Rules

• Agonistics is a game played by sending email messages to an online discussion.  The group shown here is Newsgroup.
• The goal of the game is to win points, move to the center of the circle, and get your words displayed on the left of the screen.
• Players are randomly assigned a face.
• Players win points by engaging in dialogue with other players. 
• When a player wins points, the player’s face is moved towards the center.
• The faces of players in dialogue are moved together.
• When a player in a dialogue group posts a message that addresses a theme the group is discussing, the theme is shown and a sentence from the player’s message is highlighted at the top of the screen. 
• Players who are not in dialogue with others never have their words highlighted.

Using the interface

• If you want to play, click on the [post] button to post a message to Newsgroup.
• The Newsgroup list is being checked every PauseBetweenFetches seconds by the game. If you post a message, you should soon appear on the interface.
• The interface works in IE, but not very well. If you can, try it using Mozilla, Safari, or some other browser.
• If no one is in the middle of the circle, then no one has exchanged messages with anyone else and everyone has zero points. Players need to reciprocally reply to or cite each other to win points.
• Sentences from the current leaders are displayed to the left of the screen. Sentences referring to the three most frequent themes of discussion are displayed.
• Running your mouse over a face will highlight the name of the player who has been assigned the face and will show you how many points the player has scored.
• Players and their scores are listed on the right hand side. If you run your mouse over a player's name on this list, you will jiggle the face assigned to the player in the circle of faces.
• To see all of the messages posted by a player, click on either their face or on their name in the "current leaders" list.
• The display is realtime. The time of the last posted message is shown in the lower right.
• If you want to rewind the interface and watch the action in fast forward (one message posted per several seconds), click on the rewind button.

Agonistics: A Language Game was designed and implemented by Warren Sack

Many thanks to all the folks at Rhizome!