BP Board Game From The 70s Ominously Predicts Oil Spill (PICTURE)

It's now gotten to the point where we don't even have to mock BP or criticize them for ruining the Gulf coast. They'll do it all themselves.

The UK's Metro has discovered a BP branded board game from the 70s titled "Offshore Oil Strike." Letting players take on the role of oil tycoons, they face the "hazards and rewards" of offshore drilling. It serves has a hauntingly ironic prediction of recent events. And a mindblowing addition to the ridiculousness that is BP.

Perhaps the creepiest part? The foreboding 'hazard cards,' which read 'Blow-out! Rig damaged. Oil slick clean-up costs. Pay $1million.' If only it was that easy.

You have to imagine that whoever created this game has nervously been counting the days until this baby got discovered, praying that it was lost in the back of some Toys R' Us storage facility never to be seen again. Nope. It's here and is a weird reminder that this could've been avoided. (h/t Bartunde Thurston)

Comments

[Toonguy]

10:10 AM on 07/08/2010

Funny how no one listens to game designers.

[NatieWright]

09:58 AM on 07/08/2010

Maybe there is a solution to this entire mess hidden in the game somewhere...Or maybe its in another soon-to-be "discovered" game by BP...you never know!

[pmalecki]

09:45 PM on 07/07/2010

If you ever played the "Happy Days" board game then you would likely agree that BP has lost all their "cool points"...

[Christopher Currie]

02:55 PM on 07/07/2010

whoever owns old copies of that game is sitting on gold.. I have to have one..

[Toonguy]

10:03 AM on 07/08/2010

Not if I beat you to it!

[Casey Burns]

01:15 AM on 07/07/2010

Also in this series of fun games for the whole family is the popular board game by Westinghouse

"Let's Build Us a Nuclear Reactor!"

Contestants win by seeing how much nuclear waste they can generate before one of the players has a meltdown due to age or negligence and the whole game shuts down.

The player with the most nuclear waste wins. That is unless he is downwind or simply in the vicinity....

[boredwell]

06:12 PM on 07/06/2010

This game is just like the real one being played in the board room! They got the hazards right but the thrills must be long gone by now.

[dandan1]

03:07 PM on 07/06/2010

"....for all the family".

I encourage everyone to investigate (or just use the Google) to find out about BP stock sales just prior to the travesty. Hint: Goldman Sachs (who would have guessed?)

[GuiltD]

03:28 PM on 07/06/2010

yeah the lying corportists elitist whatever you want to call them, politicians presidents, they all are mucked in the mire of working hand in hand. Government is now oficially corporate. Well has been for a long time

[Onegin]

02:02 PM on 07/06/2010

Do you win the game by lying to the media, blocking the press, and covering your oil covered beaches with sand.

[cambo]

01:54 PM on 07/06/2010

Let`s get you kids weaned off the oil teety.

[aweissnet]

01:49 PM on 07/06/2010

This is ill.

However, if you consider the incompetence and the mistakes made since day 1, you have to wonder if this muck-up, from first to last, isn't deliberate. I do.

Somewhere, someone is going to make money. And then you'll have your reason why. A few million dead wildlife, thousands of businesses, some lives, and the health of Americans are not a reason to not rake in the profits.

[oski the bear]

04:45 PM on 07/06/2010

I think you give the elites too much credit. I don't believe there's a master plan. The elites are people like George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, Michael Steele, Donald Trump, Bernie Maddoff, Ken Lay... At the point when they have power, they're rich. Some of them lose that wealth. Some remain enormously wealthy nonetheless, or get it back (Donald Trump); others don't. Some end up in prison, or otherwise scorned.

Even the smart ones--Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs--don't have the facilities to orchestrate some worldwide master plan like you're suggesting. And even the worst of them--Sarah Palin, for instance--aren't so entirely morally bankrupt as to *intentionally* destroy the world for an extra buck in an already-overflowing account.

Even things like the invasion in Iraq--sure there was corporate influence behind it, but ultimately it was George Bush sinking America (which didn't help Haliburton one bit in the end) to pursue a family vendetta. That's how this chit works. If Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck destroy the world, it'll be because God told em to. If BP destroys the world, it'll be because they had no idea their record of safety violations would result in the greatest environmental disaster of all time. It's not a master plan. It's just enormously ignorant people with a lot of money and power.

[aweissnet]

09:40 PM on 07/06/2010

Comforting to hear in an odd way, but I don't think everyone that is rich is as stupid/inane/incompetent as some of the people you mentioned.

I mean, if they are really as dumb as they appear to be (at BP), and even within the government, I would wonder when that happened. We couldn't have advanced as we have over the last century, could we?

[kinogod]

01:12 PM on 07/06/2010

The power of attraction or deliberate creation?

[Leo Fairbanks]

01:40 PM on 07/06/2010

deliberate action. How often do rigs explode at the seabed on their own?

[Gronkie]

12:50 PM on 07/06/2010

It's all fun and games until someone loses a shoreline.

[fishnetdiver]

12:14 PM on 07/06/2010

scariest part: you know these bastiches all have 'Get Out of Jail Free' cards...

[lazercat2008]

11:26 AM on 07/06/2010

Ahhh. Looks, like I've landed on Chance....What's it say....

"Deep sea oil well blows and leaves your company bankrupt".

Ratts, I have to go back to my yacht.

[TheGripester]

03:11 PM on 07/06/2010

lazercat! missed you...

[sizogee]

11:22 AM on 07/06/2010

This board game in no way "predicted" the disaster. The game is interesting, but this article is absurd. It'd be like saying flight simulators "predicted" the September 11th attacks because the plane could crash into a building.

[mightbesane]

11:37 AM on 07/06/2010

Point taken. The game didn't 'predict' a spill, it only allowed for the possibility of a blowout with severe environmental and financial consequences in a company-branded board game, something that BP execs - in fact the whole oil industry - told us was not at all likely.

So if it wasn't at all likely, why put it in a board game?

Blowout and huge costs? Possible. Put it in the game.

Cars designed that run on water? Impossible. Leave it out.

[kareemachan]

12:52 PM on 07/06/2010

Agreed. And while the game didn't predict the disaster, siz, it sure as hell predicted that BP was cognisant of its possibility.

[Nicholas Price]

12:00 PM on 07/06/2010

It was under comedy. Look before you leap.

[mightbesane]

01:42 PM on 07/06/2010

If you're suggesting that there was no such game, look befiore you leap: http://www.reghardware.com/2010/06/02/bp_offshore_oil_strike/.