Re: [s-d] [s-b] (no subject)

[Daniel Lepage <dplepage@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 1:59 PM, Kerim Aydin <kerim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, 5 Sep 2012, Daniel Lepage wrote:
>> On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 11:50 AM, Elliott Hird
>> <penguinofthegods@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> > You forgot the game state (of which the ruleset is arguably a part,
>> > although it also defines the game state, so that may be uncomfortably
>> > circular for some).
>>
>> IMO, a game is just a group of people doing things and associating
>> meaning with their actions. The ruleset, records of the gamestate,
>> etc. are just ways to help make sure the players' mental models of the
>> game are roughly the same; "the gamestate" as an object in and of
>> itself doesn't exist.
>
> That it even might be thought to exist is a unique aspect (fallacy?) of
> certain online sequential nomics, I think.

I think it's true of conventional off-line games, too - the gamestate
is an abstraction, and the board or cards or whatever you have in
front of you is just a convenient way of helping the players to
remember all the details of said abstraction. This is why your game of
monopoly doesn't have to end just because your cat jumped on the board
and knocked all the pieces around: you just put things back to the
best of your recollection and continue from there.

Of course, human memory being fallible it may happen that the state
you continue from isn't the state that you had prior to the cat's
intervention, but that doesn't mean your game is invalid, it just
means that the players all implicitly (and possibly unwittingly)
agreed to modify the gamestate before continuing.

I suppose this idea makes less sense when applied to games where the
physical components are actually themselves a part of the mechanics of
the game, such as sports where the "gamestate" is largely defined by
the real, physical position of a ball in a field.

-- 
Wonko
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