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BP’s Unfortunate Board Game

By Michael Crowley | @CrowleyTIME | July 6, 2010 | +

You couldn’t have made this up:

Up to four would-be tycoons can compete at exploring for oil, building platforms and laying pipelines to their home countries.

But BP Offshore Oil Strike players must also avoid the dreaded ‘hazard cards’, which state: ‘Blow-out! Rig damaged. Oil slick clean-up costs. Pay $1million.’

Unhappily for BP, that is just one per cent of the amount it has spent each day tackling the very real Deepwater Horizon leak, which has seen millions of barrels of oil gush into the Gulf of Mexico and hit the southern US coast.

The mint-condition game, made by Scottish company Printabox, was donated by a private collector to The House On The Hill Toy Museum in Stansted, Essex. It was very rare and ‘obscure’, said museum owner Alan Goldsmith, who added: ‘The parallels between the game and the current crisis… are so spooky.

What’s next–a rigged deck of Goldman Sachs playing cards?

(Via Jon Chait)

Related Topics: Uncategorized

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  • grape_crush

    You couldn’t have made this up…

    Well, the writers of Jumanji and Zathura did, but we get the point.

  • deconstructiva

    Same for Rollerball (the original, not the crappy remake) where corporate cartels take over the world, literally. Fascinating that the game had actual rules and was played by the stuntmen for real during filming. Most of the action was real too (except the deaths were faked, obviously).

  • nflfoghorn

    Candyland gone wild, unfortunately.

  • nflfoghorn

    However, I think a board game was designed for Madoff. Called Monopoly.

  • deconstructiva

    Imagine Sarah Palin creating her version of “Scrabble”.

  • nflfoghorn

    That’s a natural. She MSU all the time.

  • grape_crush

    - The tiles would have to be really tiny in order to fit ‘em all on her hand.
    .
    - She would bring in a ghostwriter.
    .
    - She would only post the words on her Facebook page.
    .
    - She will never, ever play Scrabble with Katie Couric.

  • deconstructiva

    FTW!
    .
    I’m also guessing as we speak, Rusty, Freepa, and Fake “Dr.” Earl are gathering in Rusty’s bomb shelter to create their version of “Battleship”: guess on a grid (with bullet-shaped pegs) where trucks and buses filled with illegal immigrants are. Their creative version of “Chutes and Ladders”, showing how illegals get over The Fence™, is available for $19.95.

  • pintortwo

    Can this be made into a drinking game?

  • nflfoghorn

    4.2: “What board games did you play as a child?”
    .
    “All of ‘em.”
    .
    “Name a few for us.”
    .
    “You know…that one with the spinning wheel and the little cars and the little stick people…everybody plays that.”
    .
    “Oh, you mean LIFE.”
    .
    “That’s not a game – that’s something we go thru every day.”
    .
    .
    Later, Miss Prissy tweets that KC put words in her mouth.

  • michaelfury

    “‘We are pleased to have this opportunity to work with the people of Iraq to develop one of the world’s great oilfields and we see this as the beginning of a long-term relationship with Iraq,’ said BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward.”

    http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2010/07/02/stole-the-summer-scent/

  • michaelfury

    “Up to four would-be tycoons can compete at exploring for oil, building platforms and laying pipelines to their home countries.”

    Yes, but is it as much fun as The Grand Chessboard?

    http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/the-gas-must-flow/

  • apr2563

    de: FTW

  • firebatfox

    Hoo, hoo! Hah, hah! BP and Goldman Sachs! But how about this: a game, maybe fashioned off of the 1950s classic “Go To The Head of The Class”, with caricatures of the Swampland Gang for tokens, where players compete to see who can lavish the most praise on Democrats and the most criticism on Republicans! Because, just as BP is a bad corporate citizen and GS is really greedy, the Swamplanders are – Hoo, hoo! Hah, hah! – really liberal!

  • nflfoghorn

    And what’s wrong with that? (assuming, of course, you don’t know the meaning of the word “liberal”)

  • http://erieangel.wordpress.com erieangel

    I’m a bleeding heart liberal and proud of it.

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