MEETING NOTES August 28, 2001
IVANHOE 8.28.01
(pre-meeting topics: liturgical calendar)
N: Agenda for five meetings. Screen map on Visio To draw an order of tasks -- who does what when/where Squares represent a screen (Screen Map 001) what are the exact fields a user needs to be able to enter in each screen
First, some higher level discussion needs to take place before we get to the level of drawing.
High Level Diagram 001
Four parts to playing Ivanhoe
1) Game initiation
registration
game creation
join/leave
2) Game play
making moves
using roles point assignment
introducing texts
challenges
using the discourse fields
3) Navigation
viewing
source
interventionos
Using game play diagram
Using Game Log
4) End Matters
archiving
collection
evaluation/assessment
BN: What about a place to do reflection/analysis after a game?
N: Objective/subjective point assessments
SR: Some of assessment / evaluation is going on in challenges/points
B: What is a discourse field/use of it?
JD: So far the diagram is very much premised on a human user, what about the computer as player?
B: Maybe bifurcate game play into human/computer? A much much later version where the computer plays.
JM: Beth's suggestion about breaking out game play into human/computer at the top is a useful one.
B: Will think about it differently if the computer is taken off as an agent?
N: Computer will be a part of the game and individual player's experience? Don't have to worry about the ways the computer interfaces with the computer, but how will the user interact?
B : From game theory -- what kinds of agents will computers be in the game?
S: Difference in ways of assigning points from computer/user p.o.v.
Last meeting we said that if someone makes a rebuttal then the computer could read it and determine whether it IS a rebuttal. Humanities computing literature -- will decide how fascist a work is. Many things the computer can do to intervene are not hard.
N: So we need to consider, overall, the role of computer participation.
A; What about cafe and theater>
JD: Is there anything in the Game Play that precludes these being used?
B: What about real time interaction?
N: All this can happen in HTTP --
JM: Living Theater -- not a chat room, but real time moves that are demanding., so should have points ratcheted up.
S: The longer you stay in the chat room the more you should get rewarded.
JD: No, there's orders of work -- doing your work and talking about it are different.
N: The Living Theater is really BIG -- could even replace this structure.
JM: So we should put it aside for now.
S: Belongs to the category of Real Time Text creation.
N: Many things left off this design.
B,S,JM: But put in the Living Theater in some way.
S: Ivanhoe has to capture the kinds of behaviors that occur around texts. One of the things they do is talk about them in real time. One of the discourses you can create is real-time discourse that is as weird as real-time discourse really is.
Additions to the diagram: player files.
(See: High Level Diagram 001)
S: Navigation terms to include "all the many ways" of viewing etc.
N: We should jump right in, using J/J rules and act out a scenario.
S: Or should we hear a fake game being played.
JM: Or should we hear the intentions of the creators. General objects that we have in view, pedagogically that governs what we do.
N: Bring up the rules.
S: But WHAT is the BASIS on which Interpretation is MADE???
N: Obviously there is a theoretical argument behind the game, but it isn't explicit.
S: When Worthy asked what is the pedagogical point, I said that every time you make an act of criticism you are intervening in the text.
N: But assumption about what it is you are intervening in?
JD: Are you going to see the intervened text or the text and its interventions?
JM: That there is an assumption that you aren't intervening in the "text" but in the discourse field, that is created by the players as you go along.
B: That answers the question that Steve made about the basis.
S: Different from asking students to write papers about Macbeth -- something more profound to say about what we are doing.
N: These objectives are quite wide open and the objectives of the game are more specific -- for instance, the game increases self-consciousness about the way a critical edition is done and the way this is an interpretation.
JM: Could play with Grammatology.
JD: Don't want to get held up here trying to lay out the pedagogical objectives too much, rather go back and forth between play and objectives.
JM: Certain practical desires embedded here -- such as a desire to get the students to use archival resources, to interact with each other, or to encourage people to be inventive in the way they they intervened in the discourse field. (For instance, if Bois Guilbert dies and you find a way to bring him back.)
N: No single agenda. Seems more wide open than that.
G: THe real objective is TO PLAY. Why not bring it to the fore.
N: These are the objectives of the game but what is the objective of the PLAYER?
JM: Maybe the first point, as Geoff says, is to produce interpretation as an act, the performative basis of it.
G: To Play Interpretation, to Think about the Play of Interpretation.
S: Students don't think about inscribing interpretation in the discourse field.
N: What is the EDGE to the game?
S: The FUN is showing off, performing in public, fun was DOING it and you were DYING for everyone to see how clever you were.
N: So it's literary "Who's Line is That?"
S: Point system is a hedge against the kind of solipscism that can take over when you get so interested in how clever you are.
N: Moderator in "Who's Line is That?"
G: Different types of points? D&D get different types of points.
S: Big difference -- the turns -- keep amassing points in monopoly til you win, but point of D&D is not to win, but to keep playing.
N: D&D is about power and range increases.
B: We talked about a certain economy --limited.
JM: Could set other limits -- time.
N: Need to set up the game so there are good and evil forces, so someone can be played in the wrong spirit.
S: THere has to be a way to keep in the flexibility to play in the wrong spirit.
N: How can that be done?
B: Could do it through deliberately thwarting somone.
S: When someone is trying to kill your character.
JD: Only solipcism could be punished by this economy of the game.
N: Play --
G: Are there moves for trashing people? If someone puts up a wrong move, one with bad bibliography?
JM: You play all your moves as an imagined person. Could be anybody. ANother kind of self consciousness, have given yourself a mask to play under.
A: A challenge of inconsistency.
S: A feature of all kinds of role playing games -- Spiderman Wouldn't Say That.
N: J/J go through the rules and explain the rationale.
(RULES DOCUMENT OPEN)
B: Why institutionalize throwing people out of the game?
JM: Catholic school -- that's what we do.
N: Want to encourage people to make moves. But do want to exclude undesirable players. There will be cases where bad people want to play.
B: But there might be times when you want to let someone into the game after five years --
JM: But this seems reasonable as a way to start -- can toggle on and off if necessary.
JD: Advanced Ivanhoe -- the game where you make rules. And then Pataphysical Ivanhoe -- where we make special rules for each player.
N:: Idea is to make a structure for discussion. And so we NEED to focus. NEXT WEEK: Down and dirty on HOW to START THE GAME.