Exchange is fundamental to organisms & living systems, underlying both competition & cooperation, equally basic to ecology & economics, the dynamics of life in nature & in society. The same can be said for play & games. Tiger cubs play fight with each other with affectionate enthusiasm, practicing seriously competitive adult skills in an essentially cooperative play mode with its own, distinct format (e.g., claws retracted) & spirit (kinship & companionship, implicit rivalries to crystalize later).
The muscular knowledge they help each develop presumably conveys a survival advantage value–for when claws are no longer retracted. Although the cubs don’t base their play on a ‘model,’ or on “ideas” about anything, their affectionate rough-&-tumble simulates adult combat without inflicting or receiving actual combat injuries, simulation being a controlling mode entered into together.
A primary value of simulation comes from providing participants the chance to learn from the trial & error of experience without the costs associated with the actual “real world”experience” represented. When the plane crashes in a flight simulator, no one gets hurt; the program is simply re-set to start. Virtual shoot-em-up games don’t actually shoot, hurt, kill &/or destroy. Financial games & simulations use “play-” or imaginary-money–or fictional electronic credit & debit balances.
In Spanish, the word mapa means map. In English, it’s made up of short forms for maternal (ma) & paternal (pa) lines, from the union of which we get our first directions. Mapa Systems was formed nearly 50 years ago to help model & navigate financial markets. Registered in New Mexico, one of its chief divisions became Land of Enchantment Game Company, primarily engaged in the design of what became a family of market-related games & simulations.
I’d been designing games from my earliest memory, most recently at that time for improved transmission of university course material containing a combination of mental knowledge & hands-on skills, as with writing & other communication. Though most courses I taught were in the English Department & multi-disciplinary Honors Studies Program, I’d been hired with some explicit expectation for bringing innovative approaches encouraging student success.
As an American, I’d inevitably been exposed to many aspects of market dynamics, including economics courses in college & a Newspaper Fund internship with The Wall Street Journal. Nevertheless, I came to the challenge of market modeling as if a beginner, finding ways of representing the dynamic forces at play in game format that made the learning fun. Potentially useful learning & actual fun were (& remain) the yin & yang of effective game design, both dependent on many factors, including mechanisms that reflect (&/or translate real-world dynamics into) playable game formats.
Over the next few years, the dual aims of realistic modeling & enjoyable play led to a number of patented game mechanisms; a scaled family of market-based games ranging from a detailed university-offered simulation played once a week by enrolled adults (at ever-expanding levels) all the way to one of the simplest (yet bizarrely most difficult to master) little trading games ever devised.
In between were various “family/ strategy board games” emphasizing purely game-play elements of strategy & imaginative design (e.g., pleasurable graphics & humor, which led in turn to the design of a game conceived if as a “classic, age-crossing, purely strategic form not based on the stock-market metaphor,” along with the aforementioned “simplest two-person strategic trading game that remains seriously difficult to master.” Though one might have expected development in the opposite direction (simplest to most complex), the actual design sequence went from the most detailed modeling simulation through ever simpler forms, each with its own niche.
These are discussed & illustrated in more detail in the password-protected room immediately under this on the menu, currently closed awaiting the completion of a more detailed personal game-history. Feel free to email c/o bodlibrary2020@gmail.com for more discussion.