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The CIA made a Magic: The Gathering-style card game for training agents
- norswap 8y agoThis doesn't look like Magic: The Gathering at all. More like a board game that uses cards.
- godelski 8y agoI was also kind of surprised at the reference to Love Letter as a card game that has a lot of replay value.
- fouc 8y agoMy coworkers and I used to regularly play Coup or Love Letter for a few months on our lunch breaks. I suppose it's not quite as replayable as Coup but we still did keep playing it over that span. I suppose if we had more selection of card games we would've moved on.
- godelski 8y ago> I suppose if we had more selection of card games we would've moved on. This was the case for me. I keep LL in my bag, because it is quick, easy, and a great way to kill 20 minutes. Coup hasn't worked well with my friend group because we got good at reading one another.
- kaishiro 8y agoIn my experience this is precisely when social deduction games go from good to great. The layers of obfuscation can get pretty deep when your friend knows you know how he would act if you knew what he knew.
- fouc 8y agoCoup is a game of bluffing. If someone guessed accurately what I have, then the next time I would exploit that.
- ghostbrainalpha 8y agoThe CIA also has a board game focused on the Mafia and Cartels where you capture "El Chapo". https://kotaku.com/the-cia-made-a-board-game-and-its-now-playable-1825556825 https://kotaku.com/the-cia-made-a-board-game-and-its-now-pla...
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoSequel title "El Chapo: Escape from NY"
- ggggtez 8y agoThis looks more like Munchkin. Players who are ostensibly on the same "team" actually spend most of their time trying to undermine each other in the name of getting more successes than their peers.
- no2ss 8y agoIf you listen to the latest Techdirt podcast where they discuss this game, they actually talk about exactly that: that the game feels somewhat inspired by Munchkin, even if it's not explicitly cited.
- themodelplumber 8y agoOk now I feel like designing a scenario which includes a CIA card game mastermind. Now retired and living in an obscure villa...with a safe containing the unreleased beta for game version two, "nanobot edition"...
- MaysonL 8y agoTechdirt is running a Kickstarter campaign for a version of the game that they're developing: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mmasnick/cia-collect-it-all https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mmasnick/cia-collect-it...
- MBCook 8y agoThe most recent episode of the Techdirt podcast discusses how the project started and gives some ideas about how they’ve approched it and how it works.
- kqr2 8y agoLink for reference: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180518/22191239865/techdirt-podcast-episode-167-cia-collect-it-all.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180518/22191239865/techd...
- DerekL 8y agoWasn't that mentioned in the second paragraph of the article?
- adventured 8y agoI can't tell where they're developing that out of (I'm guessing the US, as Michael Masnick is an American). In the US you can't use agency names in such a manner ("CIA: Collect It All"). The Federal Government goes out of their way to stop people from making use of FBI, NSA, CIA, et al. in traditional product & service commercial endeavors (non-media, eg tv shows). It'll be necessary to change that name (Espionage: Collect It All, or something). Just raising that $127,000 on Kickstarter by leveraging the CIA name is enough to get you in trouble with the Feds, they can easily come after that money now.
- briandear 8y agoI wish uninformed journalists could be bothered to get the terminology right. A CIA “agent” is a foreign national — a spy. A CIA officer is the American who is “running” the agent. FBI has Special Agents, CIA has officers. It’s much like calling a police officer a “police agent.” The reason this bothers me is that it reveals an ignorance of CIA at a fundamental level — if writers can’t even get the basic terminology accurate, how could they possibly be trusted to get the non-trivial aspects correct?
- tomc1985 8y agoThe dictionary definition of "agent" is "a person who acts on behalf of another person or group." Industry terms of art notwithstanding, anyone acting on the CIA's behalf is technically an "agent", in the same way that an employee is an agent of their employer. Similarly, it also means that LEO are agents of their force, if not the government.
- jachee 8y agoAlso, it's not a difficult logic leap to call members of the Agency "agents".
- toomanybeersies 8y agoAlthough that would make members of the FBI bureaucrats.
- gweinberg 8y agoThe CIA has spooks.
- hulton 8y agoReminds me of the Illuminati Card Game.
- em3rgent0rdr 8y agoCIA should pivot into making games.
- nol13 8y agooh they have.. bwhahaha!
- blackbagboys 8y agoDoesn't seem particularly true to life. Where are the cards for kidnapping innocent people off the streets, keeping them locked in secret prisons, pulverizing their internal organs and torturing them to death?
- no2ss 8y agoHow do we know that's not in there? After all, they said lots of the original cards were redacted...
- blackbagboys 8y agoGood point! Hopefully the Kickstarter crew will incorporate the "incinerate whole families based on probabilistic guesswork" card in the public release.
- powerset 8y agoI know whether this game is intended to be a recruiting campaign, but if it is it seems like a pretty clever one.