Dicing with Destiny

Dicing with Destiny

Today in class we watched the first part of documentary Games Britannia  "Dicing with Destiny". The documentary raised many interesting points about how ancient games were created and used for many different things. The main one that stood out to me is when they explained that a tafle board could of been used by a druid to devise battle plans for a king. It also said in the documentary that one weakness we have that the animal kingdom does not is boredom and this could be why we invented board games. While I agree that boredom could be the reason we invented games I personally don't see it as a weakness and also boredom is certainly present within the animal kingdom and has been observed in many animals kept in captivity.

I also really liked the part where they showed examples of people learning from games. It showed examples like monopoly everyone knows that Mayfair is a more expensive area an Pall Mall most people would know this from playing monopoly. We can also learn real life skills from games with some pilots learning to fly from only using simulators.

I still cannot believe that games are so ingrained our lives and still get so much bad press. I look forward to the next episode.

Caillois’s Terminology

Caillois’s Terminology

Below are game types proposed by Roger Caillois. 

•  Paidia - Paidia means spontaneous play. It's when you create rules in real time the best game example I could give of this would be Disney Infinity. You play as your favourite Disney characters in a sandbox environment and you can use hundreds of unique items to make your own games inside the game. I chose this game as paidia is usually referred to as our childish essence.

•  Ludus - Ludus is the opposite of paidia, your game play is more controlled and there are usually set goals, limits or instructions  you have to follow. The game I would picked to describe ludus would be Fifa as you know what you have to do to win. Try and score as many goal as possible, there is no variation in play sure you can lob a ball but your goal is always the same, to win.

• Alea - Alea is actually the latin word for dice and can be used to describe randomness or chance in a game. The best games I could use to describe alea would be on-line slot machines.

• Ilinx - Ilinx is the act of movement within a game, the best game I could use for this is the reboot of Tomb Raider. 80% of the games mechanics are based around movement with you traversing the game world, solving puzzles by getting on certain platforms and hiding from enemies by sneaking.