Mark Steere

Where do I even begin?

2010-04-02T15:31:00.000-07:00

Holy crap, it's been an eventful time since my last post. The only way to relate everything is incoherently, so try to follow along....

Oust - a 2-1/2 year old game that laid dormant for its first two years, with nobody, least of all me, realizing it was any good. For me it was just a concept game. I wanted to do something really different, so I looked at the overall structure of the game. I didn't (and still don't, except for Oust) know of any games that start with an empty board and end with tokens only of one color on the board. That being the goal, the details of the game worked themselves out. With barely enough play testing on tiny boards to make sure Oust was a solid concept, I released it and pretty much forgot about it.

A few months ago, a lady named Christina recommended Oust to Daniel Savarese, proprietor of igfip, who then implemented Oust - all unbeknownst to me. Some time later I stumbled onto it and began playing Daniel who had already developed a strong interest in Oust. Soon I developed a strong interest in Oust as well. It's a world class game. There's tactics, strategy, and consistent tension. There's a constant "walking the plank" sensation in this game of annihilation.

I recommended Oust to Arty, founder of iggc, who also added it. At some point I realized that, if both players cooperate in filling up the Go board with black and white stones interspersed in a checkerboard pattern, the game will end in a draw. At first I was distressed by this, but this is the only type of draw that can occur and it requires an extreme level of cooperation between the two players. A draw couldn't possibly occur in Oust between two competing players.

While I was distressed though, I released a hexagonal version of Oust with identical rules except played on a hex hex board. Even cooperating players can't create a draw in hex hex Oust. I'm glad all this happened because Hex Oust (as it's called on iggc) seems like a better game to me.

Moving on... Oust totally exploded on iggc. It was the number one game for days. Now it's died down and only a handful of people still play including me, but we're real enthusiastic about it.

Flume - new game in January 2010. Flume is, architecturally at least, a very interesting game. In Dots and Boxes you have two types of "tokens", so to speak. You have short line segments connecting the dots and you have initials filling the squares. And occasionally you have multi-move turns. Flume is uncannily similar to Dots and Boxes except instead of lines and initials you have two different color sets of stones. Stones serve as both the walls of the tunnels and what eventually fills the tunnels.

The exact sequence of events is fuzzy at this point but I'll relate it the best I can. I ordered a book on Dots and Boxes by Elwyn Berlekamp. This lead to Mathematical Ways, and then someone recommended Lessons in Play by Richard Nowakowski and two other guys. I contacted Nowakowski about Flume and he said he'd already heard of it, found it interesting, and would study it after finishing the vacation he was on, in particular how Dots and Boxes theory would relate to Flume. Even though Flume gameplay is very similar to that of Dots and Boxes, the two games end up being fundamentally different and there doesn't seem to be a lot of overlap in tactical principles between the two.

So Nowakowsi was looking at my game and I was looking at his book. All (or most) of the games in Lessons are so-called combinatorial games. One requirement of cg's is that the object must be to have the last move of the game. I.e. if you don't have a move available, you lose. A combinatorial game typically ends with tokens of both colors scattered all over the board, a real mess. Normally I'd never release such a game on aesthetic grounds, but since I was getting hyped up about combinatorial games, I decided I needed to design one of my own.

After a few weeks of messing around with the Checkers set I came out with three combinatorial games in March, within days of each other: Jostle, Colonnade, and Mad Bishops.

Going back in time a little: Flume started as a hex hex game. I just happened to be messing around with a hex hex board and came up with Flume. I was playing Arty in the sandbox at iggc (a generic game board where you can use whatever rules you want). While we were playing, the notion of square Flume occurred to me and I started messing around with some Go stones on the Go board I keep on a table next to my office chair. Square Flume is a simpler game and it's the only version that's programmed at iggc.

So I wrote and released the Flume rule sheet that night, and the next morning I get an email from none other than Wayne Schmittberger, senior editor of Games magazine. He had a question about an earlier game of mine that had seemed interesting. I had to inform him that that particular game turned out to be a dud, but that I had a new game he might be interested in, Flume. A few short weeks later, boom, a three page spread in Games magazine for Flume - both the square and hex hex versions.

I ended up playing a student of Nowakowski, Neil McKay, who absolutely can't lose when playing combinatorial games. It was really something to behold. McKay was someone who worked extensively on the book, Lessons in Play. McKay described some basic principles to observe when playing Flume and it was like the book come to life. Hearing McKay talk about Flume was exactly like reading a missing sub-chapter from Lessons.

Aaron Dalton (Super Duper Games), Wife, and Laurie Menke Visit

2009-07-30T07:39:00.000-07:00

Well, just catching up here. Long story short, I created a game for the mobius strip and another game for the Klein bottle. Tried to take a long break from games when Scott Nesin of Games by Email notified me that he had adapted my games to the Apple iPhone. So I ran out and got an iPhone, which I really like.

Aaron, his wife, Adelle, and Laurie Menke all came over to visit me and my girlfriend, Nu, Tuesday afternoon. We went out to dinner and had a great time, a lot of laughs. Laurie had to go back home that night but Aaron and Adelle stayed over. The next day the three of us chatted (Nu had already left for work) while Aaron and I played Hex KB - kind of surreal in a nice way. Designer and programmer playing a four dimensional game which neither of us had ever expected to play. Aaron and me were continuously and completely baffled, though he snapped out of it before me, pointing out that I had (accidentally) won. Aaron and wife had to ship out around 3:00 en route to their next destination point (Bakersfield, CA).

Flurry of Recent Activity

2008-11-15T02:51:00.000-08:00

I pumped out a bunch of games in the last couple of weeks. Besides Lariat and Super Lariat there were Loophole and Anchor, both 2D and 3D versions. I describe these games in my discussion group.

Rule sheets

New Game: Super Lariat

2008-11-03T10:14:00.000-08:00

Super Lariat is unquestionably my most exotic game to date. It's played on a closed, three dimensional surface - an octahedron with cylinders extending outward from three of the four faces. A filled board always produces exactly one winner. The Lariat games were ultra satisfying discoveries. It doesn't get any better than this for me.

New Game: Lariat

2008-10-26T05:41:00.000-07:00

Well, looks like my 4 month hiatus from abstract games is over. Scott Nesin, a very talented programmer and proprietor of Games By Email, added all of my games, renewing my motivation to design. Yesterday I announced my latest game, Lariat, one of my most interesting designs to date. It's played on a 3D surface, a cylinder. There aren't a lot of cylinder games out there, none that I know of actually. I've always wanted one and have tried many times to invent one. Now I've got one and it's hot, if I may say so. Lariat is based on a new geometric principle that I discovered. A randomly filled board produces exactly one winner, a very satisfying property.

Taking a break...

2008-06-19T21:43:00.000-07:00

I will have a drastically reduced presence on the Internet for the foreseeable future. I've become involved in some real world activities and I no longer have time to be online 24/7. I still check my email at least once every few days. I'll finish up the games I'm currently playing but I won't start any new ones. Game design is not a priority for me at the moment and it may be some time before I design any more.

Game Site Surge

2008-04-02T12:51:00.000-07:00

There's been a surge in game sites adding their first Mark Steere games so far in 2008. Most recently Vying.org added Cephalopod; GoogleGameCenter.com added Cephalopod, Rush and a number of others; and Igfip.com added Tanbo and Rush. Two more game sites will be adding their first Mark Steere games in the near future. Also, sites which already have my games will be adding more of them.

My games are now on most of the game sites that have non-standard abstract games. There are still a couple of holdouts which I hope to bring on board eventually.

A physics professor recently contacted me asking my permission to program Atoll and other Mark Steere games as part of a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation. He wanted to use my games anonymously in a nation wide program where students would not be told the names of my games or the rules, but would try to figure out the rules by playing the games against a computer. They couldn't be told the names of my games since that would make it easy to cheat by just looking up the rules online.

My requirements of programmers, as explained on all of my rule sheets are: Don't change the names of my games, Don't change the rules, and Attribute the games to me, Mark Steere. This professor's proposal seriously fell short of that.

I told said physics professor that his proposal, while essentially a good, interesting concept was also flawed. It was extremely vulnerable to cheating. Even if the students were not told the name of Atoll for example, there's a three page article on Atoll in the current issue of Games Magazine which is in all of the major bookstores in the country. Atoll is already played on one game site with the certainty of more to come. If you google "hex variant" Atoll shows up on page 5 of the results, and Atoll is still only three months old. As the months pass, Atoll will become ridiculously easy to find using search engines. There' s about 1 degree of separation between students and their friends who are already well aware of Atoll.

Regrettably I had to deny the professor's request. There were just a lot more minuses than pluses. I have to protect my trademarks and copyrights, and this professor didn't seem to be taking my best interests into consideration.

Hex and Y Generalized

2008-01-26T08:57:00.000-08:00

I have now discovered the generalized form of Y as well as the generalized form of Hex.

Atoll (generalized form of Hex):
http://www.marksteeregames.com/Atoll_rules.pdf

Begird: (generalized form of Y):
http://www.marksteeregames.com/Begird_rules.pdf

Atoll - A Newly Discovered Principle

2008-01-21T14:44:00.000-08:00

Atoll is more than just my latest game. It's a geometric principle of historic proportions. The famous game of Hex is merely a special case of Atoll with four perimeter segments.

Atoll rule sheet:
http://www.marksteeregames.com/Atoll_rules.pdf

Dipole Opening Setup Change

2007-10-09T07:43:00.000-07:00

On September 27, 2007 I changed the opening setup in Dipole from an asymmetric one to a symmetric one. In the months following the release of Dipole in May, 2007 a number of people complained about the asymmetric setup. There was a reason for designing it like that, but as I gained more experience with Dipole's gameplay, that reason seemed less and less valid. So I complied with the consensus and changed the opening setup accordingly. It's still exactly the same game, with only the initial arrangement of checkers changed. Now the setup could be described as follows: The board is oriented so that from each player's perspective the lower left square is a dark square. One player starts with a stack of 12 white checkers in his near row and the other player starts with a stack of 12 black checkers in his near row. From each player's perspective their initial twelve stack is on the dark square just left of center.

This change to Dipole's opening setup is a complete and permanent change, not an option or a variant. The rule sheet has been changed to show the new setup and there is no mention of the old setup. It's as if the old, asymmetric setup never existed. Some live play game sites had already programmed Dipole with the original, asymmetric setup and I didn't insist that they change to the new, symmetric setup. Of course I welcomed them to make the change but I didn't insist on it. Jijbent.nl made the change immediately and permanently and so did most of the other game sites that have Dipole. It was a simple matter of notifying the proprietors of the change and within minutes they implemented the change. One particular game site generally finds it difficult to make changes to a game program it has already released and may never change their Dipole program to have the new setup. I actually don't even know what their stance is on the matter. I notified the proprietor of said game site of the change on September 27 along with everyone else and now on October 9 I still haven't received a response. All I know is that their Dipole program remains unchanged, still using the old, asymmetric setup and that, for all I know, they may continue to use the old, asymmetric setup indefinitely.

What I'm getting at is that you may come across the old, asymmetric Dipole setup on a live play game site someday. In the old, asymmetric setup both the initial white stack and the initial black stack are left of center from one player's perspective, and both stacks are right of center from the other player's perspective. Should you encounter the old, asymmetric setup there's no cause for alarm. The new setup is mainly just a cosmetic change and really doesn't impact the game dramatically in my opinion. Some players disagree though, insisting that Dipole is a much better game now with the new, symmetric setup.

Jijbent.nl - Wow!

2007-09-24T11:38:00.000-07:00

Dipole just came online at the Dutch game site Jijbent.nl this morning. The response was immediate and overwhelming. People are starting games and moving in those games so fast I can hardly keep up. These are intelligent players. They aren't making the usual "I have no idea what I'm doing" and "Who better to teach me than the designer" statements. They already read the rules, they know how to play, and they're playing well. Really a refreshing change from what I'm accustomed to. The magnitude of the response to Dipole and the sophistication of the response are unprecedented and unrivaled.

I've always wanted to have a game in the Netherlands, and now my instincts are proving to be well founded. If I had the choice of having one game at one game site, it would be Dipole at Jijbent. Bram, the proprietor, is a great programmer and a great guy.

2007 - Year of the Games

2007-09-21T19:48:00.000-07:00

2007 has been an amazing year for my abstract game designs. For 15 years things were relatively quiet and then suddenly in 2007 everything just exploded.

First off there was a big surge in my design output. I designed five games, an unusually high number. One of those games was Dipole, a very well thought of game. As usual, most people don't understand it. But of those who do understand it everyone likes it. Before 2007 my average output was one game about every two years.

Games magazine published two of my puzzles and three of my games. The World Puzzle Federation - Team USA used my maze in their competition.

ItsYourTurn.com added Tanbo, GoldToken.com added Dipole, and Jijbent.ne added Dipole. BoardSpace.net, a real time game site, added Dipole. SuperDuperGames.org and Gamerz.net have added almost all 13 of my games.