[MUD-Dev] You, the game of philosophy.

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

Adam Wiggins <nightfall at user1.inficad.com> wrote:
>[Ola Fosheim Gr=F8stad:]
>> Isn't holding the idea that some players are "bad" a very dangerous
>> position for a designer to hold??
>
>I hardly think so.  It's merely a fact.

Even if we assume "the fact", it is still a dangerous state of mind
for a designer, unless of course, you don't give a hoot about anybody
but yourself.

>> Who are "good" ?
>
>We can define the criteria for good and bad as simply being those
>that are more and less competent at achieving the game's goals.
>Naturally this is highly dependant upon the game.  A 'good' player
>in a flight simulator is one who can take off, fly the mission successfull=
y,
>and land the plane.  A 'bad' player is one who stalls the aircraft every
>time they try to make an altitude change.  In a role-playing game, a
>'bad' roleplayer is someone who constantly makes out-of-character
>judgements and actions for their in-game character.  In an adventure
>game, a 'bad' player is someone that can't come up to the solutions for
>the game's puzzles on their own.

Ah, so everyone is a bad player, if the game itself is bad. And
everybody is a good player if the game itself is very good?  Isn't the
"fact" that there are someone you name "bad players" a sign that
something went wrong somewhere?  What if the player stalls the
aircraft because he think it is fun, is he then a bad player?  Does
the fact that users treat the game differently than the designer
intended make them "bad"?  I've never liked (or cared much) about that
artificial thing called "score" in the upper left corner of the
screen.  Is a "score" the best way to determine whether a player is
good or bad?

>Now, the real question you're asking is probably 'Where does the line
>for good/bad player end, and the line for good/bad design begin?'=20

Almost.  Although I believe that the idea that "bad players" exists is
an indicator of failure, at least in the designers attitude.  I would
rather think about those players as "beginners" or "noncompetetive" or
something else that doesn't have a negative bias.

>A good game design should end up with a fairly even spread, with some
>extra weight on the 'good' end of things.=20

Actually I think a "good game design" ought to allow for a wide
variety of play-styles and uses.  That way you'll have a lot of
different types of good players.

>on the person who is playing.  I'm bad at arcade games, simply because
>my reflexes are sub-par.  I don't feel worse as a person because of this,
>it just means that I suck at action games.

But if the game was smart enough to adapt to your reflexes, then you
could have a lot of fun even if you "suck", and you would become a
good player. Maybe not skilled, but a good player.

>> The ones that enjoy your original design?
>
>I might also note that enjoyment of a game and your ability to play it
>don't necessarily corespond.  While it is true that usually we like to

(Looks like we agree partially after all, I guess I should've read the
whole message before I replied)

>> *snicker* Haven't you failed somewhere
>> when you have to resort to defining some players as bad?
>
>Erm, if there's some way to create a game which doesn't have any sort of
>a scale for competency attached to it, I'd be thouroughly impressed.

Well, thinking back, I usually played shoot'em'up games with most
cheats on, just to be able to "blast my way through" in spectacular
bursts of explosions and special effects.  Great fun. ;)

But... What I was thinking about was more like "bad looser", from the
original context that seemed to be what the original poster was
talking about.  (bad players who whine about.. or something like that)

>> >The characters we play are puppets.  The idea that people do not possess
>>=20
>> Correction, the characters YOU play are puppets. Or at least you
>> believe so.
>
>Hmm.  This looks like a religious retort - sort of like responding to
>the statement that human beings are simply collections of flesh and bone
>by saying that "YOU may be a collection of flesh and bone, but I am not!"
>Characters ARE puppets.  We usually attach some sort of emotional
>value to them on top of this, but the fact remains.

What fact remains?  My statement is fully logical, unless you can
dismiss it by sound logic.

>> How can you be so certain that my puppet isn't me?  Are
>> you that obsessed with my exterior?
>
>Because it's...uh...not?  A radio is not you, even though I may talk to
>you via it.  A book is not you, even though you wrote it and I read it.
>This message you are reading is not me, even though it is a medium for
>my thoughts.

What is your mouth?  Is it you?  If the information you process and
the tools you use in the process isn't you, what are you then?  I will
only accept arguments that can be made valid in general.

(note that I believe I am fully in line with the concept "distributed
cognition" here, there is no significant conceptual difference between
memorizing something and writing something down on a piece of paper)

>attachment.  This is, in most instances, a Good Thing.  However, getting
>confused about whether or not you are a blood-sucking zombie or a greedy
>pickpocket is, I think, a Bad Thing.  IMO it is this distance which lets
>us play the game.  If I had to become a blood-sucking zombie in order to
>play a game in which my character is such a thing, I would not want to play
>the game, nor, I imagine, would most other sane people.

Ah, but this physical body of mine isn't a zombie.  Think about this,
do you act and think differently when you are with your love, your
parents, grandparents, friends, lecturer or the police?  Unless you
are an extremely squareheaded person, I would suggest so.  We play
roles all the time. No substantial conceptual difference? :) You've
got more freedom, obviously, and can go further, in a game, because
the game world is more detached from your other (physcial life) roles,
and you might not mind death so much, because the impact on your other
roles are close to zero.  I believe, most players mostly act like
themselves when they are online, which makes my position very sound
indeed! :-)

Now, think about a situation where your physical life (and the set of
roles it provides) is a total hell and the online world is heaven.
Wouldn't you care less about going to "school" and more about being in
the virtual world?  What is most important, and why?  Now, consider a
situation where your online character has been available all your life
and is your only possible entrance to that world or any other virtual
world.  Think about a situation in which all of your creativity (which
other users enjoy) happens in the virtual world, and nothing happens
in the physical world (because nobody need you, and nobody will ever
need you).  What is more real, the physical or the virtual?

>  There has to be
>a distance between you and the character, period.  Secondly, we were
>talking mainly about adventure games.  I don't find much of any adventure
>game immersive enough to confuse me into thinking I'm actually there.

That was my point as well.  I am me.  I don't roleplay for a computer,
not much.  The whole thing is obviously fuzzy, because the idea about
"me" ("the soul" or whatever) is incredibly fuzzy, inconsisten and, in
some sense, distributed entity, although we perceive it as atomic and
consistent.  Can you agree with this?
Anyway, if this is the case (which I believe), then there is a real
source of problems here.

The "me" will get upset in singleplayer games, if the game makes me
look bad, like a fool, if it destroys some ideas I had about my own
abilities which I valued highly etc.  So, it happens to me, not to a
distant character, simply because I was the one that made the moves.

>People do tend to get a bit silly about things they care about, to the
>point of losing sight of reality.  I generally think that this is not
>a particularly good thing.

Maybe so, but we don't really have much of a choice.  Designers must
accept players as they are.  There is no use in telling them that
their attitude to life is wrong.

>> "you" ? Is that a mental or physical entity?  Does it exists?  Is it
>> one thing or many things?  Is it a separate entity?  Can you prove to
>> me that you exists outside this game world called mud-dev?  You forget
>> that one part of your brain might accept that this is "only a game"
>> while another part of your brain ignore that "fact".  Which part of
>> your brain is more "you" than the other?  Which part is dominating
>> during gameplay?
>
>Yes.  Mental.  Yes.  One.  Seperate from what?  No, not unless you live
>near me.  Not really.  My brain is all one part, but while certain sections
>may be very much obsessed with what's happening on the screen, the 'overmi=
nd'
>as it were is always keeping myself in check.  I tend to think that if
>the other ever got control I would no longer be a sane person.

Mh, your brain (which isn't the only entity you use for information
processing when you are involved in a mental process) is more like
interconnected spaghetti (no offence), although it is contained in
something that might be viewed as one part, but I wasn't talking about
the physical implementation :).

What is your "overmind", is that something you hope exists, or an
identified entity?  Is it the mind of your primary role, maybe the
mind of your being-alone-looking-at-the-fireplace role, the least
context dependant role, or what?  But, really, my point is rather that
this is a complex issue, and the only "sane" thing for a designer to
do is to observe the effect his creation has on the users.  And to
treat them with respect, to accept their online traumas as being real
and deal with it.

Ola.