The "LA" in "PLAY"

Hard to know where to begin writing about the great time we had at IndieCade! We played 7th inning stretch style games with everyone at the Red Carpet awards - read more here - and played No Match Catch (Blackout Style) in the night games program, and then Twistianapolis 500 with the Big Games on Sunday, in addition to introducing Barn-ana Blitz at the Iron Games competition (we was robbed!). Not to mention all the fun we had playing the many console games as well as Hatter’s Table, Application Crunch, Pigeon Pinata Pummel, Human vs. Zombies, Ordnunnsvissenschaft (I tried) and after-hours Werewolf.

Special shout out to JS Joust, my favorite game of the festival!

Special shout out also to Local #12 for bringing Meta-Game. I’d been wanting to play this game for ages: I thought it would be a fun challenge given my background, ie completely ignorant of video games of all kinds but a natural bullshit artist. After all, the victory goes to the better argument! I only arrived at the end of the tournament and had to learn the rules on the fly, but I grabbed some decks of cards and challenged everyone around me, including (if I recall) arguing that Bejeweled is a better way to waste 10 minutes than Guitar Hero and that Adventure allows the player more freedom than Sim City and that Nintendogs works better as a work of art than Epic Mickey. Before you knew it, I had 10 cards in my deck, more than anyone else who was playing! This qualified me to go into the finals.

My first opponent was Robert, my team-mate from the Iron Games! He’d helped me create a barn out of bananas while blindfolded (the Amish work without electricity) and now I had to turn on him. The challenge he issued was, “Which game should be put in a 1,000 year time capsule?” The card he drew was Dragon’s Lair (I think). I picked a card at random from my deck - it was “Parappa the Rapper.” I have never heard of either game. Robert made a robust argument that was about 2 minutes long. Eric Zimmerman handed me the mic and told me to use 90 seconds. I told him I would use.

“I would like to rap my rebuttal,” I said.

What happened next went something like this. You have to take this with a grain of salt, though, because I do not remember very clearly exactly what I said.

When I say META, you say GAME: META (Crowd: “Game!”) META (“Game!”)
When I say META, you say GAME: META (Crowd: “Game!”) META (“Game!”)
Parappa the Rappa, it’s clear to see
Should be opened in 3011 BC [*Yeah, that should have been AD, but it’s hard to freestyle and think at the same time]
It’s a sociological document!
In forward in time it should be sent
Like Doc Brown’s Delorean
It’s of interest to future historians!
The music of the people, we call hip-hop
Is better than Dragon’s lair, which is just crop [*Crap, pronounced wrong]
Pick Parappa the Rappa from the school that’s ol’
Not the game with the dragon and the knight and the troll [*Is there a troll in this game? Seemed like a good guess]

Then I think I word vomited a little more and ended with “WORD,” like you do. The crowd applauded more for my argument than my opponents’, so I advanced to the finals: not bad for an ignoramus!

Sadly, that was as far as I went: in the final round, I lost to my friend Kurt who argued that Wii Sports was a game that should be taught in schools, more so than and opposed to Legend of Zelda: Windwaker. The card I drew at random from my hand had a typo: it said “Legend of Zelda: Windwalker.” So I read it that way a couple times and the crowd corrected me, but it just sounded like they were all saying “MWWEEEEH” at once and it scared me. Maybe that’s why I lost. No, I lost because Kurt had the better case. He said there is an epidemic of obesity among America’s children and Wii Sports is the solution.

Some people from the audience called for me to rap, but others were already openly saying (as I agreed) that doing it twice is pushing it. Instead, my rebuttal was, “My opponent believes that Wii Sports taught in schools is the solution to our nation’s obesity epidemic. I dispute this contention: the causes of and solutions to obesity are many and complicated. Instead, Legend of Zelda: Windwaker should be taught in schools. Legend of Zelda, as we all know, is one of those games where text scrolls across the screen when you meet a character. [This is called a cut scene, right? I really don’t know! Here’s a phrase I do know: Boss Battle! Nick Fortugno taught me that.]

“This will encourage our children to read.”

And here I displayed the card from my hand and said, “When literacy goes up, typos go down.” This got a good reaction from the crowd, but not enough to beat Kurt. Congratulations on your victory!

Anyway, I know it’s very vain to quote my own rap and talk about how great I was in the contest, but a couple people asked for a video and I don’t think that exists, nor would it love up to your memory of what happened: improvisation seldom does. It’s like jazz music, you kind of have to be there.

To sum up, thanks and congratulations to everyone who came and played in IndieCade, and to all the finalists. We look forward to seeing you next year!