20% Time

20% Time: At Google, engineers can spend a day or a week working on projects that aren’t necessarily in their job descriptions.
5 Boyer 20% Time: Twice a week we get a 40 minute period of time to work on new projects for our arcade.
Our class watched a video about a boy named Caine, who single handedly made an arcade using cardboard and packing tape from his dad’s auto part store. Our arcade was made using cardboard and a lot of tape mostly Duct and Scotch tape. When we watched the video our class became inspired to do the same thing as Caine.
Here is a link to the Caine’s Arcade website http://cainesarcade.com/
Below is the short film of Caine’s Arcade and how it evolved.

One of the first big games that our class made was Ski Ball. It was made by Jared C, Lee K and I with help from many other people from the class. The game is played by rolling a little plastic ball up to the back piece and hopefully through the 5000 points whole but there are also holes for 50, 100 an 1000 points. When you get a ball in the whole we press a little button that is connected to a speaker which makes a beeping sound to show that you have scored. The game starts when you give an amount of tickets in 1 for 2 plays and 2 for 5 plays I don’t exactly know the amount of tickets you get if you win but it is somewhere between 5 and 50. The materials used in this game are cardboard, duct tape a plastic tub, plastic balls and little bits (the circuits that connect the button and the speaker).

This image is of our claw machine being painted pink, green and white. The makers of this game are Jared C and Lee K (but I helped them paint). The materials that are being used for this game are, a printer box that has a large square cut out of the front, some clear thin plastic (over the front square) paints, tape because it wouldn’t be a cardboard arcade game without it and some type of hook with string attached to it. How you play this game is simple there is an amount of time that you get, in this time you try to pick up a strand of tickets or a prize from the bottom of the machine using a hook that will be controlled by a string. Because this game is unfinished I am unclear of one rule, do you get more time for the more tickets you put in?

A few of the girls in our class got together and built this. This is a game that is called Wack a Mole when it is more like hit the target with a ball of paper while the girls inside move the paddles around. But that would be way too long a name so we just call it Wack a Mole. The builders of this game were Tessa, Jane, Hope, Emily and Julia. The materials that were used for this game are ping pong paddles with target taped over them and a huge cardboard box with a little opening on the bottom that lets the girls through. When you play the game 2 girls are inside wearing goggles to protect their faces and as you can see holding paddles with targets on them. The game starts after you give 5 tickets in and have your 3 paper balls in hand. The girls go up and down and side to side with the paddles, every time you get a hit you get ore tickets. the game ends when time is up.

This is a game with no name built by Brian, Sam and Matthew. The materials for this game were lots of little wooden dowels, a board with holes in it and many rubber bands. The game was built by hammering in the dowels to the board at sort of random places so in the end there was no telling where the ball would go. There were rubber bands put over the tops of the dowels so the ball would not fly out when dropped. The game is played by dropping the ball somewhere at the top and hoping it goes in the slot with the most amount of points but not the middle one because it is game over. When the ball drops in a hole in the blue-green piece of cardboard on the bottom the game ends and you get that many tickets or game over.

This is an image of an air hockey, minus the air game. It was built by Brian, Henry and Sam. The materials used were a lot of tape (1.5 rolls) an four Tropicana juice bottle tops hot glued together in twos for the paddles. The game is played just like a regular air hockey game would be, you have to hit the puck into the other team’s goal. The game was designed so that the puck (a checker) would not slide around the tape, it would stay in place and roll on its side sometimes. I am unclear about how the goals will look or what they will be made of but in the end I think it will look great.(This photo was taken before the tape job was finished and it took up so much tape because both sides were taped).

    It was very fun and challenging making an arcade because it let us use our imaginations to create things but sometimes our ideas are hard to bring to life. In the long run after some sacrifice they turn out great.

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