A newsletter for Icehouse players

An Introduction by Dr Cool

Are we on? Cool.

Well, we're back with another edition of your favorite Icehouse newsletter, after a brief hiatus of only half a year.

OK, a year. Maybe a little longer than a year. Let's check the stash... Zounds! Hypo 10 was put out in November 1993! The least we coulda done was get something out after the sixth tourney! Shame on us!

Well, enough of that. In this Hypo, well give you the poop on the last tourney (Remember? We had a tournament last year), the jump on the upcoming tourney (aka Tourney 7: Return to Disclave), and the scuttlebutt on ICEBREAKER, another "praise the elongated pyramid" type game.

Info on the 7th Icehouse Tournament for those of you who refuse to read more than this meltdown: The tourney will be held May 27th at Disclave, which is a sci-fi convention in saw hotel in DC. The tourney will only last one day, like last year's. An important rule change this year shortens the length of each game to a max of 15 minutes. Sounds like it promises to be a cool, casual tourney for a truly laid-back con. Please come?

So, after making the Games 100 list, I bet you thought we'd never top that, huh? Well, guess what? We didn't But we did come close, sorta. Games Magazine put out a buyer's guide for many of the games that it has reviewed and we're in there; complete with the old G. 100 photo and a copy of the G. 100 description of the game (my favorite quote: "A game like no other.").

Remember plastic sets? Yummy plastic sets, "When are you guys gonna sell plastic sets?" Well, here come some plastic sets. And I do mean some. We have 13 sets with -- get this -practically unbreakable tips! Read on for details, collectors.

Hope you enjoy this issue, folks. We'll try to get another out by sometime after the next tournament. Hope you can make it to the tourney, too; they're always a blast. It appears that my brother Frank, who seems to think that the Air Force is more important than Icehouse, won't make it to the tourney. This takes away some of the competition from some of you other up-and-coming top gun icers -- now's your chance to get Frank's slot! Practice, practice,

-- dr cool

A LONG OVERDUE REVIEW OF THE SIXTH ICEHOUSE TOURNAMENT

It was a swell Tourney. Twelve people competed. At the end of the Ice-Offs, the scores were as follows:

  Jacob Davenport   308      Ken Megill        138 
  Dan Russett       276      Rob Bryan         126 
  Frank Cooper      262.5    Craig Mackey      103.5
  Allison Colbath   222      John White         58 
  Keith Baker       213      Paul Kossler       56 
  Paul King         146      David Hendrickson  51  

At the end of the finals, the scores were:

  Allison Colbath   323
  Dan Russett       323
  Frank Cooper      249.3
  Jacob Davenport    91

As you can see, we once again had a tie at the end of the finals. This time, though, the rules explicitly said that, should this happen, a play-off game would be held. Unfortunately, due to the lateness of the hour and the crankiness of some of the players, there was resistance to the idea of playing another round. Certain players wished to simply declare it a tie, but the refs insisted that a clear winner be declared, so they calculated a grand total rating, based on all of the scores from the Ice-off games combined with the scores from the final match games (10 scores in all), which gave these results:

  Dan Russett      1318.333
  Frank Cooper     1068.166 
  Allison Colbath   970.666 
  Jacob Davenport   816.0

Thus, Dan Russett (reigning champion and a member of the team that had won two years before) held onto the title of the best Icehouse player in the world.

As for the coveted Cooler Than Ice award, the refs acclaimed Paul King, John White, and David Hendrickson for their cool playing during the Tourney, but ultimately awarded the medal to David.

ICEBREAKER: MY OBSESSION WITH PYRAMIDS CONTINUES

By Andrew Looney

Sometime during the next year, you may (hopefully) start hearing about a compelling new computer/video game called ICEBREAKER. As an Icehouse player, you are one of a small group of people who will have a special insight into this new game, which is why I'm writing this article to tell you about it.

ICEBREAKER is a very abstract action/strategy game which features, strangely enough, Icehouse pieces. Each level presents you with a landscape populated by a forest of standing Icehouse pieces. You control a single attack piece, and with it you seek to destroy all of the defending pyramids on the playing field.

There are many different colors of pyramids, and they have differing properties. Blue pyramids, for example, break into little pieces when you run into them with your attack piece. Red pyramids, however, will instead destroy you if you run into them, but you can shoot a fireball from the tip of your attack piece which will disintegrate the red pyramids upon impact. Green pyramids cannot be damaged by you, but are also not harmful to you-, to destroy them, you need to get one of your enemies to touch it, as this will pulverize it. And who are your enemies? Well, more Icehouse pieces of course. But these pyramids can twist and contort themselves, and are thus able to chase you around. Like the red pyramids, these enemy pyramids (which come in a wide range of colors and have varying levels of intelligence) will kill you if they touch you, but can be destroyed by being shot.

Does this sound crazy and bizarre? Well, in some ways it is, but it's also challenging and a heck of a lot of fun. It started out as a little programming exercise I did when I first began my new job with Magnet Interactive Studios as a computer game programmer, and of course, since it was just a little test game, I used Icehouse pieces for the characters. But since everyone enjoyed playing it so much, my bosses decided to make it into a real game. By now, dozens of people have worked on it, and it's looking REALLY cool. It's coming out very soon for the 3DO Real Interactive Multiplayer, and sometime later this year for the PC and the Macintosh.

And so, someday, when you hear about a video game in which you go around smashing and breaking Icehouse pieces, you will be one of the few people who'll know the answer to the question, "Why is it called ICEBREAKER?"

Q What happens if I successfully call Icehouse on someone who has a prisoner on his (or her) stash pad? Do I get the prisoner as well as the player's unplayed pieces?

A Yes. Note, however, that the player gets to keep any prisoners that she (or he) gets later in the game, i.e. after the call has been resolved.

Q What's available to me over the Internet? Is there an Icehouse page on the World Wide Web? Is there an Icehouse rep available on email? Does anyone out there still have the source code for Xicehouse? And is that internet mailing list that I heard about a while ago still going?

A Icehouse Games is too tiny an enterprise to have an internet connection. Nevertheless, Icehouse info can be found here and there in cyberspace, if you know where to look.

The Icehouse internet mailing list is still going strong and has been fairly active recently. To get in on it, send mail to icehouse-request@andrew.cmu.edu asking to be added to the list. Although there is still no official way to contact us via email, we do watch what is sent out over this mailing list, and we hear about it when you post with questions or news that we really do need to know. Sometimes we even leak info to the list via the guy who originally set it up, Elliott "Eeyore" Evans. And very occasionally, we post to the list ourselves.

Since we don't have any machines that can act as web servers, Icehouse doesn't have a home page. However, other people have put Icehouse info onto their own home pages. Ken Tidwell (tidwell@kaleida.com) maintains an excellent web site crammed with info about games of all sorts (http://www.kaleida.com/u/tidwell/GameCabinet.htrnl). It's called the game cabinet, and there's a copy of our ad flyer tacked up on the "Front Door" of the cabinet, along with ads from other small game companies. In addition, Eeyore has plans for creating an Icehouse web page. Watch the mailing list for news on this front.

Andrew Plotkin (erkyrath+@cmu.edu) still has the source code to Xicehouse. If you're interested in it, send him some mail. When he finds some time, he plans to put it somewhere FTPable, perhaps on Eeyore's forthcoming web page.

Q Why has the tournament returned to Disclave?

A The casual observer will probably assume that, since we've gone back to Disclave, last year's stand-alone tournament must have been a failure. Similarly, casual observers probably think that we moved away from Disclave last year because of some ugly incident or major problem. But these assumptions are both wrong. Last year we decided to give a stand-alone tourney a try, particularly because it would be less expensive for us. This year, we decided it would be easier all around if we held it at Disclave again, and since we figured out last year how to do it all in one day, it wouldn't be as expensive as it had been other years at Disclave. So, we're back. You got a problem with that?

Q I'm curious as to the disposition of the game's creators regarding Icehouse the beer.

A When Icehouse beer first came out, several people told us that we should sue them for stealing our name. However, we really wouldn't have a case. The issue is one of trademark infringement, and the question you must always ask in cases of trademark infringement is this: "Would an ordinary consumer be confused of mislead by a similarity in the names of a couple of different products?" The reason for this is that a consumer should be able to know that if a product says "Brand X" on it, it's made by the same Brand X company that they've come to know and trust over the years, and not some fly by night company riding on the coattails of their good name.

For example, if I come across a candy bar called "Wonka's Yummy-O", I will naturally assume that the chocolate in this bar is of the same high quality I usually expect from Wonka Chocolates. However, if it turns out that the Yummy-O bar was actually made by Slugworth's Chocolates, then I as a consumer would have been mislead by the name on the package, and Wonka could sue Slugworth's butt. On the other hand, if I were shopping for snow tires and discovered a steel belted radial with the name Wonka on it, I wouldn't make any assumptions about the quality of the tire based on what I know about Wonka's chocolate making skills. Thus, no confusion, and no basis for lawsuits. As far as we're concerned, Icehouse the Beer and Icehouse the game (and Icehouse the musical group, for that matter) are as different as snow tires and candy bars.

On the other hand, as for what the beer itself is like, Dr Cool has this to say: "Yep, I was right; tastes like any other typical American mega-brewery watered down filtered recarbonated soda pop with a beer label stuck on it. When are these guys gonna learn how to make a brew?"

Q I understand that Icehouse is patented. What is your policy on sets made for personal, non-commercial use? Are there any legal problems in store for me if I make a custom set of my own? Do I have to get your permission if I make a not-for-sale set for myself? What about if I wanted to make a small number of sets to sell to my friends?

A There is nothing wrong with making your own Icehouse pieces, as long as it is only for personal use.

The reason patents exist is to allow inventor's to control who sells products that embody their invention, because, as the inventor, they are entitled to a share of all profits generated by sales of the invention.

Icehouse is protected by U.S. Patent 94,936,585. However, if you make a game set for private use in your own home, then no money changes hands and there is no profit to get a share of. Therefore, we wouldn't really be able to stop you from making a set for your own use, even if we wanted to.

Actually, we tend to encourage people to make special sets of their own. The idea that an Icehouse enthusiast would have a special set of custom-made Icehouse pieces (much the way a pool shark might have a one-of-a-kind pool cue) is very much in tune with the Mystique of Icehouse. Furthermore, making your own pieces is a bothersome enough task that we aren't too worried about losing our market,

An important point to understand in all of this is that it's not the design of our playing pieces that's protected-it's the game itself. Our patent is titled "Method of Manipulating and Interpreting Playing Pieces." Since it's a method patent, it protects the way Icehouse is played, not the pieces it's played with. This means that if someone were to start selling a game that used pyramids just like ours as tokens for moving around a board, we couldn't stop them. On the other hand, if someone started selling a game that worked like Icehouse but that used pyramids with a triangular base instead of a square base, we could (and would) sue their butts off.

This brings us to the question of selling a few of your handmade sets to your friends. This would definitely be an infringement of our patent, but as long as you're only making a few sets, we obviously aren't going to sue you. And in fact, anything that gets more people playing Icehouse can only be regarded as good for us, so long as other people aren't making a fortune that we aren't getting any part of. So here's our policy: we won't get upset if you make a few Icehouse sets for your friends, so long as you don't make any money off of them. In other words, you should only sell them for the cost of the materials you used in making them. Also, you can only make the playing pieces themselves, you cannot make copies of our rulebooks or any of our other game materials. And don't go overboard; if you're keen to sell a lot of homemade Icehouse sets (like, say, more than 10 or so) then write to us first and ask; we'll probably still let you, but we'll want to formalize the deal a bit and perhaps ask for a small royalty payment for each set.

And here's a final request: If you do make a custom set of your own, please make an extra piece for us. We have a collection of samples pieces which, we believe, includes one from every type of Icehouse set ever made, and we'd be sad if our collection were incomplete.