Tag Archives: game

Apr 7 2015

Burning Man: The Board Game

burning man board game

A great idea here that will provide hours of entertainment for Burners.

Johan the Dome Guy is a 20-year veteran of Burning Man, he has built many of the fabulous domes we’ve all enjoyed.

The idea behind the Burning Man Board Game is to have fun, and maybe learn a bit about Burner culture at the same time. You can use actual MOOP for game pieces.

moop game piecesThe game has interactive elements, like “everybody bump the thermostat on your A/C up 5 degrees”, which will have a flow on effect on the Playa.

bm board game

The game is being created as a reward on Kickstarter to help raise funds for some of the larger camps. Backers of the project can choose which camp they want to support with their donation. This follows the tradition of camps like SK8 selling skateboards and hoodies with the Burning Man logo, but is nowhere near the blatant commodification of Fest300 making Burning Man promotional videos with 10 seconds of their logo in them.

10 principles

A Burner who has played the game several times already told us “it’s fun to play, and I don’t like board games”.

Fun, right – that’s what this is all about? Art and enjoyment. All of us participating together, to amuse and entertain each other. Not money, not corporate power. Decommodification, not DECOMMODIFICATION LLC. Word is BMOrg are in an emergency crisis meeting right now about this game. Let’s hope they don’t try to shut it down. Last year they said they were teaming up with Indiegogo and Kickstarter to support Burning Man artists…how’s that coming along?

Find out more at the Burning Man Board Game Kickstarter page.

There is some discussion about the game at Reddit. Apparently some Burners think no camp should ever be allowed to use anything related to Burning Man in their fundraisers. This is different from Burning Man’s policy, though.

Screenshot 2015-04-07 11.15.53I would rather play this game than Caravancicle’s Burner Bingo…but to each their own. Cards Against Humanity released their game under the Creative Commons license, you can download it for free. This might be a good way for Burning Man The Board Game to go. Perhaps even an open source version, where Burners can come up with their own cards and share them.

Aug 3 2014

Flash Mob 2014!

Here’s a game for Burners to play at Caravansary. Maybe it’ll be fun, maybe it’ll be lame. Maybe it will be an ice breaker for shy Burners, or a guide for the Virgin who’s not sure what to do and where to go next. Maybe it will help get some activity going in some of the back streets. There’s more crazy shit going on in Black Rock City than just the Esplanade and the Playa.

Go to each hour, and the number of the hour in letters, on the hour.

trippy clock2pm  2:00 & B

3pm  3:00 & C

4pm  4:00 & D

5pm  5:00 & E

6pm  6:00 & F

7pm 7:00 & G

8pm 8:00 & H

9pm 9:00 & I

10pm 10:00 & J

If you play the game, and show up at one of these locations at one of these times…tell ’em Burners.Me sent you. And send us a photo!

 

 

Oct 9 2013

Snapcious Hones Your Photog Chops

by Whatsblem the Pro

An entry in a recent Snapcious Mission -- PHOTO: Mack Reed / Snapcious

An entry in a recent Snapcious Mission — PHOTO: Mack Reed / Snapcious

Mack Reed, a burner since 1996, is launching a free photo game for iOS called SNAPCIOUS that he says “inspires you to see the world through different eyes.”

“The challenge – ‘who can take the best picture of an idea?’ – adds meaning to the willy-nilly-photograph-anything obsession we all have with sharing photos,” Mack explains. “It inspires your creativity, and pushes you to see the world around you more intensely.”

According to Mack, the snappy new app encourages the average non-photographer Joe or Joette armed only with a phone cam to start thinking like a fine arts photographer, or a photojournalist.

“Snapcious brings out your inner photojournalist so you can do kick-ass coverage of your life. . . and it challenges you to develop your visual voice, putting your full creativity into everything you snap.”

How does it work?

“Every day, a new crowd-sourced Mission begins. It’s like a simple photo assignment, thought up by the players themselves – ‘Quality of Light,’ ‘Go Ahead and Jump,’ ‘Bad Hair Day’ – in which players snap and share their interpretation of the Mission and then everyone rates the photos.

“Top-rated photos win. As you earn more points by posting photos, rating them, adding comments and suggesting ideas for new Missions, you gradually level up and gain more insight into the art of photography.”

The game is still in its first incarnation, with a raft of incentives planned. Mack is clearly passionate about both the game and photography itself; he seems to want above all to leverage the ubiquity of camera phones to foster more and better photographers.

“When you level-up,” he tells me, “you’ll get access to a pro camera, pro editing tools, and the ability to mentor newer photographers by offering pro tips. In short, we’re building a culture around the notion that everyone secretly desires to become an award-winning photographer, and that photography is a language we can all learn to use with more beauty, finesse and meaning, if we just start communicating more effectively through what we shoot.

“We all take photos as easy as blinking. We all need to start making photos more meaningful, insightful and beautiful. Anyone can share a photo of their pet, their breakfast or their best friend. But how many of us are sharing photos that challenge the eye, that reveal something about us, that expose our inner beauty?

“That’s why we built the game – we want to give people the tools to feed their inner eye and see the world differently.”

You can check out the game at Snapcious.com or download it for iOS.

Mack himself gives a game walkthrough in this video: