Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1. Let's Get Physical 7 1.1 Platforming Perils 7 1.2 Platforming in Three Dimensions 10 1.3 LittleBigPlanet: Exploring Physics through Gameplay 12 1.4 From 2D to 3D: Bending Laws in Portal 14 1.5 Exploring Reality with A Slower Speed of Light 18 1.6 Exploring Alternative Realities 21 1.7 Beyond Physics: Minecraft or Mine Field? 26 1.8 Closing Remarks 27 1.9 Addendum: Describing Distortion 29 2. Repeat Offenders 34 2.1 Let's Play the Feud! 34 2.2 Game Shows and Birthdays 36 2.3 Beyond the First Duplicate 39 2.4 The Draw Something Debacle 41 2.5 Delayed Repetition: Increasing N 46 2.6 Delayed Repetition:Weight Lifting 48 2.7 The Completionist's Dilemma 53 2.8 Closing Remarks 55 2.9 Addendum: In Search of a Minimal k 55 3. Get Out the Voting System 58 3.1 Everybody Votes, but Not for Everything 58 3.2 Plurality Voting: An Example 60 3.3 Ranked-Choice Voting Systems and Arrow's Impossibility Theorem 61 3.4 An Escape from Impossibility? 66 3.5 Is There a "Best" System? 68 3.6 What Game Developers Know that Politicians Don't 71 3.7 The Best of the Rest 76 3.8 Closing Remarks 82 3.9 Addendum: TheWilson Score Confidence Interval 83 4. Knowing the Score 86 4.1 Ranking Players 86 4.2 Orisinal Original 87 4.3 What's in a Score? 91 4.4 Threes! Company 98 4.5 A Mathematical Model of Threes! 100 4.6 Invalid Scores 105 4.7 Lowest of the Low 109 4.8 Highest of the High 116 4.9 Closing Remarks 121 5. The Thrill of the Chase 122 5.1 I'ma GonnaWin! 122 5.2 Shell Games 123 5.3 Green-Shelled Monsters 125 5.4 Generalizations and Limitations 129 5.5 Seeing Red 131 5.6 Apollonius Circle Pursuit 134 5.7 Overview of aWinning Strategy 136 5.8 Pinpointing the Intersections 141 5.9 Blast Radius 145 5.10 The Pursuer and Pursued in Ms. Pac-Man 148 5.11 Concluding Remarks 153 5.12 Addendum: The Pursuit Curve for Red Shells and a Refined Inequality 153 6. Gaming Complexity 158 6.1 From Russia with Fun 158 6.2 P, NP, and Kevin Bacon 160 6.3 Desktop Diversions 165 6.4 Platforming Problems 169 6.5 Fetch Quests: An Overview 170 6.6 Fetch Quests and Traveling Salesmen 175 6.7 Closing Remarks 183 7. The Friendship Realm 184 7.1 Taking It to the Next Level 184 7.2 Friendship as Gameplay: The Sims and Beyond 186 7.3 A Game-Inspired Friendship Model 190 7.4 Approximations to the Model 193 7.5 The Cost of Maintaining a Friendship 195 7.6 From Virtual Friends to Realistic Romance 198 7.7 Modeling Different Personalities 200 7.8 Improving the Model (Again!) 203 7.9 Concluding Remarks 209 8. Order in Chaos 210 8.1 The Essence of Chaos 210 8.2 Love in the Time of Chaos 211 8.3 Shell Games Revisited 216 8.4 How's theWeather? 223 8.5 Concluding Remarks 225 9. The Value of Games 227 9.1 More Important Than Math 227 9.2 Why Games? 230 9.3 What Next? 242 Notes 244 Bibliography 269 Index 273

About the Author

Matthew Lane is a mathematician and cofounder of Rithm, a school for aspiring web developers. He is also the creator of Math Goes Pop!, a blog that explores the interconnections between mathematics and popular culture. He lives in San Francisco.

Reviews

"Lane explores secondary, or hidden, mathematical gems that a player might discover upon mature reflection. . . . Just as most car drivers prefer not to inquire how the internal combustion engine works, most video-type users prefer not to ask how computer magic works. For the few who do ask questions, Lane assures us and as his book testifies, 'there's a lot of mathematics under the surface'."---Andrew James Simoson, MathSciNet

"Lane explains some pretty technical concepts in an accessible way. . . . A fun survey of interesting maths related through the lens of video games."---Paul Taylor, Aperiodical

"The examples [in Power-Up] were carefully chosen from very popular games, so even the most casual player will have heard of the vast majority of the games discussed. In general, Lane's writing is easy to digest, and the use of color and high-quality paper gives the book a nice look and feel."
*Choice*

"Power­Up is a very readable book based on examples taken from popular video games. . . . It is a pity that too many people are deprived of the pleasure of finding things out via the intellectual game of mathematics. Hopefully, the effort of the likes of Matthew Lane will someday solve the severe marketing problem of mathematics."
*Computing Reviews*

"Overall the book is excellent. Lane has written a high readable text with colorful illustrations. You won’t regret reading it and maybe Power-Up will add a new level of insight to your computer gaming."
*MAA Reviews*

"Matthew Lane explores the mathematical underpinning many popular video games in this well-written and very enjoyable book that is pitched at a very broad audience"---Dominic Thorrington, Mathematics Today