A new blog to replace The New Jack Almanac

It has finally come to pass that that I need to shutter New Jack Almanac as I've been having a terrible time composing long posts using Blogger. Besides, the platform's days are likely numbered.

Rather than migrate the site to someplace new, I've opted to keep the New Jack Almanac as it is for the time being, and to start a brand new, self-hosted Wordpress blog. It's called The Magnetic North.

Advice for 2016 or the some of the things that I learned in 2015

It’s one of my theories that when people give advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past.

- Austin Kleon

January is named after Janus, the two headed Roman god of beginnings and transitions, of gateways and of doors and of passageways.

It is the first day of January. You can read the following looking forward as advice or looking back as some things that have been learned.

1. Always make note of the clouds when you outside. Always.

Oil and Water

In 2007 - now 8 years ago - I played an alternative reality game called WorldWithoutOil. It wasn’t what most people would consider a game. It was closer to being "a massively collaborative imagining of the first 32 weeks of a global oil crisis" that was spearheaded by Ken Eklund (Game Designer, Creative Director and Producer) and Jane McGonigal (Participation Architect).  I can’t find evidence of it now, but one of the first acts of creation I took on as a participant of WWO was a Livejournal quiz that asked the question,“Which Science Fiction writer Are You?” I remember sharing my response online somewhere with ‘Ew, I’m a man with a beard.’ After carefully considering my responses, the quiz had determined that I was Frank Herbert, author of the 1965 science fiction classic, Dune.

While I read a tremendous amount of Ray Bradbury in my youth, I never had much affection for science fiction. Other than the Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy series, I don’t recall reading much else in the genre (unless you count Vonnegut). I do remember trying to read “Stranger in a Strange Land” and being disgusted with the vacuous Bond Girls in the book and thinking, "well if this is the best of science fiction then I want nothing more to do with this". But over the years I kept stumbling upon references to Dune. Friends would drop references to the book. So I decided that I would read it during my first week of summer holidays.

By the time I reached the second or third chapter, I realized that Dune was a work of fiction about politics as much as it was about anything else “science”. In spite of having to learn the hallmarks of multiple civilizations in a widely expanded universe, I found Dune was especially good in developing political intrigue. I’m just over a third into the book at this point and things are starting to get trippy. Before I move on, I just wanted to get down my thoughts about Dune and politics before Frank Herbert possibly takes me elsewhere.

The setting of Dune is the planet Arrakis, which is the only source of the "spice" melange, the most important and valuable substance in the universe. But the planet is barely inhabitable on account of its scarcity of water. As such, the culture, customs, technology, and power of those who live on Arrakis are framed around this scarcity and constant mindfulness of our dependence on water.

The water conservation culture of Arrakis sounds so very foreign and exotic and the politics so very brutal. And then you think about the world that we live that has built on oil.

Our fuel. Our transportation. Our food. Everything made of plastic that surrounds us. Is oil.

I would argue that at every level of politics in our world, you can find the politics of oil. The nations that control the world’s oil set the stage for the world’s political dramas. The states and provinces that depend on industry for employment and tax revenue become beholden to keep energy prices low. And municipal politics seems to exist to feed the insatiable appetites of road maintenance and traffic congestion relief, leaving every other social service a beggar.

After I read Dune (I have not decided yet to take on the Trilogy), I am planning to read the other science fiction work that, again, friends have told me is a remarkable work of political thinking: The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin. 

Like Herbert and Dune, I keep stumbling upon Le Guin in my readings, like this passage here from the article Why Climate Change Is Not Inevitable from Rebecca Solnit,

It was the most thrilling bureaucratic document I’ve ever seen for just one reason: it was dated the twent-first day of the month of Thermidor in the Year Six. Written in sepia ink on heavy paper, it recorded an ordinary land auction in France in what we would call the late summer of 1798. But the extraordinary date signaled that it was created when the French Revolution was still the overarching reality of everyday life and such fundamentals as the distribution of power and the nature of government had been reborn in astonishing ways. The new calendar that renamed 1792 as Year One had, after all, been created to start society all over again.

In that little junk shop on a quiet street in San Francisco, I held a relic from one of the great upheavals of the last millennium. It made me think of a remarkable statement the great feminist fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin had made only a few weeks earlier. In the course of a speech she gave while accepting a book award she noted, “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”

For whom that tolls the bell

Last year, for our family summer vacation, we travelled from Southwestern Ontario to the Eastern seaboard of the United States.  Because we have small children, we broke up the 10 hour drive over two days and opted to stay at a chain hotel that was perched at the exit of a turnpike. The hotel was surrounded by gas stations and fast food restaurants.  Our stay was unremarkable except for breakfast - which was free with our stay at the hotel.  

The free food itself was unremarkable. It was a serve-yourself buffet of single serving boxes of dry cereal, packages of quick oatmeal, toast, scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes, donuts and pastries, milk, juice and serviceable coffee.  What struck me is that it only took a single person to staff the large breakfast room. That's because all the containers and cutlery were disposable and the 'fresh food' was pre-mixed and cooked in either in the microwave or in the custom ovens, like the one for eggs that I spied in the back 'kitchen'.

I remember trying to figure out what it meant to live in a world where the best paid jobs in a business are dedicated to those who ensure that the are as few poorly paid jobs as possible.

*

I'm writing this about a year later. We've made the same trip but we've altered our route. We also decided not to stay in a chain hotel this time and picked a quaint family owned hotel in Pennsylvania, right in the hear of Amish Country.

In spite of this, it too offered the same buffet of free, disposable, single serving breakfast.

Is this what we mean by post-scarcity?

*

It's difficult to argue with most people about the free market.  One reason why it's difficult is because proponents of capitalism don't see much the point of arguing. To them, trying to make a case to curb the insatiable need for profit over labour is not unlike trying to argue against gravity.

And yet isn't being unemployed not unlike to lose one's gravity that moors you to society at large?

*

When it is cool enough to have the windows open, we can hear churchbells if the wind cooperates. I hear them now at the top of the hour, sad low bells that mark another hour passed.

But there are no churchbells. There is only a recording of churchbells. I've walked past the nearby church and noticed that openings of the church steeple are covered with white-painted speakers.

Am I really suggesting that someone should be employed to ring the church bells on the hour?  Yes. Well, no. To be honest, I'm not sure where to draw the line.

*

A printed newspaper gives you yesterday's news in order to make better sense of today.  What's not as well recognized is that you can read the same paper like tea leaves to see what you can make out of the shape of the future.

Today's paper had a couple of letters to the editor in response to a story of an opera that is planned to be staged with a recording of an orchestra.  The letters both ask, then why not replace the singer with a lip-syncher.

Why stop there? Why not replace the artist with a hologram?

*

Other than that first breakfast buffet, we haven't gone out for breakfast during our weeklong vacation.  There's a pancake place nearby but the locals have warned us that too easy for a hungry family to rack up a bill over $100 there.

In Southwestern Ontario, as well the parts of Michigan that I know, the most reliable place for a cheap but hearty breakfast, are Greek restaurants. The coffee is usually not that good, but for less than five dollars, you can get your fill of a couple of eggs, toast, and potatoes to get your day started.

Unlike last year's roadtrip, this year we have eaten out so much better.  Last year, we tried to find local diners to fuel our travels, but every one of those we tried offered pre-frozen and processed foods.

But this year, we somehow lucked out.

We found a small bar by a soccer field where we watched the world cup and wondered why our food was taking sooooo long but decided the wait was worth it once we realized that the food eventually presented was fresh and flavourful. Later in the week we had great pizza and yesterday we went to a lovely and loud family restaurant with short menu of delicious fare.

In retrospect I realized that whenever we had eaten out, we had eaten in Italian restaurants.

*

Every night this week I have been reading my kids 'Percy Jackson and the Lightning Bolt Thief'.  It's like Harry Potter, but instead of Wizards, you have Greek gods, and instead of Hogwarts, you have 'Half-Blood Camp'.  But the story doesn't take place in Greece. Olympus has moved to the new centre of Western Civilization: the United States, and more precisely, to New York City.

*

I think about the future a great deal and I worry about it too.  I keep wondering that if people have no place in businesses anymore, perhaps we need to build new institutions that are human-centred. Or if we can't sustain organizations anymore, perhaps we should encourage new forms of just-in-time arts events to ease the pain of what they've replaced.

But sometimes I think that it might be more fruitful to look to the cultures that seem to resist change.

And to resist the free breakfast buffets.

Odysseus brings not one man to shore with him. Yet he sleeps sound beside Calypso

This year I have also taken up the practice of yoga.

I go twice a week and I have made a deal with myself that if I go to yoga then I don't have to mediate, since yoga itself is its own form of mindfulness training. It's difficult to think of anything else as one transitions from Cobra to Downward Facing Dog to Warrior A.

And yet some weeks ago, before class had started, as most of us were enjoying our last moments before we would start our contortions, there was a buzz of conversation floating among the room.  Everyone was passing along the same story: at that moment there was an airplane that kept circling the local airport and it kept circling because its landing gear would not come down.

"Just imagine what those poor passengers must be feeling right now" spoke a woman sitting on a mat behind me.

And then class began and it was difficult not to think of anguish of the passengers high above us despite the complaints of my limbs.

And yet.

My worry for the passengers during that class lasted longer than the ordeal that they themselves were put through. After 20 minutes of circling, the plane landed without incident.

The whole incident brought back a childhood memory. I remember being struck by this particular passage from Watership Down:

There are skylights at the yoga studio.  I let myself get distracted by looking though them into the blue or watching the clouds. Sometimes I see airplanes pass before my line of sight. Sometimes I see vultures.

Day 1: Do you really want to do this?

I am on sabbatical.

And I am going to share an important thing I have learned from this precious period of research and reflection: my sabbatical has laid waste to my illusion that what was holding me back on my various dream projects was a lack of a time. 

It's a good lesson to learn. 

Of course, this is one of those lessons that most of us have to experience rather than hear second-hand in order for us to really understand the gravity of its meaning. At least that was the case for me. I've heard this lesson a number of times before. In fact, I'm pretty sure I remember the first I had heard this warning, because I reacted quite badly to it.

It wasn't Randy Pasuch's The Last Lecture that hit me hard, but his lecture on time management, oddly enough, and in particular, this slide:

I recognized that I was guilty of trying to clear off all the not-important stuff (3,4) before getting to the important but not due stuff (2). I did so with the excuse that I was clearing up 'future time' to get the work that needs to be done.

If there is important work that you need to do in your life - writing that novel or learning to code or whathaveyou, you need to do that work everyday.  That's what all the time management for creative people books (The Creative Habit, Do The Work are such ones I've read) will tell you.

You write.

You finish what you write. 

And it's come to a point that I feel that while I'm not great at this, I'm not that bad at it either.

What I am grappling right now is the question that we all have universally grappled with: what is the important work that needs doing and how much of one's rest of one's life is worth sacrificing to do that work.  In other words, what is the good life?

For the first half of my sabbatical, I have spent many, many hours doing volunteer work. Over the last six months, I've volunteered my time for the King Edward Home and School group, for Hackforge - a community minded hacker and maker space. On Saturday, I volunteered my morning at a local karate tournament but had to return home early so my husband could get to his volunteer soccer coaching.

I love volunteer work and I've learned so much from it. I'm fascinated how systems of a gift economy are built and sustained.

Now that being said, I have also worked hard on my sabbatical work. That's not today's confession:

There were a lot of things that I thought I wanted to do with my freed time during my sabbatical that I find myself not willing to do even though I have the time for it. For example, I thought I wanted to write more.

I'm beginning to think that I'm not avoiding the creative work that I should be doing when I volunteer. I'm starting to think that I'm gravitating the work that I can do well, to the work that I enjoy, to the work that gives meaning, to the work that helps others, and that I think needs to be done.

My 6 year old daughter found my Hipster Habit App and wanted to fill it in.  She has committed herself to play every day.

I tried to explain to her that this paper was for habits of things that we have difficulty doing and she should pick something else because she already plays every day.

She looked at me like I was making no sense to her all.

And suddenly, it all started making sense to me.

Your dominant leg

This year I've taken up karate.


During my last karate class, we were practising a particular type of kick. My sensei said, 'Everyone has one good leg, and one bad leg' and then stopped himself mid-lecture to ask us, 'Why is that? Why do we have one good leg and one not so good'?'

The class offered answers. One student said that every soccer player had a dominant leg for kicking. But then stopped himself when he realized that soccer playing would not explain why *everyone* seemed to have a dominant leg.  Another student suggested it was driving that caused the discrepancy in our leg strength, but our under 16 years olds among us disproved that theory as well.

We did not dwell on it any longer. We resumed our practice.

But I did dwell on it. Why was one leg always stronger than the other?

So I went home and I did some research and it was embarrassing to learn that the answer was so obvious.

A 'dominant leg' is likely the result of the the simple preference of how we walk everyday. "Bone mineral density is higher in the “non-dominant” leg, which specializes in balance and propulsion in walking; muscle mass is greater in the “dominant.”

I was hoping that the dominant leg theory explains why we tend to walk in circles when we have no visible landmarks to guide us, but the sadly facts don't bear out this potentially beautiful metaphor.

So instead I will attempt to draw out a more poetic ending to this writing with two further observations.

First, my sensai has conditioned his left leg to become the better of the two by doing twice as many of his exercises on his left side. 

And secondly, today is Laurie Anderson's birthday.

Day Eleven : Jump Lola, Jump!

(As part of the Hackforge Summer Games Challenge, I'm trying to design a game with the theme of light and darkness by August 31st. This day 11 of the fourteen day challenge).

 I'm guilty of being a person who has read more books on game design than you know, actually designing games. And every book on game design has told me that the first step in designing games is .. to design games.

I think game design is something everyone can do. It's just like singing, drawing, and writing. Everyone can do it . But to do it well requires a lot of work and sustained concentrated effort to do it well. 

Mind you, I have no aspirations of becoming a professional game designer.  I'm designing games because I enjoy learning more about games and there's nothing like trying a craft yourself to really appreciate the art and the science that goes into it all.

I was telling a friend that I see my particular role in the Hackforge Summer Games Challenge as the person that lowers the bar and in doing so, hopefully lowers the threshold of what others might think is the minimum amount of effort and time in order to participate in game design.

What I am unable to commit to quality, I have endeavored to make up in quantity. I've already created a street game.  I've started on a Twine game - but I might not finish it because, oddly enough, I find that in order to be an entirely text based narrative game, there is a considerable amount of work that must go into the story in order to make the decisions presented to the player, as meaningful choices.

It was much easier to create my first video game, using MIT's Scratch:

Day Ten : A Work in Progress

(As part of the Hackforge Summer Games Challenge, I'm trying to design a game with the theme of light and darkness by August 31st. This day ten of the fourteen day challenge).


It's a work in progress.

Day 9 : Being a Student of Games

(As part of the Hackforge Summer Games Challenge, I'm trying to design a game with the theme of light and darkness by August 31st. This day nine of the fourteen day challenge).

I'm came back from vacation late this afternoon and so this evening I did mountains of laundry and other chores while listening to various game-related talks to keep me in the spirit of game-design.

I follow Jane McGonigal on Twitter and yesterday she retweeted this recommendation:

Man, this talk by @danctheduck is so incredibly good. http://t.co/7ojfUPclcD(and-Stop
— Adriaan de Jongh (@AdriaandeJongh) August 24, 2013

And I watched it - it being "Create New Genres" by Daniel Cook (no, not that Daniel Cook! The Daniel Cook who wrote that awesome essay about games as a life-long hobby). I almost didn't because I was underwhelmed by the beginning of this Game Developers talk from last year but I'm glad I stuck with it.  In fact, it gives a nice context to the Hackforge Summer Games Challenge.

Cook believes that there are three levels of game designers : apprentice (who copy), journeyman (who copy but extend and polish) and true game masters who invent. (This makes me feel better about my largely derivative attempts at game design. I'm a student! This is how I am learning).

Anyways,  Cook forgives students who copy games but he has no love for those companies ("clone factories) that simply grab another designers game mechanic and add different artwork. (This only seems to apply to video games. Around the 54 minute mark, Cook points out that board games have mostly unique mechanics that are rarely copied). I didn't realize this, but this practice occurs because games aren't really covered by patents because they are not 'useful inventions'.

I'm hoping to eventually spend some time working through the idea of games *becoming* the economy of the post-scarcity age but it must wait.

I was hoping to end this post with some related insights from the video that personally set me on the path of exploring the world-saving potential of games: Jane McGongial's 2008 talk at the New Yorker Festival of the Future. Unfortunately, that video is not working for me now.  So I will download Twine instead.

Day Eight: Cha

(As part of the Hackforge Summer Games Challenge, I'm trying to design a game with the theme of light and darkness by August 31st. This day eight of the fourteen day challenge).

Day Seven : Half-Moon

(As part of the Hackforge Summer Games Challenge, I'm trying to design a game with the theme of light and darkness by August 31st. This day seven of the fourteen day challenge).

I did find some time to work on my project today and I have three pages of sketches in my notebook to prove it.  The thing is, I have some ideas I'd like to work through in a narrative type game that really can't be well conveyed with any of the crude mechanics I might be able to manage to figure out in a video game platform (keeping in mind that I only have about a hour a day to spend on this project).  So I've decided that I have two goals for this project that probably should be split into two different games.




I'm going to make a moon themed story game using Twine.

And I'm going to try to make a *very simple* mechanical video game just for the sake of doing one. I've been looking at the HTML5 game engines but haven't picked one out yet but I admit it's tempting to go with the platform that already has a community that's clearly interested in the same story I am.

Day Six : Rabbit Rabbit

(As part of the Hackforge Summer Games Challenge, I'm trying to design a game with the theme of light and darkness by August 31st. This day five of the fourteen day challenge).

Hopefully, I will find some time to sketch out some design mechanics and investigate html5 game engines tonight. Before I do so, though, I thought I write down some more moon-related ideas so I can get my self-imposed daily game design blogging challenge over with...

RABBIT RABBIT

In the West, we sometimes make mention of a Man in the Moon, but really it's just something that people say and doesn't carry much resonance. Same thing with the whole idea of 'the moon is made of cheese.'  Other than being a comical premise in kids cartoon shows, again, it's not something that carries much cultural weight.

In Japan, Korea and China, it's understood that there's a rabbit in the moon instead. I have no idea to what extent this story has sway over Asian cultures, but I do know that this why Sailor Moon has a cat companion named Luna and has a nickname of Bunny. 

At the beginning of the month, I like to say 'rabbit rabbit' but evidently this has nothing to do with the rabbit in the moon. 

FULL MOON NAMES

According to the Farmer's Almanac, the native peoples of North America generally named the full moons of the year as follows:

January : Wolf Moon

February : Snow Moon

March : Worm Moon

April : Pink Moon

May : Flower Moon

June : Strawberry Moon

July : Buck Moon 

August : Sturgeon Moon

September : Harvest Moon

October: Hunter's Moon

November : Beaver Moon

December : Cold Moon

And at one time, I meant to make my own moon names, but I never got beyond March, which I renamed, Pothole Moon.

Day Five: Gone Home to Make Games

(As part of the Hackforge Summer Games Challenge, I'm trying to design a game with the theme of light and darkness by August 31st. This day five of the fourteen day challenge).

I have to admit, what I really want to do is not work on my game(s) tonight.  What I really want to do is download Gone Home and play it all through the night.  I so very want to do this because I recently read this essay called Grunge, Grrrls and Video Games: Turning the dial for a more meaningful culture that personally resonated with me  and well, this The Gone Home video promo is the most riot grrrl style now video game I have ever seen. Add to the fact that I'm currently writing this from the bedroom of my parents house and feeling the effects of that sort of time-travel sickness that you get when you go back the home of your childhood, and well, I think you can see why I'd be all over this game right now.

But I'm not. I started looking at possible game engines I could use to make a game and it's clear to me that I've got a lot of work ahead of me if I want to make even a simple video game.  I will most likely work out some ideas on paper first and only then, try to make them come alive on screen.

I had mentioned previously that I was thinking about a moon-influenced mechanic. On a lark, I looked up tide charts online which eventually led me to this lovely animation that illustrates how the earth's waters rise and fall based on the alignment of the moon and sun.  I'm sure it's possible to plug in the necessary equations to mimic this affect in a game engine is possible (like this lovely video that highlights the force of gravity) but it's probably not going to happen for me. Not at this rate.

Day Four : Star of the Wars or the Tiny Games People Play

So it's day Four of my two week 'Pretend to be a game designer' challenge and I haven't made much progress today because I spent most of my hours packing and driving most of my family up to see the grandparents. I'm having difficulty finding the time to make that epic game.

So today I will concentrate on a Tiny Game.

My kids have no trouble at all making little games to play.  One of their favourite games they love to play is played over a meal at the dinner table is this:

BROKEN OR NOT BROKEN

Player One bites/pretends to bite a cucumber or carrot or other piece of food and then shows it to Player Two and asks 'Broken or Not Broken'. Player Two guesses whether the food is whole or has been bitten in two. Player One reveals outcome. Repeat. And repeat.

And while I have had trouble getting started in my game design ambitions, my daughter has no trouble designing games out of anything in front of her:


Part One:

Part Two

But it isn't just little kids who delight in these Tiny Games.  Bigger kids do too. My sister's good friend went to Camp every summer and she seemed to know a million games for a million situations.  Here's one of the games I remember her telling me about.

(Um, it's another game that's played at the dinner table. Also: don't tell my kids about this game!)

COLOURS
Whenever someone at the dinner table yells COLOURS, everyone has to stick their tongue out. The person with the most different colours of food on their tongue wins.

And even bigger kids love these silly tiny games.  In fact, even adults.  For example, I am just one of 1226 adults who backed the Tiny Games Kickstarter because I just love the idea of "an app that gets you playing the perfect game with your friends: wherever you are, whoever you're with, whatever you're doing."

Before the lights are out, I will make a Tiny Game.

Day Three. There`s a moon in the sky called the moon

(As part of the Hackforge Summer Games Challenge, I'm trying to design a game with the theme of light and darkness by August 31st. This day three of the two week challenge).

So we went to the zoo today instead of designing games. It's night now. The day is almost over. In fact, it's really dark outside now and it's way past my bedtime.

And tomorrow is the full moon.

There are eight phases of the moon in Western culture:

• New Moon
• Waxing / Young / Crescent Moon
• First Quarter
• Waxing / Gibbous Moon
• Full Moon
• Waning / Gibbous Moon
• Third / Last Quarter Moon
• Waning / Old / Crescent Moon

I want to make a specialized deck of cards that involves waxing and waning shadows over the moon. If just to make a game that provides the opportunity to have moves such as TURN AROUND BRIGHT EYES and for someone to throw down their cards and shout 'TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART!' 

Also. I would nice to the moon as a sort of clock in a game.

Or in the game, each player has their own moon clock and there would be some dynamic that would allow players to have their moon clocks in sync with each other.

And I admit, when I first thought of this, I was thinking all about women's cycles but now I think it could be a neat power-up dynamic.  When moons are in sync, they would have more ... pull

I suspect there are lots of games with moon-related mechanics (even excluding the obvious ones that involve werewolves).  But I know of two games that make use of a moon dynamic. 

1. Sword & Sworcery :: certain events can only occur when the moon is in a certain phase
2. Kingdom of Loathing :: the two moons named Ronald and Grimace affect gameplay

I think this quotation explains why I want to make a game involving the moon so much...

“The moon does not fight. It attacks no one. It does not worry. It does not try to crush others. It keeps to its course, but by its very nature, it gently influences. What other body could pull an entire ocean from shore to shore? The moon is faithful to its nature and its power is never diminished.”

― Deng Ming-Dao, Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony

Lumos! A Wizard Battle Game

(As part of the Hackforge Summer Games Challenge, I'm trying to design a game with the theme of light and darkness by August 31st. This day two of the two week challenge).

In my neighbourhood of my childhood, there was a strange abundance of kids the same age of myself. From as long as I can remember right until grade six, we all played epic games of a variation of 'hide and go seek' called Buzz Off on the combined front and backyards of my house and of Matthew, my neighbour. Playing games of tag and hide and go seek and their variations make up some of my happiest memories as a kid. They contained moments of pure joy. No wonder I long to one day take part in the Come Out And Play Festival.

So, I've been meaning to create a "street game" for some time now. And since this is the two weeks to put vague dreams into action, this morning, I set aside some time put down something in words.

By mixing up some of the elements of games that already exist, I think I've got something to start with.

I have had for some time now, an interest in making some sort of Harry Potter wizard battle-like game. I think a group full of people, running around, pointing wands, and screaming spells and counter-spells at each other seems like delicious fun.  That's the *experience* I want folks to have.  But how to pull the mechanics together?

My breakthrough came when I was working through possibilities of games with the theme of light and darkness.  My line of thinking was very simple :: light --> flashlight --> flashlight tag! Yes! - running around in the dark *and* yelling spells and counter-spells at each other would make for an even more dangerously fun and spooky game.

Now how to work out the mechanics of the game?

Well, the biggest problem I would see with a spell-casting game is the issue of 'Han shot first'. We don't want players arguing who yelled their spell before the other, and so we need to have to rely on something else other than speed to decide the winner of a battle.

Here, I take my inspiration from the game Cruel 2 B Kind, designed by Jane McGonigal and Ian Bogost.  It's a game of 'benevolent assassination'.  Its rules are:

At the beginning of the game, you are assigned three secret weapons. To onlookers, they will seem like random acts of kindness. But to other players, the seemingly benevolent gestures are deadly maneuvers that will bring them to their knees. 

Some players will be slain by a serenade. Others will be killed by a compliment. You and your partner might be taken down by an innocent group cheer. 

You will be given no information about your targets. No names, no photos, nothing but the guarantee that they will remain within the outdoor game boundaries during the designated playing time. Anyone you encounter could be your target. The only way to find out is to attack them with your secret weapon. 

Watch out: The hunter is also the hunted. Other players have been assigned the same secret weapons, and they're coming to get you. Anything out of the ordinary you do to assassinate YOUR targets may reveal your own secret identity to the other players who want you dead. 

As targets are successfully assassinated, the dead players join forces with their killers to continue stalking the surviving players. The teams grow bigger and bigger until two final mobs of benevolent assassins descend upon each other for a spectacular, climactic kill. 

Will innocents be caught in the cross-fire? Oh, yes. But when your secret weapon is a random act of kindness, it’s only cruel to be kind to other players...

Cruel 2 B Kind makes use of RSP - the Rock Scissors Paper mechanic.

One of the great things about  the 'Rock-Scissors-Paper mechanic is that it's something that everyone already knows. And its used in places where you may not expect it. For example, the video-game Halo uses three layered RSP systems in its game (which is spoofed in this simple Scratch animation).

Using this dynamic, one player can beat another if they clearly got in the attack first. If the attacks are at the same time, then the rock scissors dynamic comes into play. So for my game, I might have three spells, all of which can defeat one other spell and be defeated with another:

• Lumos : can be beaten by Nox ; beats Stupefy
• Nox : can be beaten by Stupify ; beats Lumos
• Stupefy : can be beaten by Lumos ; beats Nox

In Cruel 2 B Kind, if both players tie, they need to separate and cannot attack again for 30 seconds. In my house, my kids have a habit of counting too fast, so would make a rule that players need to count like this: ONE Salvio Hexa TWO Salvio Hexa THREE Salvio Hexa...

Personally, I'm tempted to make things a little bit more complicated and bring in a Rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock dynamic.  Whether this admitted complication works or not probably will become clear with actual playtesting. 

Anyone interested?  Homenum Revelio!

The Hackforge Summer Games Challenge :: Day One :: The Unbearable Lightness of Designing

For the next two weeks, I'm going to occupy my time trying to design games as I'm taking part in the Hackforge Summer Games.

The game may be of any medium - video, paper, street - but it must be created between between today and August 31st and it should somehow involve the theme : light and darkness.

I'm really too tired to make a proper start on the challenge tonight. But I did come up with these design concepts just before I had dinner (and that glass of wine that did me in). As an added bonus, I've added links to my inspirations.

GAME CONCEPTS I THOUGHT UP WHILE I WATCHED MY SON PLAY SOCCER AT THE FORD FIELD TEST TRACK AFTER SPENDING THE MORNING AT HACKFORGE AND THE WINDSOR PUBLIC LIBRARY

EMERGING TECHNOLOGY

The screen begins as completely white. Then slowly, it starts to resemble a  photo that was overexposed by too much flash. As time pases, the an image from this photo begins to take shape. If this image is of a door or other means of escape, you should click on it. But if the image is one of a horrible a monster, and you click on it before you realize this, it will eat you. Wait too long before clicking and you will be eaten by an monster. In other words, there's no way to escape the monster.

YOU BRIGHT AND RISEN ANGELS

There is a bright and beckoning light bulb that pulls you, a bug, toward it like gravity. But once you are too close you become completely under it's pull and are set towards a collision with death. You must gather a swarm of others to become so large that the swarm itself will block out its light, but in doing so, you must keep yourself and others far enough away so as not fall under the light's deadly attraction.

IN PRAISE OF DARKNESS

You are in a bleak land without night. The glare of the sun (or is it a camera? An unblinking eye?) is relentless. Can you escape its gaze? You travel far and wide and try to escape the ever watching eye. Eventually you learn to distract it with spectacle / riot, and take advantage of its overwhelmed state to throw yourself into an unknown, abyss that leads to an underground passage. You are enveloped in dark and by gentle earthly sounds. You are finally able to sleep and dream the game to an end.

Adventures in Art Time!

Sometimes, when I would like my kids to do something, I don't ask them to do it. I do it myself.

This morning, I sat down and drew this sketch that I copied from this totally rhombus cover:

Then I left the table, with my pen and paper behind, and did something else on that lazy Sunday morning. And later that morning, I found this:

This trick doesn't always work. But it works many times when asking, offering or cajoling doesn't. Sometimes my meme seeding doesn't work on the first pass. Sometimes it takes time.

(I made this last week. My son made this a week later.)

And many times this trick doesn't work at all. But it works much more often than you might have guessed. It is a lesson that I find myself learning and re-learning over and over again: parenting is not lecturing.

*  *  * 

Here is my lecture on fanart and fanfic.

*  *  * 

A couple of weeks ago I was returning home from Toronto by train, and for four hours I was able to watch the screen of the laptop of a passenger that was sitting  in front of me, just across the aisle.  I had my own laptop screen to entertain me, but I have to admit that on more than one occasion I stole glances at what my fellow passenger was doing on her computer. Because beside doing normal young adult things like looking at Facebook and reading web comics online - she was doing awesome things. She made her own version of a Japanese wave pattern with a graphics program. She used a wacom tablet to take a photo of a woman and transform it into a surreal dark illustration of some sort of half-woman, half crow). She made beautiful things.

I watched her.  And then I realized that I wanted to do the same. 

* * * 

I didn't grow up with an affection for comics books, role-playing games, or science fiction and I don't really have a strong affection for those things now. I have never been to a con and I have never engaged in cosplay. I still feel a tinge weird when I go into a comic book shop. It's just not my tribe.

But - I am jealous of those communities. I am jealous that these 'interests and hobbies' have become large and strong enough to support its own ecosystem of economies and local businesses; large enough for media coverage and to have their own TV shows on local and national levels; and large enough to have an entire conference circuit that wraps around the world. 

And I admire these communities. And in particular, I admire how they lay a path for fans to become to move from being a consumer to conference organizer or from a fan to an artist. 

Here's an example. Adventure Time is a cartoon on The Cartoon Network that I am currently in love with.

Adventure Time is well known for it’s open relationship between staff and the fans. The official Adventure Time blog [6] shares official artwork, early drafts and storyboards before new episodes air. Some of the writers and animators are open to fan questions about the show, its development and its universe. They often reply to fans via Formspring accounts. [Knowyourmeme]

I love that these shows respond to fan art work with mutual admiration and even love. I love that the artists and the other creators who work on these shows are visible and public as themselves as artists. And it's really really interesting when the interactions between artists and the fanart changes the art altogether:

In 2010, just months after the premiere of Adventure Time on Cartoon Network, character designer Natasha Allegri designed gender-swapped versions of Finn and Jake called Fiona (now renamed Fionna) and Cake, a cat. (See also: Rule 63)

These versions of the protagonist resulted quite popular that many fans wanted more and made fanart that proved that.     

On December 29th, 2010, Natasha Allegri confirmed on her Tumblr[11] that an episode of Adventure Time starring Fionna and Cake was on the works. On September 5th, the episode titled “Fionna & Cake” premiered on Cartoon Network[12] scoring a total of 3.3 million viewers[13]. [Knowyourmeme]

There is a lot of Adventure Time fan art. 

I suspect that cartoonists don't mind young aspiring cartoonists trying to copy their work because that's probably how they started themselves as young artists. It's understood to many that when you start out as an artist that you learn the rules of your genre by copying your favourite things and making homages to your favourite heroes.

You copy the art that you love because you don't know how to make it.

Then, in time,  you make DeviantArt as you stretch your own skills  and ideas as you try to make your own contributions of work. In doing so, you develop your own style.  

I'm not there yet myself. I'm still in the copying stage. 

Political interference is hazardous to your health

On Monday, Windsor City Council will be holding a special meeting that will discuss whether the city should continue fluoridating Windsor's water supply. I'm pleased to read that the Windsor Star's Saturday editorial board takes this stand on the matter:

We can only hope council makes an educated decision; one that considers the mountains of research done by trained professionals in this field. It must not be swayed by those who have neither the credentials nor the research to back up their argument.

I was pleasantly surprised by this editorial because I've been troubled at how many of the city's reporters had been adopting the language of our local anti-fluoride lobby group. Here's one simple example: the first line of "Despite WUC recommendation, fluoridation of water continues"

Almost a year after the Windsor Utilities Commission’s board voted to end fluoridation of the city’s drinking water, the additive long used to combat rotten teeth in kids — but described by critics as toxic — is still being mixed in with local tap water.

Well, not quite. Water fluoridation is done to prevent cavities in kids and adults. It's worth taking the time to understand that poor dental health damages the health and economic well being of the working poor far beyond what we in the middle class might remember as just the temporary annoyance of a cavity in a baby tooth. “Almost every time we asked interviewees what their first priority would be if the president established universal health coverage tomorrow,” Sered and Fernandopulle write, “the immediate answer was ‘my teeth.’ ”  A third of the population of Windsor does not have dental insurance.

Also, the use of the word "toxic" is used by fluoride critics to discredit the practice. And yes, fluoride has a degree of toxicity. And so does caffeine.  Drinking 80 cups of coffee can kill you. You need to drink more than a bathtub of water for the fluoride in Windsor's water supply just to have an effect. I'm not a toxicologist but I would go so far as to suggest that the amount of caffeine in our pee is more toxic than the fluoride in our water.

Word association is the modus operandi of the anti-fluoride lobbyists. They have crafted their message very carefully over the years and they have a small stockpile of phrases designed to generate maximum doubt to the listener. But scratch under the surface of their words and you see that their evidence is scant when compared to the overwhelming amount of research that supports the practice. Unfortunately, it's an exhausting process because arguing against fluoride seems to be a full-time job of this small but uncompromising lobby group. Who has the time to do the research against their tidal wave of counterfactuals?

And this is why we have health officials who work for us and for our public health. They have the expertise and the ability to read and understand the research to measure the pros and cons to this practice. They need to do their job as free from political interference as possible.

It's troubling to know that Eddie Francis, the mayor of city, as well as city councillors Bill Marra and Alan Halberstadt have already publicly stated that they are going against the advice of the Windsor-Essex Public Health Unit and will vote in favour of the removal of fluoride from our water. One has to wonder if the the vote has been influenced by already established bad feelings over the fact the Windsor-Essex Public Health Unit went against the City's wishes and budgeted for a 7% increase this year:

Francis, who is still seething over the health unit's failure to back the city's passionate position on issues like heart and lung disease during the border infrastructure fight with the province...

I'm hoping for the best on Monday but it would not surprise me if reason and cooler heads will not prevail in the theatre of politics.

And that worries me because I have a conspiracy theory of my own. The same zealous anti-fluoride activists who are working around our Public Health agencies actually have a larger mission in mind. This is the just first offensive of a local anti-vaccination brigade.

DeYong said the trend across North America has been municipal authorities recognizing that “they can’t play doctor and continue to give us medication without our consent."

I wish that these individuals were as committed to removing CO2 from our atmosphere as they are from something relatively harmless from our water.

[editorial note: I will not be accepting arguments for or against fluoridation in this post's comments. thanks]