I didn’t write any research questions before I started this project, which is very unscientific of me. Lucky I’m actually just a game designer.
But seriously folks, what was I thinking about with this project? It may be the same old story…
Clearly this fits into my larger project of creating variations of specific games as a way to investigate “how design works” (at least for me). The argument is always that doing “the same thing” while changing certain variables is a way to understand or illustrate something about the nature of design. It even sounds mildly scientific put that way, but I think it’s true. PONGS is this, BREAKSOUT is this, Indie Bungle 2 is this, SNAKISMS is this, Sibilant Snakelikes is this, and the ongoing Ancient Greek Punishment series is this.
In all cases I think it allows you to see and think about what it means to design from a set of propositions/ideas on shifting ground. And seeing how you (and by you I mean I) accommodate and bring into agreement the ideas is also looking at what it means to think as a designer.
I’m translating Ancient Greek Punishments into chess, so this fits into the broader translation project I’ve been looking at for a fairly long time now, perhaps starting with Sibilant Snakelikes? Or earlier? Actually I guess the Indie Bungle did this before then. It’s of course related to the above (translation is a form of formal variation), but more specific. This is the thing that makes the project interesting because it forces questions and comparisons between the two “domains” - “how am I going to express this idea with this set of pieces?” Chess is great for this.
One thing that kind of shocks me with both this and UI edition has been how “easy” it’s been to do this? Or at least I’m really surprised that I haven’t run into a scenario where I just cannot express an idea in the new medium. I guess it could be that that the ideas in the punishments are sufficiently universal that they’re just highly expressible? It could be that as I work I shift to different levels of abstraction to get around problems of specificity? Anyway I think it’s an interesting “thing”.
I mean, it’s the corollary of the above (and maybe doesn’t deserve its own section), but I think working with chess specifically is a very useful and interesting project of its own. It’s so well known, it’s in many ways regarded as the Ur-game, and so it’s a great material to think through expressively and to see how it can be used as a language to express other ideas. It’s something I imagine I’ll continue working with.