[MUD-Dev] UO rants

[Paul Schwanz - Enterprise Services]

> From: "John Buehler" <johnbue at email.msn.com>

> 
> > Paul Schwanz - Enterprise Services
> > Sent: Monday, August 28, 2000 12:59 PM
> 
> > Mostly, I agree with what you are saying regarding common crime scenarios.
> > However, I'm not sure that "competitive" is even the best way to
> > describe these
> > scenarios.  I see "criminal" and "competitive" as vastly different
> > things.  Is
> > it always criminal to actively oppose the gameplay of another
> > player?  Or can it
> > be merely competitive without being criminal?
> 
> Criminal is a point on the competitive scale.  Consider the current legal
> proceedings involving Microsoft.  Microsoft competes vigorously, and has been
> labelled criminal in the extent of their competition.  Consider the Bored of
> the Rings monologue from Saruman while in his tower.  He attempts to present a
> war as a competitive business situation.  Crimes are essentially normal
> behavior taken to some undesireable extreme.
>

Perhaps, but criminal is not an *arbitrary* point on the competitive scale.  It isn't 
that Microsoft has simply gotten too competitive.  Rather, they've let their desire 
for success take them over clearly defined boundaries and rules.  Inside of these 
boundaries and rules, competition is a *great* thing.  The rules help to insure that 
all are competing on an even playing field.  Outside of these boundaries, competition 
becomes criminal.
 
> > Why should 'we' ensure that the folks interested in peacetime pursuits are
> > insulated?  Why should we not give them the means and incentive to
> > ensure this
> > themselves, by paying taxes, gaining access to resources, and using these
> > resources to expand their empire's territory and security?  This is what
> > competition is all about.  I agree that there should be
> > consequences for immoral
> > gameplay, but this doesn't mean that there should not be
> > consequences for poor
> > gameplay.  To me, this is the distinction between criminal and competitive.
> 
> We should ensure that folks interested in peacetime pursuits get to play the
> game their way because that's their form of entertainment.  Just as a solo
> player likes to be around other players, players interested in peaceful
> pursuits for their character like to hear news of what's going on out on the
> front lines, etc.  If they're interested in joining the war, they go find the
> war.  The war shouldn't find them.  These games need not be predicated on
> killing everything that moves and taking anything not nailed down.
> 

While I understand the desire to reach the broadest market, I think that it is 
possible to widen the focus too much.  I think that players who want peace can coexist 
with players who want to war.  However, when you *guarantee* peace to players, I think 
you've crossed the line and have moved outside of any vision for *realistic* 
interaction.  Evidently, you want some interaction between the ones who have carte 
blanche immunity from war and the ones who are engaged in war.  But it will be very 
difficult to keep such interaction from directly influencing the war.  And if it 
influences the war, then it should not be invulnerable.  If those who are farmers and 
merchants can impact the war, why can't the war impact them?  But perhaps you won't 
allow any action which can truly impact either side?  At this point, I think you'd be 
better off to provide two different games, or the same game on different servers.

<snip of "feathering" concept>
 
> Why do I bother pursuing all this?  So that I can attract a variety of gamers.
> People who want war can find war.  People who want to build a farm can build a
> farm.  People who want to get into stamp collecting can get into stamp
> collecting.  When the stamp collector decides that he's had enough of that, he
> can move onto something a bit more dangerous: ferret farming.  The individual
> games that the player involves his character in must be relatively stable.
> The idea that the game world is predicated on surviving a bunch of nuts in
> armor with big knives is blatantly silly.
> 

The game world *will be* predicated on surviving a bunch of nuts, whether those nuts 
have big knives or not. ;-)

> Note that there's nothing saying that people can't pursue stamp collecting in
> a war zone.  If that's what they want, that's fine.  But if a stamp collecting
> enthusiast has been attracted to the game with the promise that they'll find a
> community in which they can seek out misprints, sheets, first day covers and
> other philatelic pursuits, is it reasonable to expect that they also have to
> run from wars constantly?  That they could have their entire collection wiped
> out by arson?
>

Stamp collectors and warmongers coexist in real life.  Stamp collectors, however, are 
not *guaranteed* a life of peacful existence.  In fact, it behooves stamp collectors 
to pay taxes and vote in order to promote a government which will protect their way of 
life.  If stamp collectors are given no guarantee of immunity from war in real life, 
why should they be given one in a virtual life?  Yet this lack of a guarantee doesn't 
seem to keep stamp collectors from enjoying their pursuits in real life.  Why should 
it keep them from enjoying a game?  Of course, warmongers are not guaranteed conquest 
either.  How can you cast your net wider than this?

<another snip> 
 
> And I'm trying to acknowledge the fact that player characters have no
> conscience.  They don't feel pain or remorse, and so on.  The behavior of a
> player character is not human.   They will run until they collapse in
> exhaustion.  And when they've recovered, they'll do it all over again.  They
> can engage in bloody combat day after day.  This is all superhuman, and is
> done in the name of entertainment.  I understand that.  But we also have to
> factor that into the way the world works.  These conscienceless superhumans
> have to be kept in line by unrealistic measures.
> 

Why can't we make them other than conscienceless superhumans so that they can be kept 
in line by realistic measures?

Yes, player characters have no conscience.  But is there no way to give them one?  (Of 
course, the answer is that a method for giving them a realistic conscience doesn't 
exist at the moment.  However, can we not come up with some crude steps in the right 
direction?  I think that there are some things we could try in order to simulate a 
character's conscience.)  Why not make the virtual world more like the real world by 
trying to give characters a conscience and restricting unrealistic superhuman 
capabilities instead of making it less like the real world by inserting arbitrary and 
unrealistic guarantees about a player's ability to pursue stamp collecting?  In the 
real world, *all* things are permissible...even pursuing war against stamp 
collectors...but not all things are expedient.  Stamp collectors should be given the 
ability to ensure that making war against them is not expedient, but I think that 
making it impermissible is a step in the wrong direction.


--Phinehas




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