Protospiel Online

Protospiel Bingo

In partnership with Maxine and Randy Ekl of Clever Playing Cards, Protospiel Bingo is included in Protospiel Online!

Protospiel Bingo was first launched at Protospiel Chicago 2019. The attendees had a lot of fun with it — and gave some good feedback for the next iteration. In March of 2020, Maxine and Randy partnered with Protospiel Denver to run it for the second time at an in-person Protospiel.

This very meta metagame was a huge hit with Protospiel Denver attendees. It generated a lot of fun conversation and gave our attendees an incentive to playtest as many games as possible. After seeing how much our in-person attendees enjoyed the experience, we wanted to find a way to bring it to our Online attendees — with a few adjustments.

The Bingo Protospielians Know and Love

As we did with the in-person version, each attendee will get a Bingo card with a unique combo of playtest aspects to look for. They’ll use the same card for all 3 days of Protospiel weekend.

At the end of each playtest, the players will find a square on their card that matches the playtest experience they just completed and fill in this matching square.

Players can only fill in a square if they playtest another designer’s game, so all attendees will have a little extra incentive to share the playtesting love.

The things shown on a card can match the 🔍Game Description, 🎉Game Achievements, 💭Game Impressions, 🤓Designer(s), or ♟️Components of a prototype you playtest. You’ll be able to find most info that isn’t purely based on your experience in the playtest’s #looking-for-a-game players wanted post or in the designer’s Discord server profile (if they’ve added self-assignable tags to share their interests.)

Here’s an example Bingo card to give you a better idea.

5x5 grid with B-I-N-G-O letters labeling each column across the top. The B column has 5 items marked with a magnifying glass: Looking for a publisher, high strategy, self publishing, cooperative game, and medium weight. The I column has 5 item labeled with a party popper: Got 3 in a row, uncovered a secret, played with 1 other player, posted a shoutout on play experience, and played with 3 other players. The N column has 5 items labeled with a thought bubble: felt unique, inspired me, favorite playtest of the weekend, great for hobby gamers, and taught me something. The G column has 5 items labeled with a nerd face: designer is a heavy gamer, designer first name starts with E-H, designer first name starts with I-L, designer first name starts with A-D, and 2 designer partnership. The O column has 5 items labeled with a chess pawn: gave me a digital prototyping idea, impressive graphic design, impressive illustrations, color blind friendly, and score track.

To make this metagame extra fun, when you submit a PDF or image file of your completed card, you’ll earn entries to our random drawing giveaways — 1 entry for every 2 squares filled in on your submitted Bingo card and 6 entries for every winning Bingo pattern . See our Discord Giveaways thread for full details.

Bringing Protospiel Bingo Online

To make remote play possible, we found an existing online Bingo card builder and customized it to create Bingo cards full of prototype aspects.

Based on the way this tool works, we set each of the 5 types of prototype characteristics to show up in a specific column on the Bingo card.

One cool perk of using an online Bingo system is that players can refresh their starting Bingo card until they see a mix of prototype aspects they are excited to play. We ask that players only refresh the mix on their Bingo cards before they record any playtests so that all their recorded playtests will be on one card. Players can only turn in one Bingo card for giveaway entries, and only the card they’ve created last will stay in the list of active cards.

When we play Protospiel Bingo in person, playtesters ask the designer of the prototype they’re recording to initial the applicable square on their printed Bingo card. For Protospiel Online Bingo, we have to operate on the honor system. As with in-person Bingo, players are expected to mark one square per playtest.

Since this Bingo game is on the honor system, we’ve made sure everyone has an equal chance to win a prize, no matter how quickly they get their winning Bingo pattern. All prize drawings happen during a livestream after the event.

The Protospiel Bingo cards we used in person had random locations for the “Any Prototype” free space. For the online version, all the cards have their free space in the center, and we’ve changed the free space to “First Playtest of the Weekend” to make that first square extra easy to fill. We know playtests often take longer to get through on virtual tabletops than they do in person, so we’re hoping the free center square will increase the chances players can get a winning Bingo pattern.

Lastly, instead of visiting the registration desk and walking away with a prize, players must use our online submission form to send us their Bingo card before the end of the Sunday one week after the convention. (Sunday at 11:59pm Eastern Time, US) to claim their giveaway entries.

Players do not need to log on to the giveaway livestream in person to win prizes off of their earned giveaway entries, but we do give a separate set of prizes away through games we play with our live viewers. 🙂