[MUD-Dev] Re: DIS: Client-Server vs Peer-to-Peer

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On 01:32 AM 12/19/98 -0800, I personally witnessed Marc Hernandez jumping
up to say:
>
>	In certain instances we have too much knowledge for one person to
>do everything.  Most large efforts are the product of many smart people
>working very hard.  

In my experience, it's a couple of smart people covering several useless
people's backsides while a bunch of idiots actually produce the final
product. 

Then again, I was a defense contractor. Maybe that has something to do with
my feelings on teamwork, colleagues, and management.

>Thus the party system in various games.  You cant
>expect your mage to start opening chests just as your thief wont start
>saying incantations.

The average person spends most of his life depending on the efforts of
others. In his leisure time, he would probably prefer not to. It would be
nice if he could feel, just for a while, that people were depoending on him
for a change.
>Admittadly it is not rocket science, but to be putting your best into your
>job no matter what it is is very important.  

Yes, it is. It does not, however, have any bearing whatsoever on your
success. Success depends more on smoke and mirrors than on substance, and
success begets success. 

>Ironically the people that
>do not put in there best do not go up the food chain (so to speak).

Yes, they do. And the people who *do* put in their best *don't* go up the
food chain, either. 

>Perhaps the fry cooks view of work is a reflection of the american work
>ethic (or lack thereof).

The fry cook has to fill four fry containers but only has enough to fill
three to the top. So he drops more fries into the vat, and fills the four
containers 3/4 full, and FINISHES four customers. That's fast food, that's
his job. The customer gets a half-empty fry box and bitches at the cashier
who goes and gets the manager and the manager apologises and gets him more
fries. Then the fry cook, who DID HIS JOB, gets bitched at for not filling
up the fry containers all the way. If he's lucky, he can articulate to the
manager what he was thinking and why he did it that way.

The fry cook sees his job as "serve fries quickly". The customer sees it as
"give me the food I paid for". And the manager sees it as "make the
customer happy". 
You will have similar problems on most coherent teams. Different people see
the same job in different terms.

The fry cook cannot do all three at once. He knows that if he does not
serve fries quickly enough, he will get yelled at by the manager. If he
serves the customer a quantity the customer will be happy with, it will
take longer, and he will end up serving fewer customers in the same time.
And the customer will be unhappy regardless of whether he has to wait
longer for his fries or accept a partially full box. Therefore, the fry
cook's success is independent of his performance, and his performance
becomes irrelevant.

>> Design things for people like you, and only people like you will care. 
>
>	This seems to map to identity to me.  So Im the only one that
>would like to play team games?  That would be ironic.


Team-permitted and team-required are two different things. What you were
proposing was team-required, which is Bad. Team-permitted is Good.
(Team-forbidden is even worse than team-required, and if you even consider
such a thing you should probably stop trying to write games.) 

The real point of my original comment is that you are considering a game
that you would like to play, but you have not sufficiently elucidated why
other people would like to play it. I don't think other people would. Then
again, people said that about Joust, and that was one hell of a popular
game. (No fire button? That's just unheard of! You can't have a game with
no fire button, no one will play it! And what's this "flap" thing? You do
WHAT?) Sometimes radical and different ideas are great. Just because "it's
never been done" doesn't mean it's necessarily bad. 

>	However judging by the popularity of Clans/Tribes/whatever in
>various single player games I would suggest this is not so.  Quake
>TeamFortress[1] is still going strong.  The metagame of team fortress and
>even quake still seems fairly strong.  This is because of community and
>teamwork.  
TeamFortress and CTF and clan-based deathmatch and the like are not games.
They are sports. The distinction is subtle on a computer, but it is there.
Sports are extremely popular. This is an important foundation of my belief
that most of the world is ignorant.

This is not because of community and teamwork, either. It is because of a
desire to BEAT THE OTHER TEAM. Who your teammates are is irrelevant. Who
the other team is, irrelevant. It boils everything down to black and white,
win or lose, us or them. That's why team sports work fine on the net.
Nobody really gives a damn who they play with or against. 

Clans are just an effort to gain personal and persistent status and
recognition for team efforts. Even in the clans, there are people pulling
the weight, and people riding coattails. Most of the clan members will be
more than happy to tell you why *they* pull the weight and everyone else is
riding their coattails. Strangely, nobody will cop to being the weight, but
everyone is convinced that it is there. Who could it be?

>	Hmm.  So if I like playing games I am an average schmuck with a
>pointless existance?  Or does being able to program makeup for that?

No. If you are an average schmuck with a pointless existence, you will
usually like playing games. The converse does not apply and was never
intimated. Cause and effect are not commutative. 

>	I agree that games should be fun.  I agree that there is a sense
>of accomplishment.  I was merely putting forth that games that perhaps
>reflected a little more of life could be fun.  

The need to be part of a team to achieve anything is a need that many of us
do not feel, understand, or even recognise. If you need a team to
accomplish something, then the team can probably accomplish it without you.
Maybe the team needs someone else to replace you (if it takes four people
to lift something, a team of three is just not going to lift it), but YOU
-- meaning you personally, as a unique individual -- are not important. You
are just a member of the team. Anyone else would have done. Even when you
go to a class-based system. We need a cleric. Are there any clerics around
here? ANY CLERIC WILL DO. Skills based? We need someone with lockpicking.
Does anyone have lockpicking? ANYONE WILL DO. 


Team-based gameplay which *requires* you to join or have a team inevitably
results in a degradation of personal worth. In any D&D campaign, if
Mirtallen goes down in a flurry of arrows, the first concern is NOT "let us
convey the body of the priest to the temple for proper burial" -- it's "oh,
damn, there goes the cleric!"

Have you ever been walking through the game room at a convention and had
someone say "Hey, you play [system]... come on over, we need one more
player to round out the party"? Makes you feel really valued and
appreciated, doesn't it? Kinda like the fat kid on the football field who
always got picked last? 

Encouraging teamwork is good. Enforcing it is not. 

>It doesnt mean players will
>have to do taxes and go to the bathroom, but that does not mean we have to
>make them gods and give them super weapons.

Extreme games are always bad. They are almost as bad as sweeping
generalisations.


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| Caliban Tiresias Darklock            caliban at darklock.com 
| Darklock Communications          http://www.darklock.com/ 
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