[MUD-Dev] FW: UBE/high: Re: W IRED: Kilers have more fun

[Koster]

Dr. Cat sent this to me accidentally when he meant to send it to the
whole list. Sorry about the extra level of attribution on everything!

-Raph

> -----Original Message-----
> From: cat at bga.com [mailto:cat at bga.com] 
> Sent: Friday, August 14, 1998 3:59 PM
> To: rkoster at origin.ea.com
> Subject: Re: UBE/high: [MUD-Dev] Re: W IRED: Kilers have more fun
> 
> 
> Ok, the list's been spamming me with these "message-like objects" for
> the last month.  In fact, I think they''re actual messages, though I 
> haven't
> consulted with the local university's messageologist to be certain.  
> Anyway
> I'm going to take "revenge" by spamming the list back for a 
> little bit.
> 
> Raph Koster wrote:
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Marian Griffith [mailto:gryphon at iaehv.nl]
> > They'll only realize it if the cost of paying for the cop 
> is covered by
> > the money saved by not having those people quit. Which is 
> an equation
> > that is as yet very very fuzzy. You might save fifty 
> people, but the cop
> > cost you 100 people's subscriptions worth.
> 
> The tacit assumption here is that the cops are paid.  This is not a
> requirement, but an option.  Using carefully selected player 
> volunteers
> has potential drawbacks, mainly that you can't necessarily count on
> the same level of quality and reliability of performance.  
> But the cost
> equation is a lot more favorable.  (They're not 100% free, because of
> whatever cost their is in paid staff's time spent managing them.)
> 
> I was told by some kid from Furcadia that he was an Ultima Online GM,
> that he wasn't in Austin and wasn't paid any money, that players were
> just chosen from the game to do that.  I didn't have any way to verify
> whether he was telling the truth or not, though.  He also 
> bragged to me
> about his non-GM character who he claimed was a highly powerful
> playerkiller, which seemed a little ironic to me.  :X)
> 
> > Absolutely. Massive quantities of them. And as I have 
> stated before, I
> > have a LOT of respect for Dr Cat and his work, and think 
> his comments on
> > overdesign, and on attention as currency, are dead on. In 
> fact, I feel
> > somewhat uncomfortable feeling put in opposition to him, as 
> this thread
> > seems to have done...
> 
> Well it's a clear case of "oppose the ideas, and not the 
> person", and I 
> hope
> you don't take it personally.  I do admire some of the design 
> goals that 
> you
> are pursuing and I'm not, and think that someone ought to be pursuing 
> them.
> I just think that some of the elements of your approach 
> aren't going to 
> work
> out the way you hope, because of factors you're not viewing 
> from the same
> perspective I am.  Anyway you're still near the top of my 
> list of people 
> I'd like
> to go out to lunch with since I got back to town, if I weren't so 
> distracted 
> trying to find some way to earn two nickels to rub together 
> these days.  :
> X)
> 
> > If we are working towards virtual realities, as I think we 
> are, then I
> > think that there's a problem set there to solve. And we can 
> reduce it by
> > going with a smaller design, sure--one tailored to that 
> vast group of
> > people who would rather not deal with certain aspects it is 
> possible to
> > simulate, such as violence. As Dr Cat said, we can choose 
> not to add in
> > combat.
> > 
> > But *somebody* is gonna add combat. And since I was (and still am,
> > though my interest is shifting) interested in tackling many of the
> > problems that arise with an environment that includes as many of the
> > experiences life offers as can be made interesting, I regard it as
> > "leaving it out." That's not intended to be derogatory 
> towards those who
> > leave it out; they are not trying to address the same 
> problem set, is
> > all. I want to tackle the problem set of the day when we have a MUD
> > (read: spatial, multi-user) interface to the entire 
> Internet, which I
> > don't think is that far away.
> 
> If you're trying to explore a larger, more complex and 
> interesting problem
> space and/or solution space, I think there's a point that's 
> very easy to 
> miss
> here.  Which is that there are things you can add to a system that 
> increase
> its diversity, and things that can DECREASE the diversity if 
> you add them.
> If you operate Joe's online service, or a real-world shopping 
> mall for 
> that 
> matter, and you add in a place for stamp collectors, you've 
> increased the
> diversity a little, and probably without adding any problems. 
>  People that
> don't like stamp collecting will most likely ignore it rather 
> than being
> bothered by it.
> 
> But try adding something labelled "free sex, free beer, and 
> free money!"
> If the initial flood of people into there discovers that you're not 
> kidding and
> you actually provide those things, you will see usage decline 
> in the other
> areas.  Both because some people will prefer that so much 
> they won't go
> to the other places any more, and also because other people will be so
> offended they'll just leave entirely.  Some of the places and 
> activities 
> that
> used to draw steady amounts of usage will dry up and vanish.  World
> building is not a game where you can only "add" by putting 
> new things in.
> You can add or subtract, or in some cases do some amount of both.
> 
> The "free sex" thing is an imperfect analogy to combat in a 
> virtual world,
> though.  The people who insist upon being offended have to choose to
> let it affect their life, by going and looking at it and being upset 
> about it.
> They could go to the stamp collector's place and hang out 
> there all the
> time, and not worry about it.  Introducing combat, though, 
> leaves you no
> such choice, at least when done in the relatively 
> unrestricted fashion it'
> s
> seen in Ultima Online.  If some of the stamp collectors have 
> a fair amount
> of money, or if someone even thinks that they might, then the 
> activity of
> fighting to the death will be brought to them and imposed upon them.
> 
> Putting universally available combat capabilities into a game has the
> potential to drown out many, many non-combat activities.  If 
> this happens,
> you're not making your environment more diverse.  You're not covering
> more of the problems and challenges of making a sophisticated online
> world.  You're covering less of them.  Because you put in one 
> thing that
> wiped out a hundred other things, all in the name of "leaving nothing 
> out".
> 
> I still don't think anyone really understands Marian's classic Tailor 
> Problem.
> Except maybe Marian.  (Hi again, Marian!)
> 
> Consider some more that MUD interface to the entire net that you 
> postulate.
> Imagine that I'm walking through Virtual Walmart with my nice 
> Doom style
> interface displayed in my VR helmet.  (Or imagine I'm typing 
> "go west, go
> north", for you text MUD purists.)  I have a desire to purchase lawn
> furniture.  Walmart has a desire to receive some of my hard 
> earned cash.
> We clearly have a basis for a meaningful relationship here, 
> even if we're
> being a bit emotionally shallow about it.  Hey, it's 
> consensual, don't 
> pick
> on us!
> 
> So anyway, let's say Boffo leaps out from between the 
> sporting goods and
> the hardware section.  He's wearing football pads and a hockey mask, 
> brandishing a rake, and to his sides and back he's got 
> strapped a nail 
> gun,
> two hockey sticks, a chainsaw, and a ballpeen hammer.  He 
> yells "Kreegah!"
> and viciously attacks me.  I'm dead.
> 
> Now, quite apart from how I might feel about this, Walmart is clearly 
> going
> to be upset at the slight reduction in the odds that I will 
> spend money on
> their lawn furniture because of this.  What's their solution? 
>  Is it one 
> of the
> kinds of answers people have popped up with in reply to 
> Marian?  Will the
> players - er, I'm sorry, "users", many net users won't be 
> interested in 
> gaming
> as such...  Will the users form posses to lynch the sporting 
> goods bandit?
> Will Walmart give 5% discounts to people who patrol their virtual 
> corridors
> at least N hours per week, attacking and slaying any know thieves and
> murderers they encounter?  Will this graphic violence hurt 
> sales in the
> food aisle?
> 
> Or will Virtual Walmart be programmed from day one in such a 
> manner that
> it simply isn't possible for one person to attack or kill 
> another person, 
> ever?
> This is a no-brainer for me.  They'll probably be in a 
> virtual mall where 
> you
> can't attack and kill someone the moment they take one step 
> outside the
> Walmart doors, either.  You'll probably have to head for some kind of 
> Virtual
> Arcade or Castle or whatever where combat is enabled, because most 
> Internet users are not really going to want to be able to kill or be 
> killed.
> And most of those that do aren't going to want it to be a 
> possibility 100%
> or the time that they're online.  Those that do, much like 
> the college 
> kids
> that play Assassin games, will probably get some add on 
> program to play
> Virtual Assassin whilst running all over in cyberspace.  
> Instead of ICQ 
> it'll
> be called KillMeToo or something.  And elderly shoppers will 
> perhaps wave
> an angry fist at the two kids who insist on running through 
> the hallways 
> of
> Virtual Walmart, knocking over boxes and bumping people aside as they
> insist on playing their rowdy game someplace that wasn't 
> meant for it.  
> But
> the fist-waving curmudgeon won't be in any danger of having 
> their avatar
> virtually disemboweled, I'm pretty confident.  And if rowdy 
> kids became 
> too
> much of a problem, I imagine the store manager would start 
> banning them
> from entry to the store any time he caught some.
> 
> If you really want to tackle the problem set of the virtual internet, 
> then violent
> forms of conflict aren't the big issue.  Social and spatial forms of 
> harrassment,
> along with hacking, those are your issues.  Some kid will program his 
> avatar
> to move around in front of you, always hovering in the air 
> right in front 
> of your
> face, so you never see anything anywhere in cyberspace except for his 
> virtual
> belly-button.  There has to be some way to deal with that kid.  
> Programming in
> a way to lop off his virtual head and send him to the virtual 
> temple isn'
> t it.  Even
> if grandma who just wants to buy lawn furniture can overcome 
> any personal
> reluctance that she has to lopping someone's head off, and 
> tries to do it,
>  she's
> probably going to lose that fight to the quick, gaming-experienced 16 
> year old
> virtual street punk.  If granny has to be dependent on 16 
> year old Good 
> Guy 
> street punks to protect her, and has to witness them 
> decapitating the Bad 
> Guy
> street punks right in front of her virtual eyes, I think 
> we've made our 
> virtual
> society a step backwards many centuries in terms of the level of 
> civilization
> that we've acheived there.  Stepping back into the middle 
> ages for fun is 
> great
> for people that want to play Dungeons and Dragons or join the 
> SCA.  But do
> we have to require that everyone goes back there, even the 
> people that 
> just
> want to buy lawn furniture?  Is our modern level of progress 
> in making 
> societies
> where violent attacks are less common something that we don't want to 
> replicate in cyberspace, or something we do want but don't 
> know how to do
> there?
> 
> I think I remember reading a design essay about Ultima 
> Online, saying that
> it had roughly recreated the course of social and cultural 
> evolution that 
> occurred
> in the real world from 500 AD to 1000 AD, over a six month 
> period.  That'
> s a
> neat thought, and it's certainly a big time savings - a 
> thousand to one 
> ratio!
> Still, I couldn't help but think, on reading it...  Why start 
> at 500 AD?  
> Don't we
> know enough from having done all that before to be able to 
> start a virtual
> society at the point mankind had reached in 1500, 1800, or 
> 1900?  Maybe
> even 1990?  Well, 1990 would be pretty hard - we don't understand how
> 1990 works clearly enough in the real world, and a virtual world is 
> likely to
> start further back because it's required to do some things 
> differently 
> because
> of the different nature of the place.  I'd still hope we 
> could do better 
> than 500 AD
> for a starting point.  (Civilization and Age of Empires style games 
> notwithstanding.)
> 
> > Quite beyond that, I have serious doubts about the commercial
> > feasibility of a server that's completely safe. Not because 
> of the lack
> > of interest, but because of the amount of cops you have to 
> pay to keep
> > it safe. I use as my rule of thumb whether or not we're 
> willing to pay
> > enough cops to keep us safe in the real world, where the 
> stakes are a
> > lot higher. :( Yeah, we can code Toontown laws of physics, 
> and people
> > will still find ways to screw each other over. Because 
> fundamentally,
> > that's what a safe environment is promising: nobody will 
> screw you over.
> > And I can't currently design a way around that. I doubt I 
> will ever be
> > able to. You can reduce the problem set, but the problem doesn't go
> > away... what's worse, the safer you say you are, the more 
> of a target
> > you paint on your chest. A nasty dilemma.
> 
> The fact that you can't reduce "possibility of being screwed 
> over" to zero
> doesn't make this an insoluble problem.  Indeed, if you take measures
> that reduce either the frequency OR the severity of incidents 
> of people 
> being screwed over, you can reduce the cost of policing enormously.
> This can be done not only by making it harder to screw people over,
> but also by making it less appealing to the tastes of those who love
> to screw people over, and/or by providing other activities 
> that tend to
> appeal to that type of person without screwing anyone over 
> (or at least,
> not anyone who didn't choose to take such a risk in order to get a
> chance to nail someone themselves.)
> 
> As for the stakes, they will continue to grow.  I'm sure we'll someday
> have over a billion people online, and at that point the 
> value of having
> things like a safe, clean, friendly Disney Online environment will be
> so high that companies like them will throw pretty hefty amount of
> cash at figuring out ways to keep it safe.
> 
> I hope they'll throw some of it at me.  :X)
> 
> I also think that the availability of free or nearly-free 
> cops will grow 
> as
> the amount of wealth and leisure time that people have continues to
> grow.
> 
> > Whew, that was an outpouring. Basically, I cheer on the "safe game"
> > designs. Love to see how you do it. Am openly skeptical 
> about how you'll
> > do it. Hope you prove me wrong. And I go about it in a more 
> cynical way.
> > ;) UO was intended as just a microcosm, you see. The fact 
> that it is as
> > dangerous as it is speaks, IMHO, more to human nature than anything
> > else...
> 
> Indeed.  I'll conceed I'm not interested solely in catering to human 
> nature as
> it exists now, but rather in contributing to its evolution to 
> whatever it 
> will
> develop into in the next century or two.  I do view it as malleable.  
> Still,
> there's usually a LOT more money to be made in catering to it 
> exactly as
> it stands at any given moment in history...  I probably need 
> to cater to 
> it
> some more and make my fortune before I try to think TOO far ahead.
> 
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