Humanity’s Final Game: a titanium board game lost in the desert
Source: news.cnet.com
The cathedrals of Europe took centuries to build, surviving political upheavals for the benefit of future generations. Can a board game created today also last that long?
That’s what game designer Jason Rohrer was shooting for when he unveiled A Game for Someone, winner of the Game Design Challenge at the recent Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco.
Rohrer, who has created titles such as The Castle Doctrine, designed A Game for Someone for a challenge titled "Humanity’s Last Game," which it won.
Rohrer’s A Game for Someone is buried somewhere in Nevada.
Rohrer’s new board game is meant to be played not by anyone alive today, but by people some 2,000 years in the future, assuming our species survives that long. To that end it has been buried somewhere in the Nevada desert, Polygon tells us.
"I wanted to make a game that is not for right now, that I will never play," the website quoted Rohrer as saying, "and nobody now living would ever play."
Inspired by the Mancala group of board games, A Game for Someone was tested in video game form by AI algorithms, and apparently Rohrer did not even play it himself.
It was designed to last through the ages, with the 18x18-inch board and silver cylindrical pieces machined from about 30 pounds of titanium.
The rules, which Rohrer has kept secret, were printed as diagrams on acid-free paper, sealed in a Pyrex tube, and housed in more titanium.
Rohrer then buried the game at a secret location in the Nevada desert, but kept the GPS location.
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Read the full article at: cnet.com
