[MUD-Dev] Re: Affordances and social method (Was: Re: Wire d Magazine...)

[cat]

Till Eulenspiegel wrote:
> From: Marian Griffith <gryphon at iaehv.nl>
> >The strange thing then is that so few people, on this list only Dr.Cat
> >that I know of, attempt to create a safer game environment, at the ex-
> >pense of some freedom of the players. Or am I being overly pessimistic
> >now?
> >
> 
> Dr. Cat does the extreme.

I think this perspective may be fairly typical of the people on mud-dev.  
It's
why I feel like a kangaroo at the annual emu and ostrich convention.  
There's
nothing wrong with being an emu or an ostrich, but kangaroos don't 
necessarily
have enough in common with them to have much to talk about.

And I mean, really, you have to be really, really into your ostrichness 
to think
"oh, being featherless is some kinda extreme unusual thing".

How many of the almost six billion humans on this planet play games where
they make believe that they're striking Bubba with a sharp object in 
order to
get some coins, or some equivalent?  I think far more of them are playing
games like Trivial Pursuit, Bridge, Monopoly, Awari, Mah Johngg, Poker, or
Windows Solitaire.  Many more adults still buy into the notion that 
"games"
and/or "play" are things kids do, adults work and then maybe relax with 
some
leisure activity like a book, a movie, or chatting with friends over a 
beer at the
pub.

People are interested in socializing and communicating.  And they 
generally
prefer a reasonable safe environment for it, free of any risks of being 
attacked
or even of having to watch others being attacked around them.

On the net, the number one application BY FAR is email.  After that 
probably
comes chatting, browsing the web for information and/or entertainment, and
maybe newsgroups.  Playing games at all is less common, playing muds is
a fraction of that, and playing muds that have combat systems programmed 
in
is a subset of all muds.

Trying to provide a colorful, pleasant communications and creativity tool 
with a
nice user interface and a comfortable, "safe" environment doesn't put me 
in the
"extreme".  It puts me in the main-stream, the mud-dev readership is the 
ex-treme.

There seems to be so much time spent playing these games, talking to other
people that play these games, and talking to other people that program 
these
games, that it's possible to get wrapped up in this mindset, perspective, 
and
environment to the point of thinking that it IS the mainstream.  And 
losing sight
of the big picture.  But this list doesn't even cover the totality of mud 
development,
mostly only the subset that involves descendants of the combat oriented 
muds.
You don't see much talk about the MOO, MUSH, TinyMUD, MUCK and other
families of social muds.  You don't see much talk about an educational 
mud like
that one that was set up at MIT (Cyberion City, wasn't it?) or the mud 
that was
set up for astronomers to communicate and exchange information through.  
And
while this list doesn't even cover all of the territory in the field of 
muds, the muds
are just a small corner of the Internet.  And the Internet is just a 
small corner of
human experience.  This place is the ex-treme, not the main-stream.

What's particularly amazing to me is the response here to one statement.
When it was asked whether it mightn't be worth also having environments 
where
you couldn't physically strike anyone, someone replied "what if it's 
necessary?"
And the reply back was "I don't think it IS necessary."

Instead of the interesting debate on whether or not it is or might be 
truly
"necessary" to strike someone to deal with problems in an environment 
where
combat and fighting aren't built into the code, the responses from 
various people
drifted right back into the question of whether it is or isn't necessary 
in an
environment that DOES have combat built in, and is in a setting (like 
medieval
fantasy) where combat is normal and expected.  It seems this is the only 
kind
of setting people here really want to talk about.

But tell me, does anyone think that the astronomers exchanging papers and
chatting about their latest discoveries really need to use make-believe 
physical
combat in order to keep the peace on their mud?

The statement about striking other people being necessary as given, and 
in the
context of what it was replying to, was a very extremist sort of position.
  And yet,
only one person said anything to try to strongly counter it or disagree 
with it.
Everyone else seems to have filtered it in their own minds to a much more 
moderate
statement, a more defensible one.  While at the same time removing the 
vast
majority of contexts to which it could (and did, as stated) be applied, 
and instead
only considering how it applies in a very narrow range of contexts.

Consider something much closer to mainstream - not the 90,000 subscribers 
of
Ultima Online, but the well over ten million subscribers of America 
Online.  Let's
look at some of thoughts in that context.

> In our statistics a remarkably small percentage of players accounts for
> a gross majority of problems.  We've seen more success from banning
> problem people.  This option works for us however because we are not
> a pay-for system and have no implied service level guarantee.
> Not a scalable solution, IMO.

In point of fact, I think America Online did more banning and censoring 
than
Genie and Compuserve.  Last year, America Online BOUGHT Compuserve.
Banning is clearly scalable, since they have over ten million people.  It'
s the
free, hobbyist muds where things are less scalable.  Whether you need more
RAM, more hard disk, more CPU, or more staff-who-ban-people, in a hobbyist
system or game getting ten times the users just means more work and more
costs.  In a commercial system, it also means roughly ten times the 
revenues,
which will pay for the extra staff or RAM or whatever you need.

Implied service level guarantee would be an argument FOR banning rather 
than
against it.  If Boffo goes around calling everyone a zebra's private 
parts on Bubba's
Bodacious Mud, and he isn't banned for that...  The wizards can reply to 
any
complaints by saying "If you don't like the level of service we're giving 
you for
free, don't play!"  If you're paying America Online to get called a zebra'
s naughty
bits by Boffo and you complain, they have an obligation to listen, make 
excuses,
and/or do something about Boffo.

There's no issue of Boffo's implied service level guarantee, because the 
service
agreement (that he clicked "accept" on without reading) says that you not 
only
aren't guaranteed the right to go around harassing everyone you meet, but 
that
in fact if you choose to do so, you forfeit your right to all the other 
aspects of
the service that you were guaranteed.  Tough luck, Boffo.

I'm trying to invent even better methods of dealing with trouble, in 
order to
evolve beyond America Online and its ilk.  But banning really is scalable,
probably simpler and more cost effective than many of the more complex
alternatives might be, and it gets the job done.  America Online currently
has a market capitalization of about $18 billion.  And despite all the 
slams
it regularly gets from non-subscribers, quite a number of its subscribers
actually do enjoy the service provided.  And they are there voluntarily, 
at that!

....

Let's go back for a moment to this "but what if it's necessary to strike 
someone"
question.  Imagine we believe that it is indeed necessary sometimes, in 
any
online environment that is to achieve sufficient richness, culture, size, 
depth, 
complexity, self-governance, whatever.  Now let's say we go to try and 
apply
this to America Online.

First hurdle would be getting them to accept the axiom from here on mud-
dev
that the customers should be doing most of the work of keeping the peace,
rather than the staff.  Most of the AOL customers are mostly used to 
paying
for a service, and having the provider make sure it's worth buying - like 
people
are with most goods and services.  But let's say you make an impassioned
speech about the novel nature of online communities, how they're different
from other services you might buy, fit into the future of mankind, blah 
blah blah,
and you convince 'em.  Ok.

So let's say this guy says "Allright, you convinced me.  What shall I do, 
for
the good of us all?  Make more effort to report troublemakers to the AOL 
staff?  Send private messages to my fellow users suggesting that we all
stop replying to the posts by that person?  Put on ignore filters when 
they
try to chat with me?  Something else?  What?"

So we say to them, "No, actually, we have come to realize that it is
necessary for you to engage in a game of make-believe with this 
troublemaker,
where you pretend to strike him with a fist, sword, mace, or magical ball 
of
flame, and he pretends to be hurt or even killed by it.  This is 
NECESSARY in
order to keep the peace on America Online.  If we don't keep the peace in 
that
particular way, we've realized that we will be forever lacking in true 
depth and
cultural sophistication as a meaningful online community."

"But...  But...  I just come here for a photography SIG!  I don't even 
like books or
movies about all that knights and wizards and dragons stuff, let alone 
playing this
weird game you say I have to play with this guy I don't like.  Are you 
sure there
isn't ANYTHING else I could do instead?"

"Oh, no problem!  If you don't like knights and wizards, go meet him in 
the
new Futurama section and you can nail him with blasters and lightsabers 
instead!  Or if you're not into wild flights of fancy, more a down to 
earth,
modern day, realistic guy - go over to Sim-Iraq, and you can attack him
with guns, grenades, Scud Missiles, and germ warfare.  THAT will teach
him to not go around posting obscene pictures in your photography SIG!"

I mean, really - isn't anyone else capable of seeing it as extremist and
ludicrous to think of striking people as universally necessary, rather 
than
just necessary in certain specific types of environments?  Besides Marian,
that is.

Well I'm just a kangaroo.  Hop hop hop, boing boing.  Oh no thank you,
no kangaroo-boxing for me today!  Nice plumage you've got there.  Hop hop.

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