Talk:The Sumerian Game

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:The Sumerian Game/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Indrian (talk · contribs) 14:52, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Another early game nomination by PresN; another early game GA review by Indrian. Indrian (talk) 14:52, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Review

•  Done"The game, set in 3500 BC" - This is super nitpicky, but is the game truly set in the year 3500 BC, does it just begin in that year, or is it just meant to evoke mid-4th Century BC Sumeria? Since it follows the reigns of three kings over what is implied by the game play to be a period of many years, I doubt the whole game is meant to happen in that single year.
•  Done" In the second version of the game, the second segment was refocused, with the rounds limited to 10 and the player no longer required to make choices around grain allocation, but instead only make decisions about applying workers to farming or crafts." - This sentence feels like it has a lot of clauses stitched together, and would probably be well-served by being split up a bit.
•  Done"as an early mainframe game for an IBM 7090 time-shared mainframe computer" - I get that you are trying to incorporate a link to the "early mainframe game" article as a pointer to the larger topic this article falls under, but this reads incredibly awkwardly.
•  Done"One session with 30 sixth-grade students was run." - Passive voice.
•  Done"This expansion was made in the summer of 1966 by Addis" - More passive voice.
•  Done"This expansion was made in the summer of 1966 by Addis, who rewrote and expanded the game, adding a stronger narrative flow to how the advisor tells the player about the events of the city, refocusing the second segment of the game on the new concepts introduced, and interspersing the game with taped audio lectures corresponding with images on a slide projector, which have been described as the first cutscenes." - Lots of clauses joined by commas again. This may not need to be broken up so much as rewritten slightly. For example, "rewrote the game by adding a stronger narrative flow" rather than using a comma there.
•  Done"The new version of the game was again conducted with 30 sixth-grade students" - More passive voice.
•  Done"He named the result King of Sumeria, programming it for a DEC PDP-8 minicomputer" - These two clauses really don't have anything to do with each other and should be separated.
•  Done"Around 1971, DEC employee David H. Ahl had written a version of The Sumer Game in the BASIC programming language" - The verb tense here is wrong. I did not change it myself because I am not sure whether it is supposed to read "Around 1971 Ahl wrote" or "By 1971 Ahl had written". Either change would fix the issue depending on what you are attempting to convey with the sentence.
•  Done"In addition to being a prototype of the strategy and city-building genres as part of the early history of video games" - As above, this attempt to reference the early history article is a little clumsy.

I think that's about it. Its really just some minor grammar issues, so I will go ahead and place this  On hold while the changes are made. Indrian (talk) 15:27, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

@Indrian: Took me a while to figure out why I wrote so much passive voice yesterday- pretty sure it's because that 1967 report was (mostly) written in a detached, passive voice ("it was decided to make extensive revisions during the summer of 1966") and that infected my writing. The trains of comma-separated clauses and clumsy attempts to shoehorn in links to other articles are all me, though. Anyways, all of this should be fixed now in this edit. Thanks for reviewing, and so fast! --PresN 19:37, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

@PresN: Yeah, I let a couple of GAs get away for me a little bit when COVID hit, so I felt the need to show I can actually do one of these things reasonably fast ;) Anyway, flow is much better and the "early history of video games" article is introduced much more smoothly. You missed one of my flags for passive voice, which you can see above. When that is fixed, I think we are good. Indrian (talk) 20:16, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

@Indrian: Gah, done. --PresN 01:31, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

And promoted. Indrian (talk) 20:33, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Ownership

Does anyone know the source of this claim?:

"After the conclusion of the second project in 1967, however, BOCES did not receive funds to extend the project further, and as per the agreement with IBM all three games became the property of the company."

The cited source only contains info about the DEC version, nothing related to the IBM/BOCES version. I recently found a source that states BOCES copyrighted the game, and other sources that state the game was available to other institutions via BOCES. Just wanted to check if there are any objections before I revise. Xscapist (talk) 19:02, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

@Xscapist: Please do! I'm trying to figure out where I came up with that sentence, because it's very specific and if I didn't have a source it wouldn't have mentioned IBM owning the game, just that it wasn't used after the display, but I'm at a loss. If you have a source that BOCES made the game available, that would be great to add. --PresN 19:33, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Edits suggestions after further research

I'm the author of The Sumerian Game: A Digital Resurrection. Since I don't want to self promote my book I'll just suggest some edits to this page.

"The first version of the game was played by a group of 30 sixth-grade students in 1964."

According to my research the very first round tests of the computer game was done on September 18, 1964, by a group of 4 students. The program tested was named Suilxr (see next suggestion).

There were two different version of The Sumerian Game (computer game), developed in two different labs: Sum9rx (a shorter and less complex simulation) was developed by IBM in Mohansic Laboratory, while Suilxr (more complex) was developed by BOCES in Fox Meadow Road, Yorktown Heights. Suilxr was (later) divided into 3 segments, while Sum9rx had just the first segment of Suilxr.

"At the conclusion of the project the game was not put into widespread use, though it was used as a demonstration in the BOCES Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York and made available by "special arrangement" with BOCES into at least the early 1970s."

Actually The Sumerian Game was tested and studied extensively in the University of Calgary by Hallworth team. They also ported it in APL (before Dyment speech) and later in FOCAL.

"This game was expanded on in 1971 by David H. Ahl as Hamurabi, which in turn led to many early strategy and city-building games."

Before Ahl, James Storer (Lunar Lander author) was inspired by King of Sumeria by Dyment and programmed The Pollution Game envisioning many of the features that Ahl later implemented in his Hamurabi.

"As a result, Mabel Addis has been called the first female video game designer and the first writer for a video game"

No dubt about this, but it could be added that her coworker, Walter Goodman, designer and writer of The Sierra Leone Game, was the second video game desiner and writer for a video game. Moreover in The Sierra Leone Game he implemented the very first computer game turtorial and introduction.

"Two versions of the game were created, both intended for play by a classroom of students with a single person inputting commands into a teleprinter, which would output responses from the mainframe computer."

Two revisions of Suilxr. Sum9rx, as far as we know, was considered completed with just the first segment.

"The second version had a stronger narrative component to the game's text and interspersed the game with taped audio lectures, presented as the discussions of the ruler's court of advisors, corresponding with images on a slide projector. In both versions, the player enters numbers in response to questions posed by the game."

Both versions of Suilxr had slides and audio lectures. Slides were improved in 1966 but were already there.

"The rounds start in 3500 BC"

Funny information: Sum9rx starts in 3400 BC; Suilxr starts in 3500 BC.

The subsequent description is (partly) based on Suilxr version with some reference to Sum9rx. The gameplay of the two versions was similar but with some key differences in math and inventory management.

"Richard Neier" is mispelled. He was Meier

"The game itself, The Sumerian Game, was designed and written by Addis and programmed by McKay"

The very first version of the game was named The Sumerian PLay and was developed during the summer workshop by the workgroup. It was a mix between a board game and a role playing game: a teacher played as "the student" while another teacher played as "the advisor", giving reports and pulling cards like "the weel has been invented". In the next 18 months, the game was developed as a paper game and (in the last few weeks) programmed by McKay. It was tested the first time in September 1964.

"This project created three games: The Sierra Leone Game, The Free Enterprise Game, and an expansion of The Sumerian Game. "

Incorrect. The Sumerian game was ready, programmed and tested. The Sierra Leone Game was ready and programmed but not tested. With the federal grant, it was asked to drop all the others games (there were at least 3 known projects: a reading program, a chemical lab simulator and a foreign language program) and develop 3 simulations. BOCES had only 2 simulations ready so they started evaluating what to do. The first idea is to go for another simulation in classical era (as initially thought by Bruse Moncreiff) but then they decided to use "toy town", a project by Jimmer Leonard from J.H. University. The Toy Town later evolved in the Freen Enterprise Game.

"The expanded version was renamed Hamurabi and added an end-of-game performance appraisal."

The idea was already present in The Pollution game by Storer. Also the Pollution Game was included in 101 BASIC computer games. Moreover Ahl took a few sentences of the "end of game performance" from the Pollution Game and added them in his Hamurabi.

Well there are just a few edits. Of course the text could be improved with the new informations available Xend3r76 (talk) 07:46, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

So, let me preface this by saying that I have no reason to believe that any of the above is not true (I do slightly disagree with some of the interpretations, which I'll discuss below). The problem, however, is that Wikipedia articles need to cite "reliable sources", and fundamentally a self-published book is not considered a reliable source. Exceptions can be made based on the author, but in this case while you've been doing video game history research for a while it's all been published as self-published books. That said, this can all be included, but it would have to be cited to your sources, which I don't recall seeing in the preview you linked me a couple weeks ago.

More detailed response:

• 4 students - I'll tweak the wording to not imply it was the only playtesting session during development, but the June 1967 project report does say "After the experience of having some thirty pupils play the game and take the tests"
• Suilxr vs. Sum9rx - this is the main thing I would be very interested in seeing where you got it from, since the June 1967 project report says nothing about two versions being created in parallel- Wing just says that McKay programmed it
• University of Calgary - will add, I see a paper (https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED033575.pdf) from Hallworth that mentions that they had made a FOCAL version, though I wouldn't term that "widespread use"- maybe should be "widspread use by BOCES" or similar.
• The Polution Game - I see in the source code (https://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~storer/LunarLander/PollutionGame/PollutionGameListing.pdf) the "national fink" line, so since that came out in 1970 according to Storer's university site (https://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~storer/LunarLander/LunarLander.html) it predates Hamurabi, so that link in the chain should be mentioned
• Slides - yes, they were in the first version, that sentence is misleading since only the audio was "new"
• Neier vs. Meier - correct, that typewriter font is pretty awful. Even zooming in on it I can't tell it's not an N except that it matches "IBM"
• Sumerian Play - I'd love to see the source; for now I can make it more clear that the workshop idea was more than just a short idea but involved an actual concept
• Three games - The June 1967 project report literally says "During the course of Project 2841 three games were developed: The Sumerian Game (already begun in the preceding project), The Sierra Leone Game, and The Free Enterprise Game". As this article focuses on The Sumerian Game, it doesn't go into the details of how far along Sierra Leone or the Free Enterprise Game were, or where those ideas came from.

--PresN 19:48, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Well I don't know Wikipedia rules but saying "it's self published so.." it's not a clever rule IMHO. Anyway, my books are self published in the beginning (they are niche, after all) and then sold to traditional publisher. Like through the Moongate that was translated also in russian 1 year ago and printed by the Eksmo/Bombora. Nearly all my books are published in italian by 2 traditional publisher. It's just the english translation that is self published. Anyway I can't avoit to say again that this rule is... strange :) Xend3r76 (talk) 05:22, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

On second thought, let me just say: OK, don’t change anything. Honestly, I’m seriously considering deleting my Wikipedia account because I can’t stand an environment where it’s acceptable to quote a news article or a tweet, but not a book simply because it’s self-published. I’ve done my part in uncovering this story, and that’s enough. Xend3r76 (talk) 05:27, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

It’s nothing personal, so please don’t take it that way. The problem is just that self-publishing is too easy; anyone can do it these days. If you go to Amazon right now, you will find a dozen or more self-published history of video game books, and they are all crap. Every last one of them. Your books are not crap; they are great. If I were writing a book on topics you have covered, I would use you as a source and cite your work, because as an expert in the field myself, I can tell you have done the proper legwork. But Wikipedia cannot expect all its editors to be experts in the fields they write about, so we need to have some ground rules on what sources can be included. Being published by an actual publisher does not mean a book is automatically good. There are over a dozen published video game history books on Amazon right now that are also crap, but it is an indication that a person has attracted enough attention in their field that a neutral third-party saw fit to throw a little money at them for their work. It is not a perfect system, but it’s the best we’ve got. That said, if your Italian editions are published by a traditional firm, I personally think that means your work has passed this threshold and can be cited to on Wikipedia. Indrian (talk) 09:16, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

@Xend3r76: Yeah, I'm also willing to cite it if your previous books have been picked up later by Italian publishers. I've made all the changes I mentioned above with the exception of the Suilxr vs. Sum9rx thing and the details of The Sumerian Play; if you're willing to say which page numbers/chapter names those are discussed in your book, I'll cite you directly. --PresN 15:26, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

My reaction stems from the fact that I perceive it as a serious mistake to judge a book based on who published it. As has been noted, there are self-published books that aren’t worth much, just as there are books published by major publishers that have little value. I made my text available as a preview precisely to allow people to evaluate the work I did. My idea was that this topic is very important, and I am certain that it would interest many people. However, my book (even though I am proud of it) is certainly "boring" for most readers because, aside from the first section that describes the history of The Sumerian Game and the last one with the biographies of the large team that worked on it, the rest is very technical. For this reason, I thought: it’s better that the Wikipedia page be updated because many will turn to it for information rather than my book. And I’m perfectly fine with that because I’m more interested in providing accurate information than in selling copies of my book (which is why I usually work in self-publishing and only later sell the rights to publishers—but that’s another discussion).

I would also like to add another consideration that explains why I found the initial comment particularly irritating: this Wikipedia article is very well-written, but if we start distinguishing between sources—as was being done—based on the type of publication rather than the quality of the work, then it must be pointed out that the article cites blog posts and tweets. I truly cannot understand why a distinction is made between a self-published book (regardless of the quality of the work) and a tweet or a news post on a video game website, favoring the latter two over the former.

My books are, in fact, all published by Italian publishers, and Through the Moongate was even translated into Russian by Bombora/Eksmo, one of the largest Russian publishers. I think this fact is irrelevant, and I even regret having to justify myself in this way because I made the book available specifically so that the quality of the work could be judged (incidentally, my research has also been cited by The New York Times and discussed at Harvard University; moreover, my Video-Games series is used as course material at the University of Rome).

Nevertheless, I find it absurd to have to clarify these things just to point out that the article in question requires significant editing. While it was well-written and included plenty of interesting information at the time, today—after my research—I’m sorry to say it’s outdated. I’ve highlighted the biggest inaccuracies, but in reality, the entire article needs to be rewritten because of the sheer amount of information and details I’ve uncovered and analyzed.

I understand that the idea of rewriting an article might be annoying, but I thought the main interest of Wikipedia article authors was to provide accurate and up-to-date information rather than to preserve pages as they are. I expected a different reaction, and I’m very disappointed, especially because I was genuinely proud of my research. I still believe I did a good job illustrating in detail how The Sumerian Game was a complex and laborious project—certainly the result of the efforts of a few highly skilled and capable individuals, but also the work of a team of educators driven by great passion for their work. I’m sorry the article does not adequately highlight their contribution.

Again, this is why I made my entire book available, and I was very surprised when I was told that sources were lacking because the ebook’s notes contain dozens of references to papers, diaries, autobiographies, newspaper articles, and interviews. Everything is documented—I spent five years doing what I did.

If the goal was to have the sources cited directly without attributing the work of collecting, analyzing, and reconstructing the game to me, fine. I’m disappointed because I see Wikipedia is often used to self-promote even works that are not entirely deserving, but I don’t have the desire or the nerve to create a secondary account to edit articles just to make my name appear.

That said, I cannot provide the page number from the book because the printed edition hasn’t been released yet—only the ebook of The Sumerian Game exists—but it contains everything: Suilxr, Sum9rx, The Sumerian Play, analysis of the printouts, and the "genealogical tree" of subsequent versions of the game, with a study of the mathematical formulas and algorithms to determine the exact sequence of the versions. Xend3r76 (talk) 13:52, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Okay, well, if you ever have citeable page numbers or chapter names please let us know. I'll go ahead and add what I can cited to the book as a whole, but it's not great for readers to have to guess where in a large book the specific information is. The tweet in question was just a convenience link for readers to you specifically, it adds nothing over the other cite for the sentence and should probably be removed.

Ultimately, though, while I understand your frustration about the initial pushback against citing your book, the fact of the matter is that there's nearly 7 million articles on Wikipedia. So 20 years of history have built up how citing rules work here, and the end result is that in part, as annoying and awkward and frustrating as it can be, sources that are published in venues with editors are presumed to be citeable until proven otherwise, while self-published sources are the opposite, and none of that has anything to do with how "true" they are. It's because I could slap together a book this weekend about The Sumerian Game and put it up for sale for $50, and it would be bad and full of errors and completely indistinguishable from yours when put in the form of a citation. The only way to tell yours was accurate and good and mine not is if the article editor(s) went and read the books, and it is not feasible to say "the work cited is presumed good unless you spend $50 to make a subjective judgement that it isn't". (This is not a hypothetical scenario, by the way, people do and have done this, and they complain a lot when cites to their work are removed.)

So how else are we to determine what makes a self-published book acceptable as a source or not? Well, there's not much, but a history of reliability by the author is the one way, and is what Indrian was talking about. I didn't know about any such indicators, as I didn't see on your website that some of your books had been trad published (likely because if it's there, it's not in English, and I can't read Italian). So you cross the bar, at least as far as this level of review goes, and my weekend-project book does not. So now, only 2 days after we started discussing this, we've gotten that untangled. --PresN 23:02, 17 November 2024 (UTC)