[MUD-Dev] Player Goals

[rayzam]

----- Original Message -----
From: "J C Lawrence" <claw at 2wire.com>
To: <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 11:11 PM
Subject: Re: Re[2]: [MUD-Dev] List rituals
> 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:

>>>> 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.

Actually, you can do something without a goal, or without being
conscious of one. After doing it, however, you then rationalize
reasoning for it. If an action cannot be assigned to a specific
motivation, a rationalization occurs to account for it,
[possibly/temporarily] changing the attitudes and beliefs of the
person. That is, if you assigned a person to write a essay for the
opposing viewpoint of an issue, you can temporarily change their
opinion. As long as they weren't writing the essay for say $20 [an
external motivation, I'm doing it for the money], this change in
attitude occurs. Granted, when this is tested in social psychology,
it's often considered deception.

Putting the deception issue aside, is this a viable mechanic for a
game?  Can the game design involve situations where a player is
guided to do something, but not forced to do it? Then by partaking
in the action, their opinions change. Could this be the method for
turning a player from 'griefer' into a member of the community? Can
it be used for more subtle aspects, such as community building? If
there is a behavior that the designers want to suppress, could they
do so?

On top of all that, is it ethical? :)

Take community building: cities can have citizens. Being a citizen
of a city results in very little tangible gain, because there are
other neutral cities that allow anyone in them, not just
citizens. To become a citizen of one of these other cities, the
character has to make an appeal, which is an essay [reverting to the
simplest method of showing the effect] on what being part of a
community means. The essay is read by some current members of the
city [elected, volunteer, etc]. If the theory holds in this specific
instance, then the community of this cities would be stronger. Of
course, it becomes tough to balance and set up the right control. It
can't be a city that allows any citizenship, because then you'll
just preselect for different players. It would have to be, say, an
essay on something else, like the character's place in the world
[focusing on the self, instead of the community].

At least, it'd be an interesting experiment to undertake...

    rayzam




_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev