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The Three Circles

We now have only experimental games, so the following is a guideline for the future.

The Bead Game will eventually have three processes, each related to a specific circle. These circles define how the Game will interface with individuals who log onto the game's web site.

The inner circle is accessible to individuals who have placed themselves into a specific group dynamic. This group dynamic is then managed via knowledge management principles.

The middle circle is a peer review circle. Neither of these circles allows a user to interact except if a password is known and given.

The outer circle allows anyone who has a web browser to review the games that have been completed, and to play a "knowledge traversal" game.

The purpose of the "outer game" is to provide a social structure, via chat and forum technology, for discussing and learning about the knowledge encoded by the Game Masters. This outer game has many of the same characteristics as the inner game. Knowledge artifacts are produced because of the play between the Game Master and the Bead Players during the inner game. These artifacts (a graph with text and concept representation) provide a complex structure that is to be discovered in outer circle play. The knowledge traversal game has a mechanism whereby interesting play in the outer circle will cause an invitation to be generated to facilitate a training process whereby the individual may enter the middle circle.

A training process will be managed by a virtual university, to be housed in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, and in the Town of Taos New Mexico.

The finished games are a "tapestry" woven together from the scholarship of the inner circle of bead players. The original game occurs through a specific set of procedures that involves three phases of communication between the Game Master and the Bead Players. These phases are:

(1) evocation of affective/emotional states between the individual player and the game

(2) commitment through collaborative and binding agreements, and

(3) a shared sense of group membership and purpose.

The use of these phases are grounded in Raymond Bradley and Karl Pribram's theory of social communication, in Allan Schore's work, and to the literary work, "Majester Ludi, the Glass Bead Game, by author Herman Hesse.

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