Metagaming

I'm guessing that most people won't have a clue what I mean.  Not just in general but specifically to the title of this blog.  My initial thoughts before writing this blog are to meander through the power of the mind, the placebo effect and then neatly on to having a pop and my board gaming buddies. At least one of my buddies is one of the few people likely to read my blog.  Funny, this statement put me in mind of Bilbo Baginses speech at his n'hundred'n'nt'elevntieth birthday:

"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

The picture is of tangential relevance only to the blog but over on my gaming blog, in order to find an illustrative picture to add "flavour" to the text, I tend to search google with the theme of the blog and use the preface "fine art".  So this is an image of "fine art statistics".  Nice.

Meta- can be used as a prefix to mean "beyond" or in some sense relating to the subject it prefixes.  Metadata is an integral part of my working life and it appears metagaming is equally entwined within my social life and this got me thinking about how displaying results in an intuitive visual way, allowing us to truly see the trends, actually encourages us to want to influence them.  For example, I currently weigh just over 13st (I use *st* as any US readers will need to get their calculators out and then remember whether its 16 or 14 for the multiplier and will probably give up - as I do when someone says 180lbs - doh) the mere fact of recording my weight makes me want to change it, thankfully I tend to forget and then about once per week I have a disappointing few hours whilst my brain endeavours to erase what I just saw when I stood on the scales. 

[note to self, its long enough after the theft of your beloved Commencal Meta 5.5.3 to buy a new bike - quick before you burst].  

I know that if I put up a chart and routinely measured my weight I would be motivated to make the trend move in the right direction.  

Back to games.  

A few weeks ago I programmed a spreadsheet to use an adapted chess ranking formula to rank the performance of my gaming buddies and me - more detail here - the existing method was not really capturing the performance overall.  The method allowed me to enter the results for the previous few months and to display a performance ranking graph.  What is interesting is that this does bring out the metagamer.  One player has consistently won, or more accurately, consistently won when it mattered, and maintained his #1 Seed ranking since the very beginning.  Now I must add that there are many inadequacies with the scoring system, for example if we play only games that one person does well at then they will rise to the top, this wouldn't happen in chess as it's the same game for each calculation of rank.  It is like saying the top seeded tennis player will be determined only on the speed of his first serve - this would favour fast first servers.  In the long run, as long as the games we choose aren't selected any differently due to the result, this should average out (regress to the mean) and there will not be a systematic bias towards a particular game type.  But here in lies the problem, we are only human, one guy is winning so we should all try to beat him and choose games he is no good at!  I'm not advocating this stance or accusing anyone of saying it,.... er .... ok I guess I am accusing anonymous of saying it but the point stands.  We are only human, we see rankings and we start to want to improve them.  We automatically want to play the metagame.  

The placebo effect is real.  Whilst it may not be a real treatment or any treatment at all the effect does exist.  In many cases it can be put down to the added attention of the staff running a clinical trial but not always.  It can be confounding factor in so called complementary medicine reported success.  However, the fact remains that we have the power within our minds to affect our health.  As a scientist, in a medical related discipline, I believe it is important to qualify that I am not advocating complementary medicine, just noting that we can appear to influence our own health/bodies.  I found it tragic just recently to read that the fabulously intelligent and inspirationally creative Steve Jobs probably accelerated his early death by trusting in "magic" medicine.  

We should all start collecting statistics about our health and recording them on a personal dash board.  Then we wouldn't be able to help ourselves, we'd have to win - or go to the health professionals when we were clearly loosing.

麻將 - Mahjong

With my recent interest in traditional word-games it dawned on me that, as a family, we are more numerically inclined.  Having said this there has been a pocket of interest amongst the younger members of the household in Scrabble but still numbers are our "thing".  Anne and I started a discussion the other day about Mahjong and how as students we used to play with another couple we knew.  This is traditional Mahjong, not the version that is often created on computer games which is some pair matching exercise.  So after a brief search on 'tinternet, checking the veracity and authenticity of the vendor, we purchased a set.  It has yet to arrive but as I was in the mood for kick starting the economy, I invested in one of Mr Jobs' Apps for the iPad.  I nice little example of the game with a full explanation of the scoring, something I was struggling to remember.  So I dived into my first game.  It came back pretty quickly but the AIs were thrashing me relentlessly.  After a few hands I was over 3500 points down.  Pretty impressive, overshadowed only by the next achievement, a 7500 point win in a single game.  I think I'll quit whilst I'm ahead.

Scrabbled

Recently I was introduced by Dave to Scrabble on my iPhone.  I am really enjoying it.  So much so that I have hooked in (or been hooked) by 2 other pals.  Scrabble is a great little game and is usually played around a board with a dictionary at hand to help resolve any disputed words.  The iPhone app, works like sending a text message, you take your move and then in effect your opponent has 10 days to take theirs.

I know there are serious scrabble players out there but its fun to jumble the words and look for a high scoring opportunity and just play casually. Playing on the iPhone, or on the computer via Facebook and Words with Friends does provide a little dilemma however.  I hadn't realised how many aids (for that read 'cheats') there are for helping solve your particular puzzle.  There are some fascinating little apps, Scrabulizer being one such site that one of my pals pointed me to.  All interesting sites but totally defeating the objective of playing the game. So other than occasionally browsing the "Q without U" words list and acceptable 2 letter words list I avoid these sites when taking my move.

What they have provided after taking my move is knowledge that there are many strategic options within Scrabble that I hadn't really considered.  Access to the triple word square and leaving vowels next to a triple letter square (vulnerable to high scoring J's Q's and Z's) is far more important than getting a big word for example.  I must admit though I have occasionally played a word to see if it was real, the app helpfully points out if you are mistaken - is that cheating?

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fthagn!

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, American poet and author of macabre short novels, was the man behind the Cthulhu mythos.  I must confess that my only exposure to this world was a brief experience of the Call of Cthulhu role playing game as a student and more recently the collaborative board game Arkham Horror.  The game ranks 54th currently in the BGG player voted rankings.  One of the attractive elements of the game to me was the theme but also that it was collaborative and at the time the kids were favouring the many collaborative games in my collection.  I suspect we may nurture competitiveness into our children, but thats a subject for another blog.

The first time my group of regular gaming friends played the game was not as successful as it could have been, due to it being late, me not remembering all the rules too well and there being an ennui invading the group whenever collaborative games are mentioned.  This I think is a subject for yet another blog.  To read Steerpike's view of the initial experience visit his blog.  Since this initial outing the game has rarely seen the light of day and it's a shame as it may be better than we initially gave it credit.

Following a suggestion, I recently bought an app that assists the various dice rolls, card selections etc that are routinely made during a game of Arkham Horror - especially when solo.  I also entered into a brief chat on Facebook with Stretchy (an alumnus from our local gaming group) about collaborative games and threatened to bring it to OxCon next weekend.  So I have given the game a little run out this weekend.  Here follows a game review, so if you haven't switched off already and aren't a game fan.... I should now :-)

Having previously played the game solo, instinctively I thought it would be very tough with just one character and so I chose two for this new solo-ish game.  This had the benefit that the kids could dip in and out of the game.  I was very lucky with my first two off-world experiences, the first events were both successful and the consequence of each was an immediate return to Arkham.  I managed to remove the gates with just four turns passing.  However, during four regular game turns four gates have materialised.  In addition to the initial "free" gate that is given to "the ancient one", there had been five gates (and five out of 13 stages on the doom track signalling the arrival of the monster) and I had only managed to remove two!  Victory conditions are, zero gates in Arkham and (n+1), i.e 3 gates as trophies (ie not spent to aid the war).  Given that it would take four turns to destroy a gate usually (Turn 1: arrive at gate and evade/destroy monsters, then get drawn into other dimension and encounter event.  Turn 2: move through dimension, have second encounter.  Turn 3: move back to gate (ignoring monsters). Turn 4: destroy any new monsters and then destroy gate. 

This doesn't take any account of moving to the gate and acquiring enough spells and weaponry to achieve the task, this could be at least 3-4 additional turns.  So on average to destroy a gate you could be looking at a character taking 7-8 turns per gate.  Meaning there will be 8-9 gates open as you try to close your first.  Simply then, you may need 8-9 characters to win this!  

This is not strictly true, since you can close and then seal the gate,  stopping any further horror from manifesting in this location. So I guess 4-5 characters is the minimum so long as the first gates closed are also sealed.  However another consideration is that, should you leave gates open then there is much more chance of a monster surge (a new gate being selected for a location that already has a gate) and this inevitably leads to the town of Arkham increasing the terror rating with all the bad stuff that ensues.  Also more wandering evil stuff building up in the town is not good for character health. 

This game is a real conundrum I think you must have to allow a certain number of gates to open as a party of you "tool up" and then try to all get to the gates and close them simultaneously.   I think I will try to convince my competitive games crew to have another go at this collaborative game soon, see if we can't crack the code. 

Janus Tendencies

So today I had a quick tidy up of the blog setup and I remembered that I had stopped recording, on board game geek, the games that I have been playing this year.  Shame really, I think there is a little Janus in all of us at this gateway to the new year and it would have been nice to examine the statistics like some latter-day sooth sayer and predict what it means about the changing nature of me and what may happen in 2011.

Note-to-self, must play (and record) more games.

No Crib for a Bed

Last night we were lucky enough to be invited to stay for supper with some great friends following the annual Oakley Court carol service.  After eating we were casually invited to play some cards.  Fabulous.  The crib board was produced and the games began.  I took an absolute drubbing - not helped by playing against a Jedi Crib Master - "these are not the cards you're looking for".

Humiliated and dejected I decided to take on my iphone to claw back some self respect.  During this first game, I was taking the lead and feeling very confident and then I was presented with this hand.

So obviously I could sit and work out the mathematical possibilities and the appropriate probability distribution but I was taking a, ahem, 10 minute break and so I made a snap decision.  I would discard the 4 and the 3 since the resulting hand was worth 14 in its own right.

Blast, who'd've thought it, I should have kept the 4 and the 3.  This meant that my hand is now still only worth 14 but if I'd thrown the 10 and a 5 into my crib I'd have had a hand worth 18 and a stronger seeded crib.

Adding insult to injury my crib was only worth 4 points but had I have thrown in the 5 and 10, it would have been worth 8 making my total score 26, a full 10 points more than my actual score of 16.  I guess an implicit, Jedi like understanding of probability is what one must develop to make the more likely (to succeed) selection, repeatedly.  Still I beat the iPhone - scant satisfaction though, as I know deep down that Master Sandy would have punished the choice mercilessly.  I'll lay down my sweet head......

are you bored yet?

Tension mounts, well for me at least, interest wanes, for Jason. A massive 4 wins in a row has set me up for "2 match points".  All I have to do is win 1 or more of the next 2 games and victory will be mine.  Of course if I lose both, then on goal difference Jace wins.  I lose.



"In many ways you're both losers", anonymous

The Comeback kid

Having managed to squeeze in two more games yesteday, the score now stands at 3 all.  With an almost unassailable 60 points in goal difference - its all or nothing in the last few games of the series for Jimmy Mac!

What's that you're choking on Jace?  oh a piece of humble pie.....

Lessons from Mary Shelly

Two blogs in one day. There must be some drama. Well there is of sorts, for all us gaming types. I've coerced one of my colleagues to start playing board games, it may have been the bright shiny iPad (what still no product review?) version that drew him in but now he is in, well lets say he's hooked. After many games where the student has performed well and the patient but sage old master has coaxed and mentored him, and sufficient games were under the belt, the student declared its time to score - a true gamer at heart. This week we have set ourselves a challenge, play 10 games of Small World on the iPad and record the scores. In case of a draw we'll use point "goal" difference to declare the champ. Monday was a washout - too much work for both - yesterday saw us manage 2 games over lunch with a draw and Student up on goal difference. All fine so far. Today has been an humiliating defeat for the old master, 2 - 0 to the student. Faced with this stunning performance, the student was gracious, and courteous in victory and with self effacing humility reinforced the quality of the lessons he has received. Not. With taunting and jibing, and claims of "you're finished old timer", we have engaged in a little email debate. The scene is set, justice must be metered out, the universe must be brought back into balance. Game on for tomorrow :-)

Sent from my iPad

It's a Small World

This 2-player version of Small World for the iPad

 (Vyvyan: “yes we’ve got a bloody video” )

                 is one of the best Apps so far! I played 3 games at lunch today. I do hope they expand it to more players, the table top mode would probably cope.  I wanted to write a review but this is better than I could do..

WotR CE - Game Review

This isn't really a review of the game it's my description of how the game played out against Will.  We have played WotR (and CE) a number of times now and Will is getting pretty good at handling the Shadow forces.  We decided to add in the expansion rules and pieces to see what effect it has.  This added Ents, Galadriel and Smeagol for me, the fellowship and Will, the Shadow, had the Dunlendings, the Balrog, Corsairs of Umbar and the Witch King: King of the Ring Wraiths at his disposal.

After our initial set up the first turn laid out some key strategic decisions for both of us.  Will mustered the Sauron Nation to war very quickly and this allowed me to bring in Galadriel.  I suspected an attack on Gondor so I had to get the fellowship moving, I would need some of the main characters in the South very soon.  Galadriel's abilities in the main make you more confident to progress the fellowship and they whipped along in the early part of the game.  In the first turn Will decided to bring in the Witch King - a decision that meant that the Balrog would be consigned to the later part of the game, if ever, showing that he favoured military might to hunting for the fellowship.  He now had a decision, was he going to bring him in as the Black Captain - to provide support and strength to his ground troops, or was he going to bring in the new King of the Ring Wraiths and concentrate on hunting for the Fellowship.  Yes, Will the warrior went for military might and brought in the Black captain and immediately started to threaten Gondor.

These few decisions set the course of the game.  Will specifically didn't bring in Saruman as he didn't want to invite an Ent attack, I was keeping 2 of the very powerful Ent strategy cards in my hand and so this action held me back early on in the game.   Will's main tactic was a massive and rapid attack on Gondor, via Minas Tirith and Lorien to remove Galadriel.  With the new siege engines and mustering to Lorien within a siege I managed to hold on to the elves but after a devastatingly played "Denethor's folly" Minas Tirith was in jeopardy.  Due to the rapid moving of the Fellowship, Gandalf the Grey managed to fly out of the fellowship and enter the besieged city but ultimately it fell and Gandalf was dead.  The sting taken out of this assault Will struggled to keep the momentum up and I halted his onslaught at Dol Amroth on the coast.  Most of Gondor was under Shadow control but I managed to get Strider and Gimli into Dol Amroth and Aragon was crowned King in time to devastate the Shadow forces.

With the remaining shadow forces sweeping from Minas Tirith across to Rohan (still not at war!) Aragorn tried a sneaky assault and went towards the coast around the mountains to come in to Rohan from the West.  Will saw this coming and decided to muster Saruman to build an Isengard force to support the Rohan assault.  Having stormed through the East of Rohan there was only Helms Deep and the fords of Isen left.  However, Gandalf the White appeared in Fangorn forest followed swiftly by the Ents who stormed out to Helms deep and destroyed most of the Sauron forces that were now besieged in the recently fallen Helms Deep.  The new Saruman force (weak because Will feared to muster as this brings in the Ents) tried to take Helms deep but was destroyed by Aragorn and Gimli with a large force of Gondor and Rohan units.

During this assault Will had started another army from the Southron and Easterlings to attack the Souther edge of Gondor with a view to sacking Dol Amroth.  I managed to take Aragorn through the mountains with the Army of the dead and routed the Southrons.

With all this battling going on the sneaksy Hobitses had managed to reach Minas Morgul and had proceeded, with Golum now their guide, to the edge of Mount Doom and destroyed the Ring.  During the battling Will had managed to get 8 VPs of the 10 needed to win and had seriously threatened the final 2.

Another great game of WotR CE and an enjoyable few hours with my son.

Obiter Dicta

Obiter Dictum

There are several themes or threads running concurrently in my internal narrative at any one time.  Herding them and focussing on the important ones is the eternal battle that I have fought my entire life - in fact if I'm honest it is my life.  My personality has been described as a "Butterfly" and for this rare bit of descriptive parsimony I thank that person.   On occasion I take a quick look at the external narrative, since in the modern era we have an accessible and apparently permanent record, and I gloss through my Facebook history, my Twitter stream and now the building archive of this blog.  What strikes me is that the things I think were important to me don't appear in the records anywhere near as much as I would have imagined before taking a look.  There are some elements that are censored for obvious reasons, very personal relationships, work and related private information has remained, well, private.  Out of the other elements that I thought would feature more, games is at the top of this list.  I play games once per week with a group of friends, I have collected over 100 board games I have introduced many friends and their families to a broad variety of modern board games.  So to celebrate this, and in the spirit of keeping an electronic record, I have added a "widget" on the side bar of the blog to show recent games as recorded on the Board Game Geek website.  I shall try to keep this up-to-date.

more art from Derek here

And another thing, currently I am trying to decide which way to spend my 0.17 of a vote.  I have skim read the manifestos and, more characteristically for me, I have reviewed the manifestos on my iPhone.  So I know what the politicians want us to think.  I have listened to the media so I know what Rupert Murdoch wants us to think.  I have endured the cringe fest of the live debates so I know which contestant I'd phone in for! but actually I have paid little attention to what I actually want.  So I need to sift through the untidy bedroom of my brain and find the key issues on which I should judge each party.  My current thoughts are:

1.  A government and leader with statesmanly integrity and presence - showing the UK as a leader on the international stage.
2.  Equitable, balanced governance steering the country with high levels of integrity displayed throughout.
3.  For major issues like immigration and taxation: clear, fair rules consistent with an evolved, just and benevolent democracy that are policed openly.
4.  Macro economic policies that ensure the wealth of the UK whilst we contribute to the global distribution of wealth.
5. Education and learning, not just vocational training, embedded at the core of our society.
6. Smaller central government, more power at a local level.

I've spent no longer than about 5 minutes drafting this list.  It may seem like nonsense but these were genuinely the first six things to form more clearly out of the morass.  I shall let them stew for a while before I settle on my final list, then I shall see which party measures up.

Christmas Games

In a previous blog I discussed my belief that playing games was both for the joy of playing and to try to win. I have recently commented on Stephen Conway's  facebook page (of the spiel) where he eloquently expresses his disquiet at a professional team that chose to loose, in front of a crowd of over 67 thousand fans, so as to rest their team for a bigger game - we get this in the UK too with premiership teams discussing etiquette for the squad that they should field for a league cup game.  We also saw a year when Renault bosses allegedly instructed Nelson Piquet to crash to allow Alonso to win the Singapore Grand Prix.  Its all cheating really

Surely games are "trial runs" of what we expect life to throw at us, a practice ground, if you like, and we are only cheating ourselves to bend the rules - excepting you need to make the game a gentler environment for newgamingfolk and kids.

I understand the motivation but when a (to remain nameless) family member declared about 1 hour into a game of formula de "put me where you like, I don't mind", to me, I felt a bit cheated.  I appreciate that there are non-competitative types but if you elect to be in the game, my view is you should at the very least, try to win.  The sibling rivalry that my brother and I adequately displayed left me feeling much more satisfied - despite the fact that I took too big a risk on the last corner and span off - it was a tense and enthralling challenge [and we managed to not fall out!].  let me assure you, the rivalry was fun, engaging and relatively good natured.  Actually, we all enjoyed the game even my Mum, oops I mean the nameless, non-competitative family member :-o declared it was her favourite game.

William witnessed this, actually he came in a close second, so maybe he can fly the family colours next year and knock Uncle Rob into second place.

Bread and Games

The picture is the card “Bread and Games” from La Citta. These two words encapsulate my two key decisions, bread – a symbol of nourishment and essential resource – do I need this? and games – a symbol of having fun – is it going to make my life fun? You can check many things against this simple binomial test. Beer can often start out in the “Bread” category and soon becomes the “Games” category.

I like to play games. Actually I like to enjoy life and this is achieved in part by playing games. A friend has a motto on his blog, which is itself a paraphrase of the Bernard Shaw quote, "We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." I like this sentiment; that the very act of engaging in an apparently frivolous activity can indeed hold back the ravages of old age.

Recently I have had pause to consider what my motivations are for playing games. I listened to an excellent gaming podcast called Gameon -  Episode 28 – Motivations. I sympathized with much of the discussion about the challenging games with people who want to win at all costs, as we have all experienced this from time to time – I’d suggest possibly from both sides of the fence. At the end of one such discussion the guest host, single-L, said, “who even won that game?”.

I must confess, this resonated quite strongly with me. There have been occasions where the game became such a trial I could not recall who won. There have also been games that have been so much fun that I forgot who won. This leads me to believe that winning isn’t the objective. But clearly it is, you wouldn’t be a gamer if you didn’t want to win. In fact, I think Darwin had something to say about this too, so in a sense we are all the decedents of generations of winners.

Until researching for this blog – yes I did!, I had believed my old school motto was “It doesn’t matter if you win or lose, it’s how you play the game”. Actually it now appears to be “Faith in our Future”,  something you’d expect the marketing department of Orange Mobile phones to come up with. Perhaps it was another school, it doesn’t matter, the sentiment I remember is that wining isn’t the objective, but acting in an exemplary manor regardless, is. Not confusing this with the liberal nonsense of, we can all be winners, actually I think this is the point. Victurus te saluto - He who is about to win salutes you, whatever happened to gracious victors?

If not the single-minded objective to win, then what else could the objective be?

Learning, I suspect is one. Experiencing real life concepts played out in a controlled and restricted rule set. From buying property, to the stock market, to balancing resources on a newly settled island, gaming can introduce these concepts in a friendly “risk free” environment. It goes further than this, as an adult, I have enjoyed diplomacy and negotiation or trading games that in someway approximate those interactions from real life – giving me an opportunity to hone my technique. Note-to-self – must try harder. Also, purely social interaction could be the aim – however I believe I’d just go to the pub if this were true. So is it something to do with intellectual stimulation? Probably, but really I think the only objectives are to try to win and to be gracious along the way, regardless of the outcome.

One final thought from Plato

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”