let’s play a game a word association
game I’m going to say a word and I’d
like you to say or shout out the first
word that comes to your mind
my word is Jenga I’m sorry I didn’t I
didn’t hear everything everyone said but
I expect some of you will have said some
of the following game full crash and
even if you didn’t say it out loud
there’s always a cat lover who’s thinks
cat whatever the word there were no
winners or losers in that game the point
I was trying to make is that the
connections of ideas and experiences in
your own brain all influenced the word
associations in your own mind
so it was unlikely that you made any
word associations just now if you don’t
know the game or you’ve never heard the
word Jenga apropos I wonder whether you
would watch and listen carefully to the
following short video banger Jenga just
to chain you take a block from the
bottom and you put it on top you take a
block from the middle and you put it on
top you build the tower you just don’t
stop you got a build that tower putting
blocks on and a teeter sanitized as you
build it all look we people say that
waffles but you don’t give you take a
block from the mouth and then you put it
on top you take a block from the middle
then you put it on when knocks it over
and that’s swing but you start all over
putting blocks on Jenga from Erwin great
game with a strange me
that was the very first TV commercial of
Jenga circa 1986 if you couldn’t tell
from the history but it’s not the
hairstyles I wanted you to focus on
it’s how the advert focuses on not only
explaining how the games played but on
the name of the game and we needed to do
this at the time because at the time
Jenga was an almost unknown game and
Jenga was an all but meaningless word
with very few associations for anyone
but let me in let the hairstyle in 1982
I started my first business Leslie Scott
associates with there were no associates
it was just me and this was specifically
to self publish a novel game I had
conceived well every designer will tell
you that of course you need to start
with a big idea with a good big idea but
the really difficult part of the design
process of doesn’t matter what you’re
designing comes from shaping that idea
into something that’s fit for purpose in
my case it’s meant finding a way to turn
my prototype set of handmade wooden
blocks into a commercial game that I
could manufacture in quantity following
which of course I had to decide how to
package that game so that I could sell
it into the toy trade well somewhat
naively I thought that novelty was good
and so that giving my novel game an
original name would be better still and
I couldn’t find a word with all the
right associations in English so I
borrowed a word from Swahili which was
the language of my youth and I heard the
Jenga the word would in due course me
Jenga the game that it would become
synonymous did you hear the word Jenga
and you’d associated with the game Jenga
well there’s a one product one-woman
business with insufficient funds to
promote Jenga properly I struggled for
several years to convince major toy
retailers to stock my game but once the
Canadian toy company Irwin came along
and embraced and started promoting both
the game and its name
Jenga start appearing on and then flying
off the shelves of toy stores around the
world and for fast-forward 35 years now
80 million genuine Jenga games have been
sold and such a large number of people
are now acquainted with the game that I
think Jenga the word does mean Jenga the
creating a whole lot of other
associations and some of which are
really quite bizarre now very very few
games succeed less let alone capture the
imagination of so many people so what’s
the appeal of this particular game it
seems almost too simple to have acquired
such Universal recognition but as I hope
to show you behind this wall of
simplicity something very complex is
going on
when we play Jenga first off you have to
think about this for a word have
acquired so many associations and to be
used figuratively so frequently the
literal meaning of that word needs to be
well understood especially if that word
is used as a metaphor where we’re hoping
to explain a new or complex idea by
comparing it to a simple idea or at
least at the very least a familiar
experience so when Jenga is used
figuratively implicit is that Jenga is a
familiar experience or a comparatively
simple idea well I think it maybe is a
familiar experience now for a lot of
people
but I’m not so sure about the simple
idea especially if you consider that
first and foremost Zangler is a game so
its name embodies all the meanings we
already attribute to the word game such
as game is an animal that’s hunted for
sport or the pot game is a clever plan
or ploy and to be on the game well
that’s a particular line of work so even
if we rule out all those previous
definitions and any other definition for
the word game was still left trying to
define game as something we play as a
plaything and believe me this is
incredibly difficult to boil down to a
simple definition now Eric Zimmerman
he’s the game’s designer games designer
he has a definition of game that I as a
games designer
find the most satisfactory he says a
game is a system in which players engage
in an artificial conflict defined by
rules that results in a quantifiable
outcome and I’d add to this that I think
almost by definition the goal of a game
is to is to win that game so now that
the word Jenga means the game Jenga I
think you could have been run it’s it
comes already chock-a-block full of
meanings of the word game before we even
consider what playing this particular
game means at first glance
Jenga seems simple I mean pretty much as
simple as it gets it comprises 54 blocks
and 3 rules that’s it
but as I’m trying to explain there’s
something very complex emerges when
people play with these blocks according
to these three rules and this is because
the game is simply not as simple as it
seems it’s first glance crucially the
wooden blocks are not identical
the game just wouldn’t work if they were
in fact each of the wooden blocks in the
Jenga set is very slightly different to
each other block thus at any given point
in the game each block is in a unique
relationship with every other block in
the stack and this relationship changes
unpredictably every time a particular
block is removed from the stack and
changes a game when that same block is
placed back on top of the stack added to
which the fact that the blocks are
randomly slightly different means it’s
very unlikely that any Jenga game is the
same as any other Jenga game I asked my
statistician son-in-law Matias to
calculate the probability of any two
Jenga games being identical and he said
even assuming only eighteen differences
rather than the 54 that are in fact in
each block the chances of – Jenga sets
being identical is less likely than
buying the winning ticket for the
Spanish Christmas lottery twice in a row
I don’t know where he said that he’s not
he’s a statistician so complex enough it
and this is even before we try to factor
in environmental conditions or bring in
players human beings who come with their
very own set of skill sets and attitudes
to life so I would say very far from
being simple I’m going to suggest that
Jenga is even more complex than a game
of chess quite a claim I for a pile of
blocks and three rules so why do I say
this well in chess there’s no hidden
information you know exactly the power
of each piece yet even so there are
chess masters who say while waiting for
an opponent to play they don’t even
think about the game because an
individual move can change the game so
much that this there’s no point in doing
so but at least a chess master has a
store of knowledge and experience of
previous games to draw upon before
making a move the circumstances faced
are not entirely unforeseen not so the
Jenga player whether a master or novice
given that each block is unique an
individual move will change the game sir
addict Lee
so unpredictably you’ll never be
confronted with the exact same situation
as before however many times you’ve
played the game and unlike most other
games you cannot actually win a game of
Jenga sooner or later that stack will
fall that force of nature gravity wins
every time it’s physics it’s a fact of
life so unlike most games the goal of
Jenga is not to win a game of Jenga I
think think about this one in most games
you’re a loser
if you don’t win the game but in Jenga
you’re a winner
if you don’t lose
and you can feel like a winner every
time you don’t lose which can be many
times per game sorry to explain let me
digress a moment in one way Django is
like a game of football
both are played for a fixed period
albeit in football it’s for 90 minutes
whereas Jenga its until the tower falls
and football the aim is to score as many
goals as possible until you’re 90
minutes are up in gender the aim is to
move as many blocks as possible before
the tower falls down keep football in
mind and think how excited how do you
for ik players feel when scoring a goal
every goal is a triumph in itself
regardless of the outcome of the match
so in Jenga if the aim isn’t to win the
game but rather to stave off the
inevitable and keep the tower standing
as long as possible I suggest that the
best way to play Jenga is not to think
about the end game but to concentrate on
winning your turn the wait your turn
assess the situation is you find it and
then take your move and if the tower is
still standing after you reboot removed
a block and you’ve placed it back on top
well this is akin to having scored a
goal and you’re entitled to feel very
satisfied after all you’ve just
succeeded in defying gravity and the
higher and then more unstable the tower
the more intense fear is that feeling of
satisfaction derived from removing a
block and placing it on top without
toppling the tower so I suggest that
when the odds are stacked against you
keep it simple take it block by
satisfying block literally in a game of
Jenga figuratively in real life and back
to that word association game after
today hear the word Jenga and you might
think game well you might think
complexity or you might think some
félicité or you might think the balance
of the two
here Jenga and you might think
simplexity of course someone will still
think cat
[Music]
[Applause] [Music]
game I’m going to say a word and I’d
like you to say or shout out the first
word that comes to your mind
my word is Jenga I’m sorry I didn’t I
didn’t hear everything everyone said but
I expect some of you will have said some
of the following game full crash and
even if you didn’t say it out loud
there’s always a cat lover who’s thinks
cat whatever the word there were no
winners or losers in that game the point
I was trying to make is that the
connections of ideas and experiences in
your own brain all influenced the word
associations in your own mind
so it was unlikely that you made any
word associations just now if you don’t
know the game or you’ve never heard the
word Jenga apropos I wonder whether you
would watch and listen carefully to the
following short video banger Jenga just
to chain you take a block from the
bottom and you put it on top you take a
block from the middle and you put it on
top you build the tower you just don’t
stop you got a build that tower putting
blocks on and a teeter sanitized as you
build it all look we people say that
waffles but you don’t give you take a
block from the mouth and then you put it
on top you take a block from the middle
then you put it on when knocks it over
and that’s swing but you start all over
putting blocks on Jenga from Erwin great
game with a strange me
that was the very first TV commercial of
Jenga circa 1986 if you couldn’t tell
from the history but it’s not the
hairstyles I wanted you to focus on
it’s how the advert focuses on not only
explaining how the games played but on
the name of the game and we needed to do
this at the time because at the time
Jenga was an almost unknown game and
Jenga was an all but meaningless word
with very few associations for anyone
but let me in let the hairstyle in 1982
I started my first business Leslie Scott
associates with there were no associates
it was just me and this was specifically
to self publish a novel game I had
conceived well every designer will tell
you that of course you need to start
with a big idea with a good big idea but
the really difficult part of the design
process of doesn’t matter what you’re
designing comes from shaping that idea
into something that’s fit for purpose in
my case it’s meant finding a way to turn
my prototype set of handmade wooden
blocks into a commercial game that I
could manufacture in quantity following
which of course I had to decide how to
package that game so that I could sell
it into the toy trade well somewhat
naively I thought that novelty was good
and so that giving my novel game an
original name would be better still and
I couldn’t find a word with all the
right associations in English so I
borrowed a word from Swahili which was
the language of my youth and I heard the
Jenga the word would in due course me
Jenga the game that it would become
synonymous did you hear the word Jenga
and you’d associated with the game Jenga
well there’s a one product one-woman
business with insufficient funds to
promote Jenga properly I struggled for
several years to convince major toy
retailers to stock my game but once the
Canadian toy company Irwin came along
and embraced and started promoting both
the game and its name
Jenga start appearing on and then flying
off the shelves of toy stores around the
world and for fast-forward 35 years now
80 million genuine Jenga games have been
sold and such a large number of people
are now acquainted with the game that I
think Jenga the word does mean Jenga the
creating a whole lot of other
associations and some of which are
really quite bizarre now very very few
games succeed less let alone capture the
imagination of so many people so what’s
the appeal of this particular game it
seems almost too simple to have acquired
such Universal recognition but as I hope
to show you behind this wall of
simplicity something very complex is
going on
when we play Jenga first off you have to
think about this for a word have
acquired so many associations and to be
used figuratively so frequently the
literal meaning of that word needs to be
well understood especially if that word
is used as a metaphor where we’re hoping
to explain a new or complex idea by
comparing it to a simple idea or at
least at the very least a familiar
experience so when Jenga is used
figuratively implicit is that Jenga is a
familiar experience or a comparatively
simple idea well I think it maybe is a
familiar experience now for a lot of
people
but I’m not so sure about the simple
idea especially if you consider that
first and foremost Zangler is a game so
its name embodies all the meanings we
already attribute to the word game such
as game is an animal that’s hunted for
sport or the pot game is a clever plan
or ploy and to be on the game well
that’s a particular line of work so even
if we rule out all those previous
definitions and any other definition for
the word game was still left trying to
define game as something we play as a
plaything and believe me this is
incredibly difficult to boil down to a
simple definition now Eric Zimmerman
he’s the game’s designer games designer
he has a definition of game that I as a
games designer
find the most satisfactory he says a
game is a system in which players engage
in an artificial conflict defined by
rules that results in a quantifiable
outcome and I’d add to this that I think
almost by definition the goal of a game
is to is to win that game so now that
the word Jenga means the game Jenga I
think you could have been run it’s it
comes already chock-a-block full of
meanings of the word game before we even
consider what playing this particular
game means at first glance
Jenga seems simple I mean pretty much as
simple as it gets it comprises 54 blocks
and 3 rules that’s it
but as I’m trying to explain there’s
something very complex emerges when
people play with these blocks according
to these three rules and this is because
the game is simply not as simple as it
seems it’s first glance crucially the
wooden blocks are not identical
the game just wouldn’t work if they were
in fact each of the wooden blocks in the
Jenga set is very slightly different to
each other block thus at any given point
in the game each block is in a unique
relationship with every other block in
the stack and this relationship changes
unpredictably every time a particular
block is removed from the stack and
changes a game when that same block is
placed back on top of the stack added to
which the fact that the blocks are
randomly slightly different means it’s
very unlikely that any Jenga game is the
same as any other Jenga game I asked my
statistician son-in-law Matias to
calculate the probability of any two
Jenga games being identical and he said
even assuming only eighteen differences
rather than the 54 that are in fact in
each block the chances of – Jenga sets
being identical is less likely than
buying the winning ticket for the
Spanish Christmas lottery twice in a row
I don’t know where he said that he’s not
he’s a statistician so complex enough it
and this is even before we try to factor
in environmental conditions or bring in
players human beings who come with their
very own set of skill sets and attitudes
to life so I would say very far from
being simple I’m going to suggest that
Jenga is even more complex than a game
of chess quite a claim I for a pile of
blocks and three rules so why do I say
this well in chess there’s no hidden
information you know exactly the power
of each piece yet even so there are
chess masters who say while waiting for
an opponent to play they don’t even
think about the game because an
individual move can change the game so
much that this there’s no point in doing
so but at least a chess master has a
store of knowledge and experience of
previous games to draw upon before
making a move the circumstances faced
are not entirely unforeseen not so the
Jenga player whether a master or novice
given that each block is unique an
individual move will change the game sir
addict Lee
so unpredictably you’ll never be
confronted with the exact same situation
as before however many times you’ve
played the game and unlike most other
games you cannot actually win a game of
Jenga sooner or later that stack will
fall that force of nature gravity wins
every time it’s physics it’s a fact of
life so unlike most games the goal of
Jenga is not to win a game of Jenga I
think think about this one in most games
you’re a loser
if you don’t win the game but in Jenga
you’re a winner
if you don’t lose
and you can feel like a winner every
time you don’t lose which can be many
times per game sorry to explain let me
digress a moment in one way Django is
like a game of football
both are played for a fixed period
albeit in football it’s for 90 minutes
whereas Jenga its until the tower falls
and football the aim is to score as many
goals as possible until you’re 90
minutes are up in gender the aim is to
move as many blocks as possible before
the tower falls down keep football in
mind and think how excited how do you
for ik players feel when scoring a goal
every goal is a triumph in itself
regardless of the outcome of the match
so in Jenga if the aim isn’t to win the
game but rather to stave off the
inevitable and keep the tower standing
as long as possible I suggest that the
best way to play Jenga is not to think
about the end game but to concentrate on
winning your turn the wait your turn
assess the situation is you find it and
then take your move and if the tower is
still standing after you reboot removed
a block and you’ve placed it back on top
well this is akin to having scored a
goal and you’re entitled to feel very
satisfied after all you’ve just
succeeded in defying gravity and the
higher and then more unstable the tower
the more intense fear is that feeling of
satisfaction derived from removing a
block and placing it on top without
toppling the tower so I suggest that
when the odds are stacked against you
keep it simple take it block by
satisfying block literally in a game of
Jenga figuratively in real life and back
to that word association game after
today hear the word Jenga and you might
think game well you might think
complexity or you might think some
félicité or you might think the balance
of the two
here Jenga and you might think
simplexity of course someone will still
think cat
[Music]
[Applause] [Music]
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