"Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes"

Hey everyone. So, I definitely didn't blog yesterday. I was working on some things for grad school and as soon as I sent out an email to a professor, I crashed hard. Sorry about that! I know I missed at least one day earlier this year, although I can't quite remember when that was. Anyway, it's already mid-November, so missing two days compared to the stretches of time before 2015 when I wouldn't blog for months at a time... it's not all that bad.

I recently saw YouTubers playing a game called "Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes", which caught my attention. The general premise is that one player is looking at a bomb but doesn't know how to disarm it. Meanwhile other players have a bomb defusal manual that goes through each possible module (puzzle), except that they can't see the bomb. Throw in the randomness of which colors, words, and modules show up on the bomb, and the game makes for a fast-paced asymmetric game.

As I was watching gameplay videos, I thought about how the game could used to help with team communication, so I acquired a copy of the game through Steam. On Tuesday, I was able to have my RA staff try it and then today, I brought it to the weekly meeting with my co-workers. I am happy to report that every group was able to disarm the first bomb successfully.

I'm not going to go over every detail, but there were some interesting moments. Since I've seen a number of gameplay videos, I know what information on the bomb is important to talk about first and what is rarely important. So it was kind of amusing to have the first person with each group start talking about everything they see in the hopes that it's important. That of course is part of the learning curve and the conversation will be more refined as more people have experience with the manual as well as in the 'hot seat' defusing the bomb.

There were moments both yesterday and today when there a mistake that halted progress. In one scenario, the experts accidentally didn't read the manual properly, and in the other scenario, the defuser cut the wrong wire. It was interesting to see how each group tried to figure out where the error was and how to move forward.

A lot of time went into explaining the concept of the game, so hopefully I can pull it out at future meetings with less prep time. I would imagine that some of my RAs will look up the game on their own time, which is okay. The biggest thing, of course, is that the game's success hinges on communicating with others when you only have either the lock or the key.

I am certainly looking forward to this weekend. Things aren't terrible, but it will still be good to zone out from things and get away from campus for a bit. Tomorrow will be National Peanut Butter Fudge Day and Name Your PC Day.

DFTBA