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Inventing the Internet
Back in the 1960s when transistor radios and pocket calculators were getting popular, most young people I knew speculated on a not very distant time when all kinds of fantastic gadgets would come into existence. True, those radios were tinny and basic, while calculators were capable of little more than simple arithmetic, but they worked, were portable and NEW. I remember, as a teenager, studying transistor logic gates, adders and complex switching circuits that formed the building-blocks of elementary computer processors. These developments among others promised a future with all kinds of amazing technologies. Most people I knew were involved with the sharp edge of some technical development or other, and regarded the coming information age as inevitable.
Some people couldn't see it. They'd make absurd statements like: "We'll never have flat-screen TV because no-one will ever make a blue l.e.d." or "Calculators will always cost more than £100!" But most young people who worked in a techno industry knew otherwise, and that the internet (or some kind of information highway) was coming - it was only a matter of when. And not just an 'internet': numerous prospective inventions floated at the edge of our consciousness in those days - things we knew would materialise once someone solved a few basic technical problems. I remember thinking-up all kinds of gadgets myself (as I still do) and then waiting for them to appear... never considering that I might take the initiative myself. That kind of thinking - taking the initiative - had been well-drummed out of us at school. A couple of decades ago on TV they showed a prototype all-singing-&-dancing 'mobile'-phone that was the size of a fridge... with the presenter declaring that it would take a mere couple of years to reduce it to pocket-size. Who could have doubted it?
All this is ancient history now. But unlike most people then - who 'invented' the net - I actually discovered it.... or rather, for a brief inspiring interval, thought I had. I explain that disappointing episode on another page HERE.
Inventing Games
I guess the same kind of reasoning applies to games.... I mean, who didn't invent 'Scrabble'? And what in life can't be interpreted as some kind of a game? In addition to what we invented/improvised for ourselves, us kids used to play all kinds of games.... age-old ones like Snakes-&-Ladders, Draughts, Ludo... etc., then as teens Monopoly and Chess, and later Wembley and Totopoly and Millionaire, eventually Cludo... and various 'intellectual' or 'adult' games like Dingbats, Libido and so on (actually I never got to play that last one, alas). But there were loads of them, and loads more doubtless invented since - some ingenious, some pathetic. And not just board games, most of which have more-or-less fallen into the deep dark chasm of history - does anyone still play 'Trivial Pursuit'?
These days we're swamped by ever more sophisticated computer or virtual-reality adventure/war-games, most of which themselves soon get revamped or superseded. So the only thing those old games seem good for now is nostalgia.
Despite all that, a few days ago I invented yet another game - by serendipity... as if another mad game is needed in the world. Is it new, though, I wonder? Almost certainly not, at least not in essence.
Anyone who remembers the original Avengers on TV might recall the idea of translating a weird kind-of board-game into life-size reality - a bit like Lewis Carol did for chess. This gave the game/plot a sharp Kafkaesque quality - absurdity entwined with impending menace. Lewis Carol's skill was to have a sceptical and perceptive Alice cut through the absurdity and transform menace into satire. My situation happened the other way around; and instead of zapping one's adversaries, as seems the vogue these days in video games, the skill for me was in avoiding or outwitting them.
I call the game - which I played for real - 'Battle Woods'. This is doubly appropriate: for one thing it took place in a big wood of that name (just east of the little town of Battle in East Sussex), and for another, the game is in fact a sort-of battle as well as taking place in a large wood.
Although I've been doing this for decades, and have always seen it as a kind of game, it hadn't occurred to me before to translate it into one that might be played on a board or screen. Only while underway and 'the chase was on', so to speak, did it dawn on me recently that I was engaged in a contest that could be so simulated.
Now I should confess I've developed a longstanding animosity or even phobia for people who own pestering dogs, and especially for the dogs.
Not that I dislike dogs - see THIS little treatise from way back. Though it's always the dog that's the pest, I blame the owners. A few weeks ago I even got bitten - though to be fair that was on a beach with all-round visibility for miles - so for a fiver off ebay (plus a quid for the battery) I bought an electronic 'Dog Repeller'. This brilliant device generates ultrasound that dogs find disturbing so they back-away. No longer do I get dog-saliva all over my legs or trousers, nor mud. Above all I don't get bitten. Even so, I sometimes forget to shove the repeller in my pocket. That's when I'm forced to play 'Battle Woods'. It's a very simple game - though one can build-in any amount of complexity. And instead of dogs, the menace could be yales or some other ferocious mythical beast.
Yale
at
Hampton
Court
This is roughly how it goes:
The aim is to get to the other side of the wood, or maybe just to cover a certain distance, or even to visit particular 'difficult' points.... Anyhow, there are people with dogs in the wood. As in reality, if there's a human there's also a dog. Contestants in the game, on the other hand, like me in real life, are without a dog. Suddenly there's someone approaching so even if you can't see it, you know there's a dog. At all costs you have to avoid the dog. It may not attack, but at first you can't tell for sure. So, because you'd lose time backtracking, you take a diversion. The diversion risks encountering other dogs, hence further diversions, and so on.
You carry a map (or follow your progress on a board), but in order to reduce your chances of meeting the same dog again you assess its most likely location, which - as in the real world - continually changes, though consistently with the real world.
The wood is thick but nowhere completely impenetrable. There are many interconnecting tracks - some broad, some narrow, some straight, some curved, some flat, some undulating (concealing what's ahead). All this is to imitate reality - at least, as I experience it. There are patches of quagmire, especially on narrow sections, but there are also frequent even narrower and unmapped (usually winding) routes around difficult spots.... every decision/diversion involves risk.
From one to several players compete. You choose (by some random mechanism such as dice, or electronically) how many dogs are in the wood, their size (speed) and temperament. A new network appears (unless it's printed on a board). And the dogs begin at random locations too, moving in random directions.
A dog can only be spotted when it's within line of sight - as in reality. So it must be close by or on a straight track, not hidden by undulations. If the distance between you and an encountered dog is, say, less than between the dog and its owner, then it will chase, but only for double the distance between you and its owner at the moment the dog appears. Some dogs, though, are capable of double your speed.... and so on... these variables involve assessing risk.
Although dogs with their owners might turn back the way they came, or take any route designated as track, they move consistently - as I say, they replicate reality: they can't jump or run or go faster than walking pace - except a dog when spotting and chasing a player. But players can run, though (as mentioned) no faster, say, than half the speed of the fastest dog..... and so on again....
There are many possibilities. Final rules need to be worked-out. The aim, though, is to get where you intend as quickly as possible with the least hassle or harm... though not all dogs attack; some are controlled, but might still disobey their owner. The game is solid with risk - the skill is in learning to assess that risk and get through. There would be score-gains for speed, losses for damage, etc.
At least, that's the kind of situation I found myself in on a superb sunny day in Battle Woods just before Christmas. Usually, there's only three or four cars in the car-park. That day there were about a dozen. And each car represents at least one dog. (My singular presence, as I say, is exceptional - never do I see anyone else without at least one dog.)
So whenever I saw someone (ie, a dog) approaching I'd take the next track off, sometimes coming 'dangerously' close to another dog before veering down another narrower track (probably overgrown and winding erratically with dense foliage close either side, and maybe a few puddles). I'd be going at full pelt too, of course, in an encounter like this. Usually the dog would get called back rather than continue to chase me. But then, who knows. I might also have to negotiate a patch of quagmire or another approaching dog..... etc., etc.
All this might sound positively traumatic to a novice. Yet, the truth is, it's GREAT fun; a tremendous, exhilarating experience. That day, I must have covered ~60 or 70% of the wood, which is pretty big. Despite the quantity of walkers, always (as I say) with their dog(s), once I realised I was 'in a game', as it were, I was able to avoid them all - at no time did I pass a dog and at no time was I forced to turn back. Every time a dog appeared, generally a good distance away, I managed to divert - sometimes by running at top speed towards the dog first, then darting down a side-track I knew... sometimes by risking a narrow winding path through dense foliage - and leaving several dogs bewildered.
True, I know that particular wood pretty well - even parts, I suspect, that locals never go on. Likewise for other woods around here. And I could list maybe a dozen elsewhere near where I've lived.... like Charmy Down (near Bath), Ashridge Park (Beds/Bucks), Kings Wood (Kent), North Downs (Surrey), Friston Forest (E Sussex)... plus a few others. That day at Battle Woods, though, I was there for >90-minutes and probably covered ~10-miles.
I've spent most of my life turning woodland/countryside wandering into a kind-of game, if only subconsciously: attempting to pass someone more than once by taking certain routes, moving at certain speeds, sprinting, dawdling, whatever - or making certain manoeuvres so as to avoid them... all kinds of predictions and strategies just for the fun of it, to transform an otherwise unexciting excursion into a quest, a challenge. Mostly, though, if the truth's known, I rarely ever met anyone until recent years. Nowadays, for some weird reason, wandering around woods seems to have become almost a new passtime, a new vogue. And the dog problem has escalated in tandem with that. I think it needed this menacing aspect of genuine risk from dogs to alert me to the idea that the situation could be played-out on a board or computer.
The great advantage of taking this approach is that it forces your brain into the moment. Not that you'd be dwelling obliviously on some mad preoccupation while wandering around some spledid woodland... but if you do then this offers a kind of escape, as in dangerous sports like rock-climbing, for instance. You're forced to focus on what you're doing rather than ruminating on trivia that can have the effect of dragging some people into a kind of mundane everyday tedium or worse - even when in a fabulous location like a wood or some other superb wild spot.
I don't play video games, nor these days board games for that matter. And I guess there are already games that resemble what I've described for 'Battle Woods', probably vastly more sophisticated and exciting. But, just as back in the 1960s I had no idea how in practice an internet might be created, I wouldn't have much idea now about how 'Battle Woods' might be translated into a virtual reality experience.... though these days I know there's kids creating far more dramatic and challenging screen-games than I can even begin to imagine.
Later today, I'll maybe charge out again to Battle Woods (or some other wood)... in reality, which for my money is by far the best way to play. Keeps the blood circulating, the brain awake, and it makes a day-out. This time though, like a trapeze artist remembering to rig the safety net, I'll remember to take the DOG-ZAPPER - Yelp!
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