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The rules are what matters, yes, but the naming of games is a classification problem over sets of rules. This is most obvious with competitive video games, whic
by comicjk 5y ago
The rules are what matters, yes, but the naming of games is a classification problem over sets of rules. This is most obvious with competitive video games, which have complex rules that are tweaked often - each balance patch changes the rules a little, but it's still the same game. The boundaries are fuzzy, and even the players may disagree about what constitutes enough change to be a different game.
With Senet, we don't even know how much the rules have changed, so it's hard to say. But hopefully the reconstructors did well enough that an ancient player wouldn't say "what game is that?" but instead "that's a goofy way to play Senet."
- platz 5y agoA video game with two hundred thousand lines of code doesn't seem like an apt comparison to a board game.
- egypturnash 5y agoPretty close to a physical sport, if we assume that most of that code is involved in simulating something resembling physics, or in running simple robot players. Like, how much of a basketball game is concerned with the actual Rules Of Basketball vs. simulating a bunch of people playing basketball? And if you made Space Basketball with characters with superpowers who kept getting balance tweaks as the player community figured out holes in the rules, most of that simulation code would stay the same, as the tiny percentage of rules code evolved.
- rcoveson 5y agoHere is the reference wikipedia gives for the two historians who have tried reconstructing the rules[0]. It seems that only "tomb images" and some game boards and pieces are used in the reconstruction. The article doesn't suggest that any rules have a basis in history. What rules we have are fabricated from nothing but the pieces, like reconstructing the English language from nothing but the alphabet. 0. http://www.gamecabinet.com/history/Senet.html http://www.gamecabinet.com/history/Senet.html