Types of Information in Games

In The Interactive Book, designer and scholar Celia Pearce presents a different typology for understanding the ways games manifest information. She proposes four scenarios: · Information known to all players: In Chess, this would consist of the rules of the game, board layout, and piece movement parameters. · Information known to only one player: In Gin, this would be the cards in your hand. · Information known to the game only: In Gin, this would be unused cards in deck. In Space Invad...

 The Magic Circle

The term magic circle is appropriate because there is in fact something genuinely magical that happens when a game begins. A fancy Backgammon set sitting all alone might be a pretty decoration on the coffee table. If this is the function that the game is serving-decoration-it doesn't really matter how the game pieces are arranged, if some of them are out of place, or even missing. However, once you sit down with a friend to play a game of Backgammon, the arrangement of the pieces suddenly bec...