Re: PBM design and formulae - a fresh start

From: gilette@obsidian.unice.fr (Gilette Serge)

Date: Tue, 06 Jul 1993 07:35:15 +0000

In article <C9oxAD.BL7@cs.vu.nl>, saschreu@cs.vu.nl (Schreuder SA) writes:

|> But what is the point in playing against people who aren't able to do
|> simple calculations? You are saying they aren't even able to calculate
|> distances using Pythagoras, because then they need to subtract, square,
|> add and taking a square root!

a) Not everybody knows about Pythagorus. It can seem weird when you never
   encounter people not coming from a science university, but it's true.
   I bet less than 10% of the people  heard of that theoreme, AND do
   remember it. I can tell some of my friends are law students and never
   heard of pythagorus and (this is leading to point b) ) are a challenge
   playing games anyway. Also not knowing about pythagorus DOESN'T mean
   you know nothing of simple calculations, you just don't know the theoreme.

b) what's the point of playing against people who aren't able to do simple
   calculation ? Well for you there seem to be two kind of people :
   the bright interresting one who knows about square roots and the dumb
   silly uninterresting ones who don't care of maths. I won't argue for long
   but the best GO japanese players, never studied anything but GO since
   they are 5 years old, and i bet that :
     a) they'll beat you anytime, even with your mathematical skills, and their
        lack of
     b) the game will be interresting

|> And besides, the rulebook example is not an extreme example. You want us
|> no to have the rules, because some players _can't_ use them. What is
|> the difference with not publishing the rules, because some players can't
|> read them? Ever thought about foreign players? English isn't my prime
|> language, but I have to use it. I'm sure there are many people in europe
|> who aren't able to read this group, because they don't understand english.
|> But you certainly won't tell us to stop reading news, because they can't
|> either, will you?

Don't be so extreme in your position. When you want to set a game for a group
of people, you'd like, even if it's not possible, to make everybody have a
rough equal chance of performing well. If you know you have no chance of
doing anything interresting, you won't appreciate the game and that's not the
point. GAMING = FUN. So if you have a group of players and one of them is not
speaking the tongue, everybody is to make efforts for the game to be fun and
interresting for everyone. Actually with Graham and some french speaking friends
we had a stellar conquest game with some diplomacy and that when smooth because
everybody mind was set on having fun, not taking advantages on the language
difficulties. What i'm trying to say is that there is a kind of moral in gaming.
You have to make the game interresting and fun (and by the way i never found
funny to solve equations)

|> So I'll post a new article, stating that we should not use english,
|> because some people can't read it. :-) I'll be flamed a lot!
|>
|> All games need some basics skills. We play tennis, while some people
|> aren't able to. We use english, while some people can't understand it.
|> So: We publish formulas, even when some people can't work with them.

No you publish formulas because YOU know how to use them :)

Serge Gilette  | University of Nice |There's no difference between theory
------------------------------------|and practice in theory, but often a
phone: 92.94.26.41                  |great deal of difference between
email: gilette@obsidian.unice.fr    |theory and practice in practice!

References

Re: PBM design and formulae - a fresh start
rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace)
Sat, 03 Jul 1993 11:32:44 +0000
Re: PBM design and formulae - a fresh start
gym@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Graham Matthews)
Sat, 03 Jul 1993 17:11:09 +0000
Re: PBM design and formulae - a fresh start
saschreu@cs.vu.nl (Schreuder SA)
Mon, 05 Jul 1993 11:59:00 +0000