Journals: 2000(2)
by Ric Carter
Journals: 2000(2)by Ric Carter |
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Journal: Game-Design Notes, Etc. |
(( INDEX )) >> NEXT >> CONTENTSACCOUNTSto 30_06_2000 21_06_2000 22_06_2000 23_06_2000 24_06_2000 25_06_2000 26_06_2000 27_06_2000 28_06_2000 29_06_2000 30_06_2000 |
Are You Game?20 June? 2000"If Virginity Is A Game Then What Are The Rules?" Naw, that's too close to "How To Regain Your Virginity". That raises the questions of, say, virginity, um, as a state, a condition; and/or a process, the regaining or retention of virginity, as a process or processes. Considered as a game, a simulation, what's being simulated? What are the rules for enacting the simulation? How is the simulation to be scored?And we can extend that to the wider purview of all the games that I've considered -- look at each of them as a process, as a simulation, as a scoring exercise. And again we look at the components of such games -- the players, the playing field, the paraphenalia and the rules -- look at each of those as comprising various dimensions, one or more dimensions each, in n-dimensional game space, and consider how those dimensions can be extended, collapsed, the entire space rotated, transformed -- hmm, I hadn't thought of it this way before. If all the components of the games make up a game-space, a matrix, then standard matrix operations can be performed upon it, including operations between multiple game spaces. Add, subtract, combine, filter the various spaces to get new games. So, consider those factors when thinking about the games of: Virginity; Alien Abduction; UFOlogy; Global or Universal Conquest; Political / Economic / Religious / Social / Artistic / Athletic 'Games'. We could indeed establish a template for laying-out the matrix of any game; clone the instance of the template and fill it in with the specifics of any individual game; store that in a database; provide matrix manipulation tools for operating on individual games and groups of games. We in essence have an infinitude of human activities that can be plugged-in as games. (I.E.) if Genome Decoding is a game, what are the rules? What's the board? Who plays? How is it played [/ scored / timed]? If ideological subversion is a game... [Et al.] Maybe the most interesting and significant games are those, such as the religious / political / economic / social games, that have some provision for changing their rules during the course of their plays. Dull, pointless games DON'T allow for rule changes, and are merely entertainment - ways to structure and fill one's time. More about this later. One simple operation would be, to take any dimension of a game and randomly and/or systematically alter it to generate new games. But there is of course a basic problem with mechanising game generation in this way, which is that, once it's mechanized, it no longer becomes interesting. It's tedious, trivial... So the problem is, how to make the processes interesting again. Well, we can look at other processes that have been automated, learn from experience there. And we see that many of them are business processes. There is a profit incentive there. Even though once the process has been automated, looking at it can be exceedingly boring; yet it's proceeds can be quite rewarding. So, add an economic incentive to Game generation, and it becomes of interest -- to what? sell the games? (mumble) I don't know. Back to the meta-game machine: in its database, store all the components in the different dimensions of the games, into a relational database. Normalized, we'd then have a database of rules, a database of playing fields, a database of players, et cetera. New components in any or many of those dimensions can then be generated by performing operations on existing members. The next step up from THAT would be the creation of a robot, a game, a machine, to create games. That game creation then becomes a game, but in order to be so, it's processes must be scorable, so we we need some discrimination, some judgement, to decide what components have what merit. How do we make those judgements? Linear programming? Play-outs? Monte Carlo simulations? Focus groups? Chemical processes? Evolutionary networks? Genetic algorithms? Without having read up on Game Theory, what can I assume about the attributes of different kinds of games? Games of cooperation; games of competition; games of randomness; games of strategy: short, medium, long-term; games only of tactics; games that are totally random, where the final outcome is only determined step-by-step, as opposed to games whose outcome is determined more more-or-less plotting; games where the plays and players are concealed, or revealed, or something in between - full, partial or zero knowledge of what's going on, of what other players are doing; games where the outcomes themselves may be knowable, unknowable, something in between -- and the meanings of those outcomes; games where the very term 'outcome' may not any meaning; games to be played for the play itself, not for the outcome, if any - thus the outcome has various levels of relevence, from very very much to none. A game's purpose may be to simulate some other system, for training purposes, for practice, or just for the joy of doing the simulation, the intellectual challenge. In any zero-sum game, the stakes can always be upped (or downed); the outcome can be modified so that winning or losing the game may result in emotional satisfaction, or none; or financial or sexual or other reward, or none; or, life or death -- in which case, part of the payoff is the anticipation of the outcome. I can't say anything, not even this. The Totalitarian Rule of Physics: Everything that is not forbidden, is compulsory. Incorporate that into games. Belief systems, knowledge systems, both subsets of Thought Systems. Reprogram the thoughts to reprogram the system. | |
Go Southwestern, Eh?Friday, 23 June, year 2000, Forestville, California.Go to Page, Arizona. Rent a houseboat. Go out on Lake Powell for a couple weeks. In the spring. ...Travel up'n'down the Cordilleras - the Sierra Nevada and Cascades, the Rockies, the Basin'n'Range mountains in between. These are the best. From Mexico thru Canada to Alaska, all the way... Of course, social/political/economic conditions in Mexico are not so good right now, so... exercise caution. The flat country to the east? Bicycle across it. But for REAL travel it's the Cordilleras.The Cosmography of the Southwestern Native American Religions: the Black Mountain in the north; the Yellow Mountain in the west; the White Mountain in the east; the BLue Mountain in the south. Look up SKINWALKERS. Look up a book called SKINWALKERS, WITCHES AND CURANDEROS - Witchcraft and Sorcery Practices of the Southwest. Read NAVAJO WITCHCRAFT, of course. Drink a lot more water. Check out digital audio recorders online, voice recorders. Addendum: Trace the islands of cactus and tree communities at elevation across the Southwest from the Coast Ranges, Sierra Nevada, Transverse Ranges, Basin Ranges, to the Southern Rockies. Attend all the Pueblo and Reservation festivals, the PowWows and BigTimes and gatherings. 'Collect' ruins, petroglyphs, monuments, etc. Note: this may involve tromping around Bandalier a great deal. Travel to the potters of Mariposa and Mata Ortiz and Oaxaca. Track all encounters with indigenous arts in the pot log. Ride steam trains and railcars. And balloons. Skid across playas. Collect local musics, via discs & tapes & radios & buskers. Drink local beers. See local ghosts. All that kinda stuff. | |
Some Visualization NotesThursday, 6th of July, early afternoon, Forestville.Vino Grigio. Mechanical ducks at Tahoe?Visualize. Visualize your home - from above, from the side, from the front. Pull back. Visualize the block you live on - the hill, the islet. Pull back further. Visualize your city, your county, your parish. Pull back further. Visualize the watershed you live in, the state, the region, the nation. Pull back further. Visualize your hemisphere. Watch your planet spin. Spin yourself over the poles. Visualize. Pull back - go into geosynchronous orbit, precess slowly. Pull back - visualize your planet- satellite system. Pull back - visualize the portion of the solar system your planet resides in. Pull back - visualize your entire solar system, its structural components. Pull back - visualize your star, in relation to nearby stars. Pull back - visualize your stellar neighborhood. Go 'WAY back - see your galaxy. See other galaxies. See a galactic cluster. See a portion of the universe. See the entire universe. Pull back - visualize your portion of the meta-universe, all the bubble universes adjacent to your own. Pull back. Visualize your home. Move in - visualize the room that you are in. Look at it from above, from the side, from the front. Look at yourself. Circle around. Move in - look inside your head, inside your throat, inside your chest, inside your bowels, inside your genitals. Go to the tip of your toes, follow your skin structure all the way around the outside of your body, your musculature, skeleton, through the inside of your body. Trace your organs. Move in - go to your brain. Look at the connextions of neurons. Follow the neurons out through the neural-vascular bundles thoughout your body, out to the ends of your fingertips, to the ends of your toes. Go back in - re-center in your brain. Trace a path through your optic nerves, through your auditory centers, through your prefrontal lobes - explore the geography of your brain. Pick a cell. Any cell. Move in. Explore the texture of the cell wall. Note the organelles within the cell. Look at the nucleus. Move in to the nucleus. Move in. Find a strand of DNA. Follow it down. Unzip it. Check out the genes. Move through the genes to the chromosomes. Move down to each of the chemical letters that makes up your genetic information. Trace the alphabet [within you]. (Anyway. Look inward to the molecular, atomic, subatomic, absolute basic level. Visualize.) Something elseClick. Next entry: The Cagots - despised Christian sect of the Basque region. "An ancient pariah race of untouchables who had practiced a variant of Christianity which brought down upon them the rancor and hatred of their Basque neighbors. The Cagots sought relief from persecution through a request to Pope Leo X in 1504 which was granted in principle, but the restrictions and indignities continued to the end of the 19th century, When they ceased to exist as a distinct race." --Trevanian, SHIBUMI, page 306 of the paperback.Sperm-mad! -- Basque psalms. -- The 7 deadly sins as mind-control triggers. Macromastic: of large breasts. Macrophobia: fear of long waits. Mactation: sacrificial murder. Manxome: like a Manx (cat). Mariolotry: Mary-worship. Martyrology: a history or catalogue of martyrs. Matanza: a slaughterhouse. Masomancy: fortune-telling by a nursing baby. Masophila: mammary mania. Medicaster: a medical quack. Megalophobia: fear of large things. Melomaniac: a music lover. Melophobia: hatred or fear of music. Melopoeia: making up melodies; or the made-up melody. Mentacide: brainwashing. Mentamutation: change of mind. Merdiverous: dung-eating. Merkin: female genitalia; also, public hair. Metastasis: change of form or substance. Mileway: the time required to walk one mile. Mimsy: prim, prudish. Mingy: mean & stingy. Misarchist: a person who hates authority. Miserotia: aversion to sex. Misomania: hatred of everything. Misotheism: hatred of gods. Molybdemancy: fortune-telling by dropping molten lead on water. Monolatry: the worship of only one of many gods. Moonglade: moonlight reflected on water. Morology: nonsense, foolishness. Morosis: imbecility. Midden: trash-heap. Multigravita: a woman who's been pregnant more than once. Myomancy: fortune-telling by watching mice. Myriotheism: polytheism. All the preceeding from MRS BURNE'S DICTIONARY. Next: be sure to research SAINTS. -- CommonGroundRadio.Org -- clandestine radio. Varietist: one who practices unorthodox sex. Vastation: purification thru fire. Veticide: murder of a prophet. Vorticism: post-impressionist art reflecting the machine age. HELL FOR DUMMIES. THE CARE & FEEDING OF PHOBIAS. Is that a crystal in your pocket or are you just glad to see me? COSMIC HITCHHIKING FOR DUMMIES: The COMPLETE IDIOT'S GUIDE To CROSSING CONTINENTS, PLANETS, SOLAR SYSTEMS, GALAXIES And UNIVERSES At Little Or No Expense. | |
Prep For Italy19 July? 200014 WAYS TO SATISFY YOUR LOVE AFFAIR WITH ITALY
Suitable electronics & power supplies. Suitable clothes - clothes to be broken down into clothes for transit, airline, town-walking; for trail-walking; for mopedding. Clothes for warm weather and cold weather. Suitable maps & guidebooks, probably to be supplemented once we reach Italy. Appropriate medications & toiletries.OTHER STUFF: Misc paraphenalia: Walking sticks; binoculars; a couple hundred postcards of the Redwood Coast; little California Republic patches to sew onto packs & jackets & such. Itens in the equipment checklist in WALKING IN ITALY, pp. 48-49; swim trunks, river sandals; NO JEWELRY, (or) maybe one bolo; tools, compass, utensils, whistle, flashlight, 1st-aid kit; backpack; daypack; water bottles; moped gloves; toilet paper; AAA road map(s); handywipes; convertable long pants & longsleeve shirts; wicking underwear; silk & wicking longjohns; roll-up clothes-line & tiny clothes-pins; tinwhistle and/or ocarina; mandolin or travel guitar; double bunch of minidiscs to CDs to take along. Clothesline in a bottle: a thin line with a hook on each end, in a film cannister for storage; in another film cannister, a bunch of big paper-clips - use those as clothes-pins. At least, try'em. | |
More Game Notes etc20 July? 2000On self-referential games: Games that are about themselves; games, the playing of which changes their rules; games that define themselves as they go along; games that propagate-replicate themselves; games that parody themselves, describe themselves, contradict themselves; that refute themselves, create themselves, modify themselves.THE ANARCHY GAME: The rules of this game have no rules. Adding self-modification to any of the card-collection games that I've discussed before: include sets of cards (to be collected), two sets. Well first, we have the stated rules of the game. Then we have two sets of cards, one of which are CONDITIONALS, that IF some condition exists in the play of the game; the other set of cards SPECIFY moves, exceptions to the rules, variations. And as a player, as you're collecting other cards, you collect CONDITIONALS and SPECIFICATIONS, so that you can vary the rules temporarily or permanently, at whim. In a TEMPORARY modification of the rules, the cards get recycled into play; if it's a PERMANANT modification of the rules, those cards are withdrawn from play, displayed during the course of play. THIS GAME HAS NO RULES. THIS SET HAS NO MEMBERS. THIS BOOK HAS NO WORDS. THIS TITLE HAS NO MEANING. THIS MEANING HAS NO TITLE. I HAVE NO MOVE AND I AM MAKING IT. THIS POINTER POINTS TO ITSELF. THIS RULE HAS NO GAME. THIS TITLE HAS NO BOOK. Or minimally, a game in which ONLY cards containing rules that've been drawn, are the rules of the game - those are the only rules. So the game is constructed as you play it. All those rules can be about limitations, enhancements, extentions, inducements; modes of play, of thought, of behaviour. You could have a card deck that consists of nothing BUT rules, and portions of that deck are then extracted and inserted into other card decks for play in their games. Another type of self-modifying game would be one in which rules, fixed rules, specify the directions of moves; and changable matrices indicate the conditions and durations / lengths / vectors of the moves -- the range of the moves. "The most infectious memes, the ideas having the highest invading potential, are those that explain Man by assigning him his place in an imminant destiny in whose bosom his anxiety dissolves." --Jacques Monat YA GOTTA HAVE NIOBIUM BALLS IF YA WANNA TRAP QUARKS! Lexicon. Shavke: shit-eating dog; low-level incompentant. Look up: BORGWARD -- International Experimental Aircraft Ass'n. SPORT AIRCRAFT magazine -- CyberGold.Com/Shop Look up local office of Green Party; get Nader buttons, etc. See AMERICAN HERITAGE vol.12, April 1961, pp.78-85 for review of perpetual motion - that's a historical review of the American press. Monday morning, July 24th, 2000, Forestville.You are what you wear. You are where you shop. You are when you eat. You aren't what you shit. You aren't when you work. You are how you rant. You aren't why you wait. It'd be trivial to write a computer program to go thru a list of connectives and verbs to generate this sort of text -- so DO IT sometime!The most interesting games are those in which the rules can be changed. Political, economic, religious games - the dogmas may be invariant, but the rules for interpreting the dogmas CAN change. Too many SPORTS, for instance, have rules that do NOT change. People who observe such invariant games are, in my opinion, losers. - - - - - - - - - - MODIFYING GAMES: The previous was Wednesday the 26th of July, year 2000. Now it's Thursday morning. Um, modifying games: As Hofstadter notes in METAMAGICKAL THEMAS in his piece on Nomic, a self-modifying game based on reflexivity in law, that specific game has two levels of rules, all of which may be modified, but the first level should be more difficult to modify than the next level. This reflects social systems like, for instance, US law, where we have a Constitution, difficult but possible to amend; laws and statutes on top of that, easier to change and to add to; regulations on top of those statutes, even easier yet to modify; on down to customs and the like. | |
Some Late Summer NotesFriday, 28 July 2000, Forestville.POLITICAL GAMES: Note on 'Anarchism' - "...a eulogy he [Martin Buber] wrote on Landauer in which he says, roughly (I don't have my Buber shelf with me): "I cannot make sense of any claim that 'the ends justify the means,' but I can say with certainty that the means BECOME the ends: that what a political movement does in the present becomes its ACTUAL goal and result in practice." He was affirming Landaauer's opposition (as a member of a short-lived revolutionary-socialist govt of Bavaria (!!!!) after World war I) to the use of the Red Terror, as in the new Soviet Union. And he was essentially prophesying that a govt founded on the Red Terror would create a society that lived in terror." --Arthur Waskow (in email to POM elist)A translation into Game theory of "the means becomes the end" is: "the Play is the Game". "I have no interest in their political structures, one way or the other. Politics are masturbatory, the self-satisfaction of political groups. No, I am interested in besting them financially, beating them by their own rules, so to speak." --Robert L Duncan, from DRAGONS AT THE GATEIf politics are masturbatory, are all other games? Religious, economic, social, et cetera? Just for the self-satisfaction of the players? Is all entertainment masturbatory? Is all masturbation entertaining? Name for a country group: THE ROADKILL RANGERS. [For a punk band: MILK CARTON KIDS] [song-search list deleted] Saturday, the 5th of August, 2000San Francisco. Another splendid lunch at Canto do Brazil, on Franklin at Lily, between Page and Oak... At M&M Sporting Goods, Haight & Market, San Francisco, tents: Walrus Heatwave tent, $230, tall, lots of ventilation. 9'6" x 7' -- looks to be about 5' high. Why do you like it? Maureen: I like it because it's so open, the whole front is mesh, and both sides are mesh, it's wonderful. Me: Yeah. Floor plan's sorta a semi-circle... Stearns IK-140 inflatable kayak, 2-seater, $400 -- check on weight capacity. Easier said than done.Map: Kummerly+Frey official map of Touring Club of Italy, scale 1:200,000, it looks like we want sheet 12 for Campagna. Book: The Italians, by Luigi Barzini (**). Rear-view mirror to clip on hat or glasses (**). Recommended by Johnny Grimes: QL10 vitamin supplement for altitude conditioning. VERY GREEN powder from TJs. And vitamin E. DAILY LIFE IN ANCIENT ITALY, the Frank V. DeBellis collection, at the J.Paul Leonard Library, San Francisco State U, May 1st to December 15th, 2000, Monday-Friday, 1-5 PM. See www.sfsu.edu/~debellis "The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning the society's values, can force it to change." --Samuel Delaney The sun crashes down on the shore The heat rolls on breakers and combers The fire washes over the sand The light eddies and rolls back - The pain burns it way thru my eyes The pain drips in my blood The pain washes around me The pain fills all the hollows - The night laughs like a moron The night drools and masturbates The night drinks way too much The night staggers into stupor Forestville, very early Friday morning, 11 August 2000 | |
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