Desert Bus: The World's Most Boring Game (and Now a Charity Event)

In the 1990s, amidst all the controversy over video game violence, Penn & Tellers decided to make a video game that is more realistic. The result is Desert Bus, a minigame where you get to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time – that’s 8 hours of continuous play (the game can’t be paused).

There’s no scenery and no other car on the road. The bus veers slightly to the right, so you can’t simply just tape down the controller’s button and go do something else. Once you get to Las Vegas, you score exactly one point, then you get to make the return trip – another 8 hours – to Tucson for another point, ad nauseum.

That may not seem like fun to you and me, but the game does have a cult following. Canadian comedy group LoadingReadyRun is having a gaming marathon to raise funds for a children charity – the more money they raise, the longer they will have to suffer… er, play:

Unlike most video game fanatics, when Canadian comedy group LoadingReadyRun sits down for a gaming marathon they do it for a good cause.

On November 23, 2007, 4 young men will sit down, and by the time they get up, they hope to have raised more than $5000 for children’s charity Child’s Play.

The game they will play is known as “Desert Bus”, a game so tedious that it never saw official release. This triumph in monotony will require the LoadingReadyRun crew to drive an eight hour stretch of featureless highway repeatedly, with no stops for rest. The event will be broadcast live online at <http://www.desertbus.org>, where viewers can pledge money to keep the marathon going. The more money donated, the longer they will play.

There’s a blog (they’ve been playing for nearly 2 days, raised over $8,000 so far), live BusCam and DriverCam feed, and even a life chat: Link – Thanks anonymous!