Playatech Motors: The Flaming Castle

 

After eleven wonderful years, the Playabile aka MeTV was retired in 2016, but we love its original page so much we had to create a new page for our 2nd mutant vehicle furniture carrier. 

Playatech’s new mobile castle caused quite a little stir on playa its first year in 2016! DMV tracked Sunshine down 3 times to say that everyone from Rangers to a board member of Burning Man complained about the big corporate Playatech logo sign above the cab. And we laughed our heads off! With 10,000 rental truck and RV logos in BRC, they fell for a 12 year-old playa spoof that we didn’t even think newbies still believed:)

They thought Playatech is a company!! LOL. 

As Sunshine explained to our friend Sparky from DMV: “Playatech is a real brand with real products, but there is no company. Founded in the year of “The Psyche” 2005, we spoof decommodification with silly overdone branding to intentionally create a socially-transmitted virus. The virus causes Burners to engage in all 10 Principles at once by coming together to create and share playa furnishings, thus becoming makers and artists…

The spoofy promotion IS the art as much as the furniture is – and it drives more Burners to engage in making Playatech every year than build the Man and Temple combined. But since our Paypal button goes to a Burning Man Arts bank account (formerly BRAF), Playatech cannot possibly be commercial in any way – just a real 10-Principled business model. We intentionally don’t fit any Org forms or categories, but you can either consider us the Org’s renegade furniture department, or the only art project on the playa that continuously sends money to the Org instead of begging for it. Either way, please tell Charlie and the Rangers that it ain’t no company and we are going to leave the Playatech sign up!”

Heck, it was on the back of our last mutant vehicle for a decade, and no one even noticed. The new Flaming Castle must be a lot cooler…

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About the castle – it started as a 1991 Volvo sedan with 275,000 miles on it, got chopped behind the cab by some weld-happy burners and turned into a renegade mutant at BM14, then sat rusting until Sunshine bought it for $500 in May 2016. Then it sat some more until mid-July, when he and Glimmer went crazy on it for a month with paint, wood, fabric, and lights. Thanks to a bunch of help from friends (and several grand in repairs, upgrades, and decor), it ran 10 days on playa in 2016 with no problem larger than a squeaky fan belt. Can you believe NONE of the Org shops had belt dressing when we asked? They all said “OMG if you find some please bring it!”. So next year we did:)

As usual for Playatech, Sunshine did the engineering and wrenching. For everything about the castle that’s pretty from the paint to the fabrics, thank Glimmer, Playatech’s VP of Branding since BM 05. Yes, she really used to run around burning our logo into your furniture with a fire brand, as a thank you for that $5 donation to the arts that you thought was a payment to our company. Company? What company?!!! The only thing we do like a company is sponsor a racing team, and the Flaming Castle is our newest entry in the world’s most ridiculous 5mph demo derby. Don’t tread on the Flaming Castle!!

Playatech – An Empire Built From The Fastest Furniture On The Playa