Could We Dig Up Humanity’s Last Game in 2000 Years?

May 24, 2013 by dracs

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Game designer Jason Rohrer has apparently created a game which humanity won't be able to play for 2000 years. Why? Because he buried it.

Humanity's Last Game

I stumbled across this article over at Eurogamer. Apparently this year's Game Design Challenge was to come up with "Humanity's Last Game", a rather open statement which led to one game designer proposing a reality TV game in which hackers would try to cause a nuclear apocalypse.

The final winner was John Rohrer who created a board game which can only be played in 2000 years, at least in theory. Rohrer has reportedly buried the board game somewhere in Nevada. The location has been kept secret and Rohrer has printed off over one thousand pieces of paper, each of which holds 900 possible coordinates. These pieces of paper were handed out to those people who attended the Game Design Challenge Panel. Only one of those has the correct coordinates.

Rohrer's Game

So what exactly is this game? Well the board and pieces are made out of titanium, so that they will survive their two millennia under ground. But what of the rules? We don't know, the instructions are buried with the game in a vacuum sealed titanium tube of their own.

From the glimpse of the board my guess is that it is similar to games like the Japanese game of Go, an idea backed up by the way in which it was once said that if there are intelligent alien races out there they almost certainly play Go.

Would you join this treasure hunt? What do you think this game would play like?

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