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Feedback Loop Games
@feedbackloop.bsky.social
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Sharing great writing about games.

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feedbackloop.bsky.social
"He'll be worth $50,000 in the end"

A poignant vignette on parenting, marriage, and The Game of Life by Youngna Park

youngna.substack.com/p/eight-vign...

Posted Dec 2, 2024
Game of Life At our Airbnb, they have the board game LIFE, which I haven’t played since I was 10. It’s been updated, but the core principles remain the same. You spin the dial and arrive at a series of life junctures: career, marriage, kids, real estate, investments, retirement, and have to make a series of choices about your future. Marriage costs you $50k up front, but your spouse is worth $50k at the game’s end. Kids cost $50k a pop, but pets, mysteriously, cost nothing. A scientist makes a salary of $80k, but a chef, $70k. A cottage costs $120k, but an eco lodge runs you $200K. At the marriage juncture, Ada has already purchased a beach bungalow ($120k) and a ski chalet ($150k), so she doesn’t have much money left, as she considers the cost of a spouse. She looks at me and Jacob as she weighs the decision: “Soooo,” she says, “would you say there is anything actually good about being married?” We tell her this is a decision she needs to make on her own. In the end, after much deliberation, she opts for a spouse because she would “like the company” and “he’ll be worth $50,000 at the end.”
December 6, 2024 at 5:08 PM
feedbackloop.bsky.social
"Cards and gambling authority John Scarne claimed to have invented one of the greatest board games of all time. Was he bluffing?"

Blake Eskin on the strange history of Teeko, an abstract game—and also a fantasy of intellectual achievement and community.

www.blakeeskin.com/articles/a-w...
A promotional photo of John Scarne with two other people, possibly his family, featuring the games Teeko and Scarney, along with many books and other products.
December 2, 2024 at 7:12 PM
feedbackloop.bsky.social
Sad to hear that Kory Heath has passed.

Here are the rules to Heath's game Zendo, which (truly!) teaches the players how to become scientists. It is a masterpiece.

(The rules call for Looney Pyramids, but you can play Zendo with anything you have around.)

www.koryheath.com/zendo/
November 20, 2024 at 5:19 PM
feedbackloop.bsky.social
A poem about the game of go by Jorge Luis Borges.

The original Spanish, 1978: borgestodoelanio.blogspot.com/2014/06/jorg...

Translation into English by abstract game designer Luis Bolaños Mures, 2024: boardgamegeek.com/thread/33196...
Hoy, 9 de septiembre de 1978, tuve en la palma de la mano un pequeño disco de los trescientos sesenta y uno que se requieren para el juego astrológico del go, ese otro ajedrez del Oriente. Es más antiguo que la más antigua escritura y el tablero es un mapa del universo. Sus variaciones negras y blancas agotarán el tiempo. En él pueden perderse los hombres como en el amor y en el día. Hoy, 9 de septiembre de 1978, yo, que soy ignorante de tantas cosas, sé que ignoro una más, y agradezco a mis númenes esta revelación de un laberinto que nunca será mío. Go Today, September ninth of seventy-eight, I held a small disc in my hand, a fraction of the three hundred sixty-one that make that other chess, the cosmic game of Go. It's older than the oldest written word and the board holds a mirror to the stars. Its endless permutations, light and dark, exhaust the thread of our custodian time, and men can lose themselves in its extension like others in the day or love's demand. Today, September ninth of seventy-eight, I, ignorant of most, ignore once more, and owe my numina this revelation of a grave labyrinth that won't be mine.
October 12, 2024 at 7:21 PM
feedbackloop.bsky.social
People reject "educational" games. But all games teach.

Tom Lehmann (Race for the Galaxy) on a deep moral lesson about luck: Good decisions don't always have good results.

sites.google.com/site/ptlehma...

Feb. 22, 2005
Sometimes, you make the correct decision in a game, but the cards or dice just don't come through; you have a bad outcome and lose. This happens. That's the nature of a game of chance, or an uncertain world, or, indeed, life itself. For example, parents may consult specialists for some medical problem that their child has and decide, after reviewing the options and advice they've been given, that the best option is to operate -- and then have their child die on the operating table. And, usually, this was a good decision, followed by an absolutely horrible outcome (although, occasionally, it is medical incompetence). But many people can't draw this distinction between decisions and outcomes and torture themselves with guilt for years and years afterwards for having made that good decision. Or, instead, they launch a lawsuit, since having a bad outcome means that someone somewhere must be at fault... I believe that learning that, sometimes, good decisions can result in bad outcomes (you just get unlucky) and that, sometimes, bad decisions can result in good outcomes (you get lucky), is one of the most powerful things that strategy games can teach us, in a safe way. But, no one ever markets board games for this quality or even discusses it... Why not?
August 12, 2024 at 3:24 PM
feedbackloop.bsky.social
When I saw these game boxes at Egghead Software as a kid in the 90s, I had to touch them.

@philsalv.bsky.social on the stunning packaging design of Hock Wah Yeo.

obscuritory.com/essay/incred...

Posted March 21, 2021.
July 16, 2024 at 3:57 PM
feedbackloop.bsky.social
The "feelies" included in A Mind Forever Voyaging, an Infocom text adventure critiquing Reagan-era politics. You play as PRISM, a sentient AI simulating the effects of the Plan for Renewed National Purpose.

gallery.guetech.org/amfv/amfv.html

Published 1985.
A magazine page showing a fictional advertisement with the headline "It's time this country knew the facts about joybooths," sponsored by Joybooth Manufacturers of North America. A magazine page with length short story text on the left, and a fictional ad for the department store Dunbar's on the right, showing a drawing of a model wearing a retro-futuristic golden tunic with a metallic belt. A magazine page reading: "A Mind Forever Voyaging: Perry Simm was four years old when he became lost in the largest department store in the city. He let go of Mother's hand to pick up the video cube. He rotated it with wonderment, touching the control knobs and squealing with delight as the images shifted..."
July 10, 2024 at 2:42 PM