New York Ancestry - Game Information

@ Lilili:

Thanks for spotting that: the worst kind of mistake: same clues for different dots and one of them has an error in it.

Much appreciated...

One of the "Irish" tags is in lower case.

Of course, I should've given you the URL to the game COMMENTS page on Doffa's game, not the game itself.

That URL is:

http://www.purposegames.com/game/827/info

Note:

Part of my reason for making this game is to respond to comments in this game:

http://www.purposegames.com/game/827

By Doffa (which is a pretty good game, really, as most of his are.)

There was a lot of comment there on ethnicities which people felt should've been included in the game. I responded there in the game comments, but I felt that a graphical demonstration might better make the point, so I made this game.

If you compare New York in Doffa's game with New York in this game, you'll notice that the larger (by area) ethnicities show up on the US map as well as on this state map. But some (i.e., Dominican, African American) just couldn't be shown: the dot is so big that it would completely cover the area of interest. So much so, that it would look like you were clicking on the Italian area.

Moreover, the two dots would be so much on top of each other that clicking on one w/o hitting the other would be impossible.

Sometimes, when there are problems of resolution like that, you can remedy them by using an inset which expands an area of interest. That would've been impossible here: there are too many areas that would've needed that treatment.

So as a game maker, Doffa did an understandable (and correct) thing: he just made the best game he could given the limitations of the material available. It's not perfect (and no game on this kind of subject can be), but it IS very good: interesting, playable and well put-together.

And yes, I'm aware that the map I used also suffers from a problem of resolution. It only goes down to county. In metropolitan areas, you could go neighborhood by neighborhood (if not almost block by block).

The upshot is that not all ethnicities will be (or can be) represented here: it's just not possible unless you make hundreds (may thousands) of individual games, each covering small areas of the US.

Similar considerations play into games on demographics, languages, ecosystems, etc., etc.

In my opinion, if you're making a game, you should just deal with the resolution (scale) as you find it. Add insets if you can. If you can't (or don't wish to), there is no need to: it just leaves the subject open for others to come along later to make more detailed games.

More on the topic (and a map similar to this) here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York

This map here:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ancestry-new-york-by_county-2000.PNG

The image has been released into the public domain by its author.