"Leon!"

First of all, let's be honest. Midnight Madness is an awful movie. It's dreadful, really. Terrible. There are only two reasons it should ever be discussed in polite company: 1) it was Michael J. Fox's first feature film; and 2) it was the direct inspiration for The Game.

At last night's Captain's Meeting, Team Snout (plus some Drunken Spiders) revealed that we are running the previously announced Game on April 5th. We had discussed keeping our identity secret for longer, but not only would that have been very difficult for us, it would also have prevented us from fully participating in the event. And, in the end, we thought it was more thematically appropriate to do the big reveal at the Captain's Meeting. We even put together our own version of Leon's slide show, as a tribute to the original presentation for "The Great All-Nighter."

But let's get back to the movie. It was made in 1980, and is chock-full of the high dairy content which distinguished many of that decade's entertainments. I suspect that Joe Belfiore and his cohorts, the first people to take on the role of "Game Control," felt that they could make better puzzles than those depicted in the movie--which is not that hard, but making everything work in a live event can be very challenging.

We, Team Snout, wanted to get "back to basics" for a few reasons. First and foremost, we wanted to run one last Game before DeeAnn and I move out of the bay area, and we had limited time to plan. A smaller, more simple event made sense and fit (barely) within our timeline for the move. More generally, GCs tend to want to one-up each other all the time, either designing more elaborate clues, finding more impressive locations, providing better meals, or otherwise adding complexity and cost to their events. (We are also guilty of this--we'll be the first to admit that our last Game was a logistical nightmare.)

So we view this Midnight Madness Game as a sort of encore to the Hogwarts Game, and a reminder to everyone in the community of what makes these events fun in the first place. You don't need train rides or fancy meals or electronic gadgets to put on a great event. All you need is...well, you'll find that out on April 5th. But feel free to speculate in the comments. :)

~CKL