/TTGBG

Timeline Tree of Games and Board Games, celebrating more than 8000 years of game design innovations

TTGBG (v0.4)

Timeline Tree of Games and Board Games, Celebrating More Than 8000 Years of Game Design Innovations

TTGBG snapshot

Long term goal

This timeline is a part of the « On the Shoulders of Cloud Giants » (en français) set of projects. See also a Timeline Tree of Tabletop Role-Playing Games.

I would like to build a taxonomy of relations between games and I would like to design a phylomemetic system to document the evolution of cultural ideas through games. In this graph, the ludemes (ie. small units of game mechanics or goals) are driving the evolution of the branches of the tree and the actual games are outputs (or « fruits ») on these branches.

How to...

... Do it myself

  • Download the latest source code. It should be easy to understand.
  • Install and set up Graphviz and Textpad++.
  • Compile the code. The details are in the header of the source code ("Parameters"). It will produce a ps file.
  • With Adobe Distiller, turn the ps file into a PDF file. If you successfully used a free and open-source software to do that job, please let me know.

... Contribute

  • Send me corrections or suggestions at pascal.umontreal [at] gmail.com

    • It can take time before I answer you.
    • If you don't want to be cited as contributor, add "no citation" in your email.

  • Help me to compile the dot source code graph to produce a more dense graph.

  • Improve Wikidata items related to board games. I documented some guidelines. Contact me at Pmartinolli if you need help). I already made 7000 edits on TTRPGs so I have a little understanding of what is what there.

  • Export the data into GEPHY. Why ? 1) I want to try it ; 2) I think the database structure of GEPHY can help managing all the informations ; 3) It's open source.

... Start my own project

  • Have a look on this simple template of the graph, and on the rendering.
  • Gather your friends (or your students) and decide some teamwork methods. Each of you create an account on GitHub.
  • Deposit your files on GitHub.
  • Go!

... Thank me

  • Tweet it @pascaliensis.
  • Comment it on your social media.
  • Cite me in your academic work :

Martinolli, Pascal. 2020. « Timeline Tree of Games and Board Games, celebrating more than 8000 years of game design innovations. » Dataset and dot language code.

  • Print it and display it in your school, library, exhibition, etc.
  • Send me an email : pascal.umontreal [at] gmail.com

Short term improvements

  • Building a better taxonomy/hierarchy of ludemes.
  • Producing a more dense graph.
  • Inserting a key legend to explicit the colors and links displayed.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to James Wallis for his inputs on methodology, for his suggested references and for his motivating encouragements.

The source code is an adaptation of the code created by Todd Lehman for his “TeX Family Tree”.

The data sources of this work are numerous. You can have a look of the references used to select, check and analyze the TTRPGs.

This content is CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0

Informations in the source code are pure facts, therefore they cannot be copyrighted. The curation of these informations, the links between them and the structure of their display are a work of edition. I will be glad you acknowledge my name if you want to reuse them.

Metadata / Métadonnées

  • Author / Auteur : Pascal Martinolli

  • Created / Créé le : 2016

  • Most recent version / Dernière version : 2020-01-13

  • Original format / format de fichier : DOT language for Graphviz (Open source)

  • License / Licence : CC-BY-NC-SA

  • Contributor : James Wallis.

  • Comments and collaborations are welcomed at / Commentaires et collaborations : pascal.umontreal [at] gmail.com



https://github.com/pmartinolli/TTGBG