theory of natural selection.

Traits in genetics

Some trait help a creature to live longer and reproduce.

nature has balance

behaivor is a natural trait... so says the theory of natural selection.

nexon company

simple easy to play networked.

licenses like in GT

how do you get licenses?

cute characters
-characters can be bought
various cars
- cars can be bought for upwards of $30

items are findable in a level. then items collected can only be used in that level.

team play vs single play

I like the way the graphic move in angles

office workers can play this game before lunch break to see who will pay.

emotional attraction-
creates competitive sprite
it is also hard to win
-"just one more game I know I can win!"

korean men play up to 2 hours a day

kart rider is more enjoyable for women

________

ariel hide and seek

modern day uncle roy all around you.

ben affleck -the runner

reality version of the fugative

examples of childhood games invoke thoughts big games

put youself into a scary experiance safely

trickster aspect being able to trick grow-up

sardines... sexual tensions for grown-ups... nice idea to base a big game

monty pythons world championship hide and seek

assembely
flash interface

Saturday and Sunday april2-3

2 to 5 people

look at handout

reading

ARNG

talk has lead us to think about super clusters

when does the real world blur away.

jeff gannon white-wing soft question thrower

what can we do to figure this all problems out can the cloudmaker solve 9/11 problems.

real cup - picture of cup

confusion in a controled way.

***sidebar***
there is a sense of cycling of thought
***sidebar***

magritte's ce n'est pas un pipe is a good example of the idea

first game eval:
Telephone:
Played a round in class. interesting the dydmanic of change which cam out.

if we just change the sentence for changing sake.

Star Craft
to step by step how this work.

--Thought interesting relationship between thumb candy and emersion--

Glolab

psy.geo conflux

remember 3/3 Ariel, Dimitri presentation

today presentation:

tug of War

see you after school
where do you want to go
who do you want to meet

democracy in games big games add to dynamic

Many Blasters have discussed and explained the strategic theories of Colonel John Boyd. I will only summarize his ideas here; new subscribers or interested readers can find these Blasters as well as Boyd's work throughout the DNI archive, particularly Thread 1. Boyd built his theory of conflict around the moral - mental - physical aspects of an organism's decision cycle—what he called the Observation - Orientation - Decision - Action Loop. Boyd showed that an OODA Loop (the decision cycle of an individual or any collection of individuals) is an open, far-from-equilibrium process. This is a crucial finding: students of chaos theory, systems control theory, or the theory of evolution will immediately recognize the implications of such a construction: the OODA Loop is capable of expansion and growth, but it is also inherently unpredictable and its pathway can lead also to chaos, because it incorporates positive as well as negative feedback control loops. OODA loops are enormously powerful, but with that power comes real danger.

The most dangerous form of positive feedback comes from the most powerful part of the OODA Loop—the Orientation activity. Orientation and the ability to change one's Orientation give the OODA Loop both its power and its vulnerability.

Observations feed into Orientation, but they are also shaped and filtered by the lens of Orientation. The idea of an "objective" observation existing independent of the observer is a myth still held by many hidebound defense analysts, sociologists, and economists but is now rejected by most anthropologists, biologists and physical scientists.

Observations feed into the organism's Orientation activity. Boyd showed how Orientation exhibits a shaping pressure on what is seen and on the interpretation of what is seen. Decisions and actions flow out of this two-way interplay of Observation and Orientation. He showed why the most dangerous internal state of an OODA loop occurs when the Orientation process becomes so powerful that it force fits the organism's observations into fitting a preconceived template, even when those observations threaten the relevance of that template.

In essence, like the communist ideologue, the organism sees what it wants to see, interprets events the way it wants to interpret events, and sees no reason to change. It makes decisions and actions accordingly. When this happens, the loop has turned inside itself. It loses its capacity to adapt to changing external circumstances, and in effect, the open far-from-equilibrium system becomes an incestuously amplifying closed system—and echo chamber amplifying its own echoes: Any tendency toward self-correction breaks down, because Observations of the results of its Actions are fed through the same non-adaptive template, over and over again. The organism becomes increasingly disconnected from reality.

The power of Boyd's intellectual achievement is that he showed why the inevitable result of such an inwardly focused OODA Loop is a build up of internal confusion and disorder (entropy). He showed why, when such loops are put under menacing pressure, the confusion and disorder naturally expands into panic and chaos, which in turn can generate overload, paralysis, and even collapse. Boyd's entire strategy of conflict centered on the idea of inducing his opponent's OODA loop to turn inside itself.

But you don't need conflict to close an OODA loop. A closed OODA loop, with the attendant build up of entropy, can be also be the result of a self-inflicted wound, as was the case in the old Soviet Union.

With these thoughts in mind, I urge you to read carefully the attached article which appears in the current issue of Newsweek International. Judge for yourself whether or not America is in danger of folding itself inside its own OODA Loop.

(note: The original can be found at the web link cited.)

Dream On America

The U.S. Model: For years, much of the world did aspire to the American way of life. But today countries are finding more appealing systems in their own backyards.

by Andrew Moravcsik

Published in the January 31, 2005 issue of Newsweek International
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines05/0125-01.htm

…

Foreigners take an entirely different view: 58 percent in the BBC poll see Bush's re-election as a threat to world peace. Among America's traditional allies, the figure is strikingly higher: 77 percent in Germany, 64 percent in Britain and 82 percent in Turkey. Among the 1.3 billion members of the Islamic world, public support for the United States is measured in single digits. Only Poland, the Philippines and India viewed Bush's second Inaugural positively.

…

Futurologist Jeremy Rifkin, in his recent book "The European Dream," hails an emerging European Union based on generous social welfare, cultural diversity and respect for international law—a model that's caught on quickly across the former nations of Eastern Europe and the Baltics.

…

Jiri Pehe, adviser to former president Vaclav Havel, recalls the Czechs' firm decision to adopt a European-style parliamentary system with strict limits on campaigning. "For Europeans, money talks too much in American democracy. It's very prone to certain kinds of corruption, or at least influence from powerful lobbies," he says.

…

Europeans are aware that their systems provide better primary education, more job security and a more generous social net. They are willing to pay higher taxes and submit to regulation in order to bolster their quality of life. Americans work far longer hours than Europeans do, for instance. But they are not necessarily more productive—nor happier, buried as they are in household debt, without the time (or money) available to Europeans for vacation and international travel. George Monbiot, a British public intellectual, speaks for many when he says, "The American model has become an American nightmare rather than an American dream."

…

Two decades ago, a U.S. CEO earned 39 times the average worker; today he pulls in 1,000 times as much. Cross-national studies show that America has recently become a relatively difficult country for poorer people to get ahead. Monbiot summarizes the scientific data: "In Sweden, you are three times more likely to rise out of the economic class into which you were born than you are in the U.S."

…

A former French minister muses that the United States is the last "Bismarckian power"—the last country to believe that the pinpoint application of military power is the critical instrument of foreign policy.

…

With Christian Caryl in Tokyo, Katka Krosnar in Prague, Mac Margolis in Rio de Janeiro, Tracy Mcnicoll in Paris, Paul Mooney in Beijing, Henk Rossouw in Johannesburg and Marie Valla in London

© Copyright 2005 Newsweek International

baseball is a design structure.

the stockmarket is not.

Big Games calls into question to break out of the game work distinction.

Definition of a game, caillois:
free, separate, uncertain, unproductive, governed by rules, make-beleive

ours:
caillois+goals

Brain sutton smith
exercise of voluntary control mechinisams, contest of powers, contitued by rules to producea disequilibal outcome.

Every child knows what it means to play, but the rest of us can merely speculate. Is it a kind of adaptation, teaching us skills, inducting us into certain communities? Is it power, pursued in games of prowess? Fate, deployed in games of chance? Daydreaming, enacted in art? Or is it just frivolity? Brian Sutton-Smith, a leading proponent of play theory, considers each possibility as it has been proposed, elaborated, and debated in disciplines from biology, psychology, and education to metaphysics, mathematics, and sociology.

This work reveals more distinctions and disjunctions than affinities, with one striking exception: however different their descriptions and interpretations of play, each rhetoric reveals a quirkiness, redundancy, and flexibility. In light of this, Sutton-Smith suggests that play might provide a model of the variability that allows for "natural" selection. As a form of mental feedback, play might nullify the rigidity that sets in after successful adaption, thus reinforcing animal and human variability. Further, he shows how these discourses, despite their differences, might offer the components for a new social science of play.

Game anylsis

chock fight....
the Bowery chock fight

cheguin vs chunk

lafayetta and houston

rhythm, intersity, OODA loop (observe orient deside and act) John Boyd

Bali Cockfighting
clifford geertz

city of heros

The entry about surround is now a blog.

As the teams move they start with a tail which the length of 5 city blocks. The tail is used to enclose the other teams.

-Team cannot cross the tail of another team or their own tail.

-If another team's tail is on a street block, and a team goes down that street, they loose.

-If a team crosses an intersection and cut through the tail of another team the team cutting through the tail looses.

-If a team leaves the play area they loose.

As the team moves through the city and they pick up unique APs. For every 1000 unique APs found by a team, increases the teams tail by one city block.

A team starts with one escape and can find ramdomly placed escapes in the game area. Escapes are the ability for a team to enter the subway and go one subway stop in any direction allowing them to cross anyamount of tail they would have otherwise hit and lost.

At the control center there is a person who directs the team running on the streets. Those on the street and also adlib cutting through buildings communicating via audio or IM.

Each team has a palmtop, a cell and a map of the area of play

What happens to games when they escape the boundaries of our tabletops and desktops and tv screens and living rooms? From massively multiplayer online games to networked objects that turn the city into a gigantic game grid, new forms of super-sized gaming are expanding at an alarming rate and opening up vast new spaces in which to play. Whether these games are measured in terms of number of players, geographical dimensions, or temporal scope, they represent a new trend in which the “little world” created by a game threatens to swallow up the “real world” in which it is situated.

This class is a hands-on workshop that is focused on the particular design problems of large-scale games. In this class students will:

- develop a foundation of basic game design understanding from which to approach the specific issues of big games

- analyze existing digital and non-digital large-scale games, taking them apart to understand how they work as interactive systems

- work on a series of design projects that explore the social, technological, and creative possibilities of large-scale games

Conceptual Models

This class will look at large scale games from three perspectives:

Space

Every game creates a space of possibilities – a virtual space defined by all the possible states of the game system. Players explore this possibility space as they play the game. But games also have a material component – they are composed of people and objects that exist in the actual physical world. What is the relationship between these two types of spaces? What happens to that relationship when a game’s physical scale becomes larger than life?

Examples: Hide and Seek, Tour de France, Geocaching, Assassin, Noderunner

Time

Most games have a well defined beginning and end. They take place over the course of a few minutes or several hours. But some games can go on for weeks or months, and an emerging branch of game design is creating persistent games that could theoretically go on forever. Are these neverending games really games at all?

Examples: Correspondence Chess, Nomic, Everquest, A Tale in the Desert, Game Neverending

Players

Every game is a form of stylized social interaction involving various forms of conflict and cooperation. What are the particular social qualities of games with hundreds or thousands of players?

Examples: Bingo, The Lottery, World Series of Poker, Star Wars Galaxies

In addition to these three perspectives, the class will also explore the effect that new communications technologies have on large-scale games, from multiplayer online gaming to GPS devices, cell phones, digital cameras, and networked objects.

Assignments and Grading

Assignment % of Grade

Attendance/Participation (including in-class projects)…………………….….15

Game Analysis/Presentation……………………………………………….…...15

Game Project 1………...………………………………………………….…......30

Game Project 2……………...………………………………………………..…..40

Assignment Descriptions

Attendance/Participation

You will be graded on your attendance and your contribution to class discussions and in-class exercises. Please arrive on time. Repeated lateness will count against your attendance/participation grade. Occasionally there will be assigned readings. Not completing the assigned readings will count against your attendance/participation grade. Students will also participate in several in-class design exercises which explore specific game mechanics and formal structures related to large-scale games.

Game Analysis and Presentation

You will choose one large-scale game to study in-depth. You will write a 3 – 5 page paper analyzing the game, and present the game to the class for discussion. Note: it is not sufficient to provide an in-depth description of the game, you must provide some specific analysis of the game. The purpose of this assignment is to gain genuine critical insight into a specific aspect of the game that is being analyzed.

Game Project 1 – 4 weeks

Students will divide up into groups and work on a large-scale game project. The groups will choose one or two perspectives to use as a focus for their project: Space or Time.

Final Project – 6 weeks

Working together as one group, the students will develop one massively multiplayer game from concept to execution. This project will culminate in an actual play session of the completed game. Depending on what the students choose, this game could be played by all of ITP or even the entire student body of NYU.

Schedule

Week 1

Intro to the Course

In-Class Exercise : Lucky Numbers

Game Analysis/Presentations assigned

Week 2

Basic Principles of game design

In-Class play and discussion of games

Week 3

Discussion

Game Analysis/Presentation

Game Project 1 – groups assigned, begin concept development

Week 4

Discussion

Game Analysis/Presentation

Game Project 1 – prototype due

Week 5

Discussion

Game Analysis/Presentation

Game Project 1 – workshop

Week 6

Discussion

Game Analysis/Presentation

Game Project 1 – workshop

Week 7

Discussion

Game Analysis/Presentation

Game Project 1 – presentation

Week 8

Discussion

Game Analysis/Presentation

Final Project – begin concept development

Week 9

Discussion

Game Analysis/Presentation

Final Project – concept due

Week 10

Discussion

Game Analysis/Presentation

Final Project – prototype due

Week 11

Final Project – workshop

Week 12

Final Project – workshop

Week 13

Final Project – workshop

Week 14

Final Project – final presentation and discussion

waltzing is a game?

Rules, no rules make believe or not.

complete stratagist game shop

big game boggle-
using streets signs to make words in a 6 by 6 grid
giant cubes
make names out of subways stops before next stop
when does this get tooo big?

problems-

cooperations
getting players
practical
who do you see others have add
playing with too many breaks the game

catch phrase
large meeting
large screen
spoil sports
reley race style

online pictionary

animals on the underground (web site)

divide into groups...

this is a lot of hard reading to say something simple.... Sorry for all non english as a first language people who read this for class.

There is a graph at the back which is would have been nicer at the begining and one could follow what direction the writing was going.
-enough said-

So there relationship between games and play are looked at are dated.being this was writen 1958 in france... so todays game and play I believe is quite different.

Through out reading this piece I kept return to the notion that my work is is play. I find the production can be a part of play and see that the sandcastle is a metaphor for my form of work-play. Roger state that nothing can be created from play but what about the sand castle is that not playing? could that not also be seen as a piece of art? which is also a segrigating factor in playing. The line I guess which he think around is enjoyment. this is a factor which is an important in play.

I believe this paper has a lot of valuable bases to work off from, which came be seen in the table. But a whole new look should be taken on what play is.

Roger Caillois

Peter Lee sat in on class. Co-founder of GameLabs.

30 minute game design lesson.

Street Theater..

Games are a class of object...

chess, basketball, Warcraft and Mario Bros. all have something in common.

WarCraft is like Lord of the Rings, but is more like Chess.

What makes a game:
Define Outcomes / Goal
Interactivity
Rules (discussed the Game)
[Adventure of trial and error]
[Story]

Start anywhere:
-action
-material
-theme The narrative can not just a skin to work
-Design Requirements
-game mechanic (a unit of activity) example bidding or shuffle in cards. What takes a game more interesting and less formulaic.

Criteria:
legibility
-elegance
-usability
-meaningful choices
Balance
-between players(fairness)
-between stratagies (meaningful choices)
Pacing
-dramatic tension
-dead space
Theme
-relationship (Mechanic to theme)
Main idea (return al look at this)

Don't just think do too one never knows what will exactly happen.

watch out for Flat and no spark. drawing board... but something interesting happens during the flat play, which can become important in redevelopment.

Struture Short and quick, or long. Need stuff?

Book- Art Guitar-
chater-essay about basketball:
History of Basketball

Dr. James Naismith, Inventor of Basketball

KU Basketball Program Founder

Rules:
Dr. James Naismith is known world-wide as the inventor of basketball. He was born in 1861 in Ramsay township, near Almonte, Ontario, Canada. The concept of basketball was born from Naismith's school days in the area where he played a simple child's game known as duck-on-a-rock outside his one-room schoolhouse. The game involved attempting to knock a "duck" off the top of a large rock by tossing another rock at it. Naismith went on to attend McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

After serving as McGill's Athletic Director, James Naismith moved on to the YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA in 1891, where the sport of basketball was born. In Springfield, Naismith was faced with the problem of finding a sport that was suitable for play inside during the Massachusetts winter for the students at the School for Christian Workers. Naismith wanted to create a game of skill for the students instead of one that relied solely on strength. He needed a game that could be played indoors in a relatively small space. The first game was played with a soccer ball and two peach baskets used as goals.

James Naismith devised a set of thirteen rules of basketball:
1. The ball may be thrown in any direction with one or both hands.
2. The ball may be batted in any direction with one or both hands, but never with the fist.
3. A player cannot run with the ball. The player must throw it from the spot on which he catches it, allowance to be made for a man running at good speed.
4. The ball must be held in or between the hands. The arms or body must not be used for holding it.
5. No shouldering, holding, pushing, striking or tripping in any way of an opponent. The first infringement of this rule by any person shall count as a foul; the second shall disqualify him until the next goal is made or, if there was evident intent to injure the person, for the whole of the game. No substitution shall be allowed.
6. A foul is striking at the ball with the fist, violations of Rules 3 and 4 and such as described in Rule 5.
7. If either side make three consecutive fouls it shall count as a goal for the opponents (consecutive means without the opponents in the meantime making a foul).
8. Goal shall be made when the ball is thrown or batted from the ground into the basket and stays there, providing those defending the goal do not touch or disturb the goal. If the ball rests on the edge and the opponents move the basket, it shall count as a goal.
9. When the ball goes out of bounds, it shall be thrown into the field and played by the first person touching it. In case of dispute the umpire shall throw it straight into the field. The thrower-in is allowed five seconds. If he holds it longer, it shall go to the opponent. If any side persists in delaying the game, the umpire shall call a foul on them.
10. The umpire shall be judge of the men and shall note the fouls and notify the referee when three consecutive fouls have been made. He shall have the power to disqualify men according to Rule 5.
11. The referee shall be the judge of the ball and decide when it is in play in bounds, to which side it belongs, and shall keep the time. He shall decide when a goal has been made and keep account of the goals with any other duties that are usually performed by a referee.
12. The time shall be two 15-minute halves with five minutes' rest between.
13. The side making the most goals in that time shall be declared the winners.

In addition to the creation of the basketball, James Naismith graduated as a medical doctor, primarily interested in sports physiology and what we would today call sports science and as Presbyterian minister, with a keen interest in philosophy and clean living. Naismith watched his sport, basketball, introduced in many nations by the YMCA movement as early as 1893. Basketball was introduced at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. Today basketball has grown to become one of the world's most popular sports.

Kingdom
This game takes participants to a medieval marketplace which looks remarkably like a plain matrix for square tiles. Each turn players place tiles onto the board which modify (either positively or negatively) the amount of money to be made by the shops that share that tile's row or column. Three times the board is filled with tiles and shop money is earned, after which the player with the most money wins.

Description of Reiner Knizia's Kingdoms (Fantasy Flight, 2002):
The English version of Knizia's Auf Heller Und Pfennig dressed up in a new medieval fantasy theme where players build kingdoms (not marketplaces) and the negative threats come from monsters.

cartagena:
This game represents the famous 1672 pirate-led jailbreak from the fortress of Cartagena. It is said that a game celebrating the great escape became popular in the pirate coves of the Caribbean. Each player has a group of 6 pirates and the objective is to have all 6 escape through the tortuous underground passage that connectes the fortress to the port, where a sloop is waiting for them.

Boggle
Boggle is a timed word game where players have 3 minutes to find as many connected words as possible from the face up letters resting in a 16 cube grid. Quick and fun!

A number of variants have been produced by Parker over time, such as Big Boggle (which has a 5x5 grid).
The example grid given in the French Canadian rules (of Deluxe Boggle) holds an amazing 459 words!

Electionic Catch Phrase
Quick, rattle off as many clues until somebody on your team yells the word or phrase you want to hear. Get as physical as you want. Gesture. Say anything you want. Just keep talking. And keep passing. 'Cause if the buzzer goes off while you're holding the disk, the other guys get the point in CATCH PHRASE... the fast-passing, fast-talking game.

My father bumped into a classmate of mine a few months ago and he said, "Dimitri's birthday was the most memorable thing I can think of from school." It was a total experience. We would have to use public transport. Our group used the people on the trains to answer all the Trivial Pursuit card pages. It was great, each time we got on a train the whole bus would get involved and by the time we would get off, there would be some much energy, the people wouldn't want us to get off, All the people would cheer good luck.

As a big game, this is a good example of seeing the city board and interacting with the people in it. A game is a story that people live in for a period of time. Big games, when the space is physically big, allows none participants to effect the game and the players, sometimes even the outcome. The winning group was ours, but only by a few points, why? Because we got the trains and bus riders involved and they helped us. Those point got us the extra point enough to beat out the competition.

Game Lab

Big Urban Game Large scale public game
Huge chess/sorry pawns moved through the city. what are the obsticles which are had. people logon or call in and the next day the piece move with the most popular. public art works are similar. -Cristo-

-nice to be outside
-never been to this part of town

PacManhattan
PacMan transposed upon a 20 block radius.

Monumental street level events
Olympic torch
Macy's Parade
Marathon

Scale effects the system bigger

psycho geography