[six.circles] is an internet based, one or two player turn based networked game which explores the consequences of cooperation and competition through the construction of simple geometry objects.

Players construct groups of shapes which eventually are built up into complete circles, but they do so amidst attacks by virus objects which invade the community.
Players must attach illness pieces to some shapes in the game world every so many turns, and illness spreads down the chain, infecting it turn by turn.

When all the pieces of a given chain are infected, the infection changes with each turn to a full blown diseased piece which can no longer be assimilated into a circle. If an entire chain is diseased, it spawns new disease pieces with each turn. Players have to negotiate and sacrifice to cooperatively solve the problem, prevent the spread of the disease, while still attempting to win the game by creating six circles—an idea based on the Six Circles mathematical theorem: in a triangle, any chain of circles that touch their neighbors and successive pairs of sides of the triangle counts at most six circles, where the sixth circle is tangent to the first. To the artist, this metaphor of “perfect” shapes working together within an uneven “triangle” closely resembles the way community and individuals affect each other.

While one of the two players generally wins the game, the structure of the game explores the themes of cooperation, interdependence and conflicting goals in play.

This game was a commission by the Wooloo organization for its 'Thank You’ show, an HIV awareness project which raises funds for the creation of an HIV Education Center in the township of Khayelitsha, South Africa via online interactions with the art work.

[six.circles] by Mary Flanagan 2004
with the indispensible input of Ruth Catlow + Joline Blais. 
Technical Engineering + Additional Design by Christopher Egert
Game server hosting by generosity of 
Rochester Institute of Technology
Collaborative Multimedia Experience group
Information Technology Department

Many thanks to Jon Ippolito, Joline
Blais, and the University of Maine's 
Code & Creativity v3.0 :
"Games: Making and Unmaking the World"