The Game

Soulten · 08-08-2009, 09:03 PM

RULE 1: You are playing The Game.
RULE 2: Whenever you think about The Game, you lose.
RULE 3: Loss must be announced.

The objective of The Game is to forget that it exists.
The purpose of The Game is to get the entire world playing it.

Additional Facts:
- There is no winning The Game. Just losers and those not playing.
- You can only 'lose' The Game between interval of 30 minutes.
- Once you know about The Game, you are always playing no matter what. You cannot decide to not play.
- You just lost.

Origins of The Game:

The Finchley Central Hypothesis
Mornington Crescent is a game that parodies games and sports with overly-complex rules. Players take turns to announce the names of London underground (subway) stations, and the winner is the first player to announce "Mornington Crescent". The objective was to give the appearance of skill and strategy by invoking very complicated and confusing rules.

In the early 1970s, John Horton Conway, a prominent game theorist and the father of combinatorial game theory, attempted to create a game that did not fit the von Neumann definition of a game. He created a parody of Mornington Crescent, called Finchley Central, by reducing it to only one rule; the first person to announce "Finchley Central" wins the game.

In 1977, members of the Cambridge University Science Fiction Society (CUSFS) would regularly meet at the Horse and Groom pub (Kings Street, Cambridge, UK) to discuss game theory and drink beer. One member, Richard Pinch, had been taught Finchley Central by John Conway and they would sometimes play it in the pub.

In attempt to violate von Neuman's definition of a game even further than John Conway had originally done, they created a parody of Finchley Central by reducing its one rule to its logical extreme. The first person to think of the game itself would lose. The rest, as they say, is history.
finchley

The members of CUSFS assert that the creation of The Game was a collective effort, but Nigel Goldenfeld and Mark Haslett were probably the most responsible for releasing it into the public. The CUSFS 1977 collective includes:

* Dr Nigel Goldenfeld - professor of physics
* Mark Haslett
* Philip Brice
* Dr Nick Lowe - professor of classics
* Dr Richard Pinch - professor of mathematics

So, after more than 3 years of searching for its origins, is it possible that we've finally tracked down the individuals who masterminded The Game over 30 years ago? Is The Game a parody of a parody of a parody, created by drunken game theorists who had no idea of what they had unleashed on the world?

While there is of course no hard evidence to prove these claims, unless this is some kind of very elaborate hoax, it is certainly the most plausible story we've heard so far and the closest we've ever come to knowing The Game's true origins.

YOU JUST LOST

This entire thread was quoted from another site but lets play the game. Unfortuantly while I was making this (copy and pasted) both me and you both lost.