As much as I hate to admit it, there are things beyond my control -
the weather, for example. Earthquakes, forest fires, volcanic eruptions,
solar eclipses and sunsets, for more examples.
Early in the origin of our species we made rather strong attempts to
claim responsibility for all these bizarre phenomena. We sang, danced
and sacrificed various virgins in the hopes that somehow our rites would
right whatever wrongs we had wrung.
Our assumption of responsibility resulted in a profound sense of helplessness
and guild. We created professionals to take the blame for us but, eventually,
most of our magicians failed to bear the burden, and so we did away
with them.
Thus, we gave birth to the notion of nature. The nature notion really
did nothing to prevent the moon from phasing, but it did effectively
free us from our sense of guilt about it all, and allowed us to evolve
a slightly less passionate view of the whole thing.
We decided that, since we weren't able to do anything about the weather,
we could at least make allowances for it. Somewhere in our dark past
a light fell on the face of an early settler, who said, "We'd get warmer
if we stopped dancing and invented a good stove." Thus, we learned to
honor our opponent and to evolve a bit more equal relationship, which
we later called science. We learned to predict and prepare.
It is my currently unfounded belief that the key to the establishment
of civilization was the invention of the coin - not because it provided
for the establishment of an alternative to barter, but because it could
be flipped. This gave birth to far more than mere flippancy. It allowed
us to play with the very forces that had once controlled us. We had,
at long last, an effective way of symbolizing nature.
This naturally gave rise to the development of the art of gambling.
Through gambling we exercised our ability to take risks. We could invest
our very lives, if we so wished, in a mere prediction. Thus, we could
simulate and ritualize our relationship to nature. We could play with
the very thing that had once driven us to despair.
I see the new priests of our economy, solemnly sitting around the fire,
tossing coins. I see the coins spinning in the flickering light like
planets in their courses. I see the act of flippage as a recapitulation
of arbitrary fortune, a vision of the dance between life and death,
a vivid portrayal of man's destiny being given over to the winds of
the unknowable.
This act was too important to be symbolized by coins. They had other,
more mundane functions. Something more was needed, something belonging
solely to the realm of play. And thus we created dice.
Dice. Six-sided. No longer divided into mere yes and no, life or death,
heads or tails. But now able to symbolize a whole scale of significance.
And we inscribed the dice with numbers in such a way so that the opposite
sides always added to seven, perhaps indicating, even in this profound
statement of our new conception of the irrational nature of nature,
the still primitive faith in consistency.
Playing with two dice led to a higher step yet. The nature (yes, nature)
of two dice is such that it tends to speak in certain combinations more
frequently than others. This, of course, embodies the concept of probability,
thus representing still another advance in our relationship to nature.
The more we know the dice, the more accurately we are able to predict
how they may fall.
The nature of evolution is such that it does not follow a single path.
The natural strategy is the proliferation of successful alternatives.
Thus, we develop lots, spinners, cards, and the famous teetotum.
Each device focuses on a particular aspect of the relationship between
man and nature; each is an embodiment of yet another element.
The teetotum, which is now almost extinct, is a four (or more) sided
top. It performs the same function as does a die, except that it takes
a bit longer to fall to rest. It must have been created by people who
could take the time to be fascinated. We spin the top. We watch it begin
to wobble. We shudder in anticipation, waiting for the universe to make
up its mind.
As our technology increased, we created the spinner, upon which we
could inscribe all sorts of arcane incantations. We were no longer confined
by equality. We could divide the spinner into any proportions we wished,
inscribing different probabilities to different possibilities.
The ultimate actualization of the spirit of the teetotum was the roulette
wheel. The roulette wheel, with its proliferation of possibilities,
with its long, agonizing spin, with the little steel ball which actually
seals our fate before the wheel has slowed enough to allow us to discover
what has already been decided - the roulette wheel is ultimate. After
the lightning has struck, we must still wait until the storm has passed
before we can determine our losses.
The casting of lots symbolizes yet another relationship between man
and nature. Here we have a portrayal of the phenomenon of being singled
out. In the earliest form of this device, the lots were bones, all but
one similar. We drew blindly from the venerated skull. In trembling
fingers, we grasped the bone which would indicate who could take comfort
in sameness and who would bear the burden of responsibility. And then,
when the last had been withdrawn, we compared.
Thus, we metaphorized the finger of fate herself: who shall live and
who shall perish. Lots were a vivid portrayal of the arbitrariness by
which one is chosen over others to be exalted or to be eliminated. Through
lots, we evolved a paradigm of what we later called natural selection.
And from the concept of lots we emerged into the glories of the democratic
process and bingo.
Lots have been refined to a deck of cards which can be shuffled, and
so constantly randomized. In order to assure that each player faces
the same degree of chance, each card can be returned to the deck after
it has been read and acted upon. Though the vision embodied in this
device seems somewhat despairing, it is nonetheless accurate. For all
of our science, we still must face the unpredictable.
The modern deck of playing cards is perhaps the most complex of all
of our pseudonatural creations. It imposes an order onto the chaos.
There are three overlapping dimensions: color, suit and number. We thereby
embody the notions of kind and degree. Our universe has taken on aspects
of rationality. Nature, though ultimately beyond control, once again
has shape.
Probably even before we were able to admit to the concept of nature,
we had inklings of yet another manifestation of the arbitrary. As we
learned of events which were beyond our control, we must have also learned
that there were aspects of our relationship to each other that were
also, equally beyond our control. This phenomenon is what we eventually
called "human nature."
Once we discovered that we do, indeed, fool each other; that we cannot
completely predict how we will affect each other; that, in fact, we
can fool ourselves as easily as each other - then gaming became one
of our most pervasive social art forms. We evolved the shell game, we
celebrated the human carnival, and man created poker. We created boards
with multiple paths. We made pieces and gave each player several so
that even more choice (as to which to move) was available. And then,
just as we insist on playing with the predictability of natural nature,
we set out developing strategies which would allow us to predict human
nature.
We can portray nature through a variety of media, each medium embodying
a particular relationship between man and the arbitrary. Coins, dice,
spinners, tops, sticks, wheels, shells, cards - each portraying a concept
of reality, significant and whole, and yet each different.
My thesis is that a game designer needs to know these tools as well
as the reality she wishes to portray. When I created my simulation of
the county jail system, I looked at each interaction in terms of the
degree of arbitrariness with which it was conducted. I looked at what
was predictable and what was not, what presented options and what created
restrictions. The success of the game, I believe, lay in the accuracy
with which I chose its devices.
There are games which use several chance devices. Monopoly® uses
both dice and cards. In the face of such arbitrariness, players cannot
predict with total success, but they can try to prepare. The arbitrariness
of human nature is made manifest by the availability of money and property.
With the technology available to us, we are able to make chance devices
which are almost infinite in scope. We can construct completely unpredictable
systems (I have recently discovered that this can be accomplished by
my car as well as by a computer), and then make them almost as predictable
as we wish. The question is not of efficiency of the art, but of the
accuracy and integrity with which we use it.
