Stoodent Solidarity, Market Trading and Seasonal Mayhem

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There's an energetic and urgent movement in the UK at the moment, made up mainly of young people (many, too young to vote, even) who are literally fighting for their future. They want an education, without a mortgage-sized debt at the end, and who can blame them?

While free education may not be a universal human right, it is a benchmark of a progressive society and a right enjoyed by those very people who have just betrayed the students by passing the latest law, increasing higher education fees to a £9,000 a year cap.

The students have responded excellently, with a sustained campaign of action, demonstrations and other forms of protest. The local-to-us Cambridge University Occupation was one of the most publicised and we felt a small gesture of solidarity would go a long way, so last Sunday, we dropped by with some War on Terrors and a big bag of balaclavas. There were happy faces, excited cries and we got our heartwarming "santa moment" (unfortunately at the expense of someone from UCL who was trying to give a talk. Sorry, UCL-man. We didn't mean to cause such a disruption).

The students we talked to were clued up, well organised and focussed on a much broader picture than just the current occupation. They talked of the sense of solidarity and support - how an atmosphere of peaceful comradeship had so easily taken hold in the occupied cafeteria and - in contrast to the 'real world' - how trusting and open people had become with their possessions, time and work. Indeed, laptops, gadgets, bags and food were dotted around the room, unattended and perfectly safe. It was nothing short of inspiring.

The Cambridge occupation has now come to an end, but hopefully everyone will continue to fight the sell-off of education; the increasing desire to commercialise every aspect of life. Education should be about more than just learning how to capitalise upon specialist knowledge. Please support them.

Speaking of commercialisation ... IT'S CHRISTMAS! ...

If we can't beat Take That, what (self) worth do we have? For most people who observe it, Christmas is a rather tacky-but-nonetheless-welcome holiday that occupies one's thoughts maybe from around the week prior to a couple of days after. However, an depressing interesting thing occurs when you're connected to retail in any shape or form and that is Christmas begins around April and only increases in intensity as the year progresses. October feels like Christmas Eve.

Somehow, despite the entire retail establishment prerparing themselves for 9 months of the year for this orgy of spending in December, everything still manages to happen last minute. It's in this maelstrom of activity that we now find ourselves ...

After last year's shopping centre shenanigans we decided to book more dates this year. We contacted over 50 shopping centres. Every single one turned us away - yes, including Lion Yard in Cambridge where we'd run a popular and successful stand just 12 months previous.

Mostly we were refused a licence because War on Terror still manages to make people lose all capability of reason. One centre, however, was honest enough to tell us that they didn't want any of their shoppers being reminded of the financial crisis and so actually objected to Crunch more than WoT.

There is plenty of evidence sadly that we are still living in a Bush-created Dark Age of ignorance and fear. One large centre in Surrey probably thought they were being everso vigilant and PC by turning us down lest we offend the heavily Muslim constituancy. In their justification, however, they revealed that their caution was just another form of biggotry: "I'm not saying they're all terrorists", they helpfully explained "but when we collected for Help for Heroes the Muslims got very upset and claimed we were raising money to attack their homeland ..."

We responded that "the Muslims"' position wasn't entirely illogical and that, if anything, they would be very fond of our game, which draws attention to the brutal absurdities of this particular war. We got no response.

So with the "high st" route once again closed to us, we're left with hitting up the markets. So far we've spent a cold and lonely day sandwiched between a TK Maxx and a disused Ice Rink in Hemel Hemsted, we've rocked the Mill Rd Winter Fair for the 3rd year running. We've also taken a trip to Camden Market (see gallery) for the first time and Brick Lane today. Back to London next weekend ... it's not a glamorous life being a market trader and bloody knackering. But we are thoroughly enjoying running into people from all walks of life who turn out to be ardent fans of War on Terror.

On top of all of this, War on Terror - Edition 2 - is imminent; we're designing a print-and-play game for Greenpeace; "the new game" continues to occupy our time and is getting more relevant by the day and Andy S also managed to balls up his PC trying to fix a virus ... but more on all of that in following blogs (apart from the virus; that's about the beginning and end of that story).

One last thing - a great, little independent chain of music, film & book stores in Bristol, Rise, are stocking War on Terror. They reported last week that WoT was second only to Take That in sales. Please, we beg you, if you're in and around the Bristol area and you're even remotely considering purchasing War on Terror this Yuletide season, please please please get it from Rise so that we can fulfil our childhood dream of having a Christmas number one. Come on, if we can't beat Take That, what (self) worth do we have?

It's become traditional in this blog to follow any "one last thing" with another "one last thing" and we'd hate to break that tradition now. So please, also check out this rather pertinent and splendid online Kettling game by Stephen Lavelle aka Increpare. Thanks.

Terrorbull Games Just Got A Bit More Sexy

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This past weekend, we were overheating our loins at Erotica UK. In case you're wondering, we were exhibiting, not exhibitionists. And it was a nice feeling not to be the freaky odd-ones-out for once. That honour was firmly awarded to the man-babies from Nursery Thymes who spent the entire show in nappies.

Of course, we were asked by a lot of people why we were selling board games at an erotica convention. Few people accepted the idea that there might be a fetish based around playing traditional table-top games (why is that harder to believe than there being a perversion related to dressing up as a dog and being kept in a padded cage?). The reality however is that we were welcomed with open arms at Erotica, which is more than can be said for a good many other conventions.

We had a feeling that the fun and open-minded atmosphere that we had heard was a big part of the convention would be a perfect complement to our games. And while it's fair to say most people hadn't anticipating walking away with a board game (and they didn't), the reaction was overwhelmingly positive and encouraging. So thanks, everyone, who made us feel welcome.

Few people accepted the idea that there might be a fetish based around playing traditional table-top gamesIs this a new direction for TerrorBull Games? Well, there's no reason why games can't be erotic - in fact, we were approached by a wonderful dominatrix (Mistress Absolute) who happily informed us that she played War on Terror with her slaves and wired them up to electricity so she could administer electric shocks as punishment. Stunned as we were by this new application for our games, nothing could really have prepared us for the pictures she later sent through ...

Despite all the fun and shenanigans, the event had an odd, clinical air - verging on a the asexual. This could be down to people like us diluting the eroticism (we all know that, if anything, we increased it) but I think not. It just wasn't the general celebration of sexuality that we were lead to believe. It could be down to the slightly corporate air, the lack of much participation on behalf of the visitors or the grotesque and massively bloated figures suspended from the ceiling that hung over the event like a morbid advert for some arthritic treatment.

We actually got a mention in The Register, whose analysis of the event was pretty spot-on. I felt rather guilty after reading it though, realising we were part of the rot.

Still, we can now proudly add "S&M dungeon" to the absurd (and ever-growing) list of places where War on Terror is enjoyed. Will this sexy madness ever end?

Print and Play: Zombie Apocalypse, the parlour game

We decided to do something a little different - no politics, just zombies. No politics, that is, unless you see the zombies as a metaphor for the insatiable, infectious disease of material capitalism and the survivors as self-organising individuals trying in vain to create a non-hierarchical egalitarian utopia, then yeh, it's pretty political.

Actually, we've been wanting to do a party game for a while and then Andy T overdosed on brain juice one night and we all found this game squatting our inboxes the next morning:

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It seemed the perfect game for Halloween - or any gathering of people, really. So have at it: the only zombie game you will ever need (or want).

Highlights include: multiple winning criteria (especially with the "shoes" game variation); the ability to throw your best friend to the zombies to save your own ass; the cast-iron guarantee of trashing your own house and generally a recipe for fun-filled, horrific chaos.

As always, let us know how you get on. Your feedback is like cream cakes to our creative fat kids.

Zombies by our ever-dependent illustrator, Tom Morgan-Jones

TBG 2.0 - 5 years on and we have a new website!

We didn't plan it this way, but exactly 5 years ago to the day, we registered TerrorBull Games as a limited company. As War on Terror progressed, we realised that we needed a website for the publishing company we just founded and quickly cobbled one together. It did the job and fooled just enough people to get our seed investment...

Fast-forward five years and we've made the awkward transition from the "war on terror" people to "terrorbull games" people. The site, however, had a lot of catching up to do. It looked as if it had been cobbled together on a broken typewriter in the Colombian jungle and as much as we loved it, our aesthetics were only shared by a handful of others. And this is the resulting facelift. WELCOME!

Look around, we have shiny new things! a Timeline, a proper FAQ, fancy looking blog URLs and a state-of-the-art, bespoke spam captcha system ("War Criminal Captcha") developed exclusively for TBG - comment on this blog to see it in action. There's also a little surprise for you if you successfully complete an order. Cunningly, you'll only get to see it if you buy something.

And double-the-excitement-double-the-fun time: we have the first new pictures of War on Terror, edition 2*. Is this a good start to the week, or what?

We'd love to hear your feedback on the site. Plus, messages of mourning and condolence for the loss of TBG 1.0 are more than welcome.

* Please Note: War on Terror edition 2 is NOT YET AVAILABLE. We don't have an exact arrival date yet but when we get Edition 2 in, we'll have both editions listed in the shop. So for now what you're buying are the remaining award-winning cool-as-you-like original edition 1s

Board Game Camp 2010

A while back we got an invitation to attend GameCamp. We had no idea what it was, but it sounded fun and full of geek win, so we were very excited to be invited. That we ended up judging the Game Hack competition was an entirely unexpected honour. So here's what went down:

Over in a posh enclave of West London, the Ebay/ Paypal/ Gumtree offices look out over a willow-lined portion of the Thames and parakeets flutter around the courtyard. Inside, vending machines dispense free pop, chocolate and other goodies. 4 separate conference rooms are decked out in trendy furniture, impractical lighting fixtures and funky carpets and/or padded wall tiles. 3 video game consoles are hooked up to a large, flatscreen HDTV, forming an irresistible draw, while table tennis, table football, pool and a putting-practice green (all free, naturally) put up a good fight for your attention. Half-way through the day, 250 pizzas arrived. It was like a parody of a geeks' paradise and to be honest it's a miracle we had anything to do with board games all day.

There were three 'main events' to add to all this. A very respectable games library kept two rooms of gamers, developers and designers out of mischief for most of the day. Then there was the "Game Hack" - a competition to design, produce and playtest a game in six hours from a single sheet of A4. It's a tall order and something we'd normally be irresistibly drawn too, but we didn't want to be tied down all day, plus the prize - impressive though it was - wasn't really "our thing" (Cadbury were sponsoring it and the winning game was going to be reproduced on the back of next year's xmas chocolate selection box).

As if that wasn't enough, an ongoing "unconference" threw up some real gems. It wasn't terribly well subscribed at first, but it's an interesting idea. Basically anyone can stick up a subject they want to discuss; they select a time and a room and then everyone else free to join and leave at will. It provided for a nice, commitment-free atmosphere. At the same time, it was commitment free, so it was kind of hit-and-miss. Still, we caught part of a great talk on ancient Egyptian games and we even held a couple of sessions ourselves that were so popular we had people squeezed out the door (we won't mention at this point that we deliberately selected a room that could only comfortably seat 8 people).

We eased into things with a general F.A.Q. - showing off the world's only existing copy of War on Terror, edition 2 - and then launched into a discussion on "whether games can be used for positive social change". We had a really healthy range of opinions and the interest was such that our session ran over quite drastically - and then continued outside. Interestingly, we encountered some old arguments. This was odd, because we just assumed gamers didn't think this way. Firstly, "games are not artistic vehicles", or at least not suitable for politics. And secondly, that the hobby is so niche, we can't change the world anyway, so why bother: We'd like to think we won some converts during the session, including a serving soldier who had completed 2 tours of duty in Afghanistan and who added a challenging and emotional level to proceedings. It'd be presumptuous to claim we made a fan of him, but he definitely climbed down from his initial dismissal of War on Terror as "frivolous" and ended up supporting what we were trying to do.

Half-way through the day, Andy S got nabbed to stand in for an AWOL judge in the Game Hack (despite his protestations of not being qualified) and spent the latter half of the afternoon playtesting and judging with James Wallis, Graham Linehan and Simon Crowther (the "CEO of Christmas" at Cadbury's). It was an unexpected pleasure to see Graham and the day happily (and predictably) ended up at the pub, discussing comics, role-playing games and the imminent revolution. It was so uber-geek, we could have been characters in a Linehan-penned script.

A thousand thanks to James Wallis and team for a very enjoyable and inspirational day.When's the next one?