My Hunger for The Hunger Games

I heard my wife's friends express their fanatic appreciation of The Hunger Games for well over a year before I got around to reading it. From the first moment I heard about the concept, I was reminded of the Stephen King novel (and subsequent Schwarzenegger film) The Running Man. It seemed interesting, but I didn't anticipate that I'd get so engrossed in the books.

Then I read the first novel and was absolutely hooked. I think it's safe to say that not since reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone has the first novel in a series so gripped me.

I did not rush out at midnight to see the film. (This becomes a far less viable option when you have two young children.) We're hoping to see it tonight, but neither my wife nor I took the time this week to buy tickets ahead of time, so we may be out of luck. We'll see. Regardless, we will go out of our way to see the film as early as we can.

Early reviews from friends on Facebook indicate that the film is faithful to the book and well done. I'll post a review once I've seen it.

I'm pleased to be tangentially connected to The Hunger Games phenomenon through my appearance in the new collection The Hunger Games & Philosophy: A Critique of Pure Treason (Amazon, B&N). My essay focuses on applying the concepts from game theory to the situations presented in The Hunger Games ... which is fairly obvious from the essay's title, "The Tribute's Dilemma: The Hunger Games and Game Theory."

When I began work on the essay, I had hoped to include a discussion of The Hunger Games: Training Days strategy game (Amazon). In the game, you play a Tribute who arrives in the Capital for the Training Days. You practice not only your combat, survival, and other skills, but also perform other tasks in an effort to gain a higher ranking (and thus more sponsorship and rewards) going into the games themselves.

Unfortunately, the portion of the essay which discussed this was originally a bit clunky and ended up getting highly edited. This is a normal part of the process, but the upshot is that all reference to the physical game ended up being removed.

I do still discuss the Training Days themselves within the essay, since the experiences of the Tributes during that time represent a subgame. In game theory, a subgame is a well-defined game within a larger game. Anyone who watches real-world reality television shows like Survivor and The Biggest Loser is familiar with the concept of a subgame, even without realizing it. The challenges in these shows that confer rewards, such as immunity, are examples of subgames, because they're smaller games within the larger game of trying to win the show.

Beyond that, I also discuss the idea of putting one's life at risk to gain a little extra food ... and how that might actually make a lot of sense. The essay concludes with a discussion about the role cooperation plays within the Arena, using the classic game theory example of The Prisoner's Dilemma as the model.

In a fight to the death, does it make more sense to cooperate or betray?

Well, telling you that would be a spoiler.

Two Packages in the Mail: Books and a Game

This morning, two packages showed up on my doorstep, both of which are worth some discussion.

The first was a copy of my two contributor's copies from the anthology The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Philosophy. I've discussed this collection (and my essay in it) on the blog before. When I get around to reading the other essays, I'll probably have some more to say about it.

For now, though, I'd like to talk a bit about the other package that arrived. It was a promo copy of the board game Kings of Air and Steam. I learned about this game from the GeekDad blog, which posted a lengthy review of the game.

What's strange about this is that the game isn't even released yet, and won't be for several months. Kings of Air and Steam is a steampunk-themed board game that's going through a Kickstarter crowdfunding drive right now. Tasty Minstrel Games has previously used Kickstarter to fund another game. This time, they've quickly raised enough money to definitely make the game a reality. They have a number of advanced levels which will help them make the game even more impressive, and as of the time of this writing they're about $5,000 dollars away from the first of these targets, which will allow them to add a "Mafia guys" team to the game. I'll give more details on the game and game play once I have time to, you know, play the game.

If you've never heard of Kickstarter, it's a website that allows businesses (or individuals, or organizations) to raise money on the internet. This is usually done by offering special prizes for people who help fund them at certain levels. In the case of Kings of Air and Steam, the benefits are editions of the game, sent to you ahead of the official release, at a deep discount. In this case, supporters also get their names in the rule manual as supporters, and there are some other nice benefits for higher levels of support.

I'll be reviewing the game for Black Gate magazine, probably in the next week or so, but if the game sounds like fun, you should definitely go ahead and buy your discounted copy now, because each copy purchased will help improve the game. After the "Mafia Guys" team is added, the next levels involve better quality of molded plastic miniatures. With a steampunk game, of course, you want a quality look and feel, so it'll be really nice for them to reach these higher levels, making the game more fun for everyone.

It's days like this that I realize how much fun it is to be a writer ... and to live in a world where I can devote my time to stuff like this.