| ©1990-2005 by Stewart T. Coffin For questions or comments regarding this site, contact the chief metagrobologist:  |
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Games and puzzles are closely associated. Sometimes the two words are used interchangeably, and the patents tend to be mixed together too. The most popular games have been board games, now being rivaled by video games, both of which are essentially two-dimensional. Devising a successful game that is truly three-dimensional has proven to be an elusive goal for many an inventor. There are certain practical difficulties in moving pieces about, adding or removing them in polyhedral space.
But the difficulties of polyhedral games go much deeper than that. Competitive amusements, by their very nature, tend to systematical exclude all irrelevant aspects of the game, especially aesthetics. Trying to devise a captivating game that also has much appeal to one's artistic sensibilities is almost a contradiction. Find one example if you can.
Many popular competitive games of today involve the symbolic capture, dominance, elimination, or destruction of ones opponents and their belongings. A favorite theme of video games is to accomplish this by blasting them to smithereens using the latest and most advanced space age military weaponry. What the ultimate psychological consequences of all this may prove to be, no one really knows, but it is difficult to imagine doing that artistically.
Next Christmas, why not instead give a child a hand-crafted burr puzzle or set of polyominoes. After all, someone had better begin practicing how to put all the pieces back together again.
The whole idea of adults inventing games for children needs to be questioned. I used to try to devise games for children, but I soon found that, given a box of wood scraps or other similar treasures they would quickly invent their own simple amusements which they had more fun with than any of mine.
| ©1990-2005 by Stewart T. Coffin For questions or comments regarding this site, contact the chief metagrobologist: |
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