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# Marble Race

Marble race is a simple real life game wherein marbles (small glass balls) are released onto a prepared track to race from start to finish by the force of gravity. This game is great because it is suckless, cheap (accessible), fun and has almost no dependencies, not even a computer -- such a game will be playable even after the technological collapse. Marble racing is free and very in line with less retarded society.

Even though this is originally a real life game, computer versions can be made too in many different forms: 2D, 3D, realistic and unrealistic alike, possibly with added elements that would be impossible in real life, such as teleports. And indeed, there have been many games and mini-games made based on this form of entertainment. From the implementation point of view it is very convenient that marbles are of spherical shape as this is one of the simplest shapes to handle in physics engines.

Collecting marbles often comes hand in hand with this hobby, kind of like collecting race horses or Pokemon -- yes, collecting is a bit of a materialistic hobby, however this is one of the cheapest such hobbies that can satisfy the natural human hoarding needs with minimum of actual harm, just like video games satisfy the need for violence without actually harming anyone etc., so we probably consider it a net-good hobby. Consider that obtaining a new marble, basically a piece of rock, brings almost the same amount of joy and satisfaction as buying a new car while shrinking the price of it about a million times -- that's very close to what in software we would call suckless.

Virtual marble racing has in fact gained some traction on the Internet in recent years. If you search, you'll find hundreds of videos on YouTube of races whose participants are marbles representing real countries so that viewers know who to cheer for in this cheap and casual but still enjoyable substitute for watching actual sport tournaments. Streamers also use this game to "interact with their audience" -- viewers from the chat are assigned marbles and then they all together sit and watch the race unfold, no matter that the winner is decided completely randomly. Programming such a game may also not be that difficult, especially if it's only 2D.

## See Also

- novuss

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