Berlin Part 3

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On our last day in Berlin, we found out that a few errant snow flakes had brought the UK to a juddering halt, our flight had been cancelled and we suddenly had two extra days. Good news, because Berlin is The Awesome. Bad news because we had a lot of work we were meant to be getting on with (hence the reason this is all being posted over a week late).

We spent a good few hours wandering around the rides and fighting the fibreglass dinosaursStill, there's no changing the weather and we soon settled down into a very enjoyable rhythm of playing games at Michael's shop alternated with exploring the area. We have to mention the amazing Italian restaurant, run by Roman anarchists that we ended up visiting twice.

Another incredible highlight of our trip was sneaking into Spree Park, an abandoned amusement park in the former east. Apparently the owner upped and left suddenly for a new life in Peru. The remaining park is incredibly well preserved and full of spooky, calm beauty. Really fascinating - we spent a good few hours wandering around the rides and fighting the fibreglass dinosaurs.

We have to give an extra special huge thanks to Michael and his family for being so welcoming and kind and cool with us and making our stay a very memorable one. Thanks Michael! Everyone who goes to Berlin needs to check out his shop, Spielwiese, and spend some quality time playing great games.

In other news, we finally relented to peer pressure and joined Twitter. Please follow us, it'll give us a sense of purpose. God knows we need one.

War on Terror at the Berlin Academy of Arts

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It was always going to be an interesting day, what with a severe lack of sleep the previous two nights, Andy S on a constant and intense caffeine buzz (he'd given the stuff up for a month and had just started again with a vengeance), seeing War on Terror encased in a glass cabinet in the Berlin Academy of Arts and then playing the game at the same gallery as some kind of weird, vaguely-intentioned performance piece... That the day finally ended in a techno club the following morning in a squatted factory was all-too-predictable.

Only just slightly weirder than seeing WoT in a gallery display case, was playing a game in the galleryBut before all that, we took a tour of Berlin - taking in a nice mix of the usual and not so usual sights like Cafe Zapata. We particularly digged Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain, where Spielwiese is located - very cool districts with an exciting feel about them; lots happening.

At the end of the day at the Akademie der Künste, we were given a friendly welcome by Brigitte, the Akademie PR lady, who seemed genuinely pleased to have us at the gallery. We still had no idea what to expect at this point, but we were imagining an informal library-type room where War on Terror was one of many objects available on the shelves. As it turned out, our game was displayed in a room much like every other in the exhibition, locked inside a low, glass case. Surrounding this case were various videos, art pieces and a small library of books. To say we were intensely freaked out is an understatement.

It's very difficult to describe the various 'do not compute' thought processes that go through your mind when you see people examining your board game in a modern art gallery, but it's something along the lines of 'what-the-fuck-it's-just-a-game-and-you-can-buy-it-in-the-shops-just-10-minutes-away-and-you're-stood-there-peering-at-it-with-a-serious-look-on-your-face-like-it's-going-to-offer-up-some-kind-of-answer-but-it's-just-a-game-but-then-again-it-is-a-pretty-awesome-game-I-mean-what-other-game-is-in-a-modern-art-gallery-but-it-IS-just-a-game-this-is-too-mental-I-think-a-piece-of-brain-just-leaked-out-my-ear'.

The exhibition itself is truly great. The proper art is genuinely thought-provoking but - and all credit to the curators here - it's the presentation and lay out of the exhibition that is extremely well executed and really makes it what it is. All the art was located in the basement, with projections of the pieces being shown in the gallery space upstairs. Various cameras tracked visitors to the gallery and showed upstairs pictures downstairs and vice-versa. The effect was to immerse the visitor in a state of being constantly, inescapably scrutinised. If you get the chance, we urge you to see it - it runs until March 31st.

Only just slightly weirder than seeing WoT in a gallery display case, was playing a game in the gallery that evening as part of the "Long Night of the Museums" - an annual event that sees museums right across Berlin opening their doors late and laying on extra (often free) attractions for the public.

We were installed in the top floor of the gallery, with a bar, a DJ and a large balcony overlooking Pariser Platz and the Brandenburg Gate. 10/10 for location. Then we learnt the range of war on terror themed cocktails were free. 10/10 for hospitality. This town just keeps getting better and better.

We did a final bit of filming before the free cocktails took effect. It was still probably the silliest interview we've done, which came to a crashing end when Andy S tried his hand at explaining the game in German. They never prepare you for this stuff at school.

So a very strange game of War on Terror ensued as the room gradually filled up. Some people stood back and took pictures, others sat down with us and got involved. Lots of laughter, lots of confused faces - we think, overall, from what we can remember, it was a great success. The curators seemed happy anyway. They had over 2000 people through the gallery that evening.

Towards the end of the night, Sebastian from yesterday's game evening arrived with news of a one-off techno party at a disused factory building in East Berlin. It sounded too cool for us, but you can't go to Berlin and not go to a techno night. First, though, we got in a quick round of "the new game" before we had to ditch our comfy, privileged position as artists and face the real world again.

Several hours of 120bpm electronica and Andy S welched out at a shameful 9.00am. Andy T and Tom carried on going for another 2 hours. People were still arriving at this time. Berliners are mental.

Game Evening at Spielwiese, Berlin

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Getting up at 3.30am is always a challenge for us TBG chaps. Tom and Andy S solved the problem with the help of 10 different alarms. Andy T simply never went to bed and decided to drink through the night. We had to deal with a spot of 'wheel rage' at the airport when Andy T inexplicably developed a hatred of mobile luggage, but apart from that it seemed as if Andy T had the best tactic, all things considered.

After arriving in Berlin, we checked in with our gracious host, Michael, who runs the Spielwiese games shop - a cosy little cafe with over 600 games available to rent and play. Apparently War on Terror is the best seller there and the box shows it. We've never seen a WoT box so worn and well loved, it was quite touching.

After that, we set off to explore the area and hand out some flyers for that evening's game event, which we hoped would draw a decent crowd, since we were planning to officially demo our new game for the first time. Well before evening fell, we'd all fallen in love with Berlin. Friendly people, a generally laid-back air, incredible street art and an unnecessary amount of bars and cafes - oh and flippin' amazing falafel - makes for a great mix.

Back at Spielwiese and the shop was overflowing with people. We soon had two 6-player games of WoT on the go, with more looking on. Andy T played two games of "the new game" (for those waiting to know, we'll be releasing some information and pictures in the next couple of weeks) and the results were good: noisy, funny and nasty. Any game where 'Nazi Gold' can be stolen from your personal fortune is always very promising.

Andy S's game of WoT was livened up by some very German approaches to playing the game. One fellow was particularly disturbed by the lack of solid rules and suggested that Go or Chess was an infinitely better game. While it's pretty difficult to argue against this claim on any rational level, Andy S managed to stump the young gentleman by asking him when he last laughed while playing Go.

The whole evening (and the gallery event the next day) was filmed by a very nice man by the name of Sebastian - hopefully going to get it on some German culture programme. We've turned into quite the sophistocrats, don't you know.

Official: War on Terror is Art

At least in official circles, the phrase, "War on Terror", looks like it's being relegated to an unfortunate blip in history, while the crimes committed in its shadow continue regardless. In this reflexive mood, there's more opportunity and scope for analysis; people start looking at the subject in different ways.

So we were very excited when one of the curators of the Embedded Art exhibition at the Academy of Arts in Berlin got in touch to ask if they could use War on Terror as part of the exhibition.

we'll hopefully be playing a game of WoT at the museum in the evening Described as "an interdisciplinary exhibition focussing on the societal shifts caused by the universal desire for security", the exhibition features 28 specially commissioned works of art from different artists. War on Terror is going to be on show in the exhibition's archive room in the main exhibition hall, along with photos, books and other objects related to the subject.

Not only that, but we'll hopefully be playing a game of WoT at the museum in the evening of Saturday 31 January as part of their "Long Night" events programme, which promises to be a lot of fun.

To make the most of our brief stay in Berlin, we'll also be hosting a games night at the Spielwiese games shop on Friday 30 January from about 7pm where we'll also be demonstrating our new card game (which is also the reason we've been quiet for so long ... more on that later).

So if you're in Berlin, please drop by to either or both events and say Gutentag. It'd be lovely to see you all.

Brave New World

So Bush is gone, Obama is the new 'leader of the free world' and the 'War on Terror' and everything else remotely associated with the Bush administration is being rapidly swept under the carpet by just about everyone (apart from Israel, who are still revelling in the possibilities afforded to them by the magical concept of the "pre-emptive strike"). Is this the new beginning we've been hoping for?

Sorry to put a downer on things but we don't think so. While most of the world is singing, "Ding! Dong! The Witch is dead" and project 'Rebrand America' is virtually complete, we'd like to take this opportunity to cool our heels a bit and get a couple of things straight.

First off, you can never, ever truly move on, without both acknowledging and dealing with the mistakes of the past. That's what we should be doing. However, now that George Bush Jnr isn't the most powerful man in the world, the American media is intent on marking the occasion by compiling amusing and mildly mocking clips of Bush's fumbles, essentially reducing 8 criminal years to a series of TV bloopers. The most nauseating we've seen so far being Letterman's Top Ten Bush Moments. Remember, this is the same man that the United Nations special torture rapporteur has just said should be tried for war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly even genocide.

Let's clear this up. George W. Bush is a bastard, an evil bastard, up there with any of your traditional despotic hate figures. In terms of body count alone, he has no modern equal. To present him as some sort of clueless, bumbling fool almost humanises this lowlife, so we took the liberty of remixing Letterman's clip to include what Bush really ought to be remembered for. (You're not even meant to end a sentence with a preposition, but that's just how ruddy angry I am right now, I simply don't care).

By the way, if you're thinking ol' Dubya can't be held responsible for all the bad things that happened in the numerous wars he waged, consider what the Nuremberg Tribunal concluded following WW2 - that initiating a war of aggression is the "supreme international crime", in that "it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole". The buck stops with the decision makers and they all need to be held to account. Simple.

Secondly, it's not pleasant but it's vital to remember that while Bush and Co. behaved like psychotic loonies, they are sadly not unique. The policies and ideologies that the Bush administration presided over are really only a very extreme version of what has been before. The Bush Doctrine and the Clinton Doctrine are not too dissimilar when you look at the core ideas behind them. In fact, the Clinton Doctrine declared that the US had the right to use force in order to protect American "interests" abroad. That's not even evoking the mythical defence ploy of "pre-emptive strikes". So yes, it's wonderful to finally see an end to the tragically inept and brutal Bush years, but let's not forget that he's part of a pattern going back well over half a century.

President Obama, the money (although not the odds) is on you to change all that. Here's hoping ...