Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

[Icehouse] Query: Wiki categories

  • FromJeff Zeitlin <icehouse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • DateWed, 20 Dec 2006 21:20:12 -0500
Back in July, I'd asked this question on the Wiki's Main_Page Talk page,
but nobody replied, so I'll ask here as well, with a note that this is a
question about the wiki, rather than about Icehouse or Icehouse pieces
/per se/.

I'd come up with two potential categories for classifying games, and the
inquiry was essentially "Is there some sort of vetting procedure for
categories, or do I just go ahead and create the categories and add
games to them as appropriate?"

The two potential categories were:

(1) Non-stacking games: These are games where the Icehouse pieces are
never stacked, either treewise or nestwise.  Games in this category
would be suitable for playing with the early Xyloid pieces, or with
probably the vast majority of piecenikked stashes.   The original
Icehouse game would fit into this classification; Ice Towers and Volcano
would not.

(2) GIANTs: GIANT is an acronym for 'Game In A Nifty Tube', and refers
to games that (a) use a single stash, AND (b) can be explained fully in
eight-point Courier type on a 3x5 index card.  Treehouse is a GIANT, and
in fact might be considered the prototype GIANT.  My own Par-Trees-i
probably isn't a GIANT, although it's a Single-Stash game. 'Single
stash' does not specify whether the game requires a monochrome stash, a
Treehouse stash, or a Whocares stash; merely that it can be played with
at most fifteen pieces, of at most five pieces of each size. I am
undecided whether requiring COMMON materials (e.g., all or part of a
deck of ordinary playing cards, one or two six-sided dice, etc.) beyond
the stash disqualifies a game from being a GIANT.

GIANTs are more a potential marketing category than anything else, I
think, but I'm unsure whether that should be considered a Bad Thing or
not.

Discuss?