Game Design as Cultural Practice

Elements of Play in Apples to Apples

John Michael Courson

I find the game Apples to Apples to be a very interesting example of what the essence of play is. There are few other games I play where I can repeatedly lose and yet still have fun playing the game. It is as if my goal is not necessarily the goal stated in the instructions. I play Apples to Apples to have a bit of fun with my friends or family, and I feel this is perfectly acceptable because that is what play is all about. I believe that one of the reasons that I don't mind losing Apples to Apples is because the game is so subjective. Players must lay down a card with a single word and must argue before a judge about the merits of the word when compared to another word on the table. The nature of the game makes it obvious that the judge can only pick one choice and there are moments where a player has absolutely nothing in his hand that relates to the word on the table. This being said, it's always nice to be the person to win the round and it seems like friendly arguments are unavoidable, but in the end everyone is just having fun.

There are several answers to the question “What is Play?” in The Game Design Reader and for the most part the elements of play defined in the book fit in well with my experiences of Apples to Apples. At the core of most definitions of play is the fact that all play is a voluntary activity (Huizinga 102). This is certainly true for Apples to Apples in that I've never been forced to play a game. In fact, if I'm not in the mood to play, then I just choose not to play and there is no love lost between me and the players. Another important element of play is that of tension. “Tension means uncertainty, chanciness; a striving to decide the issue and so end it.” (Huizinga 105) There is certainly an element of tension when playing Apples to Apples. Players are not sure if their card will be picked or if the next card they pick will favor them or not. Players are also subject to the whims of the judge.

Roger Caillois defines play as an activity that is essentially free, separate, uncertain, unproductive, governed by rules, and make-believe (128). A case can be made for each of these elements in Apples to Apples. It is free in that nobody is forced to play it, separate in that it is “defined and fixed in advance”, uncertain in that no person knows who will win in the end, unproductive in that nothing is physically accomplished in playing the game although friendships may be strengthened and happiness elevated, governed by rules in that all players are in agreement to the way the game is played, and finally make-believe in that the choices made by the judge and the resulting winner has no bearing on reality.

Bernard Suits has a different definition of game playing that consists of a goal, a means of achieving the goal, rules, and a lusory attitude (184). These could similarly be placed within context of the game Apples to Apples. Personally, I believe that Suits places a little too much emphasis on the necessity for a goal. At the very least, I believe that play allows for goals that can be changed and changed as often as necessary. Recent MMOG's have shown that it is possible to play a game without having an ending. There may be goals that the player tries to obtain, but if these goals are not reached this does not mean they weren't playing. I find myself playing Grand Theft Auto in two very different ways. Most of the time I do the missions in the game as efficiently as possible with a clear goal in mind, to progress the story and “beat” the game with decent statistics (no deaths or arrests). At other times I simply drive around the city listening to the radio, watching the pedestrians, and enjoying the atmosphere of the game. I am usually having the most fun during these moments and there is no clear goal present. One thing that everyone seems to agree on is that play is voluntary and that play can be ended at any time. It is one of those things that is hard to define because it may consist of so many forms, yet it is something that everyone should experience.

References

Salen, Katie and Eric Zimmerman. (2005). The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology.

Analysis of a Victorian board game, Roma

Huizinga, Caillois and Suits offer three related, but still different, views of what a 'game' is. Each builds off of the previous author, creating a language with which to understand and analyze games. The game I will be analyzing will be Roma, the Fortune-Telling Game, which I played two weeks ago in class.

Huizinga's essay attempts to understand play with respect to human culture. In so doing, he postulates that play is an essential and pervasive element of society - that it is deeply ingrained not only in childhood activities, but adult ones as well. Rituals, religious and otherwise, are a form of play, according to Huizinga (GDR p.103). Huizinga resolves the vast differences between child-play and adult ritual by taking into account the idea of 'seriousness'.  A child will approach their play activities with an intense seriousness, subsuming themselves in the world of their imagination.  Adults, too, behave quite seriously during their play time.  Football fans at a sports bar, for all their revelry, watch every play with quasi-religious awe.

In the case of Roma, the players of the game session I was party to indeed imbued the game with seriousness.  We determined the rules and began to play.  We laughed and giggled at many of the pronouncements from the game board, but we also began to construct a kind of communal narrative out of the prophecies.  Our fortunes began to intersect, and our narratives grew in complexity.  For all the frivolty of the situation, my group held the game's augry as legitimate, at least for the length of the game play session.

Caillois extends Huizinga's analysis, adding the beginnings of a game analysis lexicon.  Where Huizinga avoided disecting the components of games, Caillois attempts to do so (GDR p.123).  Caillois determines 'play' to have 6 aspects:  it is Free, Separate, Uncertain, Unproductive, Governed by Rules, and Make-believe (GDR p.128). Furthermore, he classifies all games as belonging to one or more fundamental categories - Agon, Alea, Mimicry, and Ilinx (GDR p.130). Each of these are richly detailed in the text, but for the sake of time I will let the reader enjoy their description from the original author.

Can Roma be analyzed with regards to Caillois' lexicon?  Let's try.

Roma is Free - play is not obligatory in the slightest (aside from the fact that it was an in-class assignment).  It is Separate, being apart from the 'normal world' in terms of percieved time and space.  It is Uncertain - the outcome is unknown at the beginning of the game.  It is Unproductive - it creates no material goods or wealth (but it *does* generate an enjoyable narrative).  Roma is Governed by Rules, simple ones yes, but rules nonetheless.  Finally, it is Make-Believe.  Despite my desparate wishes to the contrary, one's future cannot be foretold by a Victorian-era board game.

As for the category, Roma falls firmly within the category of Alea, what Caillois calls all "games that are based on a decision independant of the player" (GDR p.133).  Movement in Roma, the only way to advance towards the win-state of the game, is achieved only through dice rolling, and thus the player is not in control of how they move. Victory is only determined through chance.

Finally, I come to Bernard Suits' jocular essay "Construction of a Definition".  Interwoven with humor, he takes ideas from both Huizinga and Caillois and extends them further.  He focuses on the concept of 'winning', as well as what it is to actually 'play' a game.

Like Caillois, Suits acknowledges that games have rules.  Suits goes on to claim that the rules are inextricably linked to the ends of games - to the methods and actions that are used to play (GDR p.174).  He goes on to examine the concept of rules and play, exploring the fact that to play a game one must usually achieve the game's goal by inefficient means, usually by the most inefficient means possible.

Suits concludes his essay with a dialogue.  One character states the definitions and identities of game elements, as Suits has theorized them to be - the Prelusory Goal (the specific state that symbolizes the 'end' of the game), the Lusory Means (the means permitted by the rules), and the Lusory Attitude (the collective acceptance of the rules as the common method of play) (GDR p.190).

Our play session of Roma, unsurprisingly, exhibited these elements. The Prelusory Goal was the end condition - one player's piece reaching their track's end zone.  The Lusory Means were both the rolling of dice and the progress of our game pieces on the board's tracks.  The Lusory Attitude was there, as well - we all participated in the game according to the rules.  No one skipped ahead or attempted to derail the game, or break the social contract that kept us all in the 'magic circle'.

These readings did much to further my comprehension of that eternal question - "What is a game?".  Huizinga, Caillois, and Suits present rich, complex contemplations of play and games, and I have enjoyed learning from them.

Cheating and Vertigo in Monopoly

Caillois' classification serves well to describe games in an elemental form, but does little to describe the motives of play.  He does some qualification, calling paida child-like and ludus more adult, but i see this article as missing the big picture in terms of play.  Suits tries to get across this message, but falls short early on with his obsession with the rules.  His analysis of the paradoxical nature between rules and efficiency is interesting, but his argument casts the cheat as the ultimate villain.  I agree more with the previous writings, asserting that the cheat must still understand and accept the rules of the world in order to manipulate or break them.  Although the cheat may induce this attitude if discovered, the ultimate impediment to play is the spoil-sport, the one who actively rejects the game world.  I agree that one dishonors the game when cheating (or perhaps honors the game best when not cheating) but the game needs no honor to itself; a game is the method by which we seek our own honor (or in some cases divine grace according to Huizinga).  I am not arguing that one must simply win and do so by all means necessary, even if the win is cheapened by ignoring the rules.  Instead, I say that the game, though not in all cases, is our method of crushing our opponents.  Cunning cheating requires a level of expertise apart from the game's natural elements.  (As an aside, the Bart Simpson guide to cheating on tests includes a disclaimer that simply studying for the test may be a simpler method than the included descriptions)  Effective cheating adds a greater thrill to the game, requiring total awareness of the other players and, if present, the referee.  In the end, the biggest challenge is to keep oneself from admitting his cleverness, destroying his opportunity for future victory.  The biggest example of mutually accepted cheating I've seen comes in the game of rugby, where one man must dictate the legality of 30 players' actions.  It is here where the players referee themselves, drawing their own lines for the other team.  Teams must halt the transgressions by their own means, often by deliberately hurting or injuring that player.  No player seeks to deliberately injure another, at least not seriously, unless he has crossed the line.

As for the board games played in class, I played the with group playing monopoly.  To categorize monopoly according to Caillois' elements, chance heavily influences the game by controlling player movement and fate in the case of chance cards, community chess, and triple-doubles sending one to jail.  The strategic element arises once the board has been largely purchased and players can now make land deals to form monopolies.  This is where I had the most fun in playing, trying to minimize cost or maximize profit through charismatic salesmanship and seemingly great offers.  Next, in mimicry, I took it upon myself to assume the role of auctioneer who granted the land to the highest bidder.  This significantly brought more entertainment to the oft ignored rule of auctioning unpurchased land.  Finally, there are no systems in monopoly overtly designed to induce vertigo, yet I introduced one myself in the element of stealing from the bank.  It wasn't important that I had more money than everyone and win, I stole just to see if I could and gauge the reactions of my opponents.  It was an action performed just to experience the rush of rule breaking and for no other reason, therefore placing it in this category.  I definitely had more fun playing this game because I cheated.  However, this may be an incomplete analysis of vertigo.  I believe this state of rush may be the key to classifying all games in describing the balance of exhaustion, flow, and panic.  Therefore, the sensation of blood rushing through my skull as I assumed the role of land salesman, speculator, auctioneer, and thief became the reason to play.  The other mechanics where irrelevant so long as I could have this moment of "grace."  I am, however, most likely describing a qualifier of good games rather than an element of all games.  Still, I argue that this state is where emphasis should lie, from which the game can be built and argued rather than the ways detailed by the authors.

- Max Groves
xxx@gatech.edu

The game of many rules

In Bernard Suits essay Construction of a Definition we go through the different facets and ways that rules work within the idea of play. We learn that there are reasons that rules of play work the way they do and one of the best examples I’ve see n of this is the game called the Mansion of Happiness. Mansion of Happiness is a Victorian board game that was made to help teach children the importance of different virtues and also many vices to avoid. What I found that was more interesting than the game its self was the way it was played by us in class. Because we did not have a rule set for which to play the game with we instead made our own set of rules. These rules we made mostly on the spur of the moment. There was a general way that we made the rule set. A good virtue would do something good for the player and a vice would give you negative effect.

Now taking the way we came up with the rules and looking at them the way that Bernard would starts with our end. The end for our game was to go all the way around the board and get to the middle spot first to win. Now like he says to truly win a game you must make it to the end effect within the rule set of the game or you stop playing and therefore cannot win. That means you cannot just pick up your piece and move it to the winning spot. The rules work this was because they are accepted for the sake of the activity they make possible. We keep good rules for the virtues and bad rules for the vices because it makes the game idea possible. If we made some of the virtues do bad things to you then it would betray this concept we had made for the game and therefore destroy what we had created.

Now to take the game apart and fit into his definition would go probably like this. The Goal is the first part of the definition. The Goal of the Mansion of Happiness is one to participate in a board game involving moving by random dice rolls racing to the center of the board, second is win the race to the center, and third is to get into the last space before the other players. The second part of his definition is the means of winning the game. The means for our game is that you must take turns rolling the dice and then moving that many squares and doing the appropriate actions that that square require of you. Next would be the actual rules of the game. The rules in this game are each named square has a set rule that you must obey and that you must go the number of squares rolled. Last part of his definition is the lusory attitude. Lusory attitude is the part playing that we do that doesn’t make sense but makes the games work the way it works in this game is that we do not take our pieces and just put them from the first spot to the last but go from A to B to C to so on until the end of the game.

Write a good blog or its Oy Vey!

 In my opinion cultural artifacts can be any object or symbol created and then left to future generations or even to left to be exposed to a different culture of the same time period. As an exemplary gaming artifact I remark upon Oy Vey!, the game where you become a Jewish Mother! Oy Vey! is a board wherein the players are attempting to get their male offspring to become doctors and their female offspring married to male offspring of other players. Every facet of the game involves some sort of reference to Jewish culture and is probably presenting that reference in a slightly satirical manner. The cultural reflections tied to this steeping of culture are myriad and in my opinion one of the reasons the game is fun to play. I had the privilage to play the game with a jewish person and so had the opportunity for live input and clarification for some of the culture specific jokes in the game. A game of this design quite possibly was made to be an ice breaker between jewish people and people who needed help understanding jewish culture.
 As a cultural artifact this game is amazing, however, as a game it can become frustrating because of its base mechanics. So the game mechanics are that each player follows a pre-determined path on the game board that will intercept other players paths. This interception is important because the "daughters" must end up on the same board space as an unmarried son to have a chance at marrying. The player gets to roll two dice and then move any of his or her pieces some combination of the numbers. The difficulties are that different boards spaces move you back or forth along the path and Oy Vey! borrows from Monopoly with the two card deck mechanic. The cards can be either good or bad and add another layer of sheer chance to the game. The final frustration of the game mechanic is that any player with a married son no longer gets to choose which pieces to move after rolling they must move the married son as much as possible. Lets just say I got stuck on the worst section of my path with no options and some unlucky rolls. I was fairly close to just calling it quits and being that guy "who denounces the rules as absurd and conventional, who refuses to play because the game is meaningless. His arguments are irrefutable" as Roger Callois writes. Callois goes on to say "[t]he game has no other but an intrinsic meaning. That is why its rules are imperative and absolute, beyond discussion" and that statement brings me to my final point. If Oy Vey! had no other value except intrinsicly at the time I played it I would not have finished it. I would have quit. But to me then and now that game had value because I was studying it as a game and as a cultural artifact. Yes i was playing it and I was involved in the microcosm created by the rules but I also had the purpose of learning from the experience. In the end the opportunity to learn about play and culture interacting ws enough to make me want to finish.

Parcheesi

A game which we did not discuss in class, but is of great interest to me is the game of Parcheesi. Parcheesi is a game that was created in India around 500 BC (even before chess is said to have been created). It, like chess, has pawns that must move around the board blocking and capturing other players pieces. These games both mimic in some ways the movements and strategies of battle. However, it is very much unlike chess in that it is much more a game of chance. A player's prospect of winning a game of Parcheesi is based almost solely on the luck of the roll of dice. Caillois would call such a game 'Alea,' meaning that Parcheesi is a game of 'destiny.' While Parcheesi is still a game that is played in America, people more commonly play a Parker Bothers 1934 adaptation of the game known as Sorry!. Sorry! is similar to Parcheesi in that it is a game with four identical sides of different color trying to get their four pawns around the board and back into home. However, Sorry! adds an element of excitement by using a stack of shuffled cards in order to determine the player's move. These cards take away what little element of strategy exist for Parcheesi. Not surprisingly, this much more fast-paced version of Parcheesi seems appropriate for the time in which it was created. Its conception very much reflects the introduction of Monopoly by the Parker Brothers in 1935. It too is an adaptation of an earlier much less exciting game known as the Landlord's game. In the same way that Parcheesi and Chess reflect the culture of the common society in which they were created, so too do Sorry! and Monopoly. In this period of American History exciting games of chance were very much gaining foothold despite the fears of the immoral nature of dice and gambling. Because money was scarce in the 1930's due to the great depression, games of chance seemed to more appropriately reflect the difficult times many people experienced despite their hardest attempts to succeed. It was a time in American history when 'destiny' seemed to outweigh determination. On the other hand, the excitement of the game more accurately reflected the fast-paced nature of society in 1930's America as opposed to 500 BC India. In the end, Parcheesi and Sorry! are yet another example of play adapting to and reflecting the society in which it is played.

Monopoly: Playful business

What was once a game that reflected how people saw their lot in life (Landlords) has evolved into the American Capitalist ideal: Monopoly. This game is about greed, cut-throat business, and shady deals. Why then, one might ask, is it any fun? There are certainly a plethora of reasons for people to get frustrated with losing, as most people are bound to do more often than not. Some of those reasons are explored by Huizinga, Caillois and Suits in their respective essays on games, and are the purpose for this essay as well.

 

One of the many important aspects of games is the rules, as highlighted by Huizinga. According to him, the rules make the game, because without them achieving the objective of a game is would be remarkably easier and therefore far less enjoyable. Rules intentionally make a task harder to complete, which is why the game is played at all. The challenge makes playing fun because it rewards a sense of satisfaction when the task is at last completed, even if the game is as simple as throwing a rock at a sign or a pole. When inventing games, people immediately begin laying down rules to make it harder to do something. The most important thing about the rules, however, is that every player agrees on them. If not everyone can agree on the same set of rules, not everyone can enjoy the game. That is why Monopoly works as a game. There are quite a number of rules, and all the players have to abide by them. What’s interesting is that an earlier version of the game used to include a contingency for when a player chose not to abide by the rules where the other players could vote to either change the rule or penalize the player who is out of line.

 

There are other elements of games that Huizinga chooses to highlight, since he talks specifically about playing the games. One of the most glaring pieces is that playing is voluntary. It can’t be fun if one is forced to participate. That is what separates work from play. This leads into the first element of play, which is that play is freedom. The second element is that play is not real life. According to Huizinga, it is like “stepping out of ‘real’ life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own.” (103) Many professional athletes often speak of the court of play as a whole other world they step into. So, too, is the Monopoly board substantially outside ordinary life. A player’s focus is on the game, which is represented by the game. This leads us to the third and final element of play: limitedness. Play is not never-ending, though it can start over once it is done. It is limited to the space in which it represented and acted out, as well as the time it takes to play or find a winner to the contest. That is how it remains separate from regular life, and becomes voluntary.

Senet: The Game of Afterlife

Amy Chang

gth848t

amy.chang - amcha421

LCC 4725-D

Blogpost 2: Board Games as Cultural Artifacts. Select one of the board games played in class. Based on your play experience, compare how it fits into the elements and cultural role of gameplay presented by Huizinga, Caillois and Suits in Game Design Reader.

Senet, an ancient Egyptian game, may be the oldest known board game, artifacts dating it back to 3500 BCE, durng the reign of King Tutankhamen. Senet's back story is based on the ancient Egyptian belief in one's journey into the afterlife.  Such cultural elements are reflected in Senet's simple gameplay of both chance and strategy; because of Senet's element of luck and the Egyptian belief in determinism, it was believed that a successful player was under the protection of the major gods. 

Senet is played by two people who must transport each of their five pieces into the "afterlife."  As such, the board itself can be interpreted as life itself as the pieces travel over the grid of thirty squares, which are arranged in three rows of ten.  The players' moves are determined by the roll of a die; after that, it is up to the player to formulate a strategy to figure out the best way to transport his or her pieces or block his or her opponent's pieces.  Obstacles are also determined by which squares the player lands on, but these can generally be avoided.  Instead, the game can be played defensively as one player can block or "punt" his or her opponent's pieces backwards.  However, the gameplay of Senet primarily emphasizes the deterministic element of luck, as each player's move is calculated by the roll of a die. 

According the Huizinga, cultural attitudes can be derived from the type or game or the game's gameplay.  Games, as systems of metaphor and abstraction, allow its gameplay to be determined on several levels.  For instance, the Senet board itself and the path one takes on it is easily interpreted as the road of life; furthermore the linear and limited player movement and its restriction to the die roll underlines once more the Egyptian belief in determinism.  Cultural values can also be determined from the game's system of rewards, motivation, and the meaning behind choices.  For example in Senet, even though strategy may emerge, the game primarily rewards a lucky roll; specifically, if one rolls an even number, he or she may roll again, and thus advance much more quickly in the game. 

The element of luck in Senet sheds light on not only the Egyptian culture that played it, but also the metaphysical properties behind the game mechanics.  Most obviously, the game of Senet is intrinsically intertwined with the story of the ancient Egyptian's lifelong journey to the afterlife. According to Caillois, in alea (games of chance), the player ends up depending on everything else but him or herself; this element arguably places all players on the same level, but foremost there is a "negation of the will," which corresponds with the deterministic mindset of the ancient Egyptians (134).  Yet, the "opposite and somewhat complementary attitudes" of the elements of agon (games of competition) and alea in Senet provide its players "conditions of pure equality denied them in real life.  For nothing in life is clear, since everything is confused from the very beginning, luck and merit too.  Play, whether agon or alea, is thus an attempt to substituted perfect situations for the normal confusion of contemporary life" (Caillois 135).  As a simulation of the ancient Egyptian's path to the afterlife, Senet illustrates a relationship between cultural ritual and gameplay.  For example, the Senet gameboard marks a spatial separation from ordinary life, yet ritual is indistinguishable from play, just as emotions and reactions elicited from certain traditions, such as a mask whose cultural tradition is to arouse fear.

However, the chance element of Senet gives the gameplay what Huizinga calls 'tension,' "an uncertainty, chanciness; a striving to decide the issue and so end it" (Huizinga 105).  Yet it is the aforementioned contrasting elements of random luck and the structure of game rules that give games of chance an interesting underlying sense of conflict.  Suits describes the purpose of such game rules as the following: "To play a game is to attempt to achieve a specific state of affairs [prelusory goal], using only means permitted by rules [lusory means], where the ruels prohibit use of more efficient in favour of less efficient means [constitutive rules], and where the rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity [lusory attitude]... playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles" (190). 

Works Cited:

Essays from:

Salen, Katie and Eric Zimmerman. (2005). The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon (1955)/Johan Huizinga 96
The Definition of Play: The Classification of Games (1962)/Roger Caillois 122
Construction of a Definition (1990)/Bernard Suits 172

Clue

During class, we played Clue, a board game about solving a mystery of who committed a murder. In the game, there are cards with each of the suspects, each of the weapons, and each of the rooms in the mansion, and at the beginning, 3 are set aside as the actual events of the murder. During the game, the players get  the rest of the cards distributed amongst themselves, and they move throughout the board, which is laid out like the mansion, to try and narrow down the pieces of the murder. The game is based on trying to outwit the other players and use information to your advantage in order to correctly guess the conditions of the murder before anybody else.

During the game, you play as a character in the mansion, but you aren't so much your character as using that character to investigate the mansion for you. Johan Huizinga's idea that play is not ordinary or “real life” shows in this game, that even though the players are investigating a murder, it's in a playful mood. Your character could be the murderer without you knowing it, but it does not affect the game or your solution; in this game world, accusing yourself of murder can have you win the game. In Huizinga's paper he also states that tension in play tests the prowess, courage, tenacity, and fairness of the players. The real battle in the game is to outwit the other players with your knowledge and control how you use it, which definitely tests these things.

In Roger Caillois's The Definition of Play: The Classification of Games, he says that in play, property may be exchanged, but no goods are produced, and this game is like most every other board game in that at the end of the game, everything is reset. Caillois has a list of things that make up play, and the game follows these; the first one, the idea that play is not obligatory is pretty evident in Clue. During the game, the player is required to do nothing except roll a die and move around. If the player wanted to simply move around in the house without guessing, then the player can just do that, and isn't forced into anything. The game is separate in that it takes place on the 'house' on the board in a world where these characters exist. The game is uncertain in that since the entire game is based on player deduction and decent bit of randomness, games aren't going through the same path every play-through. As stated before, the game is unproductive; the conditions at the end match those at the beginning. It is governed by the rules and patterns of the game, and it is also make-believe.

As for the categories that Caillois describes, the game seems to fit both into Agôn and Alea; while the game has Agôn's idea of a skill-based game, there is a randomness factor that seems to fit more with Alea. The players must outwit each other with what skills and ideas they have, similar to games like chess, and even the description of  Agôn states that it cannot always be completely fair to all competitors. However, the unfairness is not simply attributed to players going first or second, but also the random chance or which cards each player gets and starting position. The final outcome is based on three random cards, and at the beginning of the game, some players might have more cards than other players. While players are trying to find out based on other players' guesses, there are always times when some players have a major advantage over others just due to what others have guessed and what they've recieved. Even the starting locations matter, since the players must guess based on which room they are in, and some players start closer to some rooms. Alea is described as, “all games that are based on a decision independent of the player, an outcome over which he has no control, and which winning is the result of fate rather than triumphing over an adversary.” While the game isn't completely based on chance, it plays a great role in the game's result, and seems to fit in more here than with Agôn.

One thing that Bernard Suits talks about in Construction of a Definition that applies to the game of Clue is the idea that breaking the rules of the game outright makes the end of winning the game not play anymore, and instead playing the game is defined more by completing things in an inefficient way. While the player can just look at the end cards to find the solution, the game is made by guessing. The rules state that players can guess to eliminate suspects and scenes, the depth of the game is added by removing possible options based on others' guesses. If a player has something to refute a guess and is asked, they must show it, but if they have multiple choices, they can choose not to show one of them deliberately, so that nobody else will have the information. The tricking and observation is a large part of the game and isn't defined by the rules, but since it doesn't break the rules, it is this that helps define the game more.

Andy Korzik, gth707g

andy.korzik@gatech.edu

CLUE - a mystery crime fiction board game

Caillois divided games into four categories: Agon (competition), Alea (chance), Mimicry  (simulation) and Ilinx (vertigo). I think CLUE falls into more than one categories: it is a competition and simulation at the same time, while some chance is also introduced by the game mechanism. In the spectrum of Paidia-Ludus, it is leaning towards the Ludus end, meaning the game play is based on a set of predefined rules, although emergent play behavior does exist when I was playing this game with friends for more than one time. 

As a game of competition, the most significant feature of CLUE is the tension between the strategy of "keeping as much information to yourself as possible" and "sharing information with other players enforced the game rule". Huizinga define tension as "uncertainty, chanciness; a striving to decide the issue and so end it" (p105). As stated by Suits, games are designed to be not efficient at all. He defined playing a game is "to engage in activity directed towards bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by rules, where the rules prohibit more efficient in favor of less efficient means, and where such rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity." In CLUE, the efficiency is reduced because everyone is trying to hide information, the constraints are brought forward by the rules during the social play. This feature revealed its great importance to me when I played CLUE with computer. Although I won the computer game, I don't feel as much fun as playing with friends. Playing with the computer does not make the game easier, instead, with computer, a player is facing competitors who have perfect memorial and logic abilities. Or to say, the tension in the game did not get reduced at the intelligence level. But the tension is missing in other aspects: the subtlety of capturing and interpreting the other players words and gestures; the common awareness of "you know that I know you know"; the bluffing and misleading behaviors that is constraint by the rules of the game at the same time. Also, when playing the game for a second time, more social behaviors is emergent. Using the terms from Suits, I will say, the rules remain the same, but the means of play evolve themselves by the social play. I played the game for two rounds, on the second round, players start to pay attention to record not only what cards have been revealed, but also what questions were asked when other players were making suggestions, because it helped to guess which cards belong to whom. Accordingly, some players start to ask misleading questions to hide their real attention, even when facing the risk of revealing their own information. The process to win the game is never made easier or faster because of the emergent and evolving means players are taking. But winning the game usually brings more satisfaction because of the representation of more intelligence and reasoning skills (Huizinga p108.) 

As a game of simulation, it set up a stage and different roles. The stage is the mansion where the owner (Mr. Boddy) was found dead. Each of the players pick up their roles, who are the guests of the house when the murder happened. This fun of role-playing and make-believe is partially conveyed through the storyline of the game. Moreover, the real fun lies in the process of interaction unfolded in the process of playing by the rules. By following the rules, players are experience the actions of reasoning, remembering, observing and guessing. "Rules themselves create fictions", Caillois stated on p127. However, he also said that games are either ruled or make-believe, which I don't agree with him in the case of CLUE. In fact, in many of the other games, such as Dugneons and Dragons, rules and make-believe are co-existing and reinforcing each other. In CLUE, the storyline introduced a mysterious and suspicious atmosphere while playing, and the rules of making suggestions based on the existing evidence are consisitent with the fictionary roles that players are playing (they could be both the murder and the detective at the same time).

One important feature of a Mimicry game is that it is seperated from the daily life. Huizinga said that "play is not 'ordinary' or 'real' life. It is reather a stepping out of 'real' life into a temporary spphere of activity with a disposition all of its own." (p103) In CLUE, obviously few players have the crime scene experience in their real life, even if they do, they don't have the same kind of "Lusory attitude" as mentioned by Suits. The seriousness of play only lies in the intense attention that players are paying during the play, not in the result of the game itself.

It is interesting to notice the fact that, although the detective theme of CLUE lies outside most people's daily life, it gained great success with a large audience. This shows that how the game is reflecting the cultural interests. The game itself was invented in UK, 1949. Before that, many of the detective fictions has been popular. The stories of Sherlock Holmes even went accross the ocean and arrived China, it became very popular in 1990s when I was in junior high school. And it's interesting to notice that the storyline of CLUE, which is finding the murder in a mansion, become the major theme a long-lasting detective cartoon in Japan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Kudo), and has been popular for more than 20 years, and new episodes are still going on now. There might be deeper sociological and psychological reasons why people accross different cultures are interested in the theme of mystery crime fictions, but the game of CLUE captured this enthusiasm and crystalized it into the artifact of a board game.   

Some chance was also involved in CLUE, although it is not the major factor. But I noticed that in the end when the accuse was made, the player usually do not have 100% confidence about the result, which makes the game into a chance-based play. The tension between the risk of being wrong and the risk of other player may take the chance before I do makes the game more exciting when it ends.

To summarize, CLUE is a game with combinations of different game play: competition, simulation and chance, which brings a complex and rich game experience.

Yan Xu
yxu7@gatech.edu