Hiding the Numbers (was Re: [MUD-Dev] Maintaining fiction.)

[Derek Licciardi]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Buehler
> Sent: Monday, June 04, 2001 1:08 AM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: RE: Hiding the Numbers (was Re: [MUD-Dev] Maintaining fiction.)

> Derek Licciardi writes:

>> Games are played to win.(ie keep score in some way to determine a
>> winner(extremely loosly defined here), be they points, items,
>> skills, or whatnot.)

> I'll avoid getting into the semantics of what a game is, whether a
> MUD is a game, and so forth.  Such statements always seem to lead to
> 'dictionary wars'.  I do, however, want to contend that MUDs are not
> about 'winning'.  Not even in the general sense.  They are about
> entertainment.  I certainly won't begin to argue the point that many
> players derive much of their entertainment by comparison against
> game metrics or against other player's accomplishments in the game.

Player Killers win by dominating other players, Explorers win by
having more knowledge than other players, Socializers win by building
the most valuable network of people they can establish, and Achievers
win by gaining skill points or some other game measurement.  Of course
muds are about winning.  Don't limit yourself to the Tetris definition
of winning where only one can be at the top.  Competition drives may
players on MUDs be it in one way or another.  I was merely pointing
out that this seems to be an overwhelming pattern in nearly ALL games
out there today.  In some way or fashion, there is a goal and getting
to that goal can be considered the winning scenario.  I attempt to use
that assumption as a basis for describing why there is a 'Holy-War' of
sorts surrounding the contents of this thread.

>> Online games have a social aspect to them and in the real world we
>> constantly compare ourselves and our things to everyone and
>> everything else.(If you say that you don't you're lying to
>> yourself)

> If you say I must, then you are missing out on another way of
> viewing life.  It's a question of degree.  To some, the comparison
> is important.  To others, it is not.  I suspect the Dalai Lama and
> the Pope really aren't all that worried about how they compare with
> others on any axis.  No, I don't believe that they're concerned with
> being more humble, holy or wise than other people.  And I only
> mention those extremes because examples like them are usually
> mentioned in order to counter my point.

I understand your sarcasm here and probably shouldn't have been so
stereotypic in my statement.  Still, your example would tell me that
these supreme beings do not compete in any way and that somehow they
resist the urge to compare things.  I don't believe it.

> I will agree with you that current games cater to those who rely on
> the comparisons in order to define a significant portion of their
> identity. 

Glad we agree here.

>> The question that I have been struggling with for over two years
>> now, is where is the balance?  The best conclusion that I could
>> come up with is that it is up to the admins and the style of MUD
>> they would prefer to host.  Both 'hide it all' and 'show it all'
>> solutions have drawbacks that directly affect gameplay and fun.

> A game that shows all information is geared for competition.  A game
> that obfuscates all internals permits both competition and
> cooperation, while catering to neither.  Quantification is the
> cannon fodder of competition.

It is also geared for extreme statistical analysis.  What I was trying
to point out is that the design decision lies in what it will take to
allow players to use both logic and intuition to arrive at an in-game
conclusion.  If you show everything you reduce your game to a pile of
boring unsuprising tables that the Stratics.com web site will publish
in its entirety turning your virtual world into a math exercise.  The
problems arising from such analysis are something that your entire
development team will never be able to keep up with.(new interesting
content that is not statistically obsolete in twenty minutes) For MUDs
with a few hundred people this may not be a problem, but it is not
scalable above a certain number and certainly not in the six figure
player base range.  200,000 people can disect your game much quicker
than your 15 people can put out content to keep them interested.  On
the flip side too little information is frustrating as one can not
establish an identity.  I believe that frustration stems from the
comparison factor I have discussed here.

>> I believe the answer lies in the middle somewhere.  I define that
>> middle as a place where outside statistical simulations are not
>> necessary to compare yourself with someone else because the game
>> mechanics make that comparison reasonably accurate and readily
>> available to you when you need it.

[snip]

> I agree with this, all the way up to not showing the internal values
> to the player.  Obviously, I'm in the obfuscation camp (and the
> simulation camp).  Obfuscation won't keep players from figuring
> things out, but the next step after that is to make figuring it out
> of no real value.  "Hey, thrown objects follow a parabolic path!"

I think I agree with this point.  In the world today, science advances
by discovering more detail about the workings of the world(space,
time, physics, bio, blah blah blah).  I just read a good article on
how insects can hover and fly while supporting what scientists thought
was way too much weight and it amazed me that something as simple as
this could not be solved until recently.  Turns out leading vortexes
are more important than we originally wrote them off to be.  Anyway, I
took away from the article the feeling that we do not know all there
is to know about the world we live in(far from it).  In order to fill
in the gaps we use our intuition(ie reasoning) until we can logically
describe the issue(using science).  Since MUDs are many orders of
magnitude less complex than the real world, I would argue that they
are that much easier to figure out.  It is possible to know all there
is to know about the virtual world of a MUD.(or at least have it
cataloged) Removing the need for a player to rely on intuition is a
mistake in my mind and to be sure that it is not removed, I propose
that your design decisions do not reveal EVERY thing there is to know
about your world.

[snip the pyscho-babble stuff I started]

Derek

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