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Back Seat Games Set To Move Forward

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Today’s post comes from marketing whiz Spin Williams, who is always in residence at The Meeting That Never Ends.

Wow!

I’m just back from a 9 day car trip through Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Illinois, and boy, is my butt tired!

There are some big states on that list, and it takes a lot of sitting to get through them. Good thing meetings are my business, because my hindquarters were already road-ready before I left!

Along the way, I had lots of time to think about the coming transportation revolution, when autonomous cars will do most or all of the driving for us. Different states will write different laws to govern this, but my guess is that in most places our job as the “driver” will have some very basic elements:

  • Don’t be drunk
  • Don’t be asleep

Mostly, summer road trips of the future will expand the boredom of the back seat to the entire car, since your only real job will be to sit and watch the scenery go by.

Are there marketing opportunities there? You bet!

When we kicked this around at The Meeting That Never Ends, everybody agreed that backseat car games are due for a renaissance.

In the self-driving car future, everybody will be able to give all their attention to classics like 20 Questions, I Spy, and License Plate Poker.

But once the “driver” is able to swivel her seat and face the backseat passengers as the car picks its own way through road construction around Wisconsin Dells, we predict there will be a whole slew of new games the group can play, including card games and board games.

All we have to do is figure out what the breakaway hit will be in the realm of Whole Family Backseat Car Games, design it, own it, and then wait for technology to catch up.

Any ideas?  

38 thoughts on “Back Seat Games Set To Move Forward”

  4. Stupid question, really. Everyone will have their head down looking a their tablet, etc.
    My daughter and I had this idea awhile back: design apps for road games, like road bingo, alphabet games (which my wife plays always and ever in a car), find prime numbers, etc.

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    1. Not me. Cannot read or look at anything while a car passenger. The omnitheatre at the Science Museum makes me sick if I’m not sitting the center. Went to a senior symposium at school last week and one of the students was talking about google glass (and had made his own version-color me impressed). The powerpoint made me want to get off that ride.

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  5. Well, there’s always the singing game. More fun if it’s a curvy road, probably could be adapted for freeways – you can sing (I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad, Take Me Out to the Ballgame, etc.) only when the yellow line is in your lane… When you’re grown up and traveling together, it moves to trying to remember songs from your high school days.

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  7. Nope, fresh out of ideas!

    Having just returned home from a road trip down the Great River Road through parts of Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri, I can attest to the sore butt syndrome, but my eyes never tired of looking at the lush landscapes we traversed. Since we drove on average less than 200 miles per day, there was no need for games to help pass the time.

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  8. I always liked the game where the person before you ends and you continue on incorporating why they started. Like improv you must simply accept whatever comes before and enjoy what uncharteted thoughts are introduced after
    I guess it’s time to patent my windshield projector now that it’s ok for the driver to be unfocused for a full feature film or to read s book or the newspaper
    If the eindshield becomes your screen for wifi driving down the road
    I’m afraid the whole world will be Google based and create a video
    Text/Google hangout kind of life from now on
    Playing play station with a kid driving in Alaska while I’m in Montana is no big deal
    Mass users of wifi will make it free with commercials paying for it with Amazon deliveries at roadside pull offs every 2 miles

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  10. I’m not big on playing any of the kind games you can play sitting in a car. I would just sit and look out the window, or day dream, or listen to music, or listen to a recorded book. My interaction with the other people would be engaging them in conversation. I like to visit with people when traveling in a car. However, once I start talking, I don’t know when to quit. I need some kind monitoring system to prompt me to bring my talking to an end when I have been talking talking too long.

    I would play games if that is what the other passengers want to do. Since I’m not much of a game player, I don’t have any games to suggest and would leave it up to those who like games to select the game to play or invent a new game.

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      1. That’s the message I need at times, tim. Coming from you, it is kind of like the “kettle calling the pot black” when the length of some your comments found here are considered. However, i wouldn’t say any of your long ramblings are boring unlike some my ramblings.

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      2. I enjoy games and singing in the car, but I have the same problem as Jim. Sometimes my stories are boring to my daughter and son in law, but I can’t seem to quit. They always listen politely, thank goodness.

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        1. welcome pbuckmn. i wont tell you to shut up until at least your second or third visit to the trail.
          we like new folks here

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  11. I like the idea of backseat badminton, although I would guess swinging the racquets would be problematic. Maybe a similar game , using hands and not a racquet. Also no net.

    When it gets too noisy, I would suggest playing Quaker Meeting. Everyone sits quietly and says nothing. For an hour.

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    1. i used to play the quiet game for a nickle. the one who doesnt talk gets a nickle. then we start over again and give the squitrrely one another chance for a nickle.
      this would work for about 10 minutes then they realized it wasnt worth the nickle and they didnt believe id pay them the million dollars when we got home

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  12. Seeing as you have to trust the computer anyway why not go all the way. Instead of looking out the windows looking at where you are , go to where you like to be. The south of France, Hawaii, Tuscany, the Grand Canyon all at the push of a button. When I am at the health club my aerobic choice is an elliptical machine. Well then go new one has hip hop videos, lessons in how to make the machine work differently you can study while you are stuck there for 15,30 60 minutes or whatever and the choice I enjoy is the hike video of Bryce Canyon or coral bells or the back country if wherever. If ONI my way to downtown in traffic I was treated to the tour of the scenic drive through banff or glacier or allowed to view a tour of the art collection at abc museum to be continued on the way home…. It opens a pretty substantial choice on how to spend 20% of your life or whatever it works out to be. I like the IDE oaf having a mobile study and conservatory. …
    Sorry officer I was studying the brushstroke technique of the Dutch masters and how they prepared their canvases for oils tha lasted hundred of years.
    My computer was speeding?
    I will get it looked at. Thanks

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  13. I cannot read in a movie whatever, even planes. But if I could, I would reread Cider with Rosie, a book I stumbled upon by reading a bad book about the Cotswald. This is I read a classic of English popular reading, about a boy growing up in a large poor family in Scald right after WWI. V.S., this ones for you.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cider_with_Rosie

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  14. Applestoclueopoly – a mashup of Apples to Apples, Clue, and Monopoly. The suggestions for “who dunnit/where/with what” come in the form of Apples to Apples style matching, the winner gets to buy the property that prompted the Apples to Apples/Clue round. If you land on a property that is already owned, the owner can choose to take one of your Clue cards for future reference. Accusations can only be made on a turn when you pass Go. And when you get bored with Applestoclueopogy, you can play Twisterominoes…

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    2. It’s a little dizzying to watch, but this car geek’s tour of a restored model reveals that the car in the header photo is a 1960’s era Plymouth Valiant Station Wagon.

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        1. oh i misunderstood. the 63 64 vallient was one of my favorites. that and the studebaker from the same era was it a hawk?

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      2. My first car was my Grandma’s ’67 Plymouth Valiant. It had those little blinker indicators on the hood I thought were cool.

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    3. I was going to say “Valiant”, though I couldn’t remember the “Plymouth.” The reason I knew that much is the car game my dad would play with us, who sees the most – Chevys or Fords (my little sister got Trucks), so I learned other cars on the side…

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