Borås, Sweden.

Whenever I go to Borås it seems the rain is waiting for me. Today was no exception. But the rain particles in the air can make for some more dramatic photos, so – fine by me.

Today’s game is a variant of the ”Rush” mode video-gamers should be familiar with from the Battlefield series, a mode that was – to my knowledge – introduced in Bad Company (2008).

The players are split into two teams taking turns acting as attackers and defenders. The play field starts off quite small but as the attackers complete certain tasks they receive a spawn point further onto the field which naturally pushes the front line further onto the field. While a time limit promises some variety to avoid locked down games to drag on for too long.

The play field is divided into two general parts; the outdoors segment and the inner factory complex. The outside is dominated by the slightly curved, streamlined concrete path with provisional cover leading up to three-four openings to the factory – along with a smaller green path up the cliff side of the path leading to the absolute edge of the field.

Second part is the factory area dominated by thick brick walls in varying degrees of health with machines, forklifts and some tarpaulins acting as cover in the dark.

During this game I spent pretty much the entire day outdoors with the camera. The lighting conditions were a bit too poor for decent indoor photos. Last game I attended I shot a few photos indoors.

In an attempt to spice up some of the photos a touch I added some slight letterbox black bars. The result were a bit mixed, especially since I had to use Photoshop for the job – with no real plan or template. It’s something I might try again in the future first when I have more of a recipe for how to do it right.

The prolonged rain caused the player base to eventually whither. But the game carried out close to the announced end time thanks to a few brave players fighting it out through the whole day.

About the location

According to a short Wikipedia article (Swedish) the factory plant dates back to 1896 and was back in the day one of the first rubber factories in Sweden. In 1960 the American company Firestone bought the factory and manufactured rubber products, such as tires and hockey pucks, until 1990 where the factory was essentially abandoned.

As fairly typical for factories like this I’ve been unable to find that much resources about the more nitty-gritty details online. I did however stumble across this blog showing off some more detailed photos of the factory in 2014.

An assortment of photos from the game in total below, with more photos on Flickr.