Ono's game ultimately leads me to the history of anthropology, questions about how play communities are founded, and the demand to play certain games.

Within these short instructions (and a few other writings) Ono opens up a big can of worms about the nature of play!

It also led me to an essay by Roger Caillois that I think more game scholars should read, called "The Myth of Secret Treasures in Childhood"in www.dukeupress.edu/the-edge-of-...

That essay helps put Caillois back into conversation with his friend George Bataille and useless expenditure.

In my chapter on Ono, I try to come to a better understanding of these three elements.

That process led me to beautiful phenomenological writing about hide-and-seek (ie. Barritt et al "The World Through Children's Eyes"); and to the view that these ontological risks are always part of the game.

In game studies, we often discuss Ono's all white chess set because it breaks down what a game can be.

HIDE-AND-SEEK PIECE does that in a different way. It seems horrid to play; it seems impossible to follow the rules literally; and it seems to violently recruit other people into its drama.

Looking across Patterson's work, he had a clear interest in systems and simulations, and A Game is a procedure for constructing the social out of capacities different than those assumed by Rawls.

In my archival digging I found some notes from the same era where Patterson summarizes this procedure:

I argue that Patterson is in critical dialogue with John Rawls's theory of justice. As the only Black member of Fluxus, Patterson writes about his frustration with the lack of political engagement from his friends. A Game is a satire of liberal utopias, and simultaneously a earnest proposal.

I got to look at three versions of the game at MoMA and the Getty, which differ primarily in the quoted text they pull from from an issue of the artist magazine Ark (1962) on mobs and crowd psychology.

One of the most complex is Benjamin Patterson's A Game: Three Capacities and One Inhibition (c. 1963), which consists of four note cards and an envelope. In my reading, the "capacities" involve the player in a kind of critical experiment in imagining new ethics.

www.moma.org/collection/w...

Best signature

Hey Matt, always nice to see your posts!

I've been using this: tenbluelinks.org

Oooh. Bookmarked

Very helpful comparison. I feel like the opening of Clair Obscur takes it's lessons from Chrono Trigger

Anna makes the best TTRPGs. In addition to this, I want to recommend The Ceremony is at Hand w.itch.io/the-ceremony...