thread: 2006-02-09 : A Question for J
On 2006-02-09, Ninja Monkey J wrote:
Eat Poo, You Cat: there's a struggle to understand. You're competing with the person before you. Notice how it's more fun when people are earnestly trying to interpret what the previous person has written/drawn? When that challenge goes away because the person thinks of something funny to say, it saps a lot of funny out of it.
The Game: it deliberately confronts the very definition of game I'm talking about, because by playing, you lose. The only way to play is to not know the rules. It's stylized conflict because there's nothing real at stake; it's completely self-referential. The punishment for playing is having to play more. The reward for playing well is to forget that you're playing.
Real conflict means, to me, that it's over something important: resources of some sort, where the goal is to force the opposition into submission in order to get those resources. Stylization means not just beating the shit out of each other. Abstraction.
That's why a civil war isn't a game but an election is.
Dig.
This makes MSW go "so, if I gets it..."
Sitting in a circle taking turns telling a story, not a game, by your definition? Or do you see inevitable conflict there?
This makes NinJ go "Yeah, not a game..."
To be sure, it's a valuable human endeavor.
Now, if there's an issue about whose story is best, it immediately becomes a game. Or if each of those people has a different vested interest in the direction of a shared story, it becomes a game.
Do you think it is a game? I think it's an activity in its own right, storytelling. As soon as you have rules for who can say what, its a game. Because those rules stem from the need to resolve conflict between storytellers.
This makes dhs_rr go "i have never heard of this game..."
Please can someone explain the rules of "eat poo, you cat" I am intrigued!
This makes MSW go "I'm with you"
J, your definition works for me... FOR NOW. *cue suspense music*
