Yesterday I joyfully headed down to the first of the new BARG Meets at the MAC with a bulging pocket full of old train tickets. Why, well I was keen to to get some help in testing out a game based around those orange and yellow cards we all cram our wallets full of.

The idea for a game based around train tickets came after realising I, like others, spend approx 3% of my life passively collecting, then discarding them and am never without at least 5 or so on my person. So instead of just tossing them into the bin I wanted to take on the challenge of turning these disposable bits of rubbish into a competitive collectable.

So what sort of game is capable with train tickets? Lots of course, but I’m keen to develop something easy to pick up without requiring other tech or props. I’d started to think around other traditional card games and see what derivatives might be possible and of course top trumps was a natural first direction.

But where to start? As I’m still new to ‘officially’ developing games I foolishly started with a quite admin heavy approach that consisted of compiling a list of all the potential variables and the formats each ticket offers up, and there are a lot….an awful lot…..

- Return or single
- No of travellers
- Cost
- Date valid from
- Date valid till
- Date printed
- To & from
- Validity
- Various random nonsensical combinations of 5/ 10 letter numbers and letters
- Ticket validation, (stamp…hole punch….squiggle)

and this still isn’t all of them and doesn’t include seat reservations, void tickets, receipts, foreign tickets and others. After listing most of these I must admit I wasn’t a great deal further along actually coming up with a game and was just boring myself to tears. What I needed was to sit down with a group of people willing to just start playing some half baked games to see and discuss what worked and what didn’t.

And thankfully this is where the BARG meet came in. I was slightly worried when I was heading down that I wasn’t doing so with a perfect game, or even a playable one. Instead I just had a pocket full of tickets a few ideas and an extensively dull list of variables. But it turns out that’s all I needed.

I explained my semi logic and thinking so far to the group which lead to us playing through a few rounds of a trump based game with a variation of rules, discussing and deciding on these as we went along.

A personal favourite was the development of how to deal with the ‘to and from’ variable which moved from ‘distance from current location’, ‘longest distance travelled’ to the more qualitative measurement of ‘travelling up or down in the world’ (e.g. a journey from Coventry to London= good, but from Coventry to London = bad). Granted this can lead to debating (read: arguing) among players, but  this complimented the more defined numerical wins (e.g. £42 ticket trumping a £2.70 ticket).

By the end some things worked, some things didn’t, but I’m a lot further along in developing at least 1 game. I still feel that a trump based game is too much the ‘easy option’ but given the number of variables then there’s always room for a whole wiki of games (I’ve also been working around something in a domino format).

By the next meet on the 18th I’m hoping to have some further developed variations of the game we played to inflict on new willing victims. But in the meantime if you have any thoughts on games to develop with tickets then please get in touch!

(p.s. apologies for the awful picture quality, my lovely lumix camera is currently on holiday after I foolishly left it somewhere a week ago, no offence iphone camera)

Highlights so far (in order of appearance)

+ Keita Takahashi acting like a naughty school kid by playing random videos of Boy George on the Jonathon Ross Show, an ice hockey game and someone cleaning a goldfish bowl at the end of the playground announcement (which reminded me of the Friend’s with You one from a few years back)

+ 3rd place in a Canabalt tournament (even if my score ‘1800′ was still a bit shameful) resulting in some nifty over-sized shirts.

+ “Find something that allows you to build a game over a weekend or you’ll loose your mind. If its taking you any longer then whatever you’re doing, its too complicated.” – Adam Atomic on rapid prototyping and the origins of Canabalt. (coincidently it was announced elsewhere in the universe that Unity’s indie level software is now FREE… but also worth noting that Adam’s Flixel is also open source and free too)

+ Adam Atomic then explaining how he created the sound effects for ‘running on a crane’ using his macbook, a saucepan and some sneakers whilst his wife was out of the house.

+ Lord Puttnam commenting on how the game industry needs to be lead by the creatives and not the technology, and how he sees this coming from the independent and bedroom coders.

Goodness me, October has been (and still is for another week) a ridiculously busy month for Game events. For me it started back on the 1st when I crossed the Atlantic to visit LA’s Indiecade and will end on Sunday at London’s Eurogamer Expo (passing through Gamecity and Playful along the way).

Indiecade was a great ‘first ever’ game festival experience. From being surrounded directly by the developers of the games the festival was celebrating, to engaging discussions focused on culture, art and innovation and hearing talks by personal favourites Keita Takahashi and Steph Thirion.

However being a game festival novice I do admit  I was quite the Norma no-mates for the duration, which is especially difficult when surrounded by a such a well connected community. Anyhew- my inability to socialise aside, the games that lay at the heart of the festival were an amazingly eclectic selection that reminded me yet again why I’m so fascinated by indie games ..and a particular nod to Peanut Gallery’s festival favourite Minor Battle that was an excellent mix of pervasive and virtual play. (n.b. a selection of Indiecade titles will also be showing at Game City Squared this week in Nottingham).

So onto the week ahead, and although its a shame that so many excellent game events are clashing, its not going to stop me doing my darnedest to take in as much as I can! I’ll report back with my findings later on, but in the meantime here is a rodeo round up of things I’m particularly excited about…

Gamecity: Something Splendid I have nnnnnooooo idea what this is going to entail, but doesn’t that make it all the much better? (this week’s LFF suprise film being the exception to that rule).

Gamecity: Curry Session- Adam Atomic, Making Canabalt The guy who made Canablat, talking about making Canabalt… with curry. Yeah!

Playful: A one day event about games and play in all their manifestations with an eclectic and exciting line up of speakers, summed up well by this tweet

Gamecity: Frozen Synapse Beat the Dev: The cleaner almost threw away their prize pot, but thankfully its still there to win if you can take on indie devs Mode 7 as they peview their upcoming release Frozen Synapse (I hear its like chess with guns- this is a good thing).

Eurogamer: Indie Games Arcade: If you’ve read this far down, you’ll know by now that I like indie games, so of course I would always be looking forward to more.