These past months have been a blur of discovery. The last piece I did, on chess, was only the beginning of a lasting infatuation with abstract board games. I played a few, investigated more, printed and played and even went so far as to invent my own. I lovingly call it "Hoplite", and it is about forming defencive barricades while at the same time penetrating your opponent's to get at his king.
Before that I was interested in modular building toys. I eventually bought "strawbees", which are plastic connectors for drinking straws. They are great for building sierpinski triangles (think Zelda triforces forever expanding), and also includes fasteners for cardboard plates. But there was more! The Eamse's "House of Cards" - which are cards with slits cut into them for fastening, legos, building blocks, and also game systems. The latter are objects used in gaming, but not in themselves games - like playing cards.
Abstract games and modular toys are connected in an interesting way. I've been trying to find out many things connecting the two, such as: What are rules? What are games? What is the difference between gaming and playing? How are rules connected to material objects? ...and many more questions. I really ought to write a blog post just discussing these few things, because it is so damn interesting. Just to leave you with a tidbit: What happens if you connect game changing rules to playing pieces? Then you get the modern card collecting games! It is awesome, and very tiring. Such games can get very complicated, and very expensive... and very educational.
But I must move on. My latest interest is flutes. I'm currently trying to learn to play the recorder. It is a difficult process. Any child can get some sound coming out of it - but to get it to sound really nice is difficult. This process has driven my to reconsider some renaissance music I was listening to before - and now I've learned that much of this repertoire is very well suited to the flute. Hmm... I hope this will be a new venue to explore the rules of musical composition with more passion. They are so hard to master! But I feel that beginning with the renaissance is fitting. It was around this time that the rules of musical composition were established - and I find that starting with the historical beginning when learning a new thing is often very educational.
Let me think... Yes. Lately, as in the last few months, I've been interested in the connection of modern escapist culture and romanticism. It turns out the connection is more direct than I would have though. Romanticism contains an allusion to "roman times, or lands", which was very far removed from 19th century citizens. At the same time they took up myths of their people and brought them into popular culture. In many ways the fantasy genre was born there. Tolkien took up some of these strands, but added his historical know how to weave the tapestry of fantasy we have today. Modern escapism is fantasy, but also Science fiction - which is a whole other thing, but was also started around the same time with the publication of Frankenstein, and later H.G. Wells' works. The whole thing is woven together with the last big element of our culture - superhero-worship. Our focus on batman, superman, and all the other men and women of the pantheon reminds me of pagan gods, and also of the mortal heroes which followed in their wake. I cannot help feel that all these strands of our culture were very much started or developed in the 19th century, and that we are now reaching a sort of culmination of this trend, where it must shift or transform. The new "Gardians of The Galaxy", has brought in humour to the picture, maybe this will turn the trend around a bit.... who knows.
Rambling on... Ooo... there is this new video-game which I constantly thinking about. It's called "No Man's Sky". In it you are a person with a space craft. You zoom around the galaxy exploring, shooting down things, trading... whatever. The whole galaxy and everything in it is procedurally generated. You are playing with others in the same universe, but it is so vast that were you to visit every planet, if only for a second, it would take you more than 5 billion years. Planets are also frequently the size of earth.
I'm telling you: This is the future of video-games.
