I Made the MIT Admissions Blog TCG by Kayode D. '27

Howdy!⁠01 I thought I deleted this ENTIRE BLOG, and so I rewrote it. This is the original. Grrr....... smh my head.

This blog is long overdue, but since last year’s orientation, I’ve been working at the MIT Media Lab to develop the MIT Orientation Trading Card Game to be used again for the class of 2030!

I’ve been designing! I’ve been prototyping! I’ve been doing all of that! And to test out my prototypes, I’ve been using the closest things to guinea pigs I could find: The Admissions Bloggers. I made a new set of orientation trading cards themed around the Admissions Blogs that you all know and love.

Wanna check it out? I made this super cool github embedded program thingamabobber with the help of the monster [chat gpt]. Amazing what you can do with technology these days!!

[it’s kind of small here, you can open it in a new tab at this link!]

[Click on a card to spotlight it, and click the spotlight card to flip it over!!]

I yap about what’s better about this version of the game:

The “goal” of this game to complete a rainbow set by trading cards until you have a card for every color in ROY G. BP [no IV here, unfortunately]. There are 19 cards in total, though, so you can keep trading to get your favorite cards!!

I made the MIT Admissions Blogs Trading Card game to test some different changes I wanted to make to the game. The first one was to design. Each card features an MIT Admissions Blog that you [yes, you] can go and read RIGHT NOW. I wanted to see if cards with tangible MIT Connections would be more valuable to players than cards that simply complete a color set.

I also wanted to fix a major issue I identified in the first run of the game: Speed. I know MIT Students want to break a game any chance they get, and players realized the fastest way to collect all of the cards was to never say a word, and silently trade cards until they were finished. That defeats the whole purpose of the game! The read victory is the FRIENDS you make along the way, not the pieces of paper you hold in your hand!! So I added icebreaker style questions to the backs of each card, and a new rule requiring [i know not everyone will do this, but that’s why I’m doing these tests! To find prompts and topics that people actually want to talk about] players ask and answer the questions to trade cards.

The final game in the fall will NOT be themed around cards, but instead around the people, places, clubs, groups, events, and artifacts that make MIT so special. So you can trade your Brass Rat for a Sailing Pavillion card, or maybe an MIT Motorsports card and a full art Springfest card for an extremely rare Holographic Sally Kornbluth Card!! 👀👀

How it went with the Bloggers

[I would have a video here, but every video is either too big to include or [insert excuse here]. I’ll add one soon!! I wanna upload!!]

Here’s some video and/or media from when we played with the bloggers. I had to print the cards off on regular paper, which was not the goal, but I procrastinated too long on getting the cards printed at Copytech ⁠02 MIT's Printing hub. Students get $300 a semester to spend on printing stuff...but i think they give you more money if you spend it all. They can print you your own custom posters and business cards, and cardstock that they will cut out for you! Win!! .

The Cards in a sheet. I needed to cut these out myself. Next time I'll get Copytech to do it for me.

This was all of the cards that I made the first time. Maybe I'll add an update of how the NEXT set goes? After I make them, that is...grr soo much work to do. And I have a midterm this week!!

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Now I need something from YOU

Are you a prefrosh? Do YOU want to help me develop this game for orientation this fall?? Do you want your own pack of Blogger Trading cards and do YOU want to meet the bloggers in person???? Then come to MEET THE BLOGGERS, This FRIDAY at CPW, at 8pm in 20 Chimneys⁠03 Third Floor of the Stud !!! The Bloggers will be there with some snacks and drinks, and I’ll have a bunch of packs of cards to give to prefrosh. All you have to do is trade cards and have conversations, to see how effective the cards are / what needs to be improved for the fall.

“Obama out.” [drops mic and it screeches, so i pick it up and sheepishly walk off stage]