(see Version 1.1 of this card)
An algorithm — for current purposes — is a finite set of instructions for accomplishing some task, which transforms an initial starting condition into a recognizable end condition. Greg Costikyan: “Algorithmic games are ones in which underlying calculations or rules determine the game’s response to the player’s input.”* The recipes that Benjamin and other Sims learn from the cookbooks on their bookshelves are algorithms. Benjamin’s career as a Theorist is also an algorithm. There is a start condition: he must have 8 friends, 4 charisma points, a 7 in creativity, and so on. It has end conditions, too. With 10 friends, 5 charisma points and 10 for creativity, the Theorist career can end, and another begin. The gamer selects one sequence after another, and gradually learns what they do — that’s algorithm. The gamer discovers a relationship between appearances and algorithm in the game which is a double of the relation between appearances and a putative algorithm in gamespace — that’s allegorithm. (See Fig. B) But there is always a gap between the intuitively knowable algorithm of the game and the passing, uneven, unfair semblance of an algorithm in the everyday life of gamespace — this is the form that allegory now takes.
are the start and end conditions determined by the gamer or is it part of the rules of The Sims game?
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