wikidot doesn't allow scripting. but I found a way around (it works for all paragraph not a single term - so shoudn't be many terms at once).
it takes the current explanation from the glossary
http://musicgames.wikidot.com/glossary:first-rule-of-music-games
2019-03-10
This time I'll not get into detail, but the meeting was quite difficult for me as there were so many different approaches to what games are and what music is… ;)
But from march meetings I'll add recordings https://soundcloud.com/odolany/sets/march-meetings
notrightmusic's Room Score was played with added mechanics: starting point was established and one person didn't watch the Conductor and was to guess on what place in the room the piece was ended.
For the Q&A, I was thinking that no one would be able to ask more than one question. I wouldn't want it to become an extensive dialogue. But I have some doubts about it now, for the reasons you mentioned and also for another reason.
Thinking about it from another level of distance now, what I'm mainly hoping the game does is this:
description
imagination
execution
comparison
I want it to be simple enough that it moves very simply from one to the next. I could imagine stealing some of the mechanics of betting, for example on horse races. (I would need to research these.) Or it could simply be that each person fills in their own chart and any discussion would happen after the actions have been executed. If it were done after a break (allowing for preparation) and each person was responsible for his or her own numbers, there would be minimal down time. Based on whatever happens in the first round, the players could make additional constraints or rules for a second round.
Thanks for thinking it through with me!
As getting design feedback is an important part of this website, I'll throw that in of my first impressions from playing:
1) Consider adding keyboard input. Maybe sth like an octave of:
w e - t y u
A S D F G H J
If you want to reach a good score …
Do you reeaally want to force people who are bored with lower levels to sit through them to get high score?
Adjust the scoring for maximum fun and minimum "additional necessary hints" as the one above ;).
3*) As there is so much freedom for the player, this game is the closest to the main focus of our wiki. So I'll add that too: maybe it would be fun to make it a bit more creatively involving? You deal with sounds sequence, if players were adding notes to the sequence one by one the game would be… semi-compositional ;)
Thanks for adding your creations to the wiki.
Afraid though that the jigsaw puzzle here is actually outside of scope of the library as it can't be used to perform music.
I'll prepare for it a place in some other area of the page.
Would it be helpful to list some possible (non-musical) actions as prompts?
Helpful although dangerously suggestive. Maybe more elaboration for "how to describe your sound" could do. In our test most common form was similar to a 'long title'. Your "rolling or dropping" example is informative just at this level - as you would describe the action more than sound itself.
It would also be good that the performer not know the guesses in advance.
Huh, we were taking care of that (guess it seemed obvious/natural gaming-wise), but at the same time it might be what extends the downtime.
Another option would be that each player has a pin or a tag or a marker of a different color…
For game it might be better, but as for the contents and connotations this is some kind of a revolt ;). Numerology, reducing sounds to digits, this is strong in the game now, but surely it might be also about space, why not…
one of several different activities…
As for the context, I remember thinking that this is one of 'after-the-break' games. This is quite a common type, where players need to invent or plan something out, so it's best to hint them their task before the break, so they are prepared at the start of the game itself. We didn't do it like that, so there was some waiting with just that.
I think having a Q&A section before the sound might make the guesses less random or luck based.
This might be interesting. Do you have a procedure in mind? There are risks of slowing the flow down and it's hard to quickly introduce some dynamics here, like ways to get informational advantage over other players, trade-offs with the risk of helping others more than yourself etc.
Thanks so much for this feedback!
I should clarify (probably within the instructions as well) that the sounds don't have to be music-based, though they could be. It could be any action that makes noise. The performer can have more or less control over the sound, depending on what they choose. I'm not sure how that plays out in terms of strategy. It doesn't have to be skill based, at least for the performer. They could drop or roll something on the floor or a table, for example. I don't think performance skill is a great advantage, since no one is guessing the duration of their own performance. Would it be helpful to list some possible (non-musical) actions as prompts?
About the dead time, I like the idea of each person keeping their own score card. It would also be good that the performer not know the guesses in advance. Another option would be that each player has a pin or a tag or a marker of a different color, and puts their guess onto a timeline score sheet. Then the actual time could be marked on there and you could visually see who came closest. I think I prefer this option, since it gets away from extra calculation time, but I'd be interested in your thoughts. In both cases you would still need a timekeeper.
I was trying to think about incentive structures. For me, this is more of a mini-game or activity, probably not something to be played for an extended period of time on its own, so I'm reluctant to make it more complicated to learn to play. It could stand separately as one of several different activities. Or it could possibly be one component of a larger game.
I think having a Q&A section before the sound might make the guesses less random or luck based. The people who are guessing could ask the performer one question each before committing to a guess. I'm not sure if that would increase interaction or create new timing issues.
Hook I mentioned is not a sharp one, and would serve mostly to take attention away from music actually.
The game currently lets different participants play experimental music by making it easy for those that don't like it. You can listen intently, but if you don't want to (or can't) you may just focus on imagined seconds [;)] and the activity gets less awkward for you this way… By distracting the listener it also takes the stress of the player.
I don't really see the attention hook, as you guess before the player plays, and all is left is to watch the clock, listen or don't. There is some attention to a pretty meaningless number, not to the music. As for tweaking, the thing with these simple, single idea games is that tweaking it often is just making a whole new game. Maybe to focus attention to the music the thing to guess should be something which cannot be simply measured by a clock but requires active listening on part of other players? Guess the meter? Count number of some kind of sound?
As for potential players and their skill/experience there might be few groups to consider, non-musicians, classically trained and non-classically trained musicians. For people in that last group (e.g. rock musicians etc.) it might be the most interesting, as they have "chops" but otherwise don't have many opportunities to play solo.
And I feel like book-keeping serves as an "attention hook" and it influences how people play and how people listen. Making a series of ultra-short recitals would be socially much different. But indeed I think with some tweaks this activity could be accessible to many more people.
The guessing part, without any mechanism or incentive to give clues, it's pretty much blind. It's an activity that pretends to be a game, but really boils down to individual presentations, either some ad lib improv or some stuff someone have been working on lately, but if it is just that, why not give everyone a minute or a half, and ditch the useless bookeeping? Perhaps blind guessing is fun for some, for me though it would take some more meaningful clues to make it interesting. There is also skill level issue. I think that the one game we played in the hut wasn't particularly fun because of varying skill levels. I for one don't have the chops to play anything of interest solo. Perhaps could work in some context, probably with a group of somewhat skilled players with something to show.
From my experience, game design is quite often about projected possible subjectivities and purely practical stuff. It's all about streamlining the experience so let's not worry if remarks get detailed. All might be taken into consideration, but bear in mind that there is a certain essence of every game that should rather be preserved with all the possible changes around it. What's more, proper design should bring a perfect exposure to this very area of the game.
The dynamics of "Imagined seconds" are really interesting. All participants focus for some time just at one player who performs a contained part. That feature is unique, refreshing and also game-wise weird as there is practically no interaction at the core.
It might seem counter-intuitive then to suggest:
1. Moving away from one table filled in by Timekeeper. When everyone has own chart, Downtime should be much lower even with many players, as tables are filled simultaneously. Right now it's considerable, especially when you headline your game as "for any number of players"… ;)
I'm pretty sure this will still not hinder the Interaction. Here it mostly takes the form of comparing the bets, which is indeed done during the betting, but can also be expected after the round and is then not forced but naturally encouraged.
2. Informed choice would be another issue I think of right away. Should the "bets" be as seemingly random as they are now? A natural mechanic would be to provide incentives for the player to describe the sound in sufficient detail (such a mechanic is exemplified in Dixit, when you lose points when no-one guesses, although it's also not good for you if everyone knows the correct answer).
What else?
2019-02-24
There were two games we didn't try before.
One was operating on only "high-low" couples of sounds, and played pattern showed who's to play next. The game will be developed, a few more variants to try out, and the best version will be added to the library asap. ;)
Another one was Jennie Gottschalk's "Imagined seconds" as published in vol 9 of Synzine magazine. Although translated more as a series of "solo pieces" rather than just "sounds to play". Other parts were conform with defined variations (we didn't set maximum time - 99 seconds in basic version of the score - although it most often was not exceeded anyway). The game was discussed and maybe some "house rules" will be needed, but I guess it will stay as the part of the repertoire, because it happily is: for every skill, for any set of instruments and scales fine with different numbers of players. And as a series of solo music it adds variety compared to most of other games.
Here is a detailed discussion. http://musicgames.wikidot.com/forum/t-10425377/imagined-seconds-discussion
And here is a playlist for recordings (there won't be many). https://soundcloud.com/odolany/sets/february-game-meeting-ii
Added events on the main page. Here is how to organize it: event
Please, if you can, add also past events you know about. Such info is a great inspiration (we don't have to cover all dates in some past series of events).
2019-02-03
Meetings moved to shorter but a bit more frequent formula. They now co-form a regular 9-hour string of musical events in the Hut what might allow some people to drop in and check them out by the way. On that occasion I'll maybe move to a new thread next time ;)
But there will probably be less notable elements to write about after each meeting.
New experiments included colorful strings to rearrange ("DIY Treatise") and we explore options in Musical Dixit - this time there are even recordings: https://soundcloud.com/odolany/sets/february-meeting-i
It's interesting how it stresses 'music as a message' aspect.
Next time lets also play Jennie Gottschalk's "Imagined Seconds" from last Synzine magazine.
issuu.com/synzine/docs/synzine_sept18_ii
I think if we find and explain terms on Q, W and Z ;) we can finish the beta phase. Any ideas?
(Learning curve, Skill ceiling, Aspect are the terms that wait for their pages also, but no problem)
I was trying to connect articles with glossary tooltips (hoverboxes), unfortunately wikidot really keeps things tight with scripting and I don't think it can be done here for now.
Cue-cards corrected.
Actually I'll try to rewrite it to serve as events hub.
We'll see if wikidot engine can work with dates.
2019-01-13
Fun meeting!
Follow the images (testing new deck), Musical tetris-simplified, some conducting, and first time in the hut: Scratch Orchestra's CMH-CR135.
I had some plans… but there was one game that stole the meeting ;) and engaged us quite a bit.
Musical Dixit.
It was played as regular dixit, but in teams (in our case of 3) and instead of verbal description, the trio played an improvised piece.
We tried a few methods, voting on cards was better to be done individually not as teams as it adds greater variance.
Happy new year!
I've been bogged down for a few months by a huge project that is now complete on my end. Now I'm back!
Gonna go through the site to see what I missed.
I have quite a few new games and wiki articles to add.
Happy new year.
G4M started in 2018, we have 35 registered users now and you can see contents that was added at the about page.
What next will happen next? ;)
Plz write down some ideas!
