Artwork #2: Appropriate

For my Appropriation project, I was inspired by pieces such as Yoko Ono’s White Chess, Takako Saiko’s many chess variants, and Super Soul’s Open Source. What drew me to these pieces was they way that they took an established game and made one relatively minor adjustment that completely changed how said game was played and experienced. I decided that I wanted to use poker as my starting point, as it was something I knew well enough and enjoyed, and I also thought it would just be an interesting game to appropriate. My first idea was a version of poker where the rules for scoring hands were unnecessarily convoluted and nonsensical. I liked this idea, but after thinking about it, I realized that this would really just be like a new style of poker rather than a “unique” game built off of an appropriation of poker. I toyed with the idea of scoring being so nonsensical that players would have the opportunity to maybe lie about what is or isn’t a scoring rule and convince their opponents that their hand actually is the best, but I couldn’t figure out a way of doing this that I liked or that wouldn’t be negated by just playing a few times and becoming acquainted with the real rules. I realized that my want to make this game and call it “I Hardly Know ‘er” was really all I had in favor of it, so I went back to the drawing board.

One iteration I devised replaced cards with pairs of dice, with a d12 signifying the value and a d4 signifying its suit. The idea behind this was to make it so every “card” was entirely random rather than being drawn from a fixed set of 52 cards. I did have an opportunity to test this one out in class, and it was fun and seemed like it worked well, but ultimately is not what I would consider the “final design” for the project. Looking back at the pieces I was inspired by, I realized that the aspect I was really drawn to was the way that these games changed what information was given to its players and/or how it was given to them. My final iteration is one I called Omnipoker. It plays mostly like a standard game of Texas Hold ’em, except each player is able to see the hands of all of the other players, but not their own. It leads to a unique situation where players  have far more information at their disposal than usual, but are now missing possibly the most crucial part of the puzzle. This leads to a scenario where players need to determine their moves based on the information they know as well as what others know and they don’t. Not only did the game play surprisingly well, I also liked how, like many interpretations of Dadaism being “anti-art”, it ended up becoming a sort of “anti-poker”.

Dice Poker

Omnipoker

Xuanshuo Zhang

Appropriation game

Note: for convenience’s sake, the coordinates of a face are represented by numbers as below

1             2             3

4             5             6

7             8             9

Rules: Two players are needed for the game. The players play rock, paper, scissors to decide who goes first. The game runs similar to tic tac toe. The first player can choose to put their piece any place on the cube. Then, the cube rotates depends on where the player places the piece. If it is a corner of a face (1,3,7,9), the corresponding column of the cube gets rotated up if it is on top and down if it is at bottom (up 1,4,7 for 1), and then the row where the piece lands on gets rotated left if it is on the left side and right if it is on the right side (left 1,2,3 for 1). If it is placed on one of the blocks connecting to the center piece, that row or column gets rotated depends on to what position that block is to the middle piece (left for 4, top for 2, etc.). A face is won if before or after the rotation there are 3 connecting pieces on any face. The color of the face is decided by the center piece. For example, if player 1 gets 3 in a row with pieces on position 3, 6, and 9, and the center piece of the face is yellow, player 1 won the yellow face. Rotating a 3 in a row with the center piece would not win another face because the center piece is the same. If a 3 in a row that does not include the center piece is rotated, it would not score the player another face until the 3 in a row is disconnected at least once. After the rotation and checking for scoring, the other player takes their turn. They can only play a piece on the face that the first player’s piece lands on after the rotation(s). If it lands on a face that is won by any player, instead of having to play on that face, the player can choose to play on any face instead. The first player to win 3 faces wins the game. If there is a tie, the player who scored the first face wins. If both players scored the first and second face respectively during the same turn (after rotation(s)), the player that made the last movement wins.

Artist statement: I decided to do my appropriation game as a game combining tic tac toe and a rubrics cube. I really like ultimate tic tac toe (3 x 3 tic tac toe games in a 9 x 9 board, each move in a certain tic tac toe game determines where the next move will go) as a game, and I think it features some key aspects like strategy that is massively different from the original game. I came up with the idea because I wanted to make a strategy game featuring the base mechanics of tic tac toe. I really liked the idea of white chess, which is to make a game that is already complicated into something that is playable, but extremely difficult to play. For my appropriation project I wanted to make tic tac toe, a game that is known for being extremely simple, predictable, and unwinnable if both players use the optimal strategy, into something that is complicated, playable but extremely complicated. I decided to use a rubrics cube, because putting the 2D game into a 3D space would make it more complicated, and the rotational mechanics would make the game much more complicated and would potentially cause more confusion because pieces move, and one player’s move can potentially set themselves back and score their opponent a face. However, the game becomes really difficult to run, and there are quite a few issues to make the game balanced (in terms of people trying to score 3 in a row with the same 3 blocks). I decided to use stickers so that the pieces can be tracked easier as well, and they are easily removable and not expensive so the game can be run repetitively without destroying the cube. After a few play tests, I added some specific rules so that the game would not cause nearly as much confusion and much more playable. I think I reached my goal in a way that my game is runnable and playable, but is extremely complicated both to play and to win.

Preset:

1. A basic version of Parcheesi.
2. Some coins.
3. 6 written alliances symbol.

First part: Rule of normal Parcheesi.

1.     Roll 2 dice each turn, if there’s a five (the sum of 2 dice equals 5 is also ok), put one piece to the start position and move.
2.     The 2 dice can be used to move 2 pieces. If you roll a double, you can have another chance to roll the dice.
3.     When you pass a piece of another color, you can send them back to the home unless they are in a safety place.
4.     One grid can only stand 2 pieces. If there’s 2, it’s a wall and pieces can’t go across it.
5.     You should have exactly the same steps to go to the end point.

Second part: Rule of appropriation （Coins）

1. How to get coins:

•  If you pass through someone’s piece and don’t send it back, you can get one coin. It seems as you build an alliance with this person and both of you take one coin. One move can only get at most 1 coin from 1 person.
• One player can only build an alliance with one player. When he builds an alliance with another player or makes an offensive action (send the piece back, use 5 coins …), it seems as a betrayal. This player can get one coin. Also, players can’t build an alliance and betray the same player in one same turn.

2. Usage of coin:

• 1 coin can build a safety place for a grid once/one turn for yourself only.
• 5 coins can send a piece back to the start
• 10 coins can send a piece to the end directly.
• Every effect can be denied by the same number of coins.

(Yellow is about to win but green pays 5 coins to send the final piece back).

3. Some other things:

• Oral alliance and coin transactions are allowed in the game.
• Important!!! This is a personal game. The only method to win is to send all of your pieces to the end point. Alliance is not considered as winning together.

(Playing with the coins and alliances).

Art Statement:

Like what I said in my self-introduction, I’m an enthusiast in PvP games — especially the games that make conflict both tactically and technically between players. I really love the players thinking a bunch of things before they make a choice in the game. So, that’s how my game is born with the central concept — “trust” and “betrayal”. 

Like the Dada artist made their works to show their anti-war attitude, my game satires the war itself — your alliance can betray you at any time for their own benefits. Like the wisdom said, “Neither friends nor rivals are everlasting, but only profits.” Raising war only means to put yourself in a dangerous condition since there’s always no winner. Additionally, it’s like turning a game from our childhood to the deep dark meaning in the adults’ world!

Back to the game itself, based on the basic Parcheesi, I add a new thing into it — coins. When I play the Parcheesi, I found that players want to beg another player not to send their piece back but the rule forces. Also, players always form alliances to oppose the strongest player. Thus, I change the rule to allow the players to do what they want — they can form alliances to earn the coin which can save their pieces, however, they can only build alliances with one player and can get betrayed at any time. Also, since the target of the game has not been changed, alliances are not considered in winning. Only one player can win, a teammate is just a tool for the winner. In the first iteration of my game, the coin can only make the safety space and the player has 1 way to earn a coin — not to send enemy pieces back. I allow the players to do coin transactions as they want — “I give you one coin and you send his piece back” like this. Then, Jackson told me players should have more ways to earn and use the coins, the coin transaction is too free. I really love his idea, so in my final iteration, I make a large improvement in the coin mechanics. I encourage the players to build alliances and betray each other — they can earn more coins. Also, 5 and 10 coins can have a large power in the game but can be canceled by using the same amount of coins. This is how I make the coins important and promote the interaction between players. The alliances sign is for the players to remember the alliances more easily.

I did the play test with my roommates and they really love this game. One of my roommates loves to betray teammates and then say some words to satirize the other players — this is what I want in the game. (Although that caused another roommate don’t want to play this game with him any more).(This is what happened from his anger).

Pig Latin Whisper Game

Players stand around in a circle, one whispers to the next something in Pig Latin, the next person hears and repeats in English, this alternates until we reach the last person in the circle. The last person should match the first person’s words. 

Rules of Pig Latin:

Most words in Pig Latin end in “ay.” Use the rules below to translate normal English into Pig Latin.

1. If a word starts with a consonant and a vowel, but the first letter of the word is at the end of the word and add “ay.”

Example: Happy = appyh + ay = appyhay

2. If a word starts with two consonants move the two consonants to the end of the word and add “ay.”

Example: Child = Ildch + ay = Ildchay

3. If a word starts with a vowel add the word “way” at the end of the word.

Example: Awesome = Awesome +way = Awesomeway

My idea with this game was originally inspired by something I read from Marcel Duchamp, “To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing.” 

It was so interesting to me to be describing the place that artists get either inspiration/ideas from way beyond any dimension. This stuck out to me, this idea of getting inspired by something stored far away and obscurely in either our memories or as Marcel insinuates, a different labyrinth. 

For me, this labyrinth is my childhood. The happy, joyful times of playing games all day long and silly laughing constantly. With my younger brother, I used to talk in Pig Latin all the time! It helped us be silly and also helped us utilize our processing skills. When thinking back to my childhood, we also used to play Telephone very often. I got the idea to combine both and playtest the game in class. 

During the playtest process, I learnt that Pig Latin is hard. Players need examples in the rules sheet to get used to the game. Furthermore, the rules need to be explained in simple words, not paragraphs. I also learnt that just playing with Pig Latin, made it so the players were just saying gibberish back and forth. This wasn’t the point of the game! I wanted to illustrate that same feeling of being a child and processing all the words in your head. 

This feedback resulted in me changing the game. I made it so that players would alternatively speak in Pig Latin so that each user was either translating from Pig Latin -> English or English -> Pig Latin. This time around, players conveyed the game as being more fun and reminiscent of how quickly they used to do this as kids in their heads. My point of making this artwork was achieved when I heard that from the players!

Documentation:

Rule:

The player tries to reconstruct the whole thing after reading the sentence provided. Players can ask me questions about the case. I would just say yes, no and it doesn’t matter. The player needs to know the whole story of the case from these questions. The player has three chances to ask me for a hint about an item. I’ll tell them what it’s about. 

Artist statement:

The game mechanic I appropriated was a game called 海龟汤 (Turtle soup) in China. The rules of the turtle soup is to give an incomplete story, let quizzes to ask the possibilities of the problems, and ask to solve these problems can only say “yes”, “no” or “has nothing to do with it” these answers, so the quizzes must in limited clues in the reasoning of the event, by defining the Q&A piece together a full picture of the story. I didn’t change the rules of the game too much because the mechanics were hard to change. When I was playing on my own I found it a bit difficult to tell what happened by asking questions alone, so I added in the rules that players could ask me for three items. In this work, I borrowed more from the story in the game. I adapted it from a story in a book I read in junior high school called 十宗罪 (Ten Deadly Sins). The original story is like a murderer killed a woman and was heard by a blind man. The blind man asked what he was doing. He said he was mopping the floor. The next day the police saw blood all over the floor, but there were no footprints, because the killer had used the body as a mop and had wiped his tracks with the victim’s hair. And then I adapted it into a man had to go to a public toilet because his toilet was broken. It was dark in the toilet and he met a cleaner. He said hello to the cleaner and went to the bathroom. The next day the police knocked on the door and said there had been a murder in the toilet yesterday. The man quaked when he saw the photos of the crime scene. Why is that? I think appropriation can make the work more perfect, because the original work is already perfect. It can also give new life to previous works when used for appropriated by later people. After being used for appropriation, people will pay more attention to the original work. My inspiration comes from one piece from Grapefruit, which is a conversation piece. In that piece, people are trying to use their words to convey information. People also need to judge whether the information they are being given is correct. That’s pretty much the same idea as my game. I don’t give the player too much information, but the player still has to piece things together from the information I give them. Unlike Yoko Ono, my information was correct.

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