You are venturing into the world of serious games. Humans have always played games to sharpen intellect, gain skills, refine tactics, understand the ramifications of strategy, and entertain themselves. I'm currently helping to author a paper about the security requirements of serious games, so this subject is fresh in my mind.
As hunter-gatherers, humans allowed their children to play hide and seek, use child-sized weapons, and hunt small game. These were practice games for adulthood. This concept of transforming necessary military skills and learning them by games, either as children or later as adults, has continued throughout human history. In the 1800s, the Prussians added to the physical games with tabletop (or sandtable top) intellectual games that abstracted military units and allowed future officers to play without having to use real people, animals, and supplies. That game was called Kriegspiel and has continued to evolve to this day. Chess is sometimes considered the original Kriegspiel. Most historians agree it is derived from Chaturanga, invented in the Gupta Empire somewhere between 280 and 550 CE. Modern chess was formalized from the derivative of shatranj (Muslim version from the original) in about 900-1000 CE in southern Europe. As a game, chess trains the player to think ahead, understand the consequences of their actions, and generally improves the mind. In the age of Industrial Warfare new weapons, new logistics, new transportation, new communication methods, and the sheer size of armies required games to understand the bitter lessons learned in wars. These games were physical games to learn how all of these factors interact in the physical world before they could be abstracted to the tabletop as Kriegspiel. As late as the buildup to the US entry into WWII, the Army held huge maneuver exercises in the South to practice and understand how war was already being fought in Europe. Those large, physical games still take place, but as computers have become more and more important parts of the military, the games have added computers. These computers have themselves effectively created a fifth domain for military conflict (after Land, Sea, Air, and Space) which most authorities call Cyberspace. The interesting aspect of this is that, increasingly, the other domains are being abstracted into Cyberspace. A pilot might either fly a physical airplane as part of an exercise or they may fly a simulator. Either way, their actions are translated to a scorekeeping mechanism that is automated. There is an interesting trend within the videogame community where players create modifications of the game they love playing. I get Amazon Local emails because of my Prime membership, and one offer I have seen a lot, recently, is a course to teach a child how to create mods for Minecraft. Modding Minecraft involves learning Java, understanding the data storage scheme of the game, and understanding the "physics engine" of Minecraft. This all translates to skills useful in programming and software systems engineering. Mods for other games are similiar in nature. The bottom line here is that games have been one of mankind's way of learning and researching for a very long time. Some games are more valuable for learning specific things while others are more entertaining. Just as not everybody needs and wants to do "productive" work, not everybody needs and wants to play strictly serious games like agent-based simulation (yes, I am saying that many of the folks on this list are playing games in their work and research). There is a spectrum of entertainment that describes games - some games are strictly business and some games are a little business with lots of entertainment. Entertainment can be necessary to entice players to the game to learn. Sometimes, the entertainment becomes the primary goal of the players and any learning is purely happenstance. Personally, I like games because they help me hone my bad guy skills. In a very few cases, I learn new real-world attacks from the game content, usually from seeing other people try things that I assumed would not work. More often, I figure out how to use the game functions to win more easily - something that equates directly to using a system with computers to attack itself. Occasionally, I learn how to break the computer program behind the game in a way that works for non-game computer programs. Ray Parks Consilient Heuristician/IDART Old-Timer V: 505-844-4024 M: 505-238-9359 P: 505-951-6084 NIPR: rcpa...@sandia.gov<mailto:rcpa...@sandia.gov> SIPR: rcpar...@sandia.doe.sgov.gov<mailto:rcpar...@sandia.doe.sgov.gov> (send NIPR reminder) JWICS: dopa...@doe.ic.gov<mailto:dopa...@doe.ic.gov> (send NIPR reminder) On Jul 5, 2015, at 9:44 PM, cody dooderson wrote: This is a very interesting subject. I often wonder if Im doing anything useful for society and/or the universe. I think the answer is probably no, but the future is notoriously hard to predict. It seems like most useful inventions are born from silly fascinations. For instance, fire was probably once thought of as a frivolous and sometimes dangerous magic trick. Same with music, microscopes, gun powder, and quantum physics. As for video games, I wonder if they will ever become useful, for anything other than training drone pilots. I hope so. Any way, I hope you all figure out whats useful before my mid-life crisis. Cody Smith On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 9:09 PM, Nick Thompson <nickthomp...@earthlink.net<mailto:nickthomp...@earthlink.net>> wrote: But Gary! How do you make that distinction ... the difference between the innocent useless and the harmful useless? I took a whack at that in the article I sent, but I never felt I nailed it. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com<mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>] On Behalf Of Gary Schiltz Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 10:06 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] DOH! Well, you’re in good company here :-) Actually, I also distinguish between “the useful stuff” that we do and the less useful, but I suspect that both are necessary. We're complex creatures that become bored doing only the useful stuff, and our brains need for us to do “the fun stuff” too. Maybe it’s somehow like sleep, nothing obviously productive is occuring, but it appears to perform some necessary physiological functions (cleanup of waste products, other?) as well as leading to various conceptual leaps that don’t seem to come as much in conscious thought. Now, the *real* bullshit of constantly new stuff just to get us to buy it, I’m more dubious about that. Maybe in the same way that the arms race and SDI led us to create new useful stuff, creating endless new crap has some useful function. I don’t know. “Give us bread, but give us roses" On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 8:51 PM, Nick Thompson <nickthomp...@earthlink.net<mailto:nickthomp...@earthlink.net>> wrote: > So's my wife! And I love her dearly! And after all, I made my living > studying the behavior of crows. I enjoy bull shit and bullshitters. > > But still, Gary, are you committed to the notion that there is no useful > distinction to be made between bullshit and productive labor? And is there > nothing queer about the idea that some people get to earn their living doing > bullshit, while others have to do productive labor? > > Nick > > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > -----Original Message----- > From: Friam > [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com<mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>] On > Behalf Of Gary > Schiltz > Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 9:36 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] DOH! > > My god, it’s full of…. BULLSHIT! > > Well, making things and growing food are great, but it would be a lot less > interesting world if that’s all we did. Certainly Santa Fe would be. > > Gary [husband of an artist] > > On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 8:29 PM, Nick Thompson > <nickthomp...@earthlink.net<mailto:nickthomp...@earthlink.net>> wrote: >> Dear Friammers, >> >> >> >> I am late to this conversation but it has just impinged on something >> I have been thinking about a LOT. I used to be sure that there was a >> firm distinction between productive labor and … to use the technical >> term … bullshit. Growing food and making automobile engines were >> examples of productive labor; designing this year’s fashions in >> automobiles and clothing, that was an example of bull shit. It truly >> disgusts me that the automobile industry designs a pretty good car >> every decade or so, and then, stops making them because, because, >> after all, there always must be something new. (Oh what has Subaru >> done the Forrester and Volvo to the Volvo Wagon? Once they comfortable >> boxes in which to carry people around. >> Now they both look like outsized running shoes with gun slits for windows. >> That’s the essence of bullshit. LL Beans had a pretty good winter coat a >> decade back; can’t get it any more. More bullshit. >> >> >> >> Now gambling and gaming in any form (e.g., investment banking) seem >> to me to lean pretty heavily on the side of bullshit. But I have >> begun to worry that, one of these days, I am going to wake up having >> realized in a dream that EVERYTHING is bullshit. Certainly that’s >> the direction that complexity thinking leads us. Or, at least, to >> the realization that because there is nowhere near enough productive >> labor to go around, most of us have to paid to do bullshit to keep us >> from doing real harm. Anyway, Penny and I published something about >> that >> 35 years back. Perhaps some of you like to look at it. It’s called, “A >> Utopian Perspective on Ecology and >> Development.” For all I know, you might its first readers! The authors >> would love to hear from you. >> >> >> >> Nick >> >> >> >> Nicholas S. Thompson >> >> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology >> >> Clark University >> >> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ >> >> >> >> From: Friam >> [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com<mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>] On >> Behalf Of Marcus >> Daniels >> Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 6:21 PM >> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group >> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] DOH! >> >> >> >> Arlo writes: >> >> >> >> “It is not some secret mystical human experience, nor does it have to >> be some weird pop-culture cult, but just another way to spend some free >> time.” >> >> >> >> I suppose the distinction I’m making is between open vs. closed or leading >> vs. following. With so much unknown in the world, why use hours of >> wakefulness to enumerate the states of a finite state machine? In what way >> is there anything to discover from a game? I appreciate there is a craft >> to making a storyline and a craft to in designing the graphics and >> physics engines, and of course the graphic arts in designing the visual >> appearance >> of characters. But I appreciate the story like I’d appreciate literature >> or art – I am not an expert in those things, and so I am not a participant – >> I am merely a consumer. On the technology side, I can acknowledge that >> gaming software is sometimes impressive. But why _bother_ writing it >> _except_ to sell it? Another way to ask the question is how is it more >> significant to be a gamer than, say, a reader of fiction or even a >> moviegoer? How is being a gamer a Thing? >> >> >> >> Marcus >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at >> cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe >> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe > at St. John's College to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe > at St. John's College to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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