Remote Bingo
How about Building Materials Bingo. Got a lot of Gen X-ers in your workplace? Do a search for 80s-themed bingo cards. Using the 3 easy steps, create and print a set of custom bingo cards using BingoCardCreator.com. Distribute a bingo card to each staff member and instruct employees to keep their unique card beside their desk for the day. Play bingo with virtual cards In order to save ink and paper, players can join your game and play a virtual card on any device that can access the internet and that has a web browser. Players can join your virtual game on their devices at BingoMaker.com, and click “ Join a game “. Finally, a new way to pass the time at work: Office BINGO. Play alone or play with friends. Regular BINGO rules apply! PRINT A BINGO CARD NOW. Most of the squares are self-explanatory, however, since we don’t want any of your co-workers to cheat you out of victory.
This is a crosspost from VanessaSaurus, dinosaurs, programming, and parsnips. See the original post here.
I’ve been trying to think of creative ways to have some asynchronous fun, andwhen I was planning a research software engineering day (now postponed, for obvious reasons)for Stanford, one of the activities I thought would be fun is some kind of Bingo.If it were in person, it would have been easy enough to hand out paper sheets, and haveparticipants either fill out items while listening to talks, or to take the boards“home” and complete with their lab over some specified amount of time. When this was no longer possible but the US-RSE Virtual Workshopwas being discussed, I jumped at the idea of (still) injecting a little fun with playing Bingo.I quickly realized it would be much easier for participants to have a virtual (web-based)game, and I could imagine people playing along while checking off items like:
- Talks about their research cluster
- Tweet shown on slide
- Asks the audience a question
- Slide with all pictures
- Cat walks across the screen
Remote Worker Bingo Game
It would be so fun! The issue of course, which came up in a conversation with oneof the coordinators for the virtual conference, was that it would be distracting.And I have to agree, it definitely could be. So while I was disappointed that my Remote Bingo idea couldn’t be officially done, I realized that it was still a great idea! I could create a simple remote bingo game that any remote person could play on their own, or in a more multiplayer sort of setting(conference calls? virtual happy hour? during a remote conference? watching a movie?). In that we canparticipate in conferences without wearing pants, or with our pets, what wouldstop someone that wants to have fun from playing Bingo? Exactly. I wanted to builda very general tool that would have many use cases, be easy to customize, andhopefully afford some fun in these strange times. If you want to skip overthe description and just play, hop over to rseng/remote-bingo.
Remote Bingo
I had some fairly simple goals for this application. I wanted:
- A simple board interface with items to click
- A scoring mechanism
- An ability to clear or reset a board with new items
- Choosing to use a new list of items
And for all of the above, I wanted it to be easy for the user to forkthe repository, change some text files to have their own updated items,and deploy on GitHub pages to deploy their own game. Actually, given that youhave a list of items:
The above is the contents of the default “remote-bingo.csv” that the application serves on start, you can then create the Bingo instance, add the default list,and then add other lists for the user to choose from:
Here is the active board!
And then the user can change the board to another in the list at the bottom of the page:
The above should give you a hint that I created additional boards for programmingitems, quarantine cooking, indoor activities, and (in spirit of the US-RSE virtual conference)a virtual conference. If you are interested in the implementation, you can see my terrible JavaScript skills at the repository, rseng/remote-bingo.The file with the Bingo instance is remote-bingo.js. If you want to play bingo, then go to the statically deployed GitHub pages interface athttps://rseng.github.io/remote-bingo/.
How do I play?
Generally, you get a bingo notification when you fill in a row, column, diagonal, orfill the entire board. It’s up to you (and your family, friends, or colleagues) howyou want to decide on what constitutes a win, and the context to play in, period.See the other ideas for lists to get some inspiration.A game of bingo could be played over a night of watching movies, during the durationof a conference call, or over a longer period of time. Given this choice, you candecide how is best to declare bingo (for shorter events, saying Bingo! is probablysufficient, but longer events might need an email with a screen shot of your board).If I were planning an event, I’d make sure to use a much longer list of items toincrease the variety of boards generated, and to give good prizes to winners.If you want to play, go to https://rseng.github.io/remote-bingo/and again, please contribute to the repository to improve the lists, or add a new list.
Bingo Lists
The following lists are provided with the current Remote Bingo interface.
Remote Bingo
The default “remote bingo” includes items that are related to working remotely,COVID-19, and general conference calls.
Quarantine Cooking
The idea here is that you would play this board long term with friends, and tryto get bingo with funny cooking ideas.
Virtual Conference
This board would be fun to play on your own or with a small group while watchinga virtual conference. You might not want to tell the conference that you are playing. :)
Indoor Activities
This is another quarantine related board, but specific to activities. There is a lotof room for improvement here!
Cookies
This is a fun idea if you like to bake, and want to have a longer term competition withfriends. Who can get bingo first baking cookies?
New Programmer
This list is intended for someone learning to program. There could be a lot of improvement here as well, I can only do so much on a Saturday!
Other ideas for lists
Here are some other ideas that I had for lists - if you’d like to contribute a csv filewith items I’d be happy to add to the interface for you to use with your family and friends!
Moving Watching Bingo
If you (remotely) watch a shared TV show or film, you could have a board specific to that.It could even be scoped to include themed items (e.g., scary movies, romantic comedies, TV series)and I’d imagine it should also include people’s reactions to watching.
Stuffed Animals in Windows
I’ve seen that it’s a “thing” to walk around your neighborhood with kids and lookfor stuffed animals in windows, or to find chalk messages on the driveway. It wouldbe fun to have a list of items related to this search, which you could possiblyprint out from the interface and bring with you.
Quarantine Goals
Another quarantine related list (and similar to those already shared) would bea list of funny goals to achieve during the quarantine. E.g., “gain the quarantine 15”or “attend a meeting without pants.” This would likely be a list that you do on yourown.
Acts of Kindness
Remote Bingo Ideas
There are a lot of lovely acts of kindess going on, this would be a verysocially appropriate list, in contrast to the previous! You could create a listof acts of kindness you’ve seen other people do, and then see if youcan do them yourself.
Let’s Make Cake!
If you really love cake (or some other niche item) you can join with a groupof friends and have a battle to see who can make the most different kinds of abaked good to get a Bingo! For this board, I’d say that you would be required totake pictures of the result for proof. You could easily do this with any kindof baked good, pizza, bread, pasta, potato, or food category that has many derivations.See the cookies example provided already with the repository.
Contributing
If you’d like to contribute, here are a few ideas:
1. Create a custom list
I’ve created a set of good starting lists (see bingo lists but of coursethere is great room for improvement, or even making new lists!
2. Add a color picker
While not essential, it would be fun to allow a user to choose the color to highlightthe squares. It would require adding a color picker (perhaps to the bottom right)and then storing the chosen color with the Bingo instance. To do this best,it would be nice to not add additional javascript dependencies.
3. Support for Cache
Currently, if the user closes the browser window, the current game and its stateare lost. It would be nice to have an ability to cache a state, and thenrefreshing the browser would still keep the state.
4. Tags
Currently if you look in the bingo list csv files, there is a second columnfor tags that aren’t used. I was thinking that it would be nice to be ableto load a very large file of items, and then filter down to some subset ofcategories.
5. Explosive Congratulations
I think that when the user fills the entire board, there should be a moreexplosive congratulations (confetti or small animals dancing across the screen?)I think this could be done with some kind of simple css animation, again,with preference to not add additional dependencies.
6. Saving Board
For games that aren’t done live, it would be good to allow for saving to fileof the screen. I’ve done this many times, but typically with svg, so I’m opento ideas for how to best implement this for standard html/css.
7. Support for Mobile
Mobile development is usually an afterthought for me. Nuff’ said!
Thank you!
I want to say a quick thank you to A Game of Dabs on Codepenthat I was able to refactor into a Vue.js application to serve a custom board.I’m terrible at JavaScript and this example was exactly what I needed to get started.That’s all folks! Have fun playing!,and if you are an #rseng please consider attending the US-RSE Virtual Workshop!
This bingo card has a free space and 29 words: Changed Google Meet Background twice in a week, Spoke while muted, Changed your hairstyle, Joked about the commute, Did a typing speed test, just for fun, Asked: 'Is ____ in the call?', Junk food for breakfast, Woke up 5 mins before a meeting, getting numb after sitting for too long, had background nose while in call/meeting, Took a coffee break, or three, Worked in PJs, Did household chores while on break, Dressed up for a video call, Tempted by the fridge being so close, Worked in the backyard, porch or balcony, 'Can you guys see my screen?', Took a quick stroll to stretch, Meeting interrupted by pet or family member, asked 'if you're not presenting, could you please mute?', Made small talk during a meeting, Woke up 5 mins after a meeting, 'sorry, lost connection', sent/cc'ed email to wrong recipient, Missed working in the office, Liked working from home, Missed a meeting/deadline, Forgot to replay an email and 'brb, gonna ...'.
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