Your taxes at play: Government building transformed into enormous LED Tetris game

By Luke Dormehl September 7, 2016

People can and will argue unendingly about how governments should spend their citizens’ money. One idea we could absolutely get on board with? Turning sprawling government buildings into giant makeshift gaming monitors.

That’s what recently happened in Israel, where last week a giant Tetris tournament was held on the side of the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality building — designed to mark the upcoming DLD Tel Aviv Innovation Festival, scheduled for later this month.

“Last year we installed 480 LED lights, which created a 3,000 square meter screen,” Mira Marcus, international press director for Tel Aviv Global, told Digital Trends. “For the last few months we have used the screen for advertising matters — as an example, we lit it up with a huge rainbow flag during Pride Week. A few weeks ago, we decided to transform the municipality into a gaming screen. Gil Teichman, an Israeli lighting expert, was involved in the process. We placed two huge joysticks at Rabin Square and invited residents and visitors to play against each other.”

The event was enormously successful, with a long line of gamers queuing up to play until midnight.

Other titles playable on the building-sized screen include Snake, the game popularized by Nokia cellphones in the 1990s, and the first-ever sports arcade game, Pong. “We chose Tetris, Snake, and Pong as games that are familiar to the wide public, easy to play, and the screen has the technical capability to display,” Marcus said.

And don’t be sad if you’re planning a trip to Israel but are afraid of missing the Tetris tournament. The giant screen will be made available every Thursday evening after dark for the public to play and enjoy.

Now we just need to start an online petition to persuade our own government to bring a similar innovation over here. We can’t imagine they’ll be a shortage of signatures.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Contributor

I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…

Gaming

Play Xbox Game Pass’ weirdest game before it leaves on September 30

weird west leaving game pass september 2023 art

Earlier this year, Arkane Studios disappointed on Xbox Game Pass with Redfall, a game that dropped much of the studio’s immersive sim expertise for an underbaked multiplayer adventure. But what if I told you that the person who founded Arkane and helped create series like Dishonored had left the studio prior to Redfall and made an excellent immersive sim that is also available on Xbox Game Pass?
Well, that actually happened, and the game in question is Weird West.
In March 2022, former Arkane Studios founder Raphaël Colantonio released Weird West under the newly formed WolfEye Studios. While it swaps out a third-person perspective for an isometric one, Weird West is a joyfully odd supernatural Western game that manages to tap into the immersive sim design philosophy that made many of the games Colantonio worked on excellent.
Unfortunately, Weird West is leaving Xbox Game Pass on September 30, so we recommend you give it a shot before it’s gone.
Embracing the weird
Surprisingly, there aren’t a lot of games set in the Wild West, and even fewer that lean into creepy, supernatural elements like Weird West does. The game’s world is full of supernatural cults, magic, and creatures like pigmen, zombies, and werewolves. Its story is told across five distinct campaigns, starting with one about a retired bounty hunter whose child is killed and husband kidnapped, setting her off on an adventure to get them back.
The individual stories of all five of Weird West’s playable characters are emotionally captivating and quite distinct from each other. That’s very noticeable as soon as you jump over to the second story, which follows a human turned into a Pigman. Still, it’s a living and reactive world, so decisions made and characters killed in an earlier character’s journey do have an impact on subsequent characters’ adventures; you can even find and recruit characters that you previously played as.

It’s here where Weird West’s immersive sim roots start to shine, as a lot of emergent narrative moments with impact feel crafted by the player. This carries over into gameplay, which is done from an isometric perspective. Like Arkane’s best games, there are always multiple solutions to any objective, and going in with guns blazing isn’t always the best option. Instead, players are encouraged to stealth around, sweet-talk characters, and even use some magical abilities if the playable character can learn them as they progress through a character’s journey.
With these more dynamic elements, the isometric perspective, and the narrative focus, Weird West can feel like as much of a CRPG as an immersive sim at times. As such, it might be an enjoyable follow-up to Baldur’s Gate 3 for players finally coming off that lengthy RPG. At the very least, if you enjoy games that emphasize player freedom and also find novel ways to make it influence the game’s broader narrative, then you’ll enjoy Weird West.
The game had some technical issues and rough edges when it was first released, so it has flown under the radar. Most of those have all been smoothed over by now, though. Post-launch updates have fixed most of the major bugs and improved the character progression, aiming, and companion and stealth systems by adding more depth and UI clarity to them. Weird West is in the best state it has ever been in, but still feels as distinct and strange as ever.

Gaming

The best free-to-play mobile games

Marvel Snap running on the OnePlus Nord N30 5G.

The realm of mobile gaming has come a long way since the days when you were lucky if you could play a game of Snake on your brick of a phone. Today, we all have essentially a modern console in our pockets with games that look and play just as good as what is offered on current consoles. Unlike the console or PC space, mobile games have mostly stuck to either being extremely cheap or simply free-to-play. While that sounds great on the surface, it also means that the storefronts are filled with thousands of games looking for your attention, with only a select few worthy of your time. If you're looking for your next mobile go-to with no upfront cost, here are the best free-to-play mobile games you may never delete from your home screen.

Honkai: Star Rail

Gaming

Xbox Games Showcase can succeed where the PlayStation Showcase struggled

Senua stares ahead wearing war paint.

If there’s one video game presentation happening over the next week that has the most to prove, it’s the Xbox Games Showcase. Despite a strong start to the year with Hi-Fi Rush and a solid Developer Direct showcase, Microsoft’s gaming branch has floundered in recent months because of struggles with its acquisition of Activision Blizzard and the rocky launch of Redfall. With the Xbox Games Showcase and Starfield Direct Double Feature, Microsoft must reconfirm its commitment to gaming and to releasing high-quality first-party exclusives.

That said, Xbox is in an excellent position to do just that because of Sony’s underwhelming May showcase. As the first major gaming presentation of the summer, Sony had the chance to “win” the whole game reveal season early with its PlayStation Showcase. Ultimately, that live stream proved disappointing because of its focus on CGI reveal trailers and live service games.