Live Action Kaboom!

The first game I submitted to Come Out and Play was BarCode, a collaboration with David Hindman . David had created a performance art game called Modal Kombat, where he would play video games such as Mortal Kombat using a real guitar. It was super cool.

Our concept was to create a territory-grabbing game with Capture the Flag elements throughout downtown Manhattan. The primary implementation was putting a QR-code sticker in the bathroom of a bar to “claim” that location, which was poorly thought out for a couple of reasons, one being that there are commonly at least two bathrooms per bar. The submission required both the use of men's and women's bathrooms, which, beyond being a logistical pain, could encourage less-than-stellar behavior from folks who choose to eschew door labeling conventions for the sake of competition. Not to mention the anger from bartenders dealing with rando non-customers running in and out all day to use the bathroom. Oh, also, the vandalism part.

The game was loosely based on Territory Tepee (a game I created years earlier), and our submission was a bit too silly. We thought it was cute to convolute the rules with jokey asides when all it did was sow confusion.

Note: So why was this a good idea? And why did we think the submission, laced with snarky narratives and juvenile humor, would succeed?

The challenge in location-based games is unique identifiers. How do I know you’re in the place you say you are? And how do I confirm that for the sake of fairness? We could have used some location radii and GPS data, although that was/is(?) notoriously finicky and inaccurate in cities (line of site and all). Additionally, using that system would require app development, as grabbing location data via a website was not a common feature in the mid-aughts (and if it was, we were not skilled enough developers to take advantage). A binary system where someone scans a QR code that leads to a website and confirms the exact location based on an internal library made sense. It didn’t consider that folks could take photos of the QR codes and post them somewhere, allowing anyone to scan them… So maybe we were misguided and driven by a good game name (such as Star Wars, thanks, Karl Rohnke!).?

I don’t think the game would have worked the way we envisioned, but it would require players to run around and enter bars, so, likely, the of-age players wouldn’t care that much. And the goofy submission was written to stand out against others, a better tactic if the idea was solid.

The COAP team politely rejected the submission. Poor Greg Trefry added an explanation to the standard rejection notice, which was a nice gesture but unnecessary. I would have rejected the submission, too. Years and years later, I brought Territory Tepee to Come Out and Play in the form of Territory: DUMBO. Instead of invading bars, we chalked corners (similar to PacManhattan), which was a huge success (after the police gave us the OK).

In 2010, I (and perhaps Debra Everett-Lane or Frank Migliorelli ?) convinced the powers at ESI Design to sponsor Come Out and Play. With this gesture (and significant staff hour commitment), we ensured approved games in the festival. Yes, this is cheating. Sorry.

Greg came to the office and told me that the event was partially taking place at the Brooklyn Lyceum, a space that felt like a 2-story tall empty warehouse. He showed me a picture of some “challenging” space, and I immediately thought of Kaboom!

Kaboom! is an Activision game from 1981 for the Atari that featured a criminal dropping bombs that had to be caught using a barrel on the ground floor. The movement was right or left, and each player had three lives, represented by the height of the barrel (meaning that having only one life made the game more difficult). A standout feature of the game is that the paddle, not the joystick, controlled it. The paddle requires players to turn a large potentiometer to control primarily horizontal movement. It made the game feel unique compared to Pitfall or Adventure and likely made it more difficult. It was one of the games that my brother Fred and I played endlessly, although I’m not sure I was ever any good.

Note: Live-action implementations of video games, such as Live-Action Pitfall by our friends over at BumbleBear Games, LLC (makers of Killer Queen Arcade), were a staple of the new festival. It's almost as if PacManhattan had some long-term impact…

The Lyceum had a 50-foot+ long balcony, and Kaboom! was the game. The main challenge was to create a fun “bomb.” The bombs in the video game take a little bit of time as they fall, so there can be multiple bombs falling simultaneously. We needed at least two bombs falling at a time so the player could anticipate the next move and the game would move fast. Playground balls were out, as it would be way too hard, but balloons were too unpredictable, as they could be subject to an errant breeze from the HVAC system.

Bryan Vitale and I experimented and found the perfect balance: putting dry beans (or pony beads) inside a balloon. Doing so gave just enough weight to the object that it would fall predictably but not enough that it would fall too fast. Additionally, there was a nice little shimmy to the bomb as it fell, which was a happy accident.

The barrels were replaced with stackable garbage cans with wheels on the bottom-most can. While this was awkward for younger players, it was enough weight to challenge most players - both through slowing them down and forcing them to exert enough energy to make the game about endurance. I used my hobbyist coding skills to build a scoreboard using sound effects and imagery from the game. I even included a high-score board to feature the top ten players (three initials only). We projected this on the perpendicular wall. We even draped a giant piece of green fabric from the balcony to mimic the video game.

The final design challenge was the criminal - how do we make the criminal the star of the show? And how can we move them back and forth across the balcony quickly without wearing them out? Whether fate or happy coincidence, my colleague Bryan Markovitz volunteered to take on the role with his friend. We bought them black and white striped convict outfits and gave the direction, “Don’t drop the bombs too quickly.” The two convicts nailed the role - one would tease a drop from one end, hide behind the railing, and the other would drop a bomb at the other end. They relished the role and brought an element of performance and spectacle to the experience. I channeled this in future game designs, such as Field Frogger.

Note: The video contains some background music and likely won't embed (I've been trying!). Please click to watch on YouTube if you want to see the full action.

Kaboom! was one of two games we brought to Come Out and Play that year; the other was Ball Pop, and both were widely praised. The biggest issue was, as a single-player experience, the line needed to be shorter, and we had to turn players down. I solved this in future games by introducing non-playing players (this game, for instance, would have the criminals as a playable role, but that would vary the difficulty significantly between rounds). And like many of my large games, this was the only implementation of Kaboom!, as the space was unique and, as far as I know, doesn’t exist anymore. I could see this working from a one-story roof with a railing but with more beans to counter potential wind.