The "Waca" (<) is the thing you hit when you forget to take your finger off of the Shift key at the end of a sentence. Proper pronunciation for the angle-bracket characters <> is "waca waca" Here is some poetry for you.. The text of the poem follows:<>!*''#
^"'$$-
!*=@$_
%*<>~#4
&[]../
|{,,SYSTEM HALTED
I received this poem over email from my Grandmother last week. It presents a puzzle, challenging the reader to guess a way to read the poem in order to make it sound like a poem. Interpreting the poem is an asynchronous activity, but nonetheless could spawn interaction as users tried to create similar puzzles for one another.
Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,
Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,
Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,
Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH.
Children are more prone to exercise their bodies than their minds; purely intellectual games are likely to be restricted to times when physical activity is actually impossible.
When children play guessing games, it is often a prelude to some sort of physical race or scrimmage.
In a virtual cafe, we would want games to be a focus which could
serve as a prelude to conversational interaction.
Most guessing games are actually not competitive; scores are not
kept, and if someone guesses incorrectly, it just means that it is
someone else's turn. Often the games are ritualistic in some form. In the game 'Film Stars,' one player selects the name of a movie
star, and the others have to guess it, with varying numbers of hints.
One important element here is the idea of a delay in time. This is
created by having the participants run some sort of race. While it is not
feasible to run a race in the context of a virtual cafe, some form of
delay will be needed in any synchronous game in order to give
people more of a chance to participate, and to reduce
the problem of multiple people answering at once.
Another important aspect of these games is that the initiator is one
of the children, and plays along.
One possible problem in creating a virtual (or real) environment for conversation is that the environment itself, or some designated leader (perhaps digital itself) will dominate the conversation instead of facillitating it. However, informal games in which scores are not kept could be started by a facilitator, but then allow the lead of the game to be passed around to the rest of the group.
Most children's games will not hold the attention of adults for very long. However, many adults do take part in games which are somewhat similar, as they can serve as initiators for conversation, and do not require the participants to know each other well.
I know several groups of adults who sit around and solve interactive riddles, and have told them both in person and on-line.
A man pushes his car across a railroad, and stops at a hotel. The owner of the hotel asks for $50. He gives it to her. Why?
This is not an isolated type of activity; similar riddles are published and sold as a boxed game.
In addition, there are some games which are a bit more personal in nature, encouraging each other to ask personal questions. Such questions are more likely to be answered in the context of a game.