The latest issue of the Escapist, which is chock-full of good pieces, features an article by EA’s Rod Humble on the role of rulesets as art, a topic which holds a special place in my heart.

The article begins by talking about Senet, the oldest known board game in existence, dating back to Egyptian times. The cool thing about Senet is that while tomb paintings indicate the number of players, and archaeological digs have uncovered the toolset of board, sticks, and pieces, the rules of Senet were not preserved and remain unknown, rendering the game virtually unplayable.

(I say “virtually,” because there are several historians who have, through their research, devised potential rules for Senet. A version of the game — operating under one of these theorized rulesets — appears online, thanks to the British Museum.)

On the topic of rulesets, I’ve also recently found the blog of Greg Trefry, student at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and designer at Gamelab (formerly gameLab). Greg describes himself as a man obsessed with rulesets, which he uses to create a series of Urban Mini Games. These are big games with very minimal toolsets, and simple but specific rules, allowing for spontaneous play in urban environments. My personal favorite is Parasite, a race to a fixed destination made intriguing by several provisos in the rules of movement.

Rod Humble’s Escapist article, the story of Senet, and Greg Trefry’s Urban Mini Games all demonstrate not only the importance of rulesets in game design, but also the crucial role they play in the role of game design as artistic expression. Arguably, the most important facet of interactivity is its constraints. Just as boundaries help define our everyday world, limitations on interaction make one game distinct from another.

Absolute freedom is absolutely boring, and in games we rely on rules, on boundaries, to allow us to discover new ways of interacting. It is through rules — and not through their abolition — that players realize freedoms.

Coming Soon: Queer Interactivity and the Gothic in Video Games, Reinventing the Forum, My (Abridged) Ludography, and An Awesome Mind Puzzle.

Japanese developers continue to understand the importance of simplicity in portable game titles, even when most American developers don’t. This explains why a series like Nintendo’s “bit Generations” can go completely unmentioned in North America. At least we have Kotaku’s Brian Ashcroft to tell us everything cool that happens in the east. From the news piece:

This past Saturday, Nintendo put its “art games” on display in Tokyo. Sixty Game Boy Micros were set up in Shibuya Parco’s basement, demoing new “Bit Generations” titles. Simple puzzle games rich in color and sound, the games included Dotstream, Boundish, Dialhex, Coloris, Digidrive and Orbital.

According to Kotaku, these games are set for release in Japan before the end of the year. And what about the rest of the world? When will I be able to get my hands on stateside releases? So desperate was I to know more about these titles that I used Babelfish to translate a Famitsu article on the topic. Even in splotchy english, some of these titles still sound tasty. My favorites are Orbital — “Controlling the track of the planet with gravity… It makes the outer space represent.” — and DigiDrive — “the action puzzle game which designates traffic control as motif.”

Between these titles and Drill Dozer, the GBA might be in the midst of a revival. Huzzah for non-franchised titles and innovation! ^_^

Nintendo’s 60 Game Boy Micro Demo In Shibuya from Kotaku.

Official bit Generations Press Release via Kotaku.

Famitsu article on bit Generations via Kotaku.

Going to wrap up my Britain experiences, before I have another journey to talk about as well.

York was also home to England’s National Railway Museum, which features a large number of actual trains from the country’s long history of… trains. I forgot to mention that before, but it was still worth mentioning.

From York, we bussed down to London, where we were able to stay with Johnny and his flatmates for three nights. For a number of reasons, we didn’t get to spend that much time with Johnny, but we’ll get to see him back in America, so that’ll be nice.

London’s home to a lot of very big museums, most of which are free, so it was a great opportunity to see a lot of wild and crazy stuff. The British Museum is home to a lot of imperial acquisitions, including the Rosetta Stone, which I was pretty jazzed about seeing.

While in London, we visited Greenwich, birthplace of the Prime Meridian, and GMT. In contrast to the big-city, busy busy feel of London, Greenwich was very pretty. We checked out the National Maritime Museum and The Royal Observatory. Before we left Greenwich, I purchased a compass, which we’ve since discovered is in no way accurate. It’s pretty, but now I’ll never know where North is.

Returning to the city, we saw the standard sights of London, like Big Ben, and Parliament (”Isn’t that Parliament? Isn’t that what they blew up in V for Vendetta?). We took a trip up in the London Eye, which is essentially a giant ferris wheel, except taken much more seriously. It offered a beautiful view of London, from around 130 metres (about 425 feet) in the air.

We also made special trips to Harrods, and Hamley’s, the UK’s biggest toy store. The sheer size of both of them made my head hurt, but good god was it fun to run around.

After London, we bussed our way to Bath, a former Roman city which still contains the ruins of ancient bathhouses. Bath is most well known, it seems, for its connections to the works of Jane Austen, and the image of aristocratic luxury associated with the area. Bonnie and I treated ourselves to breakfast tea in the Pump Room. In the evening, we took in the “Bizarre Bath” tour, which involved no real factual information, but did involve hilarity, and the drowning of a stuffed bunny. It was a strange tour, but a fun one.

Our last stop in Britain was the city of Cardiff, in Wales. Cardiff’s a coastal city, but weather and developing sickness kept us from enjoying it to the fullest extent. As such, we had a great excuse to take it easy on our last few days in Britain. We found an amazing little Indian diner across from our hostel, and spent our last evening eating ice cream in front of a TV, watching episodes of Friends, and a documentary on The Dark Side of Hippos. It was so nice.

In less-than-stellar condition, we returned to Dublin. Bus from Cardiff city centre to Cardiff Airport: 30 minutes. Downtime in Cardiff Airport: 2.5 hours. Duration of flight: 45 minutes. Bus ride from Dublin Aiport to city centre: 1 hour. Bus ride from city centre to UCD campus: 30 minutes. 12 days of traveling proved to be a bit more taxing on our health (and sanity) then expected, but we had an amazing time.

Next up: Amsterdam.

It figures that I finally remove Planet Gamecube from my bookmarks, and it’s at that time that they choose to put up their most interesting piece of content in nearly a year.

Jonathan Metts recently had a chance to interview Henk Rogers, president and CEO of Blue Planet Software and founder of The Tetris Company (”TTC”), the company which handles all licensing of the Tetris name and fundamental design. TTC formed in 1996, which means that all “official” versions of Tetris which appeared after its inception were regulated by TTC and its guidelines. This includes Tetris DX, Tetrisphere, Tetris Worlds, and the recent Tetris DS, among many, many others. Below, Rogers discusses licensing the famous franchise:

We choose partners that we think can move the IP forward, in other words make Tetris a better game. So we have two kinds of licenses: ones that makes us money, and one that helps move Tetris forward, and Nintendo is one that actually does both. On the ones where the licensee is just in it for the money, we tell them what to do. We have a minimum bar that we create every year, called the Tetris Guideline, and that guideline is the minimum spec for which someone has to create Tetris.

To be sure, there are problems with IP’s like Tetris; for the most part, officially licensed Tetris games have been no more than near-direct copies of the original idea, with more eye candy and perhaps a peripheral mode or feature here or there. Then again, look at Tetris DS, which boasts a variety of new concepts built on the absolute minimum of constants: the seven tetrominoes.

I suppose Tetris is fun to think about in a design sense, because of its utter simplicity and massive popularity. Let’s face it, “falling-piece” puzzle games are a dime-a-dozen these days. Tetris distinguishes itself from the pack because of its use of tetrominoes, instead of bubbles, or blobs, or pills, or whatever. But what if Tetris hadn’t been based around the concept of falling blocks? How else could Tetris have worked, and did it shift the paradigm?

Also, on the topic of Tetris, I thought this was pretty cool. Same thing happens with DDR arrows, and I just heard someone in a podcast discussing a similar effect occurring after long rounds of Geometry Wars.

Tetris from the Top: An Interview with Henk Rogers via Kotaku.

I think I have a love/hate relationship with New York — that is to say that I think I will have a love/hate relationship with New York very, very soon. In an interview from 2001, Eric Zimmerman — co-founder and CEO of gameLab — had this to say about the city that never sleeps (or is that Vegas?):

We’re working in New York City, which is a complete wasteland as far as the game industry is concerned–but we’d like to counter the California-based culture of US gaming with new kinds of aesthetic languages, new genres of narrative and cultural content, and (of course) new forms of gameplay.

Of course, five years down the line, the situation hasn’t changed. The New York industry scene is still dry, with only a few notable exceptions. If NYC is to be the potential front for innovation in western game design, as Zimmerman suggests above, it’s still got a ways to go.

But then, in an entirely selfish way, I wonder if I want New York to become the scene for innovative game design in the US. I’ve spent my entire life on the east coast of America, and especially after this semester in the perpetually-gray city of Dublin, I feel like I’m going to want a little less cloud in my life after college, and a little more sun.

Even thinking about this makes me feel a little guilty. After all, I’ve felt more than a little resentment regarding the bias the games industry has towards the west coast (E3 2007 in Philly, everyone!), and I wholly acknowledge my own duplicity when it comes to this problem. Still, I can understand the draw many companies feel to the warm west, and wonder if maybe the gloomy weather acts as a sort of filter, which ensures a large number of backward-thinking developers will depart for the other side of country to leave the forward-thinkers in Manhattan.

Or maybe there’s something in the water…

Update: Okay, maybe I was being a bit harsh in the above post, with regards to the state of creative game design on the west coast. I completely forgot about Cloud, and, more importantly, the MFA program through which it’s being developed. At this point, I’m not really thinking about grad school, but USC’s Interactive Media Division seems to be doing some pretty great things in game design. Just food for thought. -sj

Update 2: We’ve heard from the east coast, and the west coast. But what about Texas? Gamasutra tackles this question in its latest feature, Can Austin Become the Hollywood of Games?, a wrapup from one particularly lively panel from the recent SxSW conference. -sj

Game design veteran Warren Spector has parts one and two of a four-part piece up on the Escapist, available here and here. It’s not pessimism, exactly, but more like caution and apprehension, with regards to the future of the video game industry, and the position in which it finds itself in the year 2006. The piece is an honest look at the potential pitfalls for video games in the years ahead. This isn’t techno-jargon, or industry-only leet-speak. It’s a clean, straightforward read, and a worthwhile one. Start here.

My favorite part is actually in the comments for the article, where this enlightened individual mistakes Warren Spector - lead designer on a number of A-list games - with Arlen Spector - Republican senator of Pennsylvania, pictured above. Good times.