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Joe Joyce wrote on Tue, Nov 18, 2008 03:23 AM UTC:
Rich, you can't regulate creativity. We've had this discussion before. IAGO as an entity has no need for regulation in the CV or any other community. Its purpose is to push abstract strategy board games. Chess in any form is a quintessential representation of such. I got interested in the idea of creating an IAGO way back when, got involved, and have paid attention ever since. I can say a few things about it.

Everything IAGO could possibly want from the CV site is already happening - slowly. And messily. Examples: the 'Track 1' and serious 'Track 2' game discussions. I will point out these are a constant source of new games that will challenge even the best chessplayers in a tournament. They are exactly what IAGO wants for tournaments, because they have all been playtested and examined for problems by some very creative people. Further, I will point out that the game out of the 10 or so games I've discussed as the best 'next chess' game is Fergus' Eurasian Chess. The only game I'd rule out of an IAGO-sponsored tournament of all the games I discussed is Black Ghost [sorry George - but I do think all the others are fine for not merely a CV tournament but an abstract games tournament] because it unbalances the game to black. I don't think it's a fair [enough] game. 

There are people here doing things from working on making CV kits to creating the new interfaces we are and will be using. But it's the free choice of everyone involved. IAGO is not a leader taking us to a promised land. Instead, IAGO is a librarian, who should be able to assist people in finding games by providing information and easy directions. Rather than make the rules, IAGO uses rules already made by others. While it may showcase some games in tournaments around the world, it's meant to direct people into the wide world of abstract games. You yourself were the one who put together the IAGO database of about 1000 games playable against human opponents over the internet. That's a card catalog for abstract strategy games you've made. That's a service, one that IAGO performs as part of its function. Being useful and user-friendly should be the main goal of IAGO.

The CV site is meant to be mostly glorious chaos, as far as I can tell. But chaos spontaneously organizes into patterns, and this is where IAGO will get its infusion of games from. However, while IAGO can get its games from the order found here - George and I aren't working together for nothing; we both see theoretical and practical benefits from The Two Tracks and other such ideas - the site gets its life from the chaos it sustains. 

By attempting to push everyone in a particular direction, you will only get people to push back, even if they want to go that way. And many if not most of us are far too individualistic to go any way but our own. Yet if it's an interesting path IAGO offers, many of us will walk it to see what's there. [Push, and you find people roll rocks onto the path...] 

In trying so [too] hard, you make it difficult for the rest of us to talk about IAGO - it's overkill. I'd love to run an IAGO tournament featuring chessvariants [and other games], in New York or Baltimore or Cleveland or Boston or Albany or... but we have to get people there. I'd like to be able to feature Next Chess games and a prize or two, and pull in some people who visit the site. For that, we need more positive feelings and fewer negative ones. Ahem. I don't want people using the IAGO banner as a dartboard while I'm standing by it waiting for the ScoreFour tournament  at NonCon, for example. And as an editor of this site, I have to be extremely careful of conflicts of interest, among others. As I have a standing policy of preventing or ending conflicts [not heated discussions] onsite as I am reasonably able to, I find it nicely ironic that in this I can and will say as little [more] as possible, being both a very early member of IAGO and later the junior editor here. It seems I may be obliged to both comment and not comment. I think the football game is still on...

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