This week we learned of World of Fourcraft, a game that turns New York into a giant game of real-life Risk. That got me to thinking about the box art that predated today's video game packshots, and thus our latest Kotaku 'Shop Contest challenge.
Somewhat open-ended yet plainly straightforward: Take a video game and give it a worthy tabletop board game box. Or, from the other angle, give a board game a video game box, whether thats a modern DVD case, a classic funky 1990s PC game box, or something else. Again, style is only one component here. A well chosen game, either one that fits a board game's motif perfectly or one for which that would be utterly absurd, is your key to making the final roundup of 20.
You know the rules: The 20 best will get rounded up and published at the end of next Saturday. Meantime, I and the rest of the starred commentariat will approve and promote as many as we can so folks can see them and pass judgment.
This is your no-frills step-by-step procedure to participation in the Kotaku 'Shop Contest.
1. Create your 'Shop.
2. Upload it to a free image hosting service. I suggest imgur. It's stupid simple. No account is necessary.
3. This is very important: You must use the URL of the image itself. In imgur, this is the second URL it gives you after you upload the image. It's under "Direct Link (email & IM)"
4. At the beginning of the comments roll, click "Start a New Thread"
5. To the right of your name, select "Image."
6. Paste the imgur URL in the image URL field. It's the field that says "Image URL."
7. You can add editorial commentary if you want, but then just hit submit and your image will load. If it doesn't, paste the image URL as a comment.
8. This is important: Keep your image size under 1 MB. It will not upload to comments if it is over that size. What's more, we're getting reports that if your 'Shop is more than 1000px tall (vertical), it won't upload. If you're getting the broken-image icon, try resizing to a smaller dimension.
As an added inducement, I want to let you know I do star commenters who send in worthy/funny submissions - whether or not they're chosen for the final 20. This may not happen immediately. I usually start rounding up a gallery by the middle of the week. This is my subjective call, but I do want to recognize as many contributors as possible, and show gratitude for making this such a popular feature on weekends.
Now, Gentlemen, start your 'shopping!