MEETING NOTES, September 25, 2001

Hello all,

In today's meeting, Jerry suggested October 30 as a deadline for a spec. There are several grants that with application deadlines approaching, and we don't want to wait until the next grant cycle to apply for funding. To accomplish this goal, our next 5 meetings will need to be very focused. We must concentrate on questions that must be answered to produce a spec for the elementary version of the game. We must note other issues but postpone further discussion to a later stage.

That said, I think we should begin our next meeting by deciding on models for "game play" and "game path." Both of these are defined in the second draft of the definitions (formerly "ivanhoe_moves") document. You'll find the entire document as an attachment to this message; you'll find an excerpt with only these definitions at the bottom of this message. For our current purposes, we should bracket for later consideration all parts of this document except those mentioned above.

Those at today's meeting suggest that we begin with model 1 in both cases.

Geoffrey suggests a second possibility. Model 2 for game play and model 1 for game path. This assuming two things: version-control system where you check out some portion of the text for editing; game log so that you know which portions of the text are currently checked out.

After we settle on these, we should return to Nathan's task model. Nathan, can you divide our remaining time among the various "boxes" that we need to discuss? If you come to each meeting with an allotment of time for each box, we promise to do our best to adhere to your schedule. (Several documents deal with definitions and implementations of moves. If you'd like to refer to those to structure our discussion of the "move" box, great. But we'll leave that up to you.)

Settling on game play and game path may take an entire meeting, or it may take 5 minutes. Either way, you've got the floor after the decision is made, Nathan.

best, Andrea

________

game: -INTERVENTION in a discourse field (D) initiated and executed by the collective
-GENERATES a data space
-SET in a game space

   game play:
   -WHAT is at stake here: knowledge of game state when making a move

     model 1: sequential single
     -ONE move at a time, single (known) active player
     -IMMEDIATE evaluation and implementation
     -GAME state known
     -NO restrictions on sequence (except maybe disallow consecutive moves by one player)

     model 2: sequential simultaneous
     -ONE move at a time, multiple (known or unknown) active players
     -EVALUATION and implementation occurs on a first-come-first-served basis
     -GAME state possibly unknown

     model 3: sequential session
     -ONE move at a time, single (known) active player
     -IMMEDIATE evaluation and implementation
     -GAME state known
     -PREDEFINED sequence

     model 4: cluster session
     -MOVES submitted by deadline
     -SIMULTANEOUS evaluation followed by simultaneous implementation
     -RECONCILIATION by human or computer intelligence (game master or collective?)

   game path:
   -WHAT is at stake here: is the Ivanhoe game primarily interested in the elaboration of a discourse field, a set of roles, or a collective?
   -HOW do challenges work? is there really an incentive to challenge a move if you adopt/allow the forking paths model?

     model 1: single path
     -PLAYERS are required to observe others' moves
     -GAME STATE cannot be chosen
     -SINGLE (negotiated) text is result

     model 2: forking paths
     -PLAYERS are not required to observe others' moves in their own moves (I can insert a sentence in a paragraph previously deleted by another player)
     -GAME STATE can be chosen
     -PARALLEL texts can result

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