Juga a Mastermind amb un edifici

Here’s How To Play A Building-Sized Game Of Mastermind…In Sweden

Beckett Mufson. The Creators Project. 8/10/2014

If your 52″ LCD widescreen no longer feels big enough for your budding gaming skills, we suggest you try Play The House, an interactive online game of Mastermind displayed on the 300-plus-feet-tall facade of Stockholm’s NOD building. Engineered by sound artist Hakan Libdo and students from Sweden’s Royal School of Technology, the Play The House installation uses color-changing lightbulbs as the movable Mastermind pegs, and is controllable by any potential player with an internet connection.

From 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. every evening, the building lights up with color-changing “pixels,” and it’s game on. A livestream camera, Play The House’s website, and a lot of wires work together to synchronize the online game with the luminescent facade. Unlike other massive video game installations, including the giant game of Tetris we played back in April, skyscraper-sized Frogger, or PONG on an Olafur Eliasson-designed building, Play The House is a breeze to set up, activate, and move from location to location. “When a small board game is being blown up in this size, and you realize how easily it’s done, you wonder if architects all over the world shouldn’t consider making their houses look more like games,” Libdo says.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Mastermind’s gameplay, check out the Wikipedia page to learn the rules. Then, picture that on a massive, Godzilla-sized architectural screen. Or, just look at the images of the game in action:

You can Play The House on the website here. For more monumental projects, visit Lidbo’s page here, the Swedish Royal School of Technology’s page here. Find the code used to put the whole thing together on GitHub here.