Greg Costikyan, the tireless, incredibly prolific games designer, has released his classic tabletop game "Vector 3" as a free Creative Commons download. The game's more than a strategy diversion — it also teaches vector arithmetic and Newtonian mechanics. Greg says,
Vector 3 is a 3D space combat board game; its virtue is that players learn the essentials of vector arithmetic and Newtonian mechanics by playing. On a number of occasions, people have told me they learned more about this from the game than from lecture courses. I could see using it in the context of a high-school math or physics course.
It's not a brilliant game, but not a bad one, either. I've rewritten the rules extensively, both to eliminate old-school SPI legalese and make them more readable, and to make some changes that I think improve the game. Mainly, these increase the effectiveness of torpedoes and mines; the problem with games where there's no terrain, facing is unimportant, and there's no equivalent of the weather guage, is that maneuver becomes irrelevant. The presence of missiles and mines at least gives some texture to space, and therefor a reason to maneuver.
- Play This Thing: games reviews from Greg Costikyan – Boing Boing
- Costikyan's jeremiad against the video game industry – Boing Boing
- Greg Costikyan interview – Boing Boing
- Costikyan's amazing game-design blog – Boing Boing
- Costikyan's free dot-bomb game – Boing Boing
- Indy label for games – Boing Boing
- Games need serious criticism – Boing Boing
