One Week Left To Get CIA: Collect It All For 25% Off

from the indoor-activities dept

Get 25% off your copy of CIA: Collect It All with
the code STAYINSIDE until the end of May »

If you're running out of things to keep you entertained at home (and who isn't, at this point?) then don't forget that CIA: Collect It All, our recreation of a real CIA analyst training game discovered via the Freedom Of Information Act, is on sale for 25% off with the coupon code STAYINSIDE. The sale lasts until the end of the month, so there's just over a week left to get your copy!

CIA: Collect It All is a game for two or more players with over 150 cards representing global crises that must be dealt with, intelligence techniques for addressing them, and the unexpected twists and turns that reality throws at an analyst's best laid plans. It also comes with a set of variant rules that turn it into a storytelling game that generates tales of intrigue and spycraft.

Get 25% off your copy of CIA: Collect It All with
the code STAYINSIDE until the end of May! »

Filed Under: card game, cia, collect it all, sale

Play At Home: CIA: Collect It All Is Now 25% Off

from the collect-it-all dept

Get 25% off your copy of CIA: Collect It All with
the code STAYINSIDE until the end of May »

With tons of folks stuck at home looking for things to do, we've decided to put our CIA: Collect It All card game back on sale. Use the code STAYINSIDE and get 25% from now through the end of May -- and have something else to entertain yourselves with while staying inside. If you don't recall, CIA: Collect It All is our recreation of a declassified card game that the CIA itself created to train analysts on how to gather information in order to respond to various crises around the globe. Unfortunately, we didn't include a "global pandemic" crisis, but perhaps some of these other crises may get your attention instead (and we include some blank cards, so create your own global pandemic card...)

The game is a fun (or perhaps horrifying) deep dive into the many ways in which the CIA collects information from around the globe, and since we're all stuck at home anyway, we might as well learn about what the CIA is doing to keep tabs on everyone and everything...

Get 25% off your copy of CIA: Collect It All with
the code STAYINSIDE until the end of May! »

Filed Under: card game, cia, collect it all, sale

CIA: Collect It All Is Now 25% Off, And The Print-And-Play Version Is Free!

from the game-intel dept

Get 25% off your copy of CIA: Collect It All
with the code HOLIDAY2019 »

It's been over a year and a half since we launched our successful Kickstarter campaign for CIA: Collect It All, our recreation of a real declassified card game that the CIA used to train analysts. Today, we're launching our first big sale: you can get a copy of the game for 25% off by using the discount code HOLIDAY2019 on our purchase page.

If you want one as a gift, there's still time to get a copy before Christmas: the deadline in the US is December 9th for standard shipping and December 17th for express shipping. For other regions, the standard shipping deadlines are December 11th (Canada), December 12th (UK and Australia), and December 9th (Europe), while the express shipping deadline is December 17th in all regions except Europe, where it is December 13th.

But that's not all — we're also officially making the print-and-play version of the game available for free! You can download PDFs of the full card decks and the rulebook, formatted for easy home printing, and you'll be collecting global intelligence in no time. Get your copy on itch.io.

Get 25% off your copy of CIA: Collect It All
with the code HOLIDAY2019 »

Filed Under: card game, cia, collect it all, game, sale

Upset That You Missed The Kickstarter For Our CIA Card Game? Pre-Order Now

from the don't-wait-too-long dept

Earlier this week our Kickstarter campaign for our adaptation of the recently declassified CIA training game, called CIA: Collect It All ended, closing out with over 500% of our target goal. Even so, we know that many people missed out on the campaign who now want to order the game as well (trust me, we've gotten your emails!). So, as we continue to get the game ready, we're now opening up a pre-order system using Celery for others to purchase the game, to be included in our list of backers when we ship out the game later this year. You can now pre-order the game right here for the next month or so until we start manufacturing the cards.

Filed Under: card game, cia, cia game, collect it all

Less Than One Week To Back Our Kickstarter For The CIA's Card Game; Also Reddit AMA Today

from the collect-it-all dept

So, we're now less than a week away from the close of our Kickstarter campaign for our version of the CIA's recently declassified training card game, which we've dubbed: CIA: Collect It All.

We've been working hard on our version of the game, filling in redacted cards, testing and tweaking certain variations and playtesting, playtesting, playtesting. The game is quite a bit of fun -- which is not something I'm used to saying about something the CIA initially created. The campaign ends next Tuesday, and we don't currently have any plans to print the game after we do this one big run, so if you're on the fence about it, now would be a good time to lean towards supporting it.

Since a bunch of people have had questions about the game, we thought it would be good to go on Reddit and do an AMA about the game. The three of us who have been working on the game -- myself and Leigh Beadon from Techdirt, and Randy Lubin from Diegetic Games -- will all be hanging out on Reddit doing the AMA starting at about 10am PT / 1pm ET today. I'll update this post with the link once it's live, but you should just be able to hit up the /r/IAmA/ subreddit and find it. That'll be the best place to have a discussion about the game, gameplay, design choices and the like (though we'll also answer questions here or on Kickstarter). So stop by and ask some questions and find out what it feels like to play the CIA's own card game. Update: Here's the link to the AMA.

Filed Under: card game, cia, collect it all, crowdfunding, game

The Clock Is Ticking: Get Your Copy Of CIA: Collect It All On Kickstarter!

from the tick-tock dept

Last month, we launched our Kickstarter campaign to turn a formerly-top-secret CIA training game into something you can play at home. We hit our goal much sooner than we expected, and now we're less than two weeks away from the close of the campaign — so if you want to get your hands on a copy, hurry up and become a backer!

CIA: Collect It All comes with over 150 high-quality playing cards in a premium box, and is also available in a digital print-and-play version. The game pits you and your friends against each other in a race to solve as many global crises as you can by leveraging clever combinations of the many varied and creative techniques used by real intelligence agencies, from satellite imagery to hacking to good old fashioned espionage.

We recently added international shipping options for 170 countries, but we still have no plans to continue producing the game after sending it out to our backers, so this might be your only chance! If you don't want to miss out, head on over to our Kickstarter campaign and secure your print-and-play or physical copy by backing us as a Digital Analyst or a Field Agent.

The campaign ends at midnight (pacific time) on Tuesday, May 22nd! Stay tuned over the next week and a half as we bring you more information here on Techdirt, or become a backer and get the inside scoop from our Kickstarter updates. And thanks to everyone who has already helped us make CIA: Collect It All a success!

Filed Under: card game, cia, collect it all
Companies: kickstarter

International Shipping Is Now Available For CIA: Collect It All On Kickstarter!

from the get-it-while-you-can dept

As most of you know, we recently launched a Kickstarter campaign for CIA: Collect It All — our fleshed out and polished version of the CIA's training card game that was recently obtained under a FOIA request. Two days later, we hit our funding goal, and now we've more than doubled it!

Before we knew just how much interest there would be, our plan was to limit shipping to the US — but the requests from other countries came pouring in alongside the pledges, and so now we're happy to announce that CIA: Collect it All is now available in 170 countries!

As we warned from the start, international shipping isn't cheap, but we've tried to secure the best rates we possibly could. If you were waiting on availability in your country before backing the campaign — or if you pledged for the digital print-and-play version but would like to upgrade to a physical copy — now's the time. There are a few major countries we are unable to ship to (such as Brazil and Russia) due to limitations of our fulfillment partner, and unfortunately there's nothing we can do about that right now, so we apologize if you're still left out.

There's just over two weeks left in the campaign, and we still have no plans to produce more than this single print run of the game — so if you want to get your hands on a copy, now's the time to back us on Kickstarter so you don't miss out! We're overwhelmed by the support for this project (huge thanks to everyone who has backed it already), and we're excited to bring this formerly top-secret CIA training game to so many people around the world.

Filed Under: card game, cia, collect it all, foia, public domain

Turns Out Lots Of People Want To Play The CIA's Card Game

from the collect-it-all dept

Well, it appears we can both confirm and acknowledge that lots and lots of people want to play the CIA's in-house training card game. As we announced on Monday, we've taken the available details of the internal CIA game Collection Deck, and are in the process of turning it a version you can actually play, which we're renaming CIA: Collect It All. To see if anyone else actually wanted it, we put it on Kickstarter and set what we thought was a fairly high bar: $30,000. And yet, we hit that in about 40 hours and we still more than three and a half weeks to go. We're a bit blown away by how many people are interested, and we're committed to making the game as awesome as we can possibly make it. We recently posted an update to the campaign concerning questions around international shipping, since that's been a big topic of conversation, so if you're interested in that, go check it out.

Either way, thanks to all of you who quickly jumped in and backed the campaign (and told others about it). As we've noted in the campaign, the idea here is to do this as a one shot deal, not to keep making the game. So, while anyone can download the FOIA'd release of the rules and make your own, if you want one of our versions, you'll need to back this campaign.

Filed Under: card game, cia, collect it all, foia, public domain

The CIA Made A Card Game... And We're Releasing It

from the come-and-get-it dept

Yes, the CIA made a card game. And... we're releasing it. No, really. If you want to play the top secret card game that the CIA used to train analysts, you can now back our Kickstarter project for CIA: Collect It All.

Let me explain how we got here...

We write a lot about the CIA here on Techdirt -- often covering just how secretive the organization is around responding to FOIA requests. After all, this is the same organization that invented the famous "Glomar Response" to a FOIA request: the now ubiquitous "we can neither confirm, nor deny." And that one "invention" is used all the time. Indeed, if you have a few extra hours to spend, feel free to go through just our archives demonstrating CIA obstructionism over FOIA.

But... the organization actually did recently respond to a set of interesting FOIA requests. Back in 2017, at SXSW, the CIA revealed its gaming efforts, and even let some attendees play them. That resulted in a few FOIA requests for the details of the game, including one by MuckRock's Mitchell Kotler and another by entrepreneur Douglas Palmer. In response to the FOIA requests, the CIA released the details of some of the games (though, somewhat redacted, and in typical FOIA response gritty photo-copy style), including a card game called "Collection Deck." My first reaction was... "Hey, that would be fun to play..." And then I had a second thought.

There's another super popular topic here on Techdirt: the public domain and how important it is to build on works in the public domain. Remember, under Section 105 of the US Copyright Act, works of the federal government of the United States are not subject to copyright and are in the public domain.

We've already been working with Randy Lubin of Diegetic Games on a few different projects (including Working Futures and others you'll need to stay tuned for). So, we started talking about making a version of the CIA's game to play for ourselves. And everyone we mentioned it to wanted to play as well. And the more we looked at the details, the more we realized that we could make a much nicer version (while paying homage to the original and its route through FOIAdom) that was playable, and maybe even offer some changes, fixes and alternative rules. We decided to name our version, "CIA: Collect It All." Not only does "Collect It All" spell out CIA and pay homage to the CIA's "Collection Deck" name, "Collect It All" was also General Keith Alexander's surveillance motto that we roundly mocked due to its inherent conflict with the old 4th Amendment. Anyway, this seemed like a way to take back the phrase a bit.

And that led us to Kickstarter. We're using Kickstarter in the real original sense of Kickstarter. We had an idea that we thought was pretty damn cool that we wanted for ourselves. And we want to see if others want it as well so we can produce it at scale. If people want it, awesome. We'll make a bunch. If we're wrong and no one really wants it... well, we'll probably still make a copy for ourselves, but you're on your own, working with redacted photocopies.

So... here's a chance to:

1. Get a cool, fun game that until just recently was a top secret training game by created by the CIA -- which, come on, is pretty cool
2. Help support Techdirt and all the reporting we do (including reporting on the CIA pushing back on FOIA requests)
3. Demonstrate why building on the public domain is a good thing
4. Did I mention that you get to play a fun game, with awesome design work (much better than the CIA's), that was originally created by the CIA?

So, check it out and back us on Kickstarter. And tell your friends. Because, look, they wanted to be CIA agents when they were kids too.

Filed Under: card game, cia, collect it all, collection deck, foia, public domain