[MUD-Dev] Re: WIRED: Kilers have more fun

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On 06:25 PM 7/27/98 -0500, I personally witnessed Koster, Raph jumping up
to say:
>
>Because given the chance, humans will attempt to exercise as much power
>over their environment as they can. 

Even if it doesn't do anything for them. 

I remember the portable wet bar, which was expensive, heavy, and did
absolutely nothing in game terms. It could give *you* an occasional message
about mixing a drink, but that was it. It was a joke. And guess what? Did
people buy it, laugh, and discard it? No. People bought it HABITUALLY.
Everyone seemed to have one. New players were advised to get one as
"standard" equipment. And they did. And they used it. And so did everyone
else. 

Why? What possible purpose did it have? I polled my players, and they
didn't know. But they kept buying them and carrying them around. 

Go figure.

>Because humans tend to seek
>standing, and the easiest way to do this is to climb over those of lower
>standing. 

Interestingly, you don't gain anything worthwhile from wasting some guy on
the low end of the totem pole. But people do. How does that increase your
standing? 

Something I've considered is maintaining a "Top Ten" sort of list as the
only real ranking in the game. That way, you're either on the list, or
you're not. How do you know how strong someone else is? Well, check the
list. Is he on it? No? Well, he might be number twelve, or he might be
number twelve million. Maybe you should go find out before you attack. ;)

>Because the game made it possible to do, thereby giving a
>veneer of acceptability to it. 

Translation: If we're not supposed to do it, don't let us. Exactly the sort
of thing I'm trying to provide in my system... if you CAN do it, it's
expected that you WILL. If I haven't accounted for it appropriately, well,
that was my fault. Basically, if you find a flaw or a bug or something like
that, I expect you to exploit the hell out of it. Either I'll find out
about this and fix it, or it's supposed to be like that. And regardless of
how abusive you are of the system, I'm not going to take your ill-gotten
gains away from you when the bug's fixed. It just won't work that way
anymore. 

>Because the perception was that the
>victim could escape anytime, and felt nothing because "it was just a
>game."

Additional reasoning: He's new. He's dumb. He can't have much of an
investment in the character. He can't have spent much time developing it.
And he can easily create another one. First level characters are a dime a
dozen *retail*, and most of us buy wholesale anyway. Besides, he ought to
know better. 

The problem with this reasoning is quite simply that nobody ever seems to
recall what a pain in the butt it was when they were newbies. 

>A favorite sport was leading newbies from the inn to the door and
>saying, "Go on through, I'm right behind you!"

Rite of passage. ;)

Ever been on a Unix box, typed 'rm *.ext', and ended up being too slow on
the shift key? So you type 'rm *>ext'? Giving you a 0-byte file named 'ext'
and nothing else in the directory? It seems to happen to a lot of people...
once. Then it doesn't happen anymore. If you're lucky, you hear this story
before it happens to you, and realise that it very easily COULD... so you
learn from it before suffering.

Extrapolation? Warn people. If it's known to be a 'favorite sport', then
there have got to be a lot of people like Marian who could... given
opportunity... mention it. Spread the word, and it doesn't work anymore.
Like most dirty tricks.