimes after work, they all play Rock Band. If you get a high score, they take a picture and put it on the wall. The company that makes Rock Band is called Harmonix and is a few blocks from GAMBIT. They send GAMBIT a new drum set every year, because the drums get worn out so fast with all the people playing them.
	They have a really fancy copier! I tried to copy myself...
	...but it didn't really work.
	This is Mike! He was setting up computers for when the summer students come to work. He's also an artist and draws pictures of video game people and an old scientist named Nikola Tesla.
	They have a lot of video games at GAMBIT. A loooooooooooooooooot of video games. This is only one of the cabinets.
	Jason was on vacation, but he's the art person. He painted this picture of Mario. Look, Mario is jumping over me!
	Clara is a researcher at GAMBIT. Researchers are people who write papers and drink a lot of coffee. But Clara drinks tea instead of coffee because she's from Europe.
	Rik was the one person who had heard of me before Marleigh explained it! He's very cool. He has lots of great toys in his office.
	Abe is the sound guy at GAMBIT. He played me some of the music he wrote for video games. He is working on video games about a Greek person named Sophocles. He said I'd probably learn about Sophocles in high school.
	Philip is the boss of everyone at GAMBIT. You're supposed to push the panic button if you need to talk to him. I didn't push it, even though I kind of wanted to. Philip was in Singapore, which is a small island about as far away from Boston as you can be. GAMBIT has another office there.
	Drew is the computer programmer. We played a game called Dark Tower. He won, but it was ok.
	This is Gene. He makes movies about GAMBIT and puts them on YouTube. He really likes Jamaican music, and made a movie about it that's going to be in movie festivals.
	Matt wasn't there either, but he makes the rules for games so that they're fun to play. Marleigh says he's written about James Bond, zombies, and Metal Gear Solid, but not in the same paper.
	Claudia handles the money, like when people go to conferences. A conference is when a lot of people interested in the same thing get together to talk about it. Her window has words from Zork, which is a video game from back before video games had pictures.
	I like this sign.

Thanks, GAMBIT! See you soon!

Stanley