Rebecca is the daughter of Ivanhoe game that Steve Ramsay and I have been trying to imagine. (See previous Rebecca post.) Here are some more thoughts on features to the game.
– Limiting moves to the output of others
– Algorithmic spirit
– Challenges
– Journals
– Code and Literary Programming
– Literary Moves
– A Game of Collaborative Algorithmic Interpretation
– To encourage collaboration moves should only be allowed on the output of the moves of others. In other words you can make a series of solipsistic moves on your own output. The problem with this is that it means that people can’t iteratively work out a text analysis process. (Though strictly they can just do an expanded process on the original text.)
– Algorithmic spirit. We need some statement to discourage custom programs that just swap one passage for another – the program equivalent to search and replace for a specific passage. To some extent such behaviour will be limited if you can make moves on your output. This prevents a bunch of mini replace moves. We still need to find wording to capture the spirit.
– Challenges. If someone violates the spirit of algorithmic criticism then there should be a challenge rule that allows another player to challenge the move. If the challenge succeeds the move is cauterized – in other words no moves can be made off its output.
– Journals. Ivanhoe supports private journals where players describe why they make their moves. Rebecca has code and comments in the code. These should be open. The code is part of the move and should be accessible and commented.
– Code and Literary Programming. Perhaps the code of previous moves should be considered part of the output of the move along with the transformed text. Thus moves could be made on other player’s code as if it was text. This is sort of the inverse to literary programming where code and input get merged into one text output.
– Literary Moves. The programming format of moves could be a literary programming format. The game engine would do the weaving and moving.
– A Game of Collaboration. The point of Rebecca would be to encourage the collaborative development of processes for interepretation. It would be a new model for programming in teams. Once the players agree that they have reached their goal (end) the path of processes that reached that point could be strung together as meta process that could be reused on other texts.