June 6, 2002

The latest issue of Games Magazine (August 2002) has a nice feature article on 1000 Blank White Cards, the freeform creative game of... cards. The article includes a brief interview with our very own Zannah, who is given credit for sparking 1KBWC in Seattle with her BWC site shortly after the original web site was created. Also mentioned is Nina's Seattle Electric Grimmeldeck, imported from Cambridge in early 2000, toward which Lisa and I are contributors. (Lisa's "Hats back in style" card has been the poster card for the Grimmeldeck web site ever since she drew it, though probably just by coincidence. :)

1KBWC is an attractive idea for a fun social activity, and has supposedly caught on in various parts of the world in various ways. But it's still a little surprising to see an article like this, as if the game has taken the world by storm. Its roots are in Madison and Boston, dated "mid-1990s", and Seattle seems to get credit as the first major branch-out, but the number of people involved in those first three steps seems unusually small for a phenomenon. (Are there any other BWC communities in Seattle beyond Z's and N's?)

So it's even more surprising that 1000 Blank White Cards is mentioned in the latest edition of Hoyle's Rules of Games. Nina has a quote (see the December 29 entry). It's listed as a "children's game," as if to say no creative, virtually non-competitive game could possibly be enjoyed by adults. To Hoyle's credit, it's a difficult game to classify, as it's barely a game. I certainly enjoy the mention either way.

I can't find a web presence for Games Magazine. Not even for their publishing house, Kappa Publishing. Anyone know of any official sites?

And speaking of game magazines, here's a bibliography that might come in handy. Abstract Games magazine looks worth looking into.

comments...

jessamyn, June 6, 2002 1:56 AM:

o that's where nate's site went! thanks.

michael, June 6, 2002 6:14 AM:

Yep, that's where it went. But it's been linked from the main Grimmeldeck page for ages. :)



I don't think he's gotten the Madison card server resurrected yet, though.

Adam Fromm, June 6, 2002 9:52 AM:

Hi, there! I was just bopping through, and thought I'd put in my two kopecks on the 1KBWC thing. I'm the author of the Games Magazine article, which I wrote after being bitten by the Blank White Card bug fairly seriously; I accidentally wandered into www.trouserarousal.net/cards while lookin' for sumfin' else, and, well, that was that. First off, thanks muchly for the mention and for the kind words (Somebody read it! Saints be praised!). I wasn't trying to paint a picture of taking-world-by-storm, really, although in retrospect I can definitely see how that came across. It was more of an attempt of taking this exciting thing that's firmly lodged in the underground and dragging it out into the light of day. I get obsessed with this sort of thing fairly easily, and my first inclination is always to foist said obsession on anyone who doesn't duck fast enough.



But to answer your question as to just how widespread 1KBWC is, I'd have to say, more so than you might think. I only mentioned the people involved whom I interviewed, and THAT list came from Nathan McQuillen, the game's acknowledged inventor. I had hoped to talk to more people outside of the Madison/Boston/Seattle nexus, but between all the material I was getting from the Madison crowd, I was rapidly running out of column-space, and had to limit myself to Zannah for the spanning-the-globe section. But the amount of 1KBWC activity is growing rapidly: I've encountered quite a few sites that have popped up just in the month or two since I submitted the article; even the Grimmeldeck site (which is awesome, by the way), didn't come to my attention until the last possible moment, courtesy again of Nate McQ. He's now got a rundown of some of the many mentions out there linked to his main card site at steaky.dhs.org/chorus/cards.html that you might want to check out.



So that's about it: weirdo from upstate New York get hooked on weirdo game from the Midwest, and decides to write about it. Just the old American dream, really.

Adam Fromm, June 6, 2002 9:54 AM:

Oh, and as to your other query: No, Games Magazine does not have any Web presence to speak of. The editors are in a perpetual state of discussion on the matter, but as of yet, discussions are all that have happened. Sigh.

Riff, July 2, 2002 8:49 AM:

A somewhat more elaborated version of the game can be found here.

Mike, July 17, 2002 3:32 AM:

Hm. How cool would it be to create at BWC server? The game could be played over a web service - say a 160x160 GIF and a text description of the card, with a score counter, so on... Hm.

Cindy, July 19, 2002 12:36 AM:

well... I'd hesitate to introduce a computer element just because I'd hate to see people using fonts and Photoshop to make the cards "better". The scribble fast and don't edit factor is part of what makes the cards so funny.