es200325 Hiding Emeralda: The secret 

   It is especially important in the early days of the corona virus pandemic to own something in the way of an occupation that can be pursued in a lock-down situation, when it’s best to stay inside, out of public venues and confined to one’s home. What to do?

I have a secret. It’s Emeralda: Games for the gifts of life. It’s a suite of games, in plain sight; but no seems to notice it. If anyone notices it, and I speak from past experiences, Emeralda seems to have a repellent quality.

Several times in the past three decades (yes, that’s about how long I’ve played this game) people have asked me to explain. One, Pam Beyette, the artist, asked me, “What’s the payoff?” and since I couldn’t say, we dropped the subject. That was the moment I realized Emeralda is not a game at all, but an activity, more or less.

Another time, Betty Merken’s spouse, David, living in the neighborhood where the best-selling game, Cranium was invented, spent time trying hard to understand my idea. This experience indicated that I’m be pursuing a chimera, not a game and not an activity which can easily be shared - yet.

Pam and Betty are former students from the UW, where I was teaching printmaking. Emeralda became my virtual campus after I left the UW. I built as the ideal, virtual and virtuous university, a communiversity, a paradisiacal region, a community of creative, inventive, discovering and imaginative people. These diverse people all played Emeralda, seeing Emeralda’s abstract structure as ten islands-of-domains-of-expertise of skills, knowledge and positive attitudes.

Emeralda is a gift which I’m given, and I have always wanted to share it. Instead, however, despite my wish, I seem to hide it, as though I had been given a precious stone, an emerald, and I’m afraid to tell I have it. In a world of uncertainty, who can blame me?

Now, as the corona virus pandemic shows how vulnerable our United States is, and staying home, I’m glad I have an abstract structure to play with. It’s lonely, however, like Solitaire. I’d rather it was a multiplayer game – even if it had to be on the Web.

When computers and the Internet showed it’s possible to have Massive, Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, I was excited because Emeralda is suited to this kind of interaction among players worldwide. With Emeralda’s abstract form – a make-believe region, a fantasy world for exercising one’s mind and artistic skills – Emeralda is suitable.

Unfortunately, MMORPG’s are dominated by a different strain of activity – not mind-building and using – but dominance and often destructive behaviors. Winning and losing, zero-sum games seem to be the way.

Emeralda, unlike these, is of the class of game concepts based on cooperation and quests. When I come back to this subject on my next visit to this island called E’Studios (Electronic Studios), I may have an example to share.