How to play this game:

A murder happened at the Baker Street. Players pretend as detectives and the goal is to collect as many real clues as possible to find the murderer. Detectives often meet at the bar every evening to exchange some clues with each other. Some detectives would like to cooperate with others by telling real clues, some may not. Players need exchange one clue by switching the clue cards with every other player once at every turn. Sheriff wants detectives to find the murderer in 5 days and will reward the one who collects the most clues and find the murderer. Sherlock Holmes hears about that and decides to help. Once both players exchange the real clues, he will provide both of them with two new clues. If both cheat, they will not be provided any new clues. If one detective cheats, and the another one cooperates, the detective who cheats will get two more new clues, the other one will get nothing.

At the beginning, each player will be given a character card. Some character cards have the feature and players should not show it to others. Each player will also be given two clue cards: one fake and one real. The game will be ended after 5 turns or the there’s no more clues. The player who gets the most of real clues win the game.

Those are the card I designed:

Character cards: This is the character card. The front of this card has a small icon and a parallelogram to help you check the how many new clues you can get according to your and other detectives’ actions. The back of the card has the description of the characters.

• Character is one of following:
• Really nice guy: You always cooperate.
• Cheater: You always cheat.
• Copycat: You start with cooperation. Then, you copy whatever the player did to you at the last round.
• Simpleton: You start with cooperation. If other players cooperate back to you, you do the same thing as last move. If others cheat back to you, you do the opposite move as last move.
• Blank space: You can do anything you want.

Clue cards: This is the clue card. The real clue is marked with a check, and the fake clue marked with a “X”.

Art Statement:

Most of my idea is inspired by the reading of Avant-garde Video Games. From the book, I learn that avant-garde game is not only a game to play or fantastic visual effects to watch, but also a way to interact with players and to express something valuable to players. Authors can tell something to player through this game. Author’s expression and players’ reactions are also the most important parts of the avant-garde game. For example, the game September 12^th impressed me a lot. It’s trying to tell players that the war cannot eliminate terrorists completely. Instead, the war creates fears and chaos and even leads more terrorists. Some other really good avant-garde games also try to express something valuable to players and invoke them to think about the problem or issue in a different way. Therefore, I want that my game is fun to play as well as will address some society problems. Sarcasm is an effective tool and often used to impress players. I also decide to use it in my game. (I will talk about sarcasm in later paragraph.)

My initial idea is to create a board game which expresses the issue of trust. Inspired by my last intervention project, I was thinking about some reasons which cause people not to sit together. One reason jumped out of my mind was distrust. People would not likely trust strangers because of their awareness of protecting themselves. Moreover, I found that some people wanted to win the game and left his initial group members during the game playing of Room at the Top. It was definitely a great strategy to win the game, but if you did so, other people could hardly trust you anymore. In real life, some people are willing to betray other’ trusts to gain benefits. Therefore, I want to create a game which includes trust and betrayal to see how people will react. Will they cooperate to win or will they cheat to win? Will they trust each other or not?

I am also inspired by Game Theory that everyone wants to win the game. People could choose to cooperate with others or cheat on others to win. Cooperation builds on the trust, and cheating will definitely destroy the trust. In my game, the best situation is that players exchange the real clues with each other for the win-win cooperation. However, there’s another situation that player can choose to cheat and get more clues, but it would destroy the trust and won’t get more benefits from other players anymore. Players can choose any strategy they want and they will see how the strategy will affect the result. People who cheat won’t get more clues if they destroy their trust. They may win in the short run, but people who choose to win-win strategy will win in the long run.

I added different character features, since I think these characters can represent people in our life. The really nice guys represent our family or our best friends. They will always trust you and provide you help, and you also trust them and should help them too. Copy cats can be our normal friends or classmates, since if you treat them well, they’ll also treat you well. Once you destroy the trust between you and your normal friends, it would be really hard to fix the relation. Cheaters often appear around us, but as long as we ignore them we are fine. I think my game is a good chance to experience how to cooperate with other to build the trust and how you destroy the trust.

While designing my cards, I also think about how to make them look clearer which will give the instruction directly and clearly like the score in Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit. Therefore, I create the small parallelogram for players to check the results they will have. At this time, I use the mathematical symbol and numbers to make the “score” instead of only using the words.

For sarcasm, cheaters can get more cards than others and goal of the game is to win. So why don’t we choose to cheat all the time? However, if everyone cheats, no one will get any more clues which means we will never find the murderer. What if we choose a win-win strategy? Then you might lose the game, since others are getting more clues at the same time! I think it’s a dilemma we also have in our society and the whole world. Everyone intends to be the best and the competition is grim, so people sometimes have to sacrifice their trust for more benefits. Competition in our world is nature, but I think people do have chances to choose a better and fair way to win instead of cheating others. A good way to evolve the trust is to have more communication to find the win-win situations. Our life is like a game, we might think the game rules us, but it’s actually our actions decide what the game or our life will be. We are keys to make our world better.

Interesting fact:

Copycat should be the last winner if there are lots of turns, since their principles are “live or let live”. They can cooperate with people they trust and not cooperate with people they distrust.

Introduction

I have noticed that people sometimes are reluctant to interact with strangers in public. However, sometimes we have to interact with strangers, since we’re all living in the public places. Specially, every time when I took a subway, I saw people don’t sit next to strangers. There is always one or several empty seats between passengers. It’s kind of weird that people even would like to stand rather than sit with other passengers.

Pictures were took at 3:49 P.M on the orange line. Actually, there were lots of people standing, but they didn’t choose to have a seat in the middle of them.

The Game

By often being told to be nice to strangers to make the world better. I come up with this game to intervene the situation in the subway:

Players are given a double-sided paper note which one side of it has a sentence “You’re welcomed to sit next to me! :)” and the other side has “Please do not sit next to me. Sorry.” Players are asked to take a subway ride to certain stations and they have to show one side of note that they want. If player chooses the side with welcoming others to have a seat next to him, the player need talk to other passengers or do anything so that other passengers would like to sit next to him. If player chooses the side with the other side, they simply make others not sit next to him. (I know it’s so rude, but sometimes if we have a bad day or are bad-tempered , we would like to be alone.)

Game Start

I start from Massachusetts Ave to State. I choose the side with “sit next to me.”

  Before getting on the trains.

The first one. Give me a thumb up when I leave! Win!

The second one. Give me a fist pound when I leave! Win!

The third one? He actually came and sat next to me without looking my note. Give me a smile. Win or lose? It seems like he can’t understand what I was doing.

Inspiration

An example of intervention from the movie we watched on class tried to tell a story and bring people join together and give some instructions that they hardly do by themselves in real life. As a result, people feel involving in the story and get sense of fulfillment of finishing the given missions. This really inspired me to think about things that we don’t usually do as well as that can make people be involved in and feel better.

Often in classroom or on subway, I always notice that people sit so separately. They often like to sit with their friends or people whom they know rather than strangers. However, it’s common to meet with strangers in our life, since we’re all living in the public places. I heard some people complaining about they saw other passengers looking around and trying to find a seat, but ignore the empty seats next them. During my life, I was always told to be nice and passionate to strangers to make this world better from school or public service advertisings. Therefore, I really want to intervene the way people interact with strangers, especially in the situation that they have to share space with others together.

I sometimes also sit alone in classroom or subways, not because I don’t want to sit with others, but other people often choose not to sit with me. I am not sure the reason why they don’t sit next to me is they don’t want or they don’t know what I think about. What if I can tell them “Yes. Definitely you can sit next to me and I appreciate that”? Will they choose to sit next to me? It’s weird to yield out that I am glad others sitting next to me. As a result, I decide to use a paper note to let others know what I think and went to the subway or classroom to play my game. For subway, I need to choose a time that there are not too much and not too less people and most of seats were occupied by passengers. I notice that time from 9 am to 12 am in morning and 3 to 4 in the afternoon would be the best. The line I choose is orange line, since it’s the nearest one from school.

To intervene is to change some existing situations in our life or make these situations little better. Example of Barbie Liberation Organization really impressed me. I could tell from video of BLO that toy experts thought the event was terrible, but I thought it was really great and meaningful. I think Barbie Liberation Organization expressed that even a barbie doll wanted to be treated fairly. This example of intervention really challenges people’s prejudice to gender. Inspired by that , I wish my intervention could remind people to think about how will they treat strangers. Subway is a perfect place for doing this intervention, since people often are busy and running on their destinations. People will more likely neglect feelings of other passengers. I hardly see people smiling to me on the subway, maybe because they are too busy.  I wish people could be kind to strangers after playing this game at least in the public spaces like subway.

From my understanding of text reading, my game is more challenging than art performing. The game challenges the way how people interact with strangers.  If you treat one person nicely, that person maybe also treat others nicely.  By doing that we will make the city, the country and the world a better place. Although it is really hard to achieve this huge goal of making the world better, but why not start from doing little things around us.

What I thought

At the beginning, I was reluctant to do this game because I had never done such activity in public and I didn’t know how others will act to my game. However, I finished this game finally, so I think I also intervene myself to overcome my social anxiety. I am glad that some people would like to sit next to me and talk with me. They were actually so nice, but they just didn’t get a chance to show it if you don’t treat them nicely. It was also cheerful that some of them give me a thumb up and a fist pound.

Rule:

Need two or more players to play this game.

1. One player will think of a word and represent it as a row of dashes. Let’s call this person the hangman or the drawing player.
2. Other players need to guess what the word is by suggesting letters, but when these players have guessed the word they don’t speak out the word, since they want to fool the hangman in this game. Let’s call these people guessing players.
3. When guessing players suggest the correct letter, the drawing players should write it on correct position.
4. When guessing players suggest the wrong letter, the drawing player draw one element of a stick figure.
5. Once drawing player finish the body of the stick figure, the game is not over. Instead of executing the stick figure, guessing player can still guess the word. At this time, if guessing player suggest the wrong letter, they can ask drawing player to draw an element of body to decorate the stick figure. Guessing players cannot ask drawing player to draw multiple repeated parts, like to draw boots on the sneakers.
6. The game will be ended when: 1) The drawing does not match the description from guessing players. The drawing player loses and asks to tells the true answer. 2) The drawing player can give up when he feels like everyone knows the word (being “fooled” by everyone). Then he will ask or tell the true answer.

The first version of the game.

The second version of the game.

The final play test on the class.

Overview: 

This game is called Fool the Hangman, and it is basically appropriated from the Hangman game. Originally, this game will end when the drawing player finish the stick figure before the guessing players guess out the word. Therefore, it is very easy for the drawing player to think of a really tricky word to fool the guessing player and execute the stick figure. The goal of my game inverses the situation that allows guessing players to fool the drawing player. After the drawing player finish the stick figure, guessing players still have chances to guess the word as many times as they want. Every time guessing players suggest a wrong letter, they can ask the drawing player to draw an element of body to decorate the stick figure. Benefited on this rule, the guessing players do need to guess out the word, but they don’t need to speak out the correct word so that they can continuously provide wrong letters to fool the hangman.

Inspiration:

The idea is inspired by all fantastic and creative examples of the appropriation from the class. Especially, the real-life version of the Pacman game impressed me the most. It simply turned the game scene to the real world. The maze in the game was transferred to streets and buildings. The player controlled themselves by running instead of controller. The rules are similar, but the way to play it changes a lot. This example really makes me think about how to appropriate some existing games. The first game that came to my mind is the Hangman game. I was also impressed by Dada in Berlin. During that period, all artist opposed the war, military and the bureaucracy. Art works at that period also showed sarcasm to the bureaucracy. (Nowadays, I think the ways people appeal for peace are gentler, and we call it Peace and Love.) Therefore, I came up with the idea that the hangman will draw a flower held by the stick figure instead of killing him to show the idea of no killings. After trying this first version of game with my friends, I realized that the game would still end so fast, since drawing a flower only contributed serval steps more for the game.

Then I came up with the idea of drawing parts of body to decorate the stick figure. This was inspired by lots of collages I saw on the class. A sculpture called George Grosz, John Heartfield, Der wildgewordene Spiesser Heartfield impressed me a lot. Authors replaced some parts of body with light bulb, weapons and false tooth. Similarly, in my game to draw parts of element to decorate the stick figure is to create a collage on this stick figure body. Guessing players can ask the drawing player to draw anything they want. Different drawing players with various drawing styles will create their own drawing. At last, this is game will help us create collages with lots of possibilities. Therefore, I encouraged people to be the drawing player in my game.

Iteration:

On my first playing test, the rules of the game are so confused because of my poor description, so the first thing I did is to rewrite the description. I tried to play more tests with my friends, but I met the situation that they asked me to draw a pair of boots on a pair of sneakers, so I added the rule that guessing players cannot ask drawing player to draw multiple repeated parts. It seems like it’s way too easy for guessing players to win the game, since they have lots of chances to guess the word. However, guessing players often forget that their goal is to guess out the word and don’t speak out to keep the hangman drawing by suggesting wrong letters. Therefore, I think it’s also challenging to not speak out the correct answer.

Conclusion:

To conclude, this is a really cool project and I learnt a lot about appropriation and dada. I really like the idea of Marcel Duchamp that to doubt who should define what the art is. By authorities? By ourselves? I think his artwork of L.H.O.O.Q gave the answer that now it’s the art, now it isn’t. Everything could be art and art should be defined by ourselves.

Need two or more players to play

1. One player will think of a word and represent it as a row of dashes. Let’s call this person the hangman or the drawing player.
2. Other players need to guess the what the word is by suggesting letters, but when these players have guessed the word they don’t speak out the word, since they want to fool the hangman in this game. Let’s call these players guessing players.
3. When guessing players suggest the correct letter, the drawing players should write it on correct position.
4. When guessing players suggest the wrong letter, the drawing player draw one element of a man stickfigure.
5. Once drawing player finish the body of the stickfigure, the game is not over. Instead of executing the stickfigure, guessing player can still guess the word. At this time, if guessing player suggest the wrong letter, they can ask drawing player to draw an element of body to decorate the stick figure. Guessing players cannot ask drawing player to draw multiple repeated parts, like to draw a boots on the sneakers.
6. The game will be ended when: 1) The drawing player does not match the description from guessing players. The drawing player loses and asks to tells the truth answer. 2) The drawing player can give up when he feels like everyone knows the word (being “fooled” by everyone). Then he will ask or tell the true answer.

Score:

1. Buy a banana and don’t peel it.
2. Put it anywhere you want.
3. Watch it getting ripe or rotting.
4. Take a picture when there is a change happening on your banana.
5. See if you can find something interesting from the banana’s yellow skin with dark spots.
6. Ends its life by any way you want when it almost “dies”.

Art Statement:

This is a simple score that we simply play with a banana. The score might look a little bit weird, but it’s still cool and fun to follow the instructions.

This score is inspired by readings of happening art and Grapefruit. I think that “happening” means art is from life and things in life could be art. For my score, a banana is the most normal thing in daily life. You may ask how a banana can be the happening art. The randomness is an important part of happening, and the randomness in banana is the growth of the black spots while banana is rotting. Different banana may have different pattern of growing spots.  I really hate the spots on banana, because it looks ugly. However, if I am thinking in a different way, the spots on the yellow skin is drawn by the nature randomly, just like drawings of Jackson Pollock. I actually like Jackson Pollock’s drawing, because we can’t tell what the pattern is, but we can still can feel the beauty among random lines and colors. That’s why I add step five to try to catch the beauty or something interesting.

This is score is inspired by readings of Grapefruit as well. When I read the Grapefruit, I always have the question of why should I do that. Later, I realized that if I followed the instructions, other people would ask the question of why should he do that.  Hmmmm… Isn’t cool to be different from other people? People will be so curious when others do something weird and they may even imitate. That’s why I make my score a little bit weird for only looking at the banana. Another characteristic of scores in Grapefruit is that scores are really simple and clear.  That is also what I want to imitate. Moreover, I notice that some scores in Grapefruit are related to food, like she asks people to make a tuna sandwich. The sandwich might make me think about the banana, since the sandwich store sometimes also sells the banana.

When I started doing my score, I found that the growth of black spots on banana was really uncontrollable. I was even worried about if the banana would get any black spots. After about three days, the banana started growing some black spots, but still not obvious. One day after, the black spots grew rapidly, and I noticed that those black spots were some kind of small pits which really looked like the surface of the moon or some planets. Then I played with colors of the photos. I found that if I inverted the color setting, I could get a “night sky” which I would show you in the video. After few days, more spots grew and easily made me think about the leopard skin. Finally, on the day I decided to “kill” my banana by drawing a sad face on banana. I felt a little bit sorry for my banana, especially while I drawing on it.

Hope everyone will treasure their bananas!

Document: