I work in a cube farm. It’s a small cube farm, with a small company, but a cube farm nonetheless.

I work in tech support. Customers ask me questions about how software works, why it doesn’t work, and how do I fix errors. Surprisingly (or not – really), almost all the answers are either in our documentation, or available through Google.

I don’t blame you if you don’t think this is a target rich environment for game ideas.

You would be wrong.

I like to think of my workplace as a tavern. A collection of cubes is a table. The consultants offices are the backrooms and private meeting rooms. The bar is a combination of the kitchen (because there’s beer in the fridge) and our administrator (because she has all the best gossip).

Is it a quest to recover the lost jewels of the kingdom, or trying to help a co-worker figure out what his wife really wants for her birthday. Is it a mission to protect the last heir and key to unlocking the time portal, or what’s the best/fastest way to get your daughter to soccer practice. My favorite, has the king summoned all of his mighty warriors to defend against a group of trolls threatening the city, or just a production outage after a server admin updated java.

Work is an adventure, you just have to think about it the right way.

The geek quotient is high in my workplace. Software development, consulting, and support will do that. Each desk and/or cube is likely a shrine to some form of geekery like LEGO, Star Wars, the Tick, My Little Pony, Marvel, Star Trek, Dr. Who, etc. And that’s just the three cubes near me. I like to mash the different genres together for one-shot games. Super Heroes in Space. Anthropomorphic animals fighting ninjas (OK that’s just TMNT). Time traveling fantasy football fanatics trying to influence the course of not just their league, but every league. Maybe a little carried away there.

So what epic stories are hidden in plain site in your workplace?