Well, it’s time!<\/p>\n
I’m trying to be better about actually doing Game in a Week games more frequently, so it’s time to start #10.\u00a0 As I perused my book shelf, I decided that I wanted to use a selection from “The Peter Principle”;\u00a0 an old business book which argues that most people in business are incapable of doing their jobs, on the basis that people are promoted until they are no longer capable of doing their job well, at which point they stop being promoted, thus leaving them in a job which they don’t do well.\u00a0 But after five minutes searching, I was unable to find that book.<\/p>\n
I did, though, stumble over my copy of “Parkinson’s Law and Other Studies in Administration”, by C. Northcote Parkinson.\u00a0 This is also an old business book which observes (amongst other things) that work expands to fill the time allotted to it<\/em>.\u00a0 This is such a relevant insight for Game in a Week that I’m a little embarrassed I didn’t think of this book first!<\/p>\n It’s been a while since I’ve gone over the Game in a Week rules, so here they are again:<\/p>\n So. My copy of Parkinson’s Law was printed by Buccaneer Books, in Cutchogue, New York, ISBN 1-56849-015-1.\u00a0 The book itself is copyrighted 1957.\u00a0 My copy has library binding;\u00a0 I hadn’t been aware that books with this style of binding were generally available to the public, but it’s very pleasing for a book of this vintage.\u00a0 Very sturdy;\u00a0 this certainly isn’t a book that will ever break its spine.\u00a0 I ordered it from Amazon many years ago;\u00a0 I can’t remember precisely why (although it’s a very notable book, often amusing, and full of observations which are still applicable today)<\/p>\n I randomly opened the book to page 20.\u00a0 Which is missing page numbers owing to an illustration covering the bottom half of the page , so I had to find the page number by\u00a0 flipping back and checking the previous page, which did have page numbers printed.\u00a0 The sentence thus selected as a theme for this week is:<\/p>\n “Really,” says Sturdy, “I don’t know why I bothered to come.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (The context is as part of an example of a technique to manipulate decision-making in a meeting)<\/p>\n Initially, I didn’t like this sentence, and was even on the verge of cheating and picking a different page for a theme sentence.\u00a0 But upon reflection, there are fantastic possibilities, here.\u00a0 “Sturdy” (which is the name of a character in the example being given) could imply some sort of physics-based game about structures.\u00a0 “Really” implies some sort of discovery about what’s “real”, and “I don’t know why I bothered to come”.. well.. I’m not sure exactly how, but I love the idea of a game about a character going somewhere, when there’s no point to him having done so.\u00a0 Imagine Super Mario Brothers, where upon successfully storming the final castle, you’re told, “Thank you Mario, but our princess was rescued five minutes ago by that guy on a charging steed.”\u00a0 Or more simply, “bothered” is also a fantastic word and implies all sorts of game mechanics.\u00a0 (And anyhow, if I didn’t cheat to avoid “One hundred and four.” back on #8, I’m definitely not going to do it now!)<\/p>\n The rules I set when I started this blog state that proper nouns are to be excluded from the sentence.\u00a0 But that was really intended to keep me from feeling tempted to include well-known characters just because (for example) Hermione Granger was mentioned in a passage.\u00a0 In this case, Sturdy is a barely-sketched character that nobody knows, and I’d be using it as an adjective, not as the character.\u00a0 So at this stage, I’m inclined to bend the rules and include the word as an available theme word.<\/p>\n Plan now is to spend a few days mulling over the theme before I start coding.\u00a0 But I’ll try to get a basic empty game framework up and working tomorrow, too.\u00a0 Unlike previous Game in a Weeks, I’m intending to do this one fully in public.\u00a0 I’ll be using a code repository hosted on GitHub, and will be doing a blog post every day, with updates on how I’m doing.<\/p>\n Am quite looking forward to this!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, it’s time! I’m trying to be better about actually doing Game in a Week games more frequently, so it’s time to start #10.\u00a0 As I perused my book shelf, I decided that I wanted to use a selection from “The Peter Principle”;\u00a0 an old business book which argues that most people in business are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/po9WK-IB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2765"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2765"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2768,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2765\/revisions\/2768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n