More on Game Museums

Games and Fun

While some kind readers have picked up on what I said about games and fun, many people commenting on sites where my article was cited haven't. Either I didn't explained what I mean well enough, or I'm fundamentally wrong, or (likely) they never bothered to read the article.

How else, after my statement that games can be an art medium entirely uninterested in whether people buy the game, whether they want to play the game, whether they are entertained by the game, and whether they enjoy the game, am I supposed to interpret comments such as:

"Well, I wouldn't buy a game that isn't fun."
"A designer who doesn't make fun games isn't going to sell many."
"Even is a game isn't fun, it still has to be entertaining in some way. Otherwise no one will play it."
"If I paid money for a game, it better be fun."
"Fun is subjective; you must mean that the game is fun for someone, but not for everyone."
"But if games aren't fun, they won't be enjoyable!"
"Art and fun aren't mutually exclusive."

Well, I mean ... yeah. So? Did ... did you read what I wrote?

As a result, I'm thinking that I'm just going to have to start the world's first games as interactive art museum. (And I don't mean the world's first games museum, as that would be this one.)

Perhaps it would demonstrate a little better what I meant.

I talked already about what an interactive games art museum would look like. Now a little more brass tacks.

To start the museum, I would want at least two experts in games and art to join me as board members.

First step would be to grab a domain and build a site. I figure it would start with:

- Entry page with doors into the museum.
- Pages organized by theme, by subject, or by artist (or all of the above).
- Each game alone on a page, with information about the artist and the work. Space on each page for commenting about the work.
- About the site, about games as an art medium.
- Sponsorship pages.
- Copyright and terms.
- Technical help and FAQs.

Now comes the question of how to acquire games for the site.

I think the museum should be a non-profit. Donations from patrons should be accepted for overall maintenance and for supporting new artist's work. Donaters receive certain gifts, of course, the least of which is a link and a writeup.

I'm tossing around ideas: Works of art an artist submits are evaluated. If accepted, a new artist is paid SUM for displaying the work on the site. This SUM comes from general donations.

Artists who have a work on the site must get commissioned for additional art by patrons who enjoy the artist's first work. The details of IP must be worked out, but at the very least, the artwork is licensed to be displayed on the site.

So what would a patron get for his commission? Name, information and link on the page. Revenues of any money made off the artwork, such as CD sales. License to display the work elsewhere. ... And of course prestige as a patron of the arts.

CDs or static items of particular artists, themes, or topics can be sold for overhead costs or as patron's revenue.

Ads on the site? On the art or artist pages it would seem rather squidgy, even if all the proceeds from those ads went to the artist/patrons. Perhaps on the main page, only, if at all.

What else?

Backlinks on Yehuda

I turned off backlinking on this blog, as spam links have been spiraling out of control. Blogger.com apparently provides no means of dealing with this as they do for spam comments.

Yehuda

Web 2.0 Research

For those of you not following my new blog, Blogging Without a Wire (which is all of you, apparently), my status is that I'm working 1 hour a day blogging small unimportant posts for one company. It pays me about what I'm making through ads on this site.

Which means, I'm well below income level, right now. I was hoping to already have a new position as a corporate blogger, but no luck so far. I was hoping I could do this before I had to take out my Keren Hishtalmut, but this seems inevitable at this point.

With my KH, and my pitzuim from my previous place of employment, if it ever arrives, I'll have another few months. Add my current salary, rental income, and blog income, and I have another month. If I get the Hebrew Apples to Apples done, and there is not too long a delay in getting paid, another two months, perhaps.

It's a tenuous life striking out as something new. Most "blogging" positions pay zero or maybe $5 plus theoretical ad revenue. I can't see how anyone can live on that.

I'm looking for work

I'm looking for an honest paid position, where I'm not only blogging, but working to develop a company's brand around the internet. Following threads, posting in forums, building a site and a company support policy, working with site design, working with customers.

These jobs are hard to find, because it's still a pretty new idea. But I'm willing to give it some more time.

The state of Web 2.0

Meanwhile, the higher paying blog positions require more extensive knowledge of Web 2.0. I'm researching a few thousand companies to see how they tick.

Some have open job positions (I've seen over 200 jobs available at Web 2.0 companies, so far, and I'm barely through 250 companies). Few have blogs.

Too many have sucky About pages, hidden About pages, or none at all. Some assume you know what they do before you use them, so don't bother to tell you. Some prefer to wax on with grandiose claims about the theory of the Internet and how they fit in - without ever telling you what they do. Of course, these turn out to be sites that do the same things as a dozen other sites.

And still: No Blacks or Latinos work on Web 2.0 sites. About 1 out of maybe 30 or 40 founders or managers are women.

Full details when I'm done. If you want my full research notes (or you want to fund my research) let me know.

Yehuda

Review: My Holden Tips (myholdemtips.com)

The following is a paid review.

My Holdem Tips (MHT) is a community website devoted to the subject of My Texas Holdem poker. It differs from the previous poker sites I've reviewed in one important way: it's a web 2.0 site.

Previous poker sites I've reviewed contained articles and reviews by the site's owners. As a Web 2.0 site, MHT has all the familiar features you would expect from a community and social media site:

• User logins - Sign in to the site, comment and email content.
• User contributions - The content on the site was primed by the site builders, but the bulk consists of uploaded content from users.
• Ratings - User's content is tagged and rated by the users.
• Forum - User to user communication.

As well as Digg icons on every page, and so on.

User content contributions include videos and articles.

Videos

Videos on the site are currently divided into 8 categories. The videos include instructional videos, clips from online poker play, and commercials and music videos featuring video content. Videos can be sorted using the same techniques Youtube uses: by rating, most popular, most commented, etc...

The videos contributed by MHT itself are simple and useful. The basic ones are incredibly basic ("a deck of cards contains 52 cards ...") but the more advanced ones cover Holdem topics well.

Since the videos are contributed by the user, there's no guarantee that they're useful, helpful, or even Texas Holdem related. From what I could see, so far most of them appear to have something to do with poker.

As a result, some are salacious, covering topics like strip poker and such. Some of these include actual nudity. So be warned. Others are poker humor, commercials, and so on.

Articles

The articles follow the same categories and format as the videos; there are currently somewhat less articles than videos.

Some of the "articles" are simply notes someone wrote, while others are complete articles about strategy and so on. Some of these articles are from competing poker sites, complete with links back to their sites. ;-)

Forums

The forums are really basic, allowing you to enter a subject and text with smileys. If you're logged in, your user name is automatically applied to your post. Otherwise, the user information in the forums is divorced from the user information of the site, and anyone can post using any user name. And there is no way to delete or correct anything you've written.

Right now, the forums are empty of content, except for two of my test messages.

Resources/Lessons

The Resources link on the navbar leads to a ten step lesson plan in Texas Holdem, integrating videos and articles from the site and instructions on how to slowly step up into serious poker play. These steps include creating accounts at other poker sites, so I didn't follow them through.

This content was all provided by MHT and looks pretty sensible.

Reviews

Ratings are one of MHT's weakest areas.

Only 21 poker sites are listed, and there doesn't appear to be any way of adding any more. Each site uses only numerical ratings along ten or so categories. I'm not sure where the sum total ranking number of a site comes from.

Ratings are purely user based. On the other hand, like the other sites I've reviewed, it is obvious that MHT makes affiliate money from directing people to pay sites, but there is no disclosure to that effect or how it affects the site.

Terms and Conditions

Speaking of which, the bottom page of every site contains a blanket copyright notice, while the terms and conditions of the site specify that uploaded content is still property of the uploader. By uploading, the site can use it in any way they want, so long as the use is related to the site, until you remove the content.

The terms and conditions claim to also set out the privacy terms of the site, but I couldn't find any such terms.

Conclusion

If you are interested in joining a Holdem community, as opposed to simply visiting yet another guy's slick poker site, My Holdem Tips looks pretty nice. The videos are useful and/or entertaining. The site is smooth and easy to navigate, and the web 2.0 aspects are nice. With more users, it could become a hopping site.

Yehuda

Yinsh With Saarya

Puerto Rico

Rachel and I played what might be our last 2-player PR game before she goes, although who knows what may happen over the next ten days.

I headed to Tobacco, Sugar, and Discretionary Hold, while Rachel took corn, Commodity Exporters, and eventually Large Business. She was slightly ahead in building and shipping points, but I had her edged with money near the end, and I was blocking boats against her Commodity Exporters while shipping extra barrels in the Hold.

It came down to my getting two big buildings to her one, but when the dust settled, she still beat me 62 to 60. A close game and a nice one.

Yinsh

Saarya and I played a game of Yinsh after shabbat ended.

We began with the rings packed together, and they stayed that way during most of the game. I noticed that a certain point on the board is inviolate if there are three rows of disks ending with a ring leading out from it along the three axes. That formation determined a lot of our play.

I offered to swap rows early with Saarya, but he tried to wreck mine, first. Eventually, I got a row off,followed by another one very soon that he simply overlooked.

When you're up by two rings to zero, you only care about winning and don't mind letting your opponent get his rows off. I did some setting up while Saarya took off one row, and then set myself up for a winning row as he took off the second. Unfortunately, I didn't notice that I was one disk short. He cut across, and we were now equal.

I thought I was in good shape, nonetheless, as his moves were forced and his disks piled up on the side of the board, but Yinsh in the type of game where a row of disks is dangerous for both sides, regardless of the color.

He swept out with a great move, leaving himself two pivotal points which I couldn't block - but neither could he flip: he had disks in the right area, but the lines terminated at the end of the board. Unfortunately for me, I was in a similar position.

And he had just the right freedom he needed to move into position for the last jump, while I didn't, without flipping one of his tiles for him and thus giving the game to him.

An exciting game and a great comeback for Saarya. And none of you could follow this description at all without seeing the board, which sucks.

Game News

The NY Daily News reran an old David Barry column on board games.

Scott John Siegel is trying his hand at "off the grid" game design for Escapist magazine. Here is his first go, Magic Numbers, a simple bluffing dice game.

Oh yes. By the way, this lovely Brazilian Belizean woman loves to play board games.

Maybe you should, too?

Yehuda

Electronic Arts Buys Rights to Hasbro Games

You'll soon be seeing Hasbro games done up fine and fancy on your video systems. Electronic Arts has reached an agreement with Hasbro to produce Monopoly, Scrabble, et al.

These are the games that were shrinking in popularity due to the onset of computer games, right? Being able to play them on your computer makes them better? Will you at least be able to play these over the Internet with other players?

Rahala is a trivia game covering 4000 years of Arab history.

New Yorker magazine has its own board game, too.

By the way, my last post came about as I'm in the middle of doing some extensive research into Web 2.0 companies. One other curious fact I've learned (I've studied more than 200 Web 2.0 companies, so far): almost no women anywhere are managing or founding these companies, and not a single black person. Lots of white males, Jews, Asians, and Europeans. If this trend continues, expect a longer blog post about it.

How to Create a Web 2.0 Brand Name

1. Choose one of the following:

A. Misspelled word OR two misspelled words
B. misCapitalize
C. Funny name
D. Punned Phrase OR joined phrase

A. Misspelled word(s)

a. Drop a letter from the word. Dropping an "e" is popular, e.g. Flickr. Or a vowel before a letter which sounds like itself, phonetically, such as "l" or "r", e.g. Vowl.
b. Double a letter, such as "r". Grrls.
c. Change a vowel sound into the appropriate number. Gr8!
d. Add an extraneous letter in front: iTomato, jDiapers, eSnoring, xFiles.
e. For two misspelled words, misspell one or both and concaten8.

B. misCapitalize

E.g. tUnes. MissPell. grbagE.

C. Funny name

Choose a color and an animal, e.g. Blue Octopus. Red Shellfish. Turquoise Tomato. Or try an alcoholic drink (or something that sounds like one), e.g. Blue Martini, Purple Jamaica.

D. Phrases

SingShot. PhoneHomey. SecludedSound. TVGlide. Human Textuality. BlahBlahBlah.

For best results, try to get a "hip" word into the name, like "click", "dot", "web", "share", "connect", etc...

Yehuda

July Board and Card Game Patents

The patent train is leaving the station. All aboard!

Quoit board - The game of Quoits isn't popular enough, according to this patent's claim, because the board is too heavy. Here's a plastic board.

Method of playing a card game - 3 card poker game with two rounds, one communal, and one individual vs the dealer.

Board Game - The game of Sevinpold, not terribly well-thought of by BGGers. The designers claim that the game combines luck and skill, and allows you to win with some lucky tosses no matter how far behind you are.

Game board - A design patent for a board of six 4x4 diamonds arranged in a hexagon.

Method of playing a poker-type wagering game with multiple betting options - Each player gets three cards as individual hands. They can toss one for free, and a second losing part of the bet after the first common card is flipped up.

Board game - A design patent for a board game called Compassion. The board looks a lot like the Trivial Pursuit board.

Slotted game board and gaming table - A games table that includes slots in the table surface to hold cards or dominoes.

Card game - A shedding game. Discard a card that is a multiple or divisor of the top card in the discard pile. There must be more to the game because I can't imagine how this could work.

Golf board game - From the description, an intentionally dumb board game that doesn't require the players to have to think, allowing more time for socializing.

Casino game with multiple playing modes and wagering options - A convoluted poker game called "Showdown Poker".

Game board - Math based game on a board that looks a lot like a Mancala board.

A light month.

Yehuda