1 THE GAME

2 “Here and there in the ancient literatures we find legends of wise and mysterious games”.

3  Herman Hesse, 'The Glass Bead Game'.

4 History of The Game.

5 Having created many games, I encountered Bob Abbott's card game Eleusis, in 1995. I was interested by the idea of some of the rules being secret. In 1998, in response to Eleusis, I created Mission, in which the aims of the players are kept secret until the end.

6 In the following year, I read Hesse's 'The Glass Bead Game', in which an imaginary game encompasses all the knowledge and values of a society. I felt challenged to create such a game.

7 After thinking for some time about Hesse's book, secret rules, role-play games, Zen and game theory, I came up with "The Game" (no other name seems to fit). It has fascinated me ever since: it seems to be the ultimate game.

8 The 'Rule'.

9 The Game has only one rule: ALL RULES ARE NEGOTIABLE. The idea is that the players create their game as well as play it. The scope of The Game is therefore endless. It can take any form we care to create. It can be played for a few minutes, or for a lifetime. It can be very simple (children can do it), or enormously complex (it beats Chess). The players negotiate everything.

10 The Open-endedness of The Game.

11 Creating the Game is The Game. This arrangement has the benefit of freedom: the players can create whatever game they choose. However, it also has the drawback of formlessness: no guide is offered the players about how they should go about playing. It is easy to get “players’ block”.

12 It is impossible to have any formal guide to playing The Game, because this would restrict it to one particular format. The Game is inherently outside any such thing. However, it is possible to suggest a way for inexperienced players to get started, since it should become apparent to anyone who has played one Game that such suggestions are far from binding.

13 Who, When and Where?

14 The first thing to establish is the identity of the players. In more advanced play, the concept of “player” may become somewhat fluid, so that it includes people who are not aware of their role, or even nonhuman actors. However, at the beginning, it is advisable to stick with a normal definition of player, and decide who these people are going to be. There can be any number of them, and it doesn’t matter who or where they are.

15 The next thing to work out is the timescale. Again, advanced play may bring extreme interpretations of where the game is located in time. For now, it is enough to decide whether the game is to last an hour, a weekend, a week, or however long. Is it to be played in one, or several, sessions? Will moves be made at particular times, or at any time?

16 Once the players and timescale are settled, it should be fairly simple to decide where the game is to be played: on a tabletop, in a field, through the post or email, or some other possibility?

17 What?

18 What kind of game do you want to play? To avoid restricting the options at such an early stage, it is better to answer this question in general terms at first. How physically or mentally demanding? What balance of luck and skill, or cooperation and competition?

19 Then decide how to achieve the game that you want. Think of games that you know that are similar to what you want, and consider which bits of those games you can use in your new game. Plunder all the games you can get your hands on for ideas. Use whatever equipment is useful and available: pens, paper, tokens, dice, cards, letters, the internet, and so on. Start to plan your game.

20 Negotiation.

21 At this point, you will need to think about how to reach agreements. If it is a one-player game, or a simple cooperative game, then this may not be such an issue. However, games of any level of complexity or competitiveness tend to require a way for the players to reach agreements.

22 There are going to be many decisions to be made in your game, and plenty of opportunities for disagreements to go on for a long time. You may want to introduce some kind of voting system to settle disputes, or appoint an arbitrator to make a judgement on any difficult issues. Haggling and appeal to chance are other options. In many games, there will be eventual winners and losers: how can you ensure that this happens without the game degenerating into an argument?

23 Fundamental to this is the fact that all players have agreed to play in the first place. This means that there is a basic level of cooperation underlying anything else that may happen.

24 Creating and Playing.

25 It is advisable to be clear about what rules have been agreed upon: you may want to keep records.

26 Players may compete at some points, and cooperate (or even form alliances) at others. Handling and communicating information is central to this. Situations can arise in a game where there is a dispute that cannot be resolved, causing the game to split. Some players may form a secret group, playing a game within the game. In these situations, one game can turn into a set of interrelated 'super-games' and 'sub-games'. It is important to remember that these are all part of The Game.

27 Players may adopt different roles in a game.it may be useful (especially among inexperienced players) to appoint one (experienced) player as 'Gamesmaster'. This player's role is to oversee and organise more complex games, and possibly act as an arbiter.

28 The Game involves both creating games, and playing them. There is no hard line between these two, but a good game should contain plenty of both. The game might begin with a period of negotiation over the rules, progress to a series of trials so that the rules can be honed, and then go on to a session of play within those rules.

29 Partial or total success or failiure can be measured with a scoring system. This need not be number-based: bonuses and penalties can take many forms.