304 MAIN ST
PERMANENTLY UNDER CONSTRUCTION
TREND SATURATION
304 MAIN ST is a strategy game aiming at simulating urban design
scenarios for Main Street, Ames, IA. Today Main Street is empty and
lacks social and commercial activities. It only comes to life during
special events such as Farmers Market and festivals. Thus, its current condition can be regarded as unsuccessful.
In real life trends die and new trends emerge instead. This process
is affected by complex circumstances. Saturation (e.i. when trend
starts to die) occurs when no more of something can be absorbed
or added. This is a signal of a crises, meaning that an old trend is going to get weaker and disappear giving a space to new trends. There
can be several concurring trends at the same time.
Successfulness of the street can be determined by presence of
visitors who use the street for social activities over transit. In plain
words, successful street is able to accommodate visitors needs
and sustain business by creating adequate spaces. Some spaces
and activities are more popular among visitors - Customers - than
others. This means that some spaces appear more frequently or, in
other words, are trending. It becomes crucial for architects and
urban designers to identify what features make trending spaces.
The game models cycles of gradual transformations of spaces
on Main Street into something new and more attractive based on
trends established by the local citizens(Customers).
In this game, trend is defined as a desire of a Customer to appreciate similar features. Saturation is randomly set by a clock-dial.
When Customer collects set number of features, s/he loses interest in it and switches to the new one. Once this happens, collected
features should be returned to the library, and a new saturation level should be established.
Gamers are free to decide which feature to appreciate. Several
gamers can appreciate same feature e.g. follow same trend.
LETS PLAY!
I round
GAME SETUP
The game is played among TWO groups of players:
Shopkeepers and Customers, who compete inside their corresponding groups. Customers try to establish a trend as fast
as possible by appropriating design features of shops. Shopkeepers compete by expanding their shops and modeling them based on
trends set by the customers.
AGENTS A: shops - commercial space
AGENTS B: customers - commercial space
ENERGY A: profit - appropriation of space by customers
ENERGY B: being trendy - establish a trend
LINKAGES A&B: design features
The game setup consists of a board with 24 shops, a clock-dial with
sequential numbers, a library of SIX design features (30 tiles each),
and Shopkeepers tiles.
NUMBER OF PLAYERS
There are FOUR Shopkeepers and EIGHT Customers.
TILES
Each Shopkeeper randomly opens 3 shops and furnishes them
with features.
304 MAIN STREET
board is ready!
Shopkeepers are free to select any feature from the library. In order
to get all available features presented on the board, every second
player has to use at least one feature which was not employed by
previous players.
Shop is ready to receive Customers when two similar tiles of features are presented.
Shops are considered neighbors if they share the edge or one in
front if the shop is located on the edge of the board.
Dear Customers,
Welcome to Main street! Salve!
GREEN SPACE
FOOD TRUCK
PARKING
PLAYGROUND
WINDOW
MUSIC
SEQUENCE
Each round, player sequence for both Customers and Shopkeepers
is set through clock-dial. In this case, the very first Customer has
an advantage over others to pick any available feature from the
board. Following players have to deal with what is left.
After shops are furnished, Customers are allowed to sequentially
collect ONE in the first feature from shops as a signal of
appreciation.
304 MAIN STREET
When Customers leave, Shopkeepers began to re-construct their
shops based on the information from their own shops and the
shops owned by their neighbors.
If the feature was appreciated, it means that it is trending and can
be re-filled from the library.
If the feature was NOT appreciated, Shopkeeper should flip it to
indicate it as unsuccessful.
If the feature was not appreciated in the following round as well,
Shopkeeper is required to change it with a trending feature, e.g.
copy a successful neighbor.
304 MAIN STREET
304 MAIN STREET
Flip if not appreciated
If there are no successful neighbors, Shopkeepers can learn from
the board and copy the most successful feature.
Every time Customers appreciate Shopkeepers any THREE features, Shopkeeper should expand via occupying neighboring empty
shop on the board with trending feature. If there is no empty shop in
the neighborhood, Shopkeeper can claim any empty space.
If player owning four or more shops fails to be appreciated from at
least two of them, s/he is forced to close down one unsuccessful
shop by own choice.
Following rounds
Starting from the second round, Customers are required to appreciate TWO features. This will create a slightly weighted demand on
some of the features.
Similarly to the first round, shopkeepers re-construct their shops,
open or close down businesses.
Trend saturation example
Lets imagine trend sturation set by dial-clock is SIX. After THREE
rounds of visiting Main St Customers should have FIVE features.
On the forth round those Custmers who managed to collect SIX
features, should start following new trend and set new saturation
level via dial-clock.
bingo! bingo! bingo!
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
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GAMERS FEEDBACK
