Two Ball Game

This happened earlier today.

Get a wiffle ball and a soccer ball. Divide approximately 12 people into two teams. At any moment, one is offense and the other is defense. One of the players (the "goalie") on the defensive team guards themselves with a wiffle ball bat inside an equilateral triangle approximately 12 feet on each side. The offensive team is trying to throw the wiffle ball at the goalie. The defensive team is trying to kick the soccer ball at the player in possession of the wiffle ball.

Points are scored when the offense hits the goalie with the wiffle ball (throwing underhand from outside the triangle), or the defense hits the offensive player in possession of the wiffle ball with the soccer ball. Because the latter is a bit more difficult than the former, it might be assigned more points (but we never got that far). When a point is scored, the player it was scored by/against becomes the goalie. The former goalie throws in the wiffle ball.

Additionally: it might make more sense if both balls may be either kicked or thrown. It might also be easiest to play this in a court, where the soccer ball cannot be lost when it misses a target (or with multiple soccer balls).

The Game and Society

I just noticed some guys outside playing American football (being a typical overcast autumn day, this isn't surprising). Calling the ball a "pigksin" reminds me of our formerly ubiquitous nomadic lifestyle. I wouldn't be surprised if the appeal of many sports is due to the role each player takes in relation to the ball — becoming a chaser, defending it from others, etc. — and the similarity this role bears to the original game hunt. If evolutionary theory is on track, then games like football are the highest fulfillment of our deepest instincts (at least in industrialized societies).

It's also interesting to note the place of the hunt in art. It was of primary importance to the first artists, but slowly fell by the way-side as societies were established — making way for themes relating humans to each other and the gods. You could say all these things make sports photographers the modern day equivalent of cave painters, but the cave paintings are much more of an abstract art than documentary.

War/Dance in Life and Play

Why do so many games advance the war metaphor? Chess is almost synonymous with the idea. Other board games will require players to compete for some limited resource or rack up the most points in some arbitrary currency. Perhaps we simply understand life itself as a war, in which case the interaction in these games is called for — preferred, even. But what if we viewed life through another lens? What if we started to think of life as a dance? Interaction becomes poetic, and the goals change completely. Obstacles disappear — without a hammer, you see no nails — they are turned into dance partner, you would be wasting your time stomping on your partner's feet (the dance accounts for the interdependence of things). I'd like to see more games where the players learn about each other and themselves through some sort of continuous poetic interaction towards a shared goal. You could always think of musical improvisation as that sort of game, or the interaction between a Dungeon Master and the characters in a typical RPG, but how could you apply this idea to something like a visual art or board game?