304 MAIN STPERMANENTLY UNDER CONSTRUCTION

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 cur-rent condition can be regarded as unsuccessful.

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).

GAME SETUP

NUMBER OF PLAYERS

TREND SATURATION

SEQUENCE

TILES

The game is played among TWO groups of players: “Shopkeepers” and “Customers”, who compete inside their cor-responding groups. Customers try to establish a “trend” as fast as possible by appropriating design features of shops. Shopkeep-ers compete by expanding their shops and modeling them based on trends set by the customers.

AGENTS A: shops - commercial spaceAGENTS B: customers - commercial spaceENERGY A: profit - appropriation of space by customersENERGY B: being trendy - establish a trendLINKAGES 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.

GREEN SPACE

PLAYGROUND

FOOD TRUCK

WINDOW

PARKING

MUSIC

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 go-ing to get weaker and disappear giving a space to new trends. There can be several concurring trends at the same time.

In this game, trend is defined as a desire of a Customer to appre-ciate similar features. Saturation is randomly set by a clock-dial. When Customer collects set number of features, s/he loses inter-est in it and switches to the new one. Once this happens, collected features should be returned to the library, and a new saturation lev-el should be established.

Gamers are free to decide which feature to appreciate. Several gamers can appreciate same feature e.g. follow same trend.

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.

There are FOUR Shopkeepers and EIGHT Customers.

LET’S PLAY!I round

Each Shopkeeper randomly opens 3 shops and furnishes them with features.

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 fea-tures 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.

board is ready!

Dear Customers, Welcome to Main street! Salve!

304 MAIN STREET

304 MAIN STREET

After shops are furnished, Customers are allowed to sequentially collect ONE in the first feature from shops as a signal of appreciation.

GAMERS’ FEEDBACK

Following rounds

Trend saturation example

bingo! bingo! bingo!

+ + +

Flip if not appreciated

304 MAIN STREET 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.

If there are no successful neighbors, Shopkeepers can learn from the board and copy the most successful feature.

Every time Customers appreciate Shopkeeper’s any THREE fea-tures, 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.

Starting from the second round, Customers are required to appre-ciate 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.

Let’s 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.

1st

2nd

3rd

4th