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
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 Invitation. Whether you are sheltering in place for a global pandemic or just geographically separated, you can still spend time with friends and family. Plan a remote game of bingo using modern video conference software (zoom, etc). Google 'Bingo Board Generator,' for resources on creating some randomly generated bingo boards.
- Prove Remote Work Really Works: Zoom made video calls and realtime back-and-forth screen.
Office bingo: Seemingly standard indoor office games for employees such as bingo, charades, or Pictionary get a revamp when remote workers are invited to join by video. This is a great way to engage workers across the globe informally while forging relationships with office workers in a no-pressure situation.
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:
Remote Bingo Template
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?
Remote Work Bingo Card
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
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!
Remote Bingo is a networked computer bingo system that enables your bingo players to remotely attend and participate in a bingo game being played at a single location with each player watching the game and their cards from their own remote location. It works with the Arcade Gaming System so that Players can use their own desktop computer, laptop, tablet or smart phone to participate in the bingo game.
Being able to have players participate from their own remote location is highly important in times when social or physical distancing is encouraged or required.
We would like to hear about your bingo hall and where you would like to move it in these times where social and physical distancing is so important to your customers.
Please send us a message using the button below and provide any extra information or questions you have about how your bingo hall can use our services. The more information you provide, the quicker we can get to know you, and respond in a way that is most helpful to you.