Fault Finder
A ‘Whodunit’ Board Game
The concept:
A murder has been committed in the data center, and it’s up to you to trace the Ethernet cables to get to the truth.
Fault Finder is a classic whodunit board game adapted, lovingly, for folks working in IT.
It takes place in a data center, and the object of the game is to solve a murder mystery by going through the process of elimination to identify the murderer, the room where the crime happened and the murder weapon.
The rooms are different areas of a data center, such as the server cage or the meet-me room, and the murder weapons are objects you typically see inside, such as a server power supply, a crash cart or a patch cable.
For those who work or have worked in a data center, this is a fun way to see a familiar workplace through the lens of a murder mystery board game. For cloud natives who have never set foot in a data center, it can also be a way to explore the physical spaces where the cloud lives.
Put on your homburg hat and uncover whodunit!
The creation:
Step 1: Ideation: Like most creative projects do, this one started with an idea. It was born over breakfast sandwiches and hot coffee, with a side of team bonding. We were talking about ways we could spark curiosity about physical infrastructure in a highly software-centric community. Most of us have never set foot inside a data center, and those who do, the humans building and operating cloud infrastructure, are unsung heroes of our digital world. Could we help our fellow cloud natives walk in the shoes of our DC Ops team… and make it fun to boot? And what’s more fun than solving a mystery with your friends and family? The idea was cemented with our first suspect name—Dir. Claude Architect was punny, yet relatable—and thus Fault Finder was a go.
Step 2: Creation: Once we had our list of suspects, we made our way through the rooms and the tools and finally had enough “material” to start creating. We had to evaluate the approach, explore various design styles, shapes, fonts, logos and ultimately landed on a style that would have just enough detail to translate across both print and digital, with elements on the smaller side while being legible. We found ourselves in a goldilocks predicament: it had to be just right.
Step 3: Production: Once the concept was baked, we got to work on making everything fit. We designed the board to fit within standard box dimensions and went to work sourcing materials we would feel good about: the game pieces are wooden and the board, the cards, the rules booklet and the box are made of sustainably sourced materials. We were careful to ensure that our production process, from design layout to color correction and proofing, resulted in a final product that is beautiful, functional and most of all fun to play!
