GGLOB

Before moving to France I remember discussions we had amongst my board gaming friends in Bergen on “Could it be possible, and more importantly practical and enjoyable, to continue playing board games over the internet?” Sure one can play games online here and there, in real time, like Puerto Rico or Go, or even at slower pace, like Through the Desert, but the experience remains entirely virtual. The mouse and keyboard can hardly replace the wooden pieces found in a real game… What if we could use webcams and multiple copies of the real game in question? (Technically this has been done for ages with correspondence chess.) What kind of games could one play? Would the the game need to be a game like Caylus or Puerto Rico, or even Go, where all the information is open to all the players, or could one devise a system to transmit hidden information - like cards drawn and such to players afar by for example having someone at the “main game” showing them to a webcam? This has so far remained an experiment of thought, and we’ve continued to play virtual games when needed. Until now…

Enter Eye of Judgment. This is, as most of you probably know, a video game played with real cards with the possibility of playing online. You play with your deck of cards on your side and your opponent plays with her deck on the other side of the internet tunnel. A dream come true - except this is not a general tool, there’s no way to play, let’s say poker, using the same piece of software. The rules of this specific game is programmed with strict German vigour into the game’s protocol. Before online play you register a deck of card you want to use and the computer draws for you - whereupon you browse through your deck and place the card on your hand, thus eliminating cheating. (Except cheating the card collecting part of the game, but that’s another, not game breaking, story.)

This system could easily be modified to work for other games, though. The first game that spring to mind is, of course, Puerto Rico. Both because all ingame information is open (this leads to the need of just a very simple computer book-keeper, but it could of course very well be played only with a defined “central player”) and also the fact that all players have their own piece of the playing board (simpler setup required for each player). It could be solved in an old fashioned way by having one central table, where maybe most of the players are located, that keeps the numbers of building, settlers, and goods remaining, the types of plantation to draw from etc. Then one can set up one webcam on this table for remote players, and webcams on each of the boards of those. When a remote player does his move, let’s say buys a building he pulls it from his local copy of the game itself and updates his corner of the world and the central table mirrors his move by removing the building in question from the pool of buildings.

This does for me, on paper, sound almost practical, but, as mentioned, I haven’t tried it out. (Has anyone, or rather anygeek, tried stunts like this out there?) What I think computerised system like the one for Eye of Judgment can bring to the table (hehe) here is the book-keeping and the updating of the “central board”. Let’s say the remote player places a coffee plantation on his island. The webcam can read this move and do necessary updates… If a player tries to buy the third wharf of a game the computer could tell him nicely that there are no more. Of course all players would have to have their own (, possibly specially made,) version of Puerto Rico to play, but that’s something any player should have anyway…

For games that involves cards - like Settlers, the system of Eye of Judgment - letting the computer draw for you, would work perfectly, I would think. And cheating would not be a problem (not that it will while playing among friends, but on an imagined anonymous PvP scale, who knows), as there is always one impartial entity that knows has all the information on cards drawn - the computer. If you try to play a card that she has not picked for you, she will complain…

Games that would be difficult to implement like this would be those with too much info on one overly complex central board, I guess. Other games with too many different cards, like Carcassonne, I imagine would be tough as well.

Any comments on why or how this would (not) work, or games that would be fun and simple to try out without a computer book-keeper? Maybe this has already been done with other games than Eye of Judgment?