Reading Journal 1 – Definitions

Playing is a part of our life. The other part is doing things except playing. So in my opinion the “separate” attribution of play is extremely important for defining what play is. This is also mentioned in the article of Caillois, “In effect, play is essentially a separate occupation, carefully isolated from the rest of life, and generally is engaged in with precise limits of time and place.” Actually time and place are not the crucial restrictions. Yet playing is a mental status that we make different from our normal real life of adults. So whatever we did in childhood is like playing. We could do anything like playing in our everyday life, even it is not in the form of a recognized “game”. And we can not be playing if we were not in a playing mood (for example a game tester playing video game all the working time but thinking about hopping to another bigger company).

So play must be free and unproductive, which are to maintain this “playing mind”. Force and real substantial results are all opposite of it. In this way I really disagree with that playing in professional sports leagues is playing, nor gambling with money. A game could either have nothing to do with real life, or simulating it. However the bottom line is “simulating”, which means similar, but not the same as real life. Because people are playing to experience “the other” part of life, not just that real part. Players are looking for something they can not find in their real life, whatever seems like transmitting to antiquity or competing physically/intelligently with friends. A playing experience of a game has to let players acquire this feeling. Different people have different preferences in game and playing strategies (like I like to play by following the tips and tricks. It’s not cheating! But get more “information” to make it more fun). It is all because of people have different demands and requires but can not be satisfied in real life.

Rules in Eastern and Western Games

The reading and discussion in class also reminded me an interested idea about the difference between Chinese and Western games. - The “game” I discuss in the following will be a narrower category that mainly refers to the “agon/competition” games. - I found unlike the Western games, most Eastern classical games do not emphasize on the rules. From the intelligent games (like Go) to the physical competitions (like Sumo, which originally started from China and now popular in Japan), all of them have the simplest rules. Go’s rules can be simply introduced in three sentences (two if in longer ones). But its richness in strategic complexity makes no efficient computer algorithm been developed to calculate it against human intelligence, in despite of that IBM Deep Blue have defeated human world champion Kasparov in 1997. To my understanding, that is possibly due to that the way of Chinese thinking and philosophy are not logically or systematic. It is quite difficult to describe these kinds of thoughts using logical rules system. But in the game players more rely on individual’s personal former experience and improvising creativity. On the other hand, Western games are constructed on detailed rules based on the logical philosophy system. Players will have got a clear strategy following the rules when playing. They more rely on players’ logical understanding and analyzing, or physical capability. That’s an example of different culture backgrounds come out different ways of thinking and living.

Critique 1 - Settler's of Catan

Luckily I played this game about two years ago with quite a lot of friends. One of them was studying in Germany and introduced us this nice game. And seeing that again in the class reminded me a lot of experience of playing it.

It is like a tabletop version of Civilization, also similar to StarCraft or WarCraft to some extent. It contains some key factors of an attractive game. First, the rules are not too much complicated, so that beginners can start playing in a few minutes, by just understanding how to get materials, how to build up things, how to trade, etc. But there are also following rules when the game goes along into a higher level, for instance the usage of ports and various cards. These are making the game keep catching players’ attention. Secondly, the victory requires some strategy and decision making (where and when to construct what building, how to trade for materials) also some luck (because the resources come out from the result of random dice rolling). These are important reasons to make a lot of fun in the game also adding the enjoyable exploration experience. Thirdly, all of players are participating all along. No one will be out of game. Everyone could influence the situation from the beginning to the end. “Game demands participation!” as Costikyan said in our reading material… And lastly, it requires a lot of communication during the game, no matter within the team or among each part. Face to face interaction is one distinguishing advantage of tabletop games comparing to others such as online games.

So in general, this is a game which needs knowledge of management capability, economy fundamentals, negotiation skills and probability statistic analysis… But who cares – after all it makes fun.

Starting point

For the weekly blog assignment in course IAT 842 -The Theory and Design of Games.