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Really Bad Chess
October 15, 2016
Chris Suellentrop has an article in Slate Magazine on Zach Gage’s new app Really Bad Chess.
The introductory paragraphs:
One of our deepest and most cherished assumptions about games is that they are fair. Most people, I suspect, think the perfect game is a kind of utopian meritocracy, that the magic circle of play can be a great sorting machine to determine who is the smartest or the strongest or the fastest. Games are so fair in our imagination that we frequently want life to be more like them: The playing field, we say, must be levelled.
Except games aren’t fair. Like life, they are arbitrary and capricious. That’s part of why we love them. And now we have a game that proves it: Zach Gage’s Really Bad Chess, which hit the iOS App Store this week.
Gage is a conceptual artist as well as a game designer. Best known for Spelltower, Ridiculous Fishing, and Sage Solitaire, he was the main character in Sam Anderson’s 2012 New York Times Magazine cover story about “stupid games.” Anderson called him “the Bon Iver to Rovio’s Katy Perry.” Like Sage Solitaire, Really Bad Chess takes a familiar game and makes it new. But it is also a provocation aimed at his fellow game designers.
Really Bad Chess is, basically, chess with random pieces. I recently played a board in which I was given one pawn, two bishops, eight knights, and three queens. My computer opponent got two pawns, three bishops, two rooks, six knights, and two queens. (Each side always gets one king, in the chess-appropriate position.)
The result is a fast-paced variant of chess that makes the game more interesting for beginners and (Gage hopes) adds a new layer even for masters. “For advanced players, the shuffled-up boards turn chess from a game of patterns and speed to a game built entirely around tactics and ingenuity,” he says.
________
Really Bad Chess isn’t cruel, but like poker it will sometimes deal you a hand you can’t win.
Would you like playing a game that is sometimes very unfair?
Suellentrop goes on to say that in the game, the pieces aren’t truly random. By rule, only bishops, knights, pawns, and (rarely) rooks can be in the front row. The frequent bishops, especially, allow for quick strikes or require an early defensive maneuver.
http://www.slate.com/articles/techno...o_be_fair.html
October 15, 2016
Chris Suellentrop has an article in Slate Magazine on Zach Gage’s new app Really Bad Chess.
The introductory paragraphs:
One of our deepest and most cherished assumptions about games is that they are fair. Most people, I suspect, think the perfect game is a kind of utopian meritocracy, that the magic circle of play can be a great sorting machine to determine who is the smartest or the strongest or the fastest. Games are so fair in our imagination that we frequently want life to be more like them: The playing field, we say, must be levelled.
Except games aren’t fair. Like life, they are arbitrary and capricious. That’s part of why we love them. And now we have a game that proves it: Zach Gage’s Really Bad Chess, which hit the iOS App Store this week.
Gage is a conceptual artist as well as a game designer. Best known for Spelltower, Ridiculous Fishing, and Sage Solitaire, he was the main character in Sam Anderson’s 2012 New York Times Magazine cover story about “stupid games.” Anderson called him “the Bon Iver to Rovio’s Katy Perry.” Like Sage Solitaire, Really Bad Chess takes a familiar game and makes it new. But it is also a provocation aimed at his fellow game designers.
Really Bad Chess is, basically, chess with random pieces. I recently played a board in which I was given one pawn, two bishops, eight knights, and three queens. My computer opponent got two pawns, three bishops, two rooks, six knights, and two queens. (Each side always gets one king, in the chess-appropriate position.)
The result is a fast-paced variant of chess that makes the game more interesting for beginners and (Gage hopes) adds a new layer even for masters. “For advanced players, the shuffled-up boards turn chess from a game of patterns and speed to a game built entirely around tactics and ingenuity,” he says.
________
Really Bad Chess isn’t cruel, but like poker it will sometimes deal you a hand you can’t win.
Would you like playing a game that is sometimes very unfair?
Suellentrop goes on to say that in the game, the pieces aren’t truly random. By rule, only bishops, knights, pawns, and (rarely) rooks can be in the front row. The frequent bishops, especially, allow for quick strikes or require an early defensive maneuver.
http://www.slate.com/articles/techno...o_be_fair.html
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