Tic-Tac-Toe Where?

Game Rules:

Preparations

1. 4 sudoku tables labeled A – I horizontally, 1 – 9 vertical
2. Each player marks 3-in-a-row on each 3-by-3 grid on the board as a means of winning, Make sure your opponent cannot view your board.

Playing

1. On each turn, players would “attack” the board to see where the enemy has placed their markers on the blank board. When attacking, announce to your opponent the grid you are attacking.
2. The opponent must tell whether the attack hit or missed. If the attack missed, the player that attack may go again.

Goal

First to find 3-in-a-row of the 3 x 3 square of the opponent will win.

Artist Statement 

Initially, I started with a Yoko Ono inspired work where the tic tac toe game would create an infinite game of tic-tac-toe. I wanted to create a distinctive art piece through a game with the only added rule being “add a line anywhere on the page after you play your move in tic-tac-toe”. The games became messy and interesting as people were forced to think outside of the box about their next move until realizing that they would never win. The best part was seeing people coming to this realization and seeing the way that their strategic play-style from before changed into pure chaos. It was a creative spin to the game however, it wasn’t as climatic as I expected it to be. (Playtest result see below)

As a result, I decided to do a mashup of different games together to create a intensive game of tic-tac-toe using a sudoku board and the gameplay of battleship to create a fun and different spin to the game. Initially with this iteration, I started with a basic tic-tac-toe board, but I feel like the game would be too brief for players to feel the fun before it is over. Thus, I adopted the idea of using the sudoku board as it is comprised of 9 tic-tac-toe boards together while also creating a larger 3 x 3 board.

Overall, I felt that artists during the DADA movement were having fun with their work while trying to iterate on previously-created works of art. Iterating on my own idea reminded me a lot of Marcel Duchamp as he has appropriated his own works so many times. In a way, iterating and improving upon an idea could be appropriation as I had changed the ideas and made it into my own. Like artists during the DADA movement, I had fun trying to think of various ways to iterate and add more to a simple game of tic-tac-toe that I’ve known all my life.