La dicima vittima

As I missed the lesson on la dicima vittima, I decided to watch some of it online I have to admit I didn't have a clue what was happening(The version I watched had no subtitles). The scene I watched had a women kill a man with guns inside her bra which is the weirdest yet coolest assassination I have seen. Then everyone around her just acted like nothing has happened.


I did notice the Austin Powers feel to it that others have been writing about on their blog's especially Ursula Andress's influence on the Austin Powers fem fatales.

Tafl Iteration

For the ancient board game iteration I will be trying to focus on balancing the game. I first started by looking what others had tried. I liked the idea of a bidding mechanic so I started there. I decided that each player would have 10 tokens and at the start of every turn would be a bidding round, you could bid any amount of tokens who ever bid the most gets to move. after some play testing I decided that these counters should be reset every third move that way you had to think three move ahead which added a lot more strategy to the game.

I am also going to put special squares on the board, if you land on one you get an extra token to bid with. I placed these central on the board to try and take some of the game play away from the edges.

Games Britannia Part 2 - Monopolies & Mergers

I really enjoyed part two of game Britannia, the episode started by explaining a game from the 18th-19th century called the mansion of bliss. This game was made to get more children into school the whole aim is to reach the middle of the board which had a huge Georgian house. It was a way of telling the lower/middle class that you can aspire to more in life if you behave proper.

After success in the UK the mansion of bliss was copied in America, however there were some changes made, instead of a nice Georgian house at the end it was replaced by president of a company. It was telling you to work hard and you will become rich. You could say the american dream come from this morality based game by saying to win you need to be rich you need to be powerful.

In this episode they also talked about a game called br'er fox and br'er rabbit this was a game made to raise debate about redistribution of wealth from land owners. It helped raise debate about a sensitive subject by making a safe setting your disconnected from the subject your just playing a game. From this game we ended up with a classic board game monopoly.

I am starting to realise how games have been used in the past as a way for discontent people to express their feelings just as books and films have.

Tafl

Tafl

Hnefatafl is a Scandinavian board game that is played on a square chequered board with an odd number of squares on each side.  There is much debate regarding the rules and also the size of the board.  However there is a general consensus that the aim of the game is for the defending player to try and reach the edge/corners of the board while the attacking player tries to prevent this by capturing their pieces.

According to H.J.R Murray the board game tafl or hnefatafl as it would later become known (to distinguish it from other games of the time such as chess (skak tafl) or tables (kvatru tafl)). Is a game that could have been played in Scandinavia as early as 400AD (Murray (1952) p. 56).  Of course it wasn't only played in Scandinavia, Murray suggested the game was being played in parts of Europe mainly appearing in countries where the Vikings settled such as England, Ireland and Iceland.

After much research the main problem with tafl is the game play isn't balanced the king is usually able to escape. I have decided to pick this as the ancient game I will iterate for my first assignment.

The Royal Game of Ur

The Royal Game of UR

The royal game of Ur was first discovered by Sir Leonard Woolley while he was excavating tombs in Ur (hence the name). These tombs and the game boards found inside date from around 2,600BC, that is older than the pyramids of Giza which amazed me, these tiny boards have lasted as long as the pyramids. 3 full boards and 2 half boards were excavated from the tombs (Becker 2007, P.11). 

The fact that someone was buried with multiple copies of this game just goes to show how popular this game must have been in 2600BC. It really made me think about games that are made now, how we churn them out as fast as possible to make money I highly doubt any games made recently will still be played in 4000+ years.

Overall I really like the royal game of Ur, I found the rules slightly confusing at first but when I got the hang of them it became a very fun game to play.

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.