[MUD-Dev] List rituals

[J C Lawrence]

On Wed, 27 Jun 2001 12:04:21 -0400 
Travis Casey <efindel at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 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!

<Brace yourself Edna, he's coming over>

> [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.

Yup, its only really applicable to GoP 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.

There are two levels of strategy in that regard:

  1) Doing something logically consistent based on the assumed
  real-world-like rules of the game world

  2) Doing something logically possible given the capability
  definitions of the game world.

You seem to be referring to #1.  Players generally seem to be
referring to #2.  The interesting part I see is not in attempting
#1, but in making a sufficiently detailed and logically consistent
(to itself) #2.

> The flexibility of a world-modeling system allows an incredible
> number of creative solutions to problems.  

Yospe has talked about some interesting work in this area.

> 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.

Quite.  Complexity theory comes to dominate and balance calculations
tend to go out the window.  About the only approach then is to make
balance calculations dynamic based on observed action.  This tends
to unfairly (?) penalise the skillful, as well as unfairly (?)
advantaging the rummager in out of the way places and challenges.

We had some fairly good discussions on this a while back.  About the
only key phrase I can recall right now was one of mine, "expressive
fertility".

>>> 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?

Ah you philadelphia lawyer!

> 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.

There are human activities for which it can be difficult to
determine an itemisable goal.  The critical bit is that while the
actual goal is difficult to determine, the observed behaviour is
consistent with having a goal (people work quite hard to get to go
the beach).  

  Certainly my sons who are both being on their very extra special
  best behaviour and sucking royally up all this week so they can
  have a chance of going to the beach again this coming weekend
  would seem to have a goal for beach going, even if its not clear
  what their goal is once there.

Just because we can't see it and don't know what it is doesn't mean
it isn't there.

> (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.

I don't know that I'm emotionally prepared to be responsible for the
state of your toilette.  <kof>

> 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.)

We had a dinner conversation at work yesterday in which one fellow
admitted that he'd recently put a down payment on a Harley Davidson
motorcycle.  His wife then found out and gave him a choice: bike or
me.  His comment: "After a quick calculation on the back of the
envelope I decided to cancel the bike."

Opportunism can be a powerful persuader on both sides of the
equation.

>>> 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?

You've read the bit on the list page about the definition of "MUD"
ad the drop of ink?  This is among the reasons I made the charter
for MERA so broad: I see PBWEM and LARP (for instance) sharing
several core concerns with more classical MUDs.  At a point
boundaries have to be drawn, but at this point I see no danger of
crossing them, and I suspect I'll know much more about it should we
get close.

> 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.

Having done much the same thing I've a second order effect of doing
that in that waiting reduces the perceived urgency of replying.
When its fresh it is interesting, new, and somewhat urgent.  Nobody
may have raised the points you wanted to do but after a few days it
tends to get stale,

>>> 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.

That too, tho it seems quite unsuccessful when I say that.

>> 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.

This is really a topic for Meta so I've replied there.

> 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.

<nod>  Lotsa topological permutations.  

>> 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?

Hehn.  Are you trying to bring back my whole rant and championing of
swarm bodies?  I've been thinking of working that into a discussion
for a while now.  There's some interesting implications in there
I've not dug at yet.

--
J C Lawrence                                       claw at kanga.nu
---------(*)                          http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/
The pressure to survive and rhetoric may make strange bedfellows
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