[MUD-Dev] List rituals

[Travis Casey]

Wednesday, June 27, 2001, 3:31:50 AM, J C Lawrence wrote:
> 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:

Time for random responses!

[about players establishing their own means of communicating,
outside the game context]

>> 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.

I'd like to note that the whole notion of "detente" depends on
something else: the idea that the game is a struggle or competition
between the game designers/builders and the players.  This is not
the only model for games.

>> (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.

The biggest problem that I see is the lack of real world-modeling.
Most games don't really try to model the world, but instead are...
well, games, with very arbitrary limits on what can and can't be
done.  For example, in how many muds or MMORPGs could you dig a
tunnel from a nearby forest into the dungeons of a castle?  Almost
none.

The flexibility of a world-modeling system allows an incredible
number of creative solutions to problems.  This is both a blessing
and a curse, though -- if the players are truly free to come up with
creative solutions to obstacles they encounter in the game, then the
amount of work that the game designers and builders have to do goes
up exponentially, since they have to try to anticipate the creative
solutions and guard against them in some way, so that they don't
become easy routes to success.

>> 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)

For that matter, one can ask: if humans do not have goals, then what
does?  If humans don't have goals, then where did the concept of a
goal come from?

It should be noted that goals can be temporary in scope: for
example, if I'm playing basketball, I have a goal of getting the
ball into a particular net.  However, that doesn't continue to be a
goal for me after the game is over.

Humans have many goals -- at a wild guess, I'd say that the average
person has hundreds or thousands of goals, counting at a detailed
level.  It's hard to keep track of that many goals analytically, so
we abstract them into such things as preferences.

(And it should be noted that human goals are not simply on-off
variables: they can have priorities as well, and these can change.
For example, I currently have the goal of finishing this post.  I
also have a goal of going to the bathroom.  As my bladder fills, the
priority of going to the bathroom is increasing.  Whether I'll go to
the bathroom before finishing this post depends on how long it takes
me to finish it.

Also, on a related note, humans are very opportunistic -- if I get
interrupted and have to do something else that takes me close to a
bathroom, I'll probably go, even though I wouldn't have left working
on this post to go to the bathroom.  Being near the bathroom lowers
the cost of going to the bathroom.)

>> 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.

Would a PBEM RPG game be a mud, then?  The need to have a GM in
order to do anything significant doesn't seem to be an obstacle to
being a mud... what level of automation is necessary to be a mud?

>> 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!

Personally, I let a lot of posts just go by me, because of just that
-- if I responded to *everything* that interested me, I'd spend way
too much time on responses.  One technique I like to try to use is
to wait a couple of days after a post, and see what answers have
gone by.  Often someone else will have made the same point that I
would have made, at which point I don't have to.

>> 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.

That's actually part of why I stay.  I haven't been working actively
on any mud for... well, a couple of years now.  But I like the
discussion, and I like to try to bring a different viewpoint to it.
I consider myself to be less focused on what muds *are*, and more on
what they *could be* -- or, rather, a particular vision of what they
could be.

>> 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.

>> 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.

As the old saying goes, if you don't like what's being posted, post
something different.  If there's an "interesting part" that you
think isn't getting attention, try to draw some attention to it.

>> 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.

I'd be very happy to be on such a list, if the "conceptual models"
being discussed were game designs.  I'm not very interested in the
tech aspects of things, like whether to use threading, or UDP
vs. TCP, etc.

>> ...too much US stuff.

> The dinners do seem to dominate.

That's one thing that bothers me.  I don't work in the MMORPG field,
so to go to any of the conferences where the dinners get held, I'd
have to take time off from work, pay my own way, etc.  I'd love to
be able to talk face-to-face with people from the list, but it's
unlikely to ever happen.

>>> 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.

And there's a third possibility that even this doesn't touch on --
that you can have many alter egos at once.  Your character in Game X
may die, but you might have characters in four other games at the
same time.

> 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?

What if you were aware that "you" were actually incarnated in many
different physical bodies at once, and that your continued existence
was, in truth, independent of the existence of any of those?

--
Travis Casey
efindel at earthlink.net

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