[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system]

Caliban Darklock cdarklock at gmail.com
Fri Mar 16 10:35:12 CET 2007


On 3/12/07, cruise <cruise at casual-tempest.net> wrote:
>
> A particularly out-of-touch general may view war as a game, and enjoy
> himself immensely, though it's unlikely the soldiers on the ground would
> agree. Fundamentally, this is what we do everytime we play an RTS:
> playing at war, without all the inconvient dying. Have you read "Ender's
> Game"?

Yes. However, a game is not required to be fun. (Crossfit.com has a
slogan relating this to exercise, "it doesn't have to be fun to be
fun".) It is only required to have mutually agreed-upon rules. It is
not required to have win or loss conditions.

On another note, I just lost the game. ( ilostthegame.org ) Which has
no win condition, but does have a lose condition. This is unusual, but
hardly unique... life itself has no win condition, but does have a
lose condition (death).

Some say life isn't a game, but the rest of us have a lot more fun.

> > You are describing a toy, not a game. A game, by definition, entails
> > agreement among multiple parties on what the rules are.
>
> To an extent, I'd agree, though I'd be interested in your definition of toy.

A toy is not required to have an agreement among players, it is merely
required to have some set of rules that govern one person's play.
Fundamentally, the minimal ruleset is "this is a toy".

> The rules of the game are identical for both. How the players view the
> rules makes a world of difference to their experience within the game.

That's the mutual agreement. You are forced by the mechanisms of the
game to agree on certain things - for example, in World of Warcraft,
you can't play the T-101 Terminator. There's no model for it. You can
act like the T-101 Terminator - nothing will prevent you from doing
that - but you can't make other people act like you're the T-101
Terminator. They have to agree to it. And if another player simply
refuses to agree, you can't play this particular game with him.

In essence, everybody is playing the same game at a certain level, but
beyond that all bets are off. The more ability your game provides to
expand the rules beyond that lowest common denominator, the more
disagreement you're going to have among your players. The player types
are just the tip of this particular iceberg.



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