[MUD-Dev] List rituals

[J C Lawrence]

On Sun, 24 Jun 2001 15:38:41 +0200 
Ola Fosheim <=?iso-8859-1?Q?Gr=F8stad?= <olag at ifi.uio.no>> wrote:
> J C Lawrence wrote:

> What I find interesting is that some player sites
> (guilds/alliances) have extremely well developed and pervasive
> communication and analytical features. More advanced than what is
> being discussed here. (including security systems on different
> levels to prevent spies from doing too much harm).  This is a
> relatively new phenomena, I think.

Its about 18 - 24 months old that I've noticed.  At a technology
level its pretty primitive usually, and most have gaping security
holes (bad designs/implementations) but that's a problem with the
base tools not being a pervasive commodity yet.

> Users are no longer allowed to be co-owners (which the LP/MOO
> communities encouraged), so they co-develop their own structures
> that engulf the game instead.  

Which, outside of the lack of control in regard to presentation and
perception, marketing depts tend to love.

> The net result may be that designers are no longer able to see the
> mechanisms behind strategic game play.  Neat. :)

Quite.  It encourages attempting detente.

> (Doesn't matter all that much to the MMPORPG model, because it
> does not support strategic or creative game play to any reasonably
> interesting degree... They are more like TV. :-(( )

This will change and is slowly doing so.  There are learning and
development curves to master first.  The biggest problem is building
the basic vocabulary for the control and manipulation concepts in
the player base.  On the first hand its a problem in invention (we
really haven't figured out the area yet) and on the other hand the
player base aren't educated into that vocabulary.

  20 years ago if you'd sat any computer user in front of a current
  (2001) GUI interface with icons, drop down menus, a mouse, etc,
  they would have been unable to function effectively.  They didn't
  have the basic education in knowing what a pointer was, what an
  icon was, what "selecting" mean in regard to a computer interface,
  etc.  The basic vocabulary had not been set.  The intuitive set of
  expectations and automatic reaction wasn't present, and as anyone
  who has worked with teaching the elderly basic computer use,
  getting them to grok those concepts can be extremely hard: They
  don't have the background intellectual wiring to think about
  interfaces and systems in that way so everything is ALWAYS
  re-derived from first principles, even if its just figuring out
  how to move the mouse cursor off atop a word on the screen so you
  can read it.

That's where we are now: still trying to invent the base language,
still working just the other side of, "Ugg!" let alone any larger
expressions like, "Me hungry!"  We really don't have a basic
interface vocabulary set yet for MUDs, let alone strategic MUDs.

  ObNote: The fact that the market was stupid/desperate enough to
  standardise on something as fundamentally broken and unusable as
  the current desktop/icon model is *really* not helping here.
  Recovering from that (tacit) decision is going to be a long and
  expensive process.

>> Historically this has been split into the PK good/bad threads,
>> the how-to-implement-PK threads, and the how-to-control-PK
>> threads.  We've not had them as incestuously knit before.
>> There's been some integration work to going on there.  Not as
>> much as I'd like, but enough to nod at.

> Not really sure where you see this integration (not even sure if
> that would be good).  I don't see anything new :).  If you are
> talking about "how to give players the maximum ability to evolve
> the world and the culture" then maybe.  Old topic, but a good one,
> if one points in new directions and manage to avoid "that will
> never work" thinking.

Previous discussions have generally been basic; dedicated to first
principles and scoping the field.  More recently we've started
identifying class concepts like "grief players" and are starting to
attempt to build models around general behaviour definitions and
then building models from there.  That's a level of abstraction and
general algebra that the Black Rose papers never dreamt of.  

>> There's raw meat still left in scoping and defining the basic
>> structures of MUDs in terms of player goal determination,
>> acquisition scales and approaches, player value perception, ROI
>> etc etc etc yada yada.  We've not really backed out much to try
>> and look at a meta level beyond a few dismissive hook and cherry
>> models of advancement scales.

> Yes, but I'd like to question whether players actually have or
> need to have distinct goals.  

This seems largely irrelevant.  Walks like a duck et al.  If a
player behaves in a manner which is consistent with him having one
or more goals, then you may as presume he does.  And IRL many/most
clearly express that they do have goals and what they think they
are.

> It is very easy to end up thinking that "these are the goals", but
> I'm not convinced that humans necessarily are goal following.
> Still most literature/analytic endeavours that deal with human
> behaviour tend to assume that as a premise.  I think.  Humans may
> have needs and preferences, positive and negative associations,
> expectations of something pleasurable or exciting, not necessarily
> defined, but goals..?  

Yup, goals.  Not hard well defined easily measured and auditable
goals in general, but goals none the less.  (Just came back from
Santa Cruz beach as happens)

> However, do you really need levels at the player level? 

Levels are a tool, one among many is designing the functional
mechanics of a game world.  As with any other tool there are cases
where they apply and work well, and cases where they don't.
Arguably levels work well on EQ where they are central to the basic
model.  Ignoring the argument that programmer bits and admin
privileges are speudo levels, equally I'd argue that levels would
not work well on LambdaMOO.

> Thus, you might want to somehow formalise "asynchronous" teams,
> but that is somewhat meaningless in a world with a strong
> real-time focus.  

Ooo!  Neat.  I hadn't really thought about disconnected cooperative
player systems for MUDs.  Neat.  There's fun stuff in there.

<ponder>

> Are non-realtime MUDs MUDs?  Most of the design rationale is quite
> different...? Still, the "sense of community" is similar?

For the purposes of this list I consider them MUDs.

>> Are ___ANY___ topics or threads on MUD-Dev ever really
>> conclusive?  And, in fact sre any of the topics usually discussed
>> capable of being conclusively answered?

> Well, I hope so..?  I distinctly remember getting to an agreement
> with Jon Lambert once, on the infrastructure for role acting!  :)

Yup, you agreed and thereby defined the beginnings of a vocabulary
for the area.  This is good.  You've got a couple symbols defined.
The next step is to take those and relate them to others and define
new ones.  This is the way vocabularies evolve and areas are scoped,
defined, and understood: we devolve them into semantic relationships
via evolutionary processes.

Or, did you actually answer a fundamental problem to the point that

  a) those who understand the answer can employ that understanding
  such that they are (literally) never the adverse or unwilling
  effect of that area?

or:

  b) the problem or area under discussion just doesn't exist in any
  possible phrasing as a problem or question any more?

> However, it is usually hard to tell, because if people agree or if
> the argumentation is good enough then nobody will respond.
> Likewise, if the argument goes over their head, they won't
> respond.  

Yup, its only the waffle areas that get interest and therefore
traffic.  If someone dropped a fully developed general relativity
theorem for MUD design on the list today I have no doubt it would be
answered by nothing more than yawning silence between a few "Huh?"

While not claiming to be posting such, its one of the reasons I
leave short-range logical inconsistencies and unresolved areas in my
posts.  It allows and encourages the reader to respond to fill in
the blanks, to fix and correct.  Its not a great technique as the
definition of "short range" is subjective to the reader and the list
covers a wide range of such.  It also ignores the reputation/peerage
problem yada yada and others.

> If the argument is rigorous then it becomes too boring to read,
> and they won't respond.  

Responding to rigorous arguments requires rigour.  Rigour requires
analytical effort and investment.  So it goes.  We're had quite a
few people leave the list stating that their reasoning as (heavily
paraphrased):

  Its a good list but I end up having to read every post, and then
  I want to think about the posts because they are good posts, and
  then I want to reply and to write a reply that I think is worth it
  given the quality of the post I'm replying to, and takes time and
  yet more thinking, and in the end it takes so much time and
  thinking I get nothing else done.

  Your list demands too much of me!

> It is the bad arguments and the most opinionated topics that get
> the most attention, because they are easy to attack (and of course
> the most profiled members)... :(

This can hardly be a surprise.  Evolution rarely proceeds by great
leaps into new territory.  Most activity is wobbly work in the
internices of the current edge.

> If you get to agree on the premises, or insist on positions being
> backed up with arguments rather than "common wisdom" or "common
> practice", then yes. If not, you risk that MUDs are being defined
> as UO/EQ/DIKU because as MUD-Dev grows, most will have that rather
> limited background/perspective. 

This is an already extant danger on both scores.

> So where are you going to obtain that fertilizer you like so much?

Does the list suffers from a lack of fertiliser?  Are there signs of
a diminishing supply?

> Unless you are actively recruiting "radical" thinkers you will
> have problems establishing a group that is breaking free from
> "what exists".

Yup.  This has been one of the problems with my inactivity: we now
have a more heavily normed population which has settled in enough to
start attempting defence of that normality.

> (Another point: Male culture seems to gravitate towards picking
> arguments to pieces rather than building up a common
> framework. Discussions seem to be top-down rather than bottom-up
> too... More bottom-up would be good, but that would require some
> common memory, like a white-board, see below.)

Coming...

>> Is the field deterministic?
> I think a group like MUD-_DEV_ could learn a lot from discussing
> minimal MUD-concepts.  That is, not to discuss subsystems or
> social/commercial issues, but develop distinctly different
> hypothetical and radical full designs.  The question is if there
> is enough radical/creative momentum on the list.

The list has done that, and can do it again.  It merely needs
someone to lead the discussion.

>> This is not a fault of the list, but of the topic.  The list
>> largely deals with soft topics which come down to questions of
>> evaluation, order of importances, personal preference, as well as
>> even softer influences such as cultural predilictions,
>> demographics, etc.  We're dealing with people, not machines.  In
>> a sense the job of the list is teaching its members how to think
>> intelligently about the field while learning how to do it itself.

> And you can see that happening??? :)

Inefficiently and with more public failures than successes, but yes.

> If the good topics would stick and was followed down to the
> interesting parts...

Aye, you've complained of this before as have others.  The problem
is that a list is not in a position to mandate that as such is
tantamount to not only mandating human interest, but mandating human
communication, thought, and participation.  School/college is a bit
different and is a lot more structured.  A list is a media, not a
social structure or a vested interest system.

> I was recently at a small (beginners) conference on computer
> supported collaborative learning.  One of the inane, but still
> interesting, topics is the relation between a virtual white-board
> and chat.  

An interesting book on the area:

  Groupware and Authoring
  Edited by Roy Rada
  ISBN: 0-12-575005-6

> If I recall correctly then it turns out that white-boards are used
> largely as a common memory, rather than for discussion and
> communication.  

I see both practices in common use.  They start out as shared visual
thought tools, and once the discussion is done, mutate into shared
memory tools.

> I wonder if such an solution would have been beneficial for
> supporting discussions.  I.e. each thread provides a visual map of
> the positions taken so far.

I'm trying to do this with the Wiki.

> This is of course a bitch to implement for MUD-dev in it's current
> form.  There might be other options though.  Maybe that Dev-MUD
> thing would be a good idea even if it never materialise.  It would
> provide some common ground, a common reference (or a "boundary
> object" to use the academic term) that could bridge the gaps
> between the different people with different backgrounds.  

Pan has most of those intentions.

> Right now EQ seems to be the common reference, that is no good and
> way too limiting IMHO. (I haven't even played EQ, although I've
> read a lot about it...).

Currently it is EQ.  It used to be UO.  Arguably that change was
lead and anchored by Raph as a vocal and articulate, umm,
pontificator.

> Another option is to fork a new list which focus on conceptual
> models of game/server designs.  I would applaud any initiative in
> that direction.

I'll make you a deal:

  If you can demonstrate that enough people are not only
  interested in such but are interested enough to post and maintain
  a working and productive list, I'll start and run the list.

or:

  Get a dozen people together with some demonstrated ability or
  history in that particular area and I'll set up the list so that
  you can run it.

Or, if you prefer a simpler course, Yahoo etc run free list servers.

> I think a fork would be good.  I see way too many interesting
> postings that dies. 

We're in an uncomfortable position right now.  My sense is that the
we're approaching an inflection point.  I hope/trust that the graph
on the other side of the point goes exponentially up versus down.

> For instance that recent audio perspective, and Bruce's design
> model and Prolog attempts.  Both topics that I've tried to
> establish threads on before with no or little success.  

Hehn.  Think about that for a bit.  You've answered your own
question.

> For instance Richard Bartle's engine is Prolog inspired and
> Cynbe's engine is Lisp inspired, there are also fairly recent
> academic attempts at marrying Prolog with MUDs in order to
> facilitate parallelism... There's a lot of interesting
> opportunities that should be investigated.  

While I agree, I expect that we have different definitions of
"should" in the above sentence.  

We are standing in a field which is liberally scattered with large
gold nuggets.  It is dark.  We are blind.  Even when we trip over a
gold nugget the size of a car we often don't recognise it. and
continue to move on blindly.  Brownian motion.  We'll be back to
that nugget and will trip over it again, and possibly again and
again and again.  Someone will finally notice.  Maybe not now.
Maybe not tomorrow or the next day or the day after that, but
eventually.  The basic part of the deal is that we have to keep
wandering and tripping.  The rest is just low probability mechanics.

> I've also noted that my request for interesting research
> directions didn't get a single follow-up, which is rather
> depressing given that MUD-Dev is (supposedly) a development
> oriented community. 

<pound head on wall>

> What I am hoping for is a group of capable C++ developers willing
> to go for an experimental server on the conceptual level, aiming
> for local evolution and global adjustment/"control". Maybe
> marrying event-based systems, logic programming, constraint based
> programming, genetic algorithms in an inefficient but minimal and
> flexible design with excessive logging for analytical
> purposes. I.e. suitable for prototyping, testing and analysing new
> ideas. (30 simultaneous users, tcp/ip text based protocol or http
> web-interface, 2 GB RAM 2GHz CPU, GPL...?)

Hehn.

I've long wished to grab a team out of the list and build something
I think would actually be interesting.  Perhaps after I win the
lottery.

>> 2) Human interest and cognitive development is non-linear.  It
>> follows a drunkard's walk.  In an idealistic sense this is
>> incredibly wasteful in terms of efficiency of progress toward
>> known goals.  The problem is that the actual definition of the
>> goals can't be fully defined until after they are accomplished,
>> and human vagary and brownian motion encourages as many gems to
>> be found on the back-staggering retreats as it does the forward
>> lurches.

>> Think of it as an evolutionary process: there are more dead
>> mutants than surviving ideotypes (if that's not a word it is
>> now).

> Well, we don't have enough islands, enough individuals, high
> enough breeding rate or enough time to follow an unguided
> evolutionary process!  :) 

Do we have a choice?

>> Of course properly this thread should be on Meta rather than
>> here, but then I'm not writing as list owner.  Urk.

> I don't read Meta...

For shame!

I've crossed your post there, and will likely be following up some
aspects there as well.  (I notice Lambert has already started this
progression).

> ...too much US stuff. 

The dinners do seem to dominate.

> Can't even keep up with MUD-Dev.

You're not alone.

>>> PK discussions are always knee-capped, by the topic's
>>> spamminess.  They never go anywhere.  They are never useful
>>> (except for the ritual aspect).

>> Here I diagree, vehemently.  The PK debate on the surface is
>> monochromatic.  When dug at colours appears, both in the fact
>> that even without explicit systems players will manipulate each
>> other, and will explicitly manipulate each other in ways that
>> upsets them. hurts them, causes pain, and deals with concepts of
>> ideotypical (to coin a term) mortality (the mortality of valued
>> mental constructs, or in this case the mortality of a class of
>> types of mental constructs, ie, "ideotypes").

> Not exactly sure what you mean here.  I assume you mean that their
> cultural understanding is made invalid or something like that?  If
> so, then this is rather old news, isn't it?

Not what I mean.

At the moment we talk flippantly of avatars, characters, permadeath,
investment, emotional attachment, immersion, etc.  The area I'm
referring to above is the concept that an individual can manufacture
an idea, conciously or not, imbue that idea with life, and
personally and intimately invest themselves in it with the implicit
expectation that that idea will later be killed, mutilated, mutated,
or otherwise destroyed or altered against their will or ability to
control, and that this process will happen iteratively and
frequently with direct parallels to daily life and the iterative
aspect of human life and generations.

> I could agree that a thorough and exhaustive discussion of PK
> infrastructure, or what you miss by removing PK might be
> instructive. As an example, my basic viewpoint is this:

>   The ability to affect is valuable even if never used.  The fact
>   that a person choose not to kill you is a strong communicative
>   act.

Unfortunately the sound of one hand clapping rarely communicates
well.  

>> As members of western society we're typically unused to dealing
>> with mortality as a iterative process and our culture in
>> particular is not adapted to that.  Other societies which deal
>> more intimately with reincarnation still do not fluently express
>> them as a regular working concepts for day-to-day
>> ordinariness-of-living
>> get-up-in-the-morning-and-go-to-work-and-I've-got-a-headache
>> world views.

> Not really sure what you mean here.

Story form:

  I have an alter ego.  The alter ego exists online.  It is me.  It
  dies.  Who am I?

Secondary form:

  I had an alter ego.  The alter ego existed online.  It wss me.  It
  died.  I made another alter ego.  It was me.  It was killed.  I
  made another alter ego.  It was me, even more so than the previous
  two.  It was murdered by one I thought my friend.  I have a new
  alter ego I carefully built over several months.  It is me.  I
  hope I don't die again.

Currently we assume clarity because we assume that there is a
significant definition difference between the RL person and the
online character.  I question the validity of that distinction and I
expect that line to become increasingly blurry and start to publicly
vanish over the next years.

What happens when identity, personal "human" identity becomes
iterative and concious of its own iteration?

Or, to turn it around slightly, what happens and what would happen
if you were aware that you, personally, had lived thousands of lives
before this one, and could recall all of clearly and distinctly,
without effort or special process?  Waht if everyone else were in
the same position?  Does the definition of identity change?  How
does that change reflect in social and cultural constructs?  Does
the definition of life change?  How about how life is lived and the
perceived value of a given life, which is, after all, just another
iteration among many?

>> That's juicy stuff in there.

> I'm sure there is... :-) Maybe you could elaborate?

Hopefully the above did some of that.

--
J C Lawrence                                             claw at kanga.nu
---------(*)                                http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/
I never claimed to be human.
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