May’s Days
What do “Bachelor Pad” and “RuPaul’s Drag Race” have in common? For once thing, both called recently to see if I was available to produce challenges and games for them over the summer. And while normally I like taking TV work - well, clarification, I like getting paid TV money - there is TOO MUCH going on at Wise Guys for me to check out for a few weeks. That’s a pretty good feeling.
How much is too much? If you asked me a couple weeks ago what I had going on, I would have said to you: “We’re preparing a cell phone scavenger hunt for a professional group of women who work in construction; an Olympics themed game for high school kids attending DeVry; and a team building game for the librarians of the city of Pasadena.” In fact, I know that’s what I would have said to you, because I said it to a bunch of people in the last few weeks, and even that only describes the first half of the month.
Now that all those games are through, if you want to read about how they went, click below the jump.
Going to Pomona! This is what we loaded the car up with to do an Olympics themed game for DeVry University. Usually Greg and I include a few puzzles in every game we do. Puzzles take up no room when you are packing them. If the game is all physical stunts, it requires a lot of gear. It’s like the circus packed up for a beach vacation.
Hexagonals: This breaks my recent streak, but I want to post this video anyway. Confession: I watch tons of Fort Boyard on YouTube every week. I steal stuff from this show and pitch it to Survivor all the time. There are some great games, and this is one the best ones I’ve seen this year. It seems clearly unfair - rigged in favor of the contestant - but I like it anyway.
Fort Boyard, for those who don’t know, is a French game show filmed on a decommissioned military base on an island: like Alcatraz. The island and the facility are owned by the television production company, and they sell licenses to TV stations all around the world, which means crews of various nationalities are always coming to the island to film. There are many games in different rooms, and some of them are played against a masked confederate, who is part of production. This would never fly on American TV but it’s too bad because games like this afford a lot of opportunities.
The other reason a game like this would not make it past the Survivor challenge room is because there is too much chance involved. Besides which, they are really shying away from purely mental challenges. They don’t do many of these aside from the Concentration game every once in a while.
Stage play
Thanks for the quick and positive feedback, Jed. I will continue in this vein. Here’s the story of the mischief we got up to on Thursday night.
Rainy day recess, sunny day raincoats
It’s too late for a new year’s resolution, but my new goal is to write more posts to this blog that reflect my own personal experience as a game master, as opposed to re-posting articles about the state of gaming today.
I start with a story of failure and a story of triumph.
Under the Boardwalk
Pictured: Big Dipper, the old rickety wooden roller coaster in Santa Cruz. People still ride it to this day. The reason why is beyond me.
Safer by far to enjoy Rides by Fourth Wall Studios. Ever since I saw Elan Lee at a Transmedia LA event talking about his experience creating The Beast and other game-changing events, I have been very interested to follow what Fourth Wall is doing, and now they have a Tumblr.
http://fourthwallstudios.tumblr.com/
If you haven’t the first ride, “Home,” set aside about half an hour and click below.
Something’s Fishy
Last night Wise Guys continued our monthly residency at Mindshare, LA’s premier edutainment salon. My words, not theirs. This month’s theme was The Vast Blue (the ocean) and there was a fantastic collection of speakers talking about harnessing wave energy, how Greenpeace led to sustainable sushi restaurants, and of course hermaphroditic sea slugs. The real star(fish) of the show, of course, were the players who came to our table to check out our latest game: Fishionary.
It is played like Pictionary, but instead of drawing your clues, you had to shape them using goldfish crackers. We had a big bowl of them to use for playing - and a smaller one for eating. Teams faced off trying to shape such ocean-themed clues as OCTOPUS, SEAWEED, and TITANIC. Any guesses on the shapes above?
As the players stepped up their game, we increased the difficulty of the clues leading to some hilarious match-ups like GUMMY WORM vs. TOAST. One of the best pictures of the night was this amazing rendition of a SCUBADIVER by Ashley Booth:
More pictures can be found on our Flickr page. Don’t miss your chance to play with us at the next Mindshare, Thursday, April 19.
Can’t wait for that? Play at home and post pictures of your best Goldfish creations in the comments section below. We’ll award the best picture with tickets to the next Mindshare.
Play the Great Urban Race in Santa Monica
Greg and I played this game a couple years ago in Hollywood and it was a ton of fun. We hope you play this game and enjoy!
http://greaturbanrace.com/event2012_la_santamonica.php
Playtest time
Myles and Greg, with some help from Myles’s wife Laurel and baby Fenton, prepare our new game to submit to IndieCade.
