I quite enjoyed Prof. Blashki’s opening remarks about what lies behind technology, and its relationship with society at large.
She likes Sandman! :)
Messers Calvin and Hobbes join us today because they are the world’s leading experts on Calvinball, a game so great that it has its own theme song.
Right now, I ask you to take note of the second panel on the bottom strip, when Hobbes invites Calvin to play, and Calvin agrees. We will go back to this later, but first we must review some concepts.
This is a reflection paper. As such, it does not present results or proposals; it invites reflection on an issue related to the conference.
Among such diverse and engaging technical papers and presentations, ours may be a little off-kilter. But, as professor Blakshi remarked earlier today, sometimes it is interesting to go behind technology, and to look on its relationship with society at large.
We distinguish games with full rules agency and games with reduced rules agency. Full rules agency is usually found in non-digital games, and it includes
(1) learning rules and / or teaching them; this is important, because in any given non-digital game, at least one of the players must learn the rules in order to play;
(2) implementing rules, that is, making rules work as intended;
(3) enforcing rules, that is, preventing and correcting behavior which deviates from the rules; and
(4) changing the rules, and / or creating rules.
… because self-restraint is an essential element of all human societies, as Norbert Elias pointed out.