[ Download mp3 - 28 MB ]
00:00 - "priceless"
01:56 - leftovers from The WHO Game
03:25 - who keeps all this stuff?
05:23 - would a "Museum of The Game" be a good idea?
11:15 - game museum != puzzle museum
12:34 - Elvis != TMBG
15:47 - a hunt experience > puzzles alone
19:23 - yet another moviemaking analogy
25:31 - what have we learned, Charlie Brown?
30:27 - The End
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Music: instrumentals from "Code Monkey" and "My Monkey" by Jonathan Coulton
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I've been meaning to ask for about a year... what the heck does "inside baseball" refer to? From the context, it sounds like it's a synonym for "inside joke," but I've only ever heard it on this show. What's its etymology?
ReplyDeletePer Wikipedia:
ReplyDelete"[D]etails or minutia of a subject so detailed or requiring such a specific knowledge about what is being discussed that they generally are not well known or appreciated by outsiders."
If you don't think that describes puzzle hunt culture, please allow me to direct you to Ian Tullis' GC Summit talk. :)
Yep, it was I who have occasionally spoken of a Game museum, and have probably chatted with Curtis about it at some point. Maybe I'll get around to it one day. I've definitely amassed quite a collection of Game artifacts that I'm sure (some) people would enjoy perusing, and right know it is all just stuffed away in a closet.
ReplyDeleteReally enjoyed the way that this one made me think. Thank you, both, as ever!
ReplyDeleteThe direction that this led me down was the thought of a permanent exhibit that people could visit and do an organised event at which, while it could not be a Game, might have a faint flavour of the puzzle hunt nature. Now it's very tempting to say "it's a nice idea, but it could never happen in practice", but it's interesting to see that the world of Family Entertainment Centre attractions is independently moving just ever so slightly in this direction over time.
There hasn't been a breakout hit yet, but the 5-wits centre in Boston and their relocated previous adventure in Pigeon Forge shows that there is at least some demand for something that has both a tad of the puzzle nature and a tad of the thematic story nature. From what I've heard, the experience does not stand up in court for those who have done This Sort Of Thing before on the bigger, better scale of a longer puzzle hunt, let alone a full overnight Game, but nevertheless I think it's a baby step in the right direction.
It's also very interesting to hear about the Real Escape Game experiences in San Francisco. Again, I'm not pretending that they necessarily have much in common with the Game (and I'm not at all qualified to speak on this, having done no more than a single DASH!) but I know that some people who have done puzzle hunts in the past have enjoyed Real Escape for vaguely similar reasons to a much lesser extent. Could this be another step in the right direction? I'd like to believe so.
I guess what I'm getting at is if there is enough demand for this sort of thing that it becomes possible to do it bigger and better over the years on a commercial scale, and get closer and closer analogues to the puzzle hunt nature, could one of these existing sites, with twenty or thirty years' evolution, be the basis for an eventual location for a Museum of the Game? Probably not in all actuality but I'd like to live in a universe in which it were so, even if this universe only exists in my head.
Now I need to go and find this Jackpot movie... :-)
CHRIS: you're very welcome! Glad you're still enjoying the podcast.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the very interesting info about 5-wits and the adventures in Pigeon Forge. We've done similar things at the Spy Museum in Washington, DC ( http://www.spymuseum.org/exhibition-experiences/interactive-spy-experiences/operation-spy/ ) and in the Wisconson Dells ( http://malum-iter.com/RoadTripCatsMMVIII/2008/07/wizard-quest.html ).
We'll see if we can find someone to talk about the Real Escape Games. :)