Should period games be described with a Linnaean hierarchy?

[jducoeur]

Okay, here's a very offbeat question looking for opinions. I'm committing the dangerous (but probably to-be-common) act of crossing the streams between SCA and Querki here.

One of my long-term projects is running the Medieval and Renaissance Games Homepage. I've run this page for many years now (since the late 90s, when I got seriously into period games), and I consider it an important public resource -- it's my agglomeration of all useful-looking links I know of on the topic. But frankly, it's gotten pretty long in the tooth -- it's still written in hand-maintained HTML, and is kind of a pain in the ass at this point. (With the result that it has been *years* since I last updated it.)

There is, of course, an obvious solution: this is a *great* candidate for a Querki Space. After all, Querki is all about "semi-structured" data, and this site is about as "semi-structured" as you can get -- a mix of miscellaneous webpages with what amounts to a database of links and reconstructions of many sorts. And with Querki's planned collaboration features, I'll be able to open this solo project up to other members of the period games community, so we can build the one true wiki on the subject. So I think it's clear that I'm going to move the Period Games Homepage to Querki, likely within the next month or two.

That said, it does force me to think about what the schema should look like, which introduces an interesting question: how should I describe the family tree of period games? Calling it a "family tree" is clearly correct -- you can see the hierarchy visibly in the existing Rules page -- and I'm finding myself whimsically thinking about following the Linnaean taxonomy, grouping things more or less like this:

• Phylum: the broad kind of game -- eg, Active, Board, Card, Dice


• Family (or maybe Genus): what we think of as a single game today, but usually were a collection of linked variants -- eg, Chess, Tables, Tafl


• Species: a single precise variant in a Family -- eg, Shatranj, Courier Chess, Dice Chess, Chess of the Mad Queen


• Morph: a specific reconstruction of a Species -- eg, the various Hnefatafl reconstructions

Admittedly, this is probably more clever than useful. But I am struck at the way the memetic evolution of games, and the resulting family tree, *feels* like a biological evolutionary tree. (And purely on the Querki side, now I'm beginning to ponder whether there is anything that should be reified into Querki's type system to support such trees, since there are a lot of use cases for them.)

Anyway, looking for any thoughts and opinions about what the schema should look like here. I have a rapidly growing collection of links that I need to record somewhere, so I may as well start this project of converting the Homepage to Querki sometime soon...

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

For some games this makes sense--they have an ancestor or a parent. But others are mashups of disparate games. Perhaps a tag set, and also allow a parent-connection ("derived from" or "inspired by" or "variant of")?

In a way it feels more like Java classes; roulette-chess subclasses chess, but implements random-move and random-damage...

[mikekn]

I like the idea, but I'm not sure how it would work for some of the games. Does Tables fall under Board or Dice? What sort of Families would you have for card games? (Trick taking, trick avoiding, ??)

[fitzw.livejournal.com]

So, would you place Mah Jongg as a Family of games (with Species based on locale where played), or a Species of games (with Morphs based on the locale)?

[marphod.livejournal.com]

Does the hierarchy need to be enforced from the outside, or can it grow organically?

A game could have a list of attributes that include direct predecessor games, direct descendent games, indirect predecessor and descendent games, and generation (or non-generational) peers, as well as earliest known creation date, and one or more date ranges for the height of its popularity.

That leaves the game the first class concept, and the relationships of a lesser class, at least structurally. You can than run a spider across the network to build it up as a graph (in the mathematical sense), and have it figure out how the hierarchy should look. (which, admittedly, moves some of the problem to how to write a algorithm to display the resulting graph, but that is, presumably, a problem with existing solutions.)

[talvinm.livejournal.com]

I read through the conversation between you and goldsquare above and...my head hurts. :P

A concern that I have that may be valid or may show that I am missing the point: you are considered the Authority on these things. If you use a hierarchy, there may be some who will point to that as documentation (of a sort) that "Y descended from X: the game started as X and morphed into Y over time."

As an Authority on this topic, you need to be careful how you present the information. If you have some good documentation that, purely hypothetical example, "Briton-Tossing" evolved from "Gaul-Tossing" as the Romans expanded their empire and found more people to toss for points, than a hierarchy makes sense, and it should be presented that way. If the Romans invented Gaul-Tossing, and it appears that the Picts invented Briton-Tossing along the same lines but independently of the Romans, that's not a hierarchy, and you risk confusing someone who relies on you too much as an authority. So you might want a different way to present those cases.

I hope I am making sense, and I hope you haven't totally lost me.

No Gauls or Britons were harmed in the making of this example. We do not condone and do not practice the actual tossing of Gauls or Britons at sanctioned events. Anyone who wishes to participate in simulated tossing must have authorized in the specific type of tossing they wish to recreate and carry their signed authorization card at all times. Please sign the waiver.

[mindways]

I had a longer post, but...

Admittedly, this is probably more clever than useful.

...this neatly sums up my thoughts. :)