Global Games Project - Malaysia

A short contribution of mine is up on Kill Screen today.

The topic of the piece, a Malaysian folk game based on the local Mancala variant, is SO DAMN OBSCURE that I couldn’t find the exact rules anywhere - just anecdotes and one very blurry video with lots of shouting in Malay - and no one in KL knew what the hell I was talking about.

If you know anything about this, please let me know!

Perhaps as an elementary schooler you were introduced to a Mancala board. It’s long and narrow, often made of smoothed wood, with a series of pits dug in two rows. Seeds, stones, or marbles act as the playing pieces, jumping from “house” to “house” in the various basins.

There are popular adaptations among hundreds of localized variations across Africa, Asia, and elsewhere, but there is no “standard” Mancala game.

A Malaysian offshoot is called Congkak. It’s played throughout parts of Southeast Asia, traditionally by girls, and like many other Mancala games, involves obtaining more playing pieces in your home pit than your opponent’s.

Interestingly, in the Malaysian state of Terengganu, this traditional offshoot has its own more obscure variation, Congkak Gergasi Wanita, in which the pits are houses and players carry playing pieces in baskets. It means “Women’s Giant Congkak.”

Garden Chess this ain’t.

http://www.thomson-craighead.net/docs/thap.html

Triggerhappy is a gallery installation whose format will be familiar to anyone who has encountered that early arcade game, Space Invaders combining an absurd quest for information with an old-fashioned shoot-em-up computer game. In this, it accurately reflects, and comments upon, the electronic environment in which we live, work and play. “In effect”, the artists say, “triggerhappy becomes a folly. A self-defeating environment looking at the relationship between hypertext, authorship and the individual.” They cleverly recontextualise existing representations and subject them to active manipulation on the part of the viewer, who becomes an unwitting participant in a meaningless game of “info-war”.

Michael Gibbs. 1998.

“[In Trigger Happy] ..It is crucial that [Thomson & Craighead] don”t merely combine the two visual elements - space invader iconography and theoretical text - without the more spiked combination of two purportedly antithetical modes of attention. They use the thrill of actually playing the game to complicate further the theoretical point being made as you try to kill the “death of the author” text before it gets you.”
Dave Beech, Art Monthly July/August 1998.

“In the web environment, as in that of Trigger Happy, the reader’s focus on text seems constantly and thoroughly aborted, perpetually distracted by the prospect of more specialised, more scintillating, more apropos information. Thus, in the midst of this play on hits and clicks, Trigger Happy is gesturing towards the basis of a future information economy, where attention, precisely because of its scarcity, may become a central commodity.”

Beacons of Hope playtest

A quick blurb from my recent essay on Doug Wilson’s Beacons of Hope playtest.

Beacons of Hope is a quaint-sounding name for a game, especially for something as ostensibly esoteric and experimental as this one, but it resonates meaningfully with the gameplay experience.

The short version of how it works is this: you stumble around in complete darkness with a dozen or so similarly hapless participants, tripping on makeshift barriers and groping helplessly. Meanwhile, motion-triggered flashes of red light from PlayStation Move controllers held by “monsters” briefly illuminate the space as they stalk and eliminate other players from the game by grabbing them. The players’ goal is to find three hidden “beacons”, (also PS Move controllers) which can shine a bright white light at the press of a button.

If all three beacons are found and triggered together, the monsters are defeated and the players win the round. If all players are eliminated, or they don’t discover the beacons in time, they lose. Any motion registered by the different controllers results in a cacophony of melodic and dissonant sounds, allowing players to get an idea of the current game situation by listening closely.

The game is creepy, confounding, occasionally thrilling, and like much of Doug’s work, social.

http://www.thepretentiousgamer.com/page/hiding-discovering-beacons-of-hope/

Sweet nectar come to me. Atomic Coffee machines were manufactured in a variety of countries as far back as 1947. The early models are rare, and look very different to the later machines. The basic shape hasn’t changed much in the last 40 years but the design has been progressively improved. These days there are over 20 variations of the Atomic Coffee machine. Atomic coffee machines are still manufactured in small quantities and vintage machines regularly come up for sale on eBay. This is hands down the best coffee maker I’ve ever used.

Sweet nectar come to me.

Atomic Coffee machines were manufactured in a variety of countries as far back as 1947. The early models are rare, and look very different to the later machines.

The basic shape hasn’t changed much in the last 40 years but the design has been progressively improved. These days there are over 20 variations of the Atomic Coffee machine.

Atomic coffee machines are still manufactured in small quantities and vintage machines regularly come up for sale on eBay.

This is hands down the best coffee maker I’ve ever used.