Gamasutra has an interesting article about applying Agile software development methodology in game development. The argument is basically that the Waterfall model should be abandoned in favour of an adaptive Agile method called Scrum. Scrum requires more communication and collaboration, and rapid iterations in which functional versions of the software are released often - in general, it pretty much follows the Agile manifesto and seems suitable for game development.
On page two of the article, you can find a few diagrams over finished functionality versus time - the Waterfall method won’t show results until the very end, while Scrum’s functionality boost is primarily in the beginning of the project since it concentrates on making rapid releases with the most relevant elements first. I agree that the tendency is along these lines, but I think the author’s optimism is colouring things a little. Scrum relies on adaptation, so the functionality can go up and down depending on the decisions; and in fact, since the functional requirements change due to adaptation, the functionality axis can’t very well be displayed completely static, can it? The functionality becomes subjective since the goals change, unlike with the Waterfall method.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not defending Waterfall thinking. If the requirements are static, it means either that
- Someone has the hubris to think that they can define a project’s end result detailed enough from the beginning, or
- The project will probably fail. It may be a de facto success, but still probably a de jure failure. (If we assume that the requirement specification is law - you’ll have to give me some poetic license.)
An interesting question was posed in a blog entry which also comments on the article above: are there software development methodologies that are applicable for individuals? At first glance I agree that there aren’t many that apply directly - development methods mostly concentrate on using resources optimally, and that is never really an issue for a one-person project. After all, a single person rarely finds himself waiting for himself to get done with that bloody document, or for himself to finish coding that damn module that’s needed for the next part. But one thing does spring to mind: rapid iterations!
I’m a firm believer in fully (or as good as) functional increments delivered in relatively rapid order. At work we are moving more and more toward rapid iterations in order to constantly have a stable base for testing. When I work on my hobby applications I try to specify many minor increments that span over a long time, since it helps me keeping focused. “1.0 will have this functionality… 1.1 will have encryptions on this part, and an improved user interface…” and so on. Of course with room for adaptability as well. Technically this may not be following either Scrum iterations or the Iterative method, but I find that specifying desired increments ensures that I don’t get side-tracked as much.
I guess I should have posted this bit as a comment to the blog entry above, but I’m not only a cynical bastard - I’m lazy as well.
For years I’ve only used complete content management systems, such as Drupal or WordPress. When the time came to design a Sheeplings website I decided to examine exactly what I need: a few simple pages and some php magic to track the downloads and page views and whatnot. In other words, I need specialized features, but not a big system. In these cases it’s easier to re-invent the wheel.
So, I took the plunge into HTML 4.01 and CSS 2 and all that jazz, and came up with a basic design for the site. Take a look, and if you find that it doesn’t look okay, please let me know!
Sheeplings Website
I showed the Sheeplings site to a friend yesterday, and after looking at the screenshots on the page, his immediate response was along the lines of: ”I suppose this is a sheep-herding game with force-repulsion? I have an excellent algorithm for the sheep movement!”
The algorithm in question is a very simple subsumption one, consisting mostly of vector additions. It’s basically what I’m already doing, with two exceptions: the algorithm uses fixed destinations instead of - as I do it - define a vector and a duration to follow this vector. With all the acceleration and decceleration going on it’s easier to do it like this.
The other difference is of great consequence. So far I’ve been doing basic collision detection, and the sheep AI has decided whether or not to take a new action when it has collided with something. Instead, the new algorithm suggests that inverted vectors to objects surrounding it are added, in order to make the sheep avoid collisions. Elegance! Brilliance! I’m so ashamed of myself that I didn’t think of this.
A similar thing happened when I was making Mega Brain Splashing 4: I had implemented A* pathfinding for the robot movements, but noted that it took way too much time when dozens and dozens of them were present. I thought of sub-dividing the map and make layers to the pathfinding - first get to the correct area and then search for the player inside the area, and so on. I guess this would have worked, but the same friend of mine came up with an alternative solution: potential fields. Easier, faster, and performs almost as good as proper pathfinding. Dammit!
Speaking of subsumption algorithms, I looked up the subsumption architecture. It seems to be a layered AI architecture in which complex behaviour is achieved from the emergent combination of different asonchrynous layers. Each layer is pre-wired, but due to their interaction interesting behaviours can apparently be achieved. Read more about it here!
Speaking of layers, I might mention the simple Sheeplings AI. There are priority layers for actions that the different characters can perform; for example:
- High priority: running away, jumping (and being carried off, but this is a special case)
- Medium priority: walking someplace
- Low priority: eating grass, looking around, wiggling the ears
In order to quit doing an action, it must be exchanged for an action of higher priority. Otherwise, the character continues until the current action is done, and then decides what to do next.
It’s interesting to speculate how the sheep in my game would behave with a sumbsumption architecture, but I really don’t think it’s worth the effort for this game.
I am very fond of Baroque music, and-
Watches in dismay as people stop reading
Okay, I’ll start with something more amusing! I guess that everyone’s heard of fibs, or Fibonacci poems? It’s a brilliant form of poetry: following the Fibonacci sequence, each line in the poem must have 1/1/2/3/5/8 syllables respectively. Here’s an example:
Blood
Flows
The pain
Comforts me
How I long for death
Teenage angst is so pathetic
Hey, I’m no poet - I’m just a grumpy bastard. Anyway, note how the last line forms a counterpoint against the rest of the poem; I’ll get to that later.
The fib has become a minor Internet phenomenon, and people have written fibs all over the place. As an amusing bit of info, you can scroll down to the comments in the last link, and note that Gregory K - the first person to post about Fibonacci poems - has left a comment where he mentions that 12th century Sanskrit poetry had a meter based on the Fibonacci sequence. He’s not the inventor in other words; it’s rather silly that it took 900 years for the idea to become widely known again, though. And while I’m on the topic of amusing info, you can note that he mentions Tetractys as well in his post. Anal as I am I had too look it up: it’s a 20 syllable poem consisting of verses where the lines have 1/2/3/4/10 syllables respectively.
Fibs have become very popular, as I mentioned. Guess who’s writing a book on fibs, for example? It probably came to this after the NY Times article that mentioned Fibonacci poetry and showed a pic of the aforementioned Gregory K as well. If you look at the NY Times article you’ll note that they offer an example of an alternative Fibonacci poem; one that adds two lines to the structure:
I
like
to blog.
Frequently.
Theory matters.
Computer science (theory)
is my home and geometric algorithms are
sublime. Let P be a set of points in general position in the plane. Amen.
Now, this is where the fun begins. I would like to claim that the fib above is clever, but absolutely atrocious as poetry. This is what happens when mathematicians start writing poetry! I quote from the article: “For many people, writing one of the poems is a little like solving a puzzle.” What they probably fail to see is that it has potential for beauty as well; mathematical elegance and aestetical qualities can merge, and this is a perfect example of a meter for it.
And with this I have brought us back to my initial statement: I am very fond of Baroque music, and I believe that restrictions is what gives the style its appeal. There is a mathematical beauty in Baroque music, just as there is emotion and aestetic beauty. The restrictions force repetitions, but in turn they bring out flowing variations; the limited cage transmogrifies into the entire world, making the outside irrelevant.
So, what exactly is it that I’m trying to say? I believe that fibs could become so much more if additional restraints were added - stylistic guidelines and restrictions. Take the haiku for instance: the hokku where it originated from had demands for a season word, a combination of elements, a grammatical break and so on. I am pretty convinced that I would appreciate a strict hokku style more than the common free-form haiku found everywhere. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the sonnet was much appreciated with its strict meter, for instance.
Speaking of the sonnet (and Shakespearian sonnets in particular) they often featured a turn of events - a volta - toward the end, where the build-up of the poem changed into the resolution, and the mood of the sonnet changed. Did you note that my silly Fibonacci poem in the beginning had just that, as well? I tried to add an ironic twist in the last line, and I suspect that fibs in general would benefit from a stylistic change like that.
But then again…
He just won’t shut up
Thinking he knows poetry
Don’t listen to him
When I play a game, I want a sense of progression. Why are there so few Sudoku games that take note of this? Am I the only one who wants progression even when I’m playing casually? I doubt it - I suspect the problem lies with lazy or misguided developers.
A while ago I read a blog entry concerning how the Sudoku game would look if tech companies had developed it. Sudoku is perfect, it argues; nothing more is needed, and would in fact lower the simplistic pleasure of the game. This is very true for the game itself, but - as another blog comments - computer games need to think about usability and the fun factor. Sudoku itself might be perfect, but computer implementations benefit from making the game more attractive, appealing and usable. Why else would we play it on a computer, rather than with a pen and paper?
I demand more from computer Sudokus than from newspaper counterparts. A lot more! Personally I don’t care about bells and whistles; as long as the font is readable and the user interface is decent, I’m happy. But - as I mentioned - I want progression; I want to feel that I’m achieving something.
In my search for good Sudoku games I’ve encountered a few online gems, such as Sudoku League and Sudoku Combat. The latter is a two-player Sudoku battle; beat the game faster than your opponent. The idea is excellent, and I love the fact that it shows what cells the other player has solved - this makes the game slightly more interesting, since a slightly less proficient player can look at the cells that the other player has filled in. He knows that these can be derived from existing knowledge. Of course, it also opens up new strategies, such as filling a cell with a false number on purpose in order to fool the opponent.
Sudoku League, on the other hand, is a one-player game. Every day, a Sudoku puzzle is posted, and you can attempt to solve it on time once a day. If you succeed, you are given a score, depending on how well you fared compared to all others who played that day. The Sudoku League page keeps the scores for the day, for the month, and a history of every month. Now, this is something I like! It gives the game a reason - a purpose! And in addition to that, it has a great user interface. Simple, granted, but it makes do without switching between “enter number” and “enter temporary note” states. I hate that.
I’ve also tried a couple of downloadable Sudoku games in the hopes that they would offer something more than online versions. There are for example Ancient Sudoku and Sudoku Pagoda, or Sudoku Works. The developers of these games really should have read the previous blog entries concerning tech companies and Sudoku: they offer nothing interesting at all, in my opinion - only bells and whistles. (I have to make a footnote here: Sudoku Works really does have some interesting features and a good user interface. It brings added value, but not the kind I’m looking for when I’m playing casually.)
Sure, the graphics are neat, and sure, there is music and sound effects. But the actual games are pathetic: single-player Sudoku without a single reason to play them. You can only compete against yourself. This is great for online games - I don’t have high demands for games where I only want to waste a few minutes on an amusing puzzle; but for a downloadable game, I demand something interesting. A storyline, perhaps, like Mah Jong Quest? Or something to show a progression, at least.
I seem to recall that I found a downloadable multiplayer Sudoku game as well, but I never tested it; I refuse to play games that unnecessarily require me to register an account before I can see how it feels to play them.
In general, I feel that many downloadable Sudoku game developers are missing out on a great opportunity if they only aim for the people who want a graphically enhanced single-player game: I would love to play a story-based Sudoku or a good multiplayer one, and I doubt that I’m the only one.
I often get my blog topics from things that pop up in everyday discussions - amusing links, interesting comments and so forth. Basically, my originality and innovativity is sometimes lower than pre-teen humour; and today is no exception. There are two reasons for this blog entry’s existence: my picky taste, and a link to a Tasteline article. Don’t bother going there unless you know Swedish, though.
Say hello to Mr. Umami - the complex and elusive “fifth” flavour, which accompanies the four primary flavours of sweet, salty, sour and bitter. As this article explains, umami was discovered thousands of years ago and is used extensively in Asian cooking. It adds a depth of flavour which apparently brings out all the tastes present, unlike Western cuisine which concentrantes on fat as a flavour enhancer in order to bring out specific tastes.
So, where’s the beef? We’ll get to the literal beef later; in the mean time, here’s the interesting part: I’m a very picky eater. In some ways I’m an omnivore - I can eat half-spoiled food, I can eat burnt food, and so on. But there are many foods I either refuse to eat or choose not to eat, and among those are mushrooms, fish, shellfish, mashed potatoes, most types of cheese, vegetables like broccoli and some cabbages, and much more. I’m very selective with my food, but I don’t really view it as being spoiled. Not really. Spoiled implies (in my opinion) that one receives alternatives; if I’m faced with foods like this I prefer to simply go hungry. Maybe that’s just some weird masochistic tendency to punish myself for being spoiled though - who knows. But guess what? Most of the foodstuffs above contain large amounts of umami, according to the article above. Maybe there’s a connection?
Umami is the hip new word for something more common: glutamate, or glutamic acid. Apparently, there are three nucleotides that contribute most to the umami taste: inosinate, guanylate and, to a lesser degree, adenylate. According to this list, it seems that many of the foods above contain large amounts of glutamate, but also things I do like such as beef, pork, chicken, tomatoes and carrots. Maybe I’m just picky after all?
I have three different theories concerning this:
- Adenylate is abundant in fish and shellfish, and guanylate is abundant in plants; it might be possible that I have some sort of sensitivity toward these particular nucleotides.
- As you can read in the article mentioned in the second paragraph, umami can act in several ways: flavour partner, flavour balancer, flavour catalyst and flavour layerer. It might be possible that certain uses of umami simply does not work for me. Balancing or layering the tastes might be okay, but bringing out new flavours might be a complete no-no to my tastebuds.
- I’m a spoiled bastard who’s trying to avoid responsibility.
In all probability it’s a combination of all three options.
I may be a bit of a male chauvinist, but I believe in equality. One would think that this would be an easy road to follow: simply judge everyone the same, regardless of gender. Too bad that things are never as simple as that.
It seems that the girl gamer group Frag Dolls and the PMS Clan have protested against a Miss World Series of Video Games competition. I saw a comment that they were going to hold a male beauty contest in protest as well, but I saw no reference to this on their homepages. Either way, I applaud their protest; I like looking at girls as much as the next person, but gaming prowess should be the main concern when it comes to competitions like this.
Or should it? Why is it wrong to have a beauty contest? Humans are shallow, and we cannot pretend that looks don’t matter; why play the hypocrite and hide our interest in such competitions? Of course there’s a good reason against it: almost everyone agree that there should be more women in gaming, and competitions like this are sure to make many fence-sitting women sniff contemptuously and head toward the land of non-gaming amusements. (The opposite is true as well, but those women are in all probability a minority.)
However, among the comments to one of the articles I saw this comment:
“I wonder if they know that a lot people seriously believe that the only reason that both Frag Dolls and PMS have gotten all of the attention that they have been getting is because they are good looking girls first and gamers second.”
I wouldn’t put it quite as cynically as that, but I’m certain that the girls’ looks is a major part of their popularity - and it seems others agree. If this is true, it means that equality cannot be achieved simply by making the gaming scene equal; we are different, after all. It might draw more women, but equality would still be far off since people would compete for popularity on an unfair basis.
Hey, that’s the same situation as out in the bars!
Yesterday I saw a discussion about vaginas. One man started a thread about “front” and “back” vaginas - i.e., how far back in the groin they were located - and what the effects were on intercourse. The discussion was dull and uninteresting until one woman expressed her extreme dislike for the topic. I’m quoting:
In what way is it interesting to discuss advantages and disadvantages of things that are genetically determined?
Another woman joined in, commenting that:
Do you choose a partner from [these] criteria?? [...] Maybe we should alter our genitalia to fit the man??
At this point I definitely couldn’t keep my mouth shut! I replied with a caustic comment about women’s discussions concerning sizes of male private parts, and how potential hypocrisy was in action. One of the comments that followed mentioned that the penis size is of more importance than the angle of the vagina’s placement, and thus discussions of it are more relevant. This can be argued, of course, but it’s worth taking note of.
Why am I bringing up all of these different things?
I’m trying to show that I haven’t got the slightest clue how to be for equality, after all. There are too many variables and parameters, and except for simple cases like equal salary, it’s practically impossible to decide whether or not a point of view is actually equal. Would the gaming world be a more equal place if no beauty contests were held? Would the women who like to show off themselves be happy then? Would an equal gaming environment make both males and females happy, or would one group have to suffer? Should both males and females be allowed to discuss genetically determined body parts? Should none of them? Should we allow some parts to be discussed, since they have more of an effect?
What about the men and women who don’t fit in with the stereotypical cutout? Have we achieved equality if the ones outside normality don’t approve at all? Should we assume that people ought not have interests and traits that belong to the other gender?
I guess the question boils down to whether or not it’s truly equal to have an environment in which everyone is treated exactly the same. I really cannot say.
And don’t get me started on the bog of racial and cultural equality!
For years and years I have been writing small games and programs as a hobby. It all started when I received a C64; after a few weeks of playing games, my perceptive family got me a book on graphics and game programming. I was instantly hooked. The Amiga soon followed, and when I attended high scool I saved up to buy my neighbour’s 486 PC. Granted, I was mostly interested in using it for making music (can you imagine the possibilities when you go from 1MB RAM to 4MB?), but assembly programming was also a great treat. In 1998 I finally got myself a decent PC, and that’s when my Windows adventures started.
I could go on with my nostalgia, and mention old game projects: Time Fighters, the Wolverine game, Shit Invaders, Mega Brain Splashing 1 to 4, the Star Wars game, my GBA emulator, Satan Claus, Spank da Virgin - and so on. But that’s a story for another day. Instead, I’m going to mention my latest game project: Sheeplings.
Last year, I was interested in making a game engine, and posted a question about that project on the Indiegamer forums. Mildly heated discussions emerged, and I felt that many didn’t understand that I didn’t care about the faulty logic of developing a new engine when there are many others already available; I simply wanted a hobby project to waste my time on. But something good came from that discussion: I got inspired by their professional view, and started wondering what it would be like to produce something of interest to the general public - not just a game for my own amusement.
I abandoned my self-made OpenGL-powered engine, and started experimenting with BlitzMax for productivity reasons. I decided to outsource the graphics as much as possible. And I decided to make a game with ultra-cute and fluffy sheep. Enter Sheeplings.
If you feel inclined, click on any of these images to see screenshots of the development version of the game:
The premise is extremely simple: you play the part of the sheepdog, and you have the awesome power of…barking. You can bark to scare sheep, in order to get them where you want; that is the main idea of the gameplay.
The screenshots above show only extremely simple guide-the-sheep-to-some-area levels, intended as introduction for the fresh would-be-shepherd. Later on, eagles will soar menacingly overhead, and you have to make sure that your sheep stay alive. Wolves will of course also make an entrance, as well as other adversaries. I hope to put together a complete demo of the game as soon as possible, but until then I just might rant about all my fluffy sheep here instead.
Sheeplings status:
- Finished levels: 12 out of an unknown amount
- Main gameplay: 80%
- Graphical effects: 60% (More sparkling thingies are needed)
- Title screen: 30% (No-one gets to see the current one; it needs to be re-done)
- Map screen: 50% (But no graphics for it yet)
- Music: 30% (Songs are present but I need to work more on them)
- Sound effects: 10% (Mostly place-holder effects are present now)
On my way to work today I was listening to Stephen King’s third book in the Dark Tower series. As I strolled alongside the rolling hills, accompanied by the raspings of the monotonous voice actor, a sentence suddenly struck me: “Eddie picked Susannah up.” Okay, I admit that the sentence might have been “Roland picked Susannah up,” but Eddie was carrying her later. I didn’t pay close attention. The structure seemed very strange to my ears, either way.
At first I thought that I had encountered a split infinitive; I blame that on my five hours of sleep. Of course it wasn’t - it was a phrasal verb. When I got to work, I had to look up a list of phrasal verbs, to check whether or not it was separable. Indeed it was. And the only reference I could find regarding object placement was that long objects sound better after the particle, and that pronouns must be placed between the verb and the particle.
Susannah is definitely not a long object, so nothing indicates that “X picked Y up” is wrong in this case. Still, it felt intuitively erroneous when I heard it. What to do? Ignore this? Humbly admit that English isn’t my native tongue, so I have no right to comment on what sounds right and wrong? Ha!
Time to bring out the ultimate statistical tool: Google. Languages are fluid and ever-changing, and a good way to find a large set of statistical data is to search for various constructs and compare the results. (I’ve had teachers in Linguistics as well as English grammar who used this method when controversies arose. So I guess it has to have some scientific relevance.)
Here are some interesting results:
- “picked up the knife” = 24 400 hits
- “picked the knife up” = 177 hits
- “picked up John” = 12 500 hits
- “picked John up” = 199 hits
- “picked up Mary” = 488 hits
- “picked Mary up” = 91 hits
- “picked up Susannah” = 1 hit
- “picked Susannah up” = 4 hits
I know that the last result is too small to say anything at all, but I find it ironic that the exact phrase I was questioning is the only one where the “false” example is more popular than the “correct” one. Either way, I guess the general consensus is that objects more often than not ought to be placed after the phrasal verb.
I wonder why Stephen King chose to place it before the particle. As a non-native speaker I can’t say if it brings an emotional change to the sentence. Maybe putting more emphasis on Susannah makes her the center of the action? Or maybe it’s the preferred style for small sentences without following adverbs and whatnot?
Or maybe he just wanted to avoid the idiomatic interpretation that Eddie was picking her up, as in hitting it off with her. Silly bugger. They just killed a guardian! Eddie was covered in dead white worms! Not the most romantic setting, eh? And besides: they were a couple already.
Last week I attended Sweden Rock Festival - a place filled with excellent hard rock bands and drunken debauchery. Now, why should you care? That’s what I asked myself: “Sure I have a blog, but I can’t just fill it with incoherent ramblings about Deep Purple and Alice Cooper and other great bands; there has to be some substance as well or people will just get bored.”
That’s when it struck me: there was one topic that span throughout the entire festival; one topic that could bind everything together.
The power of steel, and the might of our ever-present Sword…of Doom! 
Just look at how happy I made everyone who got to pose with the Sword…of Doom!
Sorry, but I had to censor a few of the pics.
I know that I’ve probably screwed up the layout of this page with all these pics, but I hope you feel the power of the Sword…of Doom anyway. Unfortunately I can’t show all the wonderful pics of people posing with the Sword…of Doom; these are just pics of unknown people who can’t complain that I’m showing the world lousy pictures of them.
Oh, and since http://www.tshirthell.com/ is all out of the t-shirt below, I just had to make one myself. I rock like a big stone.
And pink is cool, dammit!
As I was randomly browsing some blogs, I found a reference to a theory about Game 5.0. Very briefly summarized, these are the different game types, according to the blog entry:
- Game 1.0: abstract contest-based games like Chess or sports games.
- Game 2.0: games where the gameplay becomes a means to explore the game world. Emotions and a storyline can have an impact on the player’s choices. Examples of 2.0 games are GTA, Zelda and Resident Evil.
- Game 3.0: these games turn toward the introspective, letting the gamer himself define conditions for winning and losing; emotions can also become more important. Here we have games like Animal Crossing, The Sims and The Movies.
- Game 4.0: social games, where interaction becomes integral for the experience. The player becomes an actor instead of just a player. Games like World of Warcraft, Second Life and Planetarion are examples of these.
The numbers, the blog entry continues, represent how games evolve - how they progress. However, new game types don’t eliminate the previous types:
“No, the key point here is talking about how the fictional element of a video game has gone from an abstract representation of something to shoot at to a multi-layered player-created world, and how this fundamentally changes the relationship of player, game, goal, gameplay and so on. It highlights how the terminology and ideas that underpin one version do not necessarily hold for another.”
All in all, an excellent idea and a very good summary of different game types, in my opinion. As a side note, it seems that others also characterize game/player types in a similar manner.
Since people are lazy by nature, I assume that you haven’t read this far; and if you have, you probably didn’t read the original blog entry. That’s too bad, ’cause there are a lot of good points there. For example, the closing words:
Now who wants to have a go at the fun part?
Game 5.0
In the comments I noted that someone was of the opinion that
Game 5.0 will be art that can only be presented as a game. You might look to Electroplankton for an early example.
I think I would have to disagree with that. Electroplakton is, in my view, definitely of type 3. And, come to think of it, the progression from Game 1.0 to Game 4.0 seems to be more and more player involvement - moving from abstract simple goals to meta-gaming and new forms of interaction. I would rather place Electroplankton and other art games on a different line of evolution, since they move away from interaction toward spectator experiences.
I started thinking about what I would view as Game 5.0, and I came to the conclusion that social gaming where the game’s rules are broken would be what I consider Game 5.0. Sometimes a strange little riddle like This is Not Pron or Zest pops up; games where you have to use real-world knowledge in order to solve an Internet puzzle. Those kinds of games beg you to break the rules and think outside the box in order to crack the game; they also invite people to discuss their solutions in order to advance. Of course, nowadays everyone knows that these are in fact the game’s rules, so it’s not a particularly transcending experience anymore. But imagine the first time you encounter(ed) a riddle like that, and you ask around if anyone else know what this is all about. That is what I believe Game 5.0 is like!
This is Not Pron is a simple example of the concept. There are other instances of games that have spanned many websites, placing obscure references and leads that you can follow. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember a single concrete example of a game like that, but another example came to mind: the numbers in Lost - and the whole show, for that matter.
The Lost numbers have caused people to make up great theories and discuss endlessly about the properties of the numbers that feature in the series. I’d claim that this is a great example of an emergent social game that turned out even better than the writers had imagined - and also an example of the concepts of Game 5.0.
Now, how would one make a computer game out of something like this?
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