February 2002
- Article: Moral Outrage - Bizarre as it seems, indignation makes the world go round (from New Scientist) Christopher Allen
- premium servers Matt Mihaly
- premium servers Talies the Wanderer
- premium servers Matt Mihaly
- premium servers Christopher Allen
- premium servers Christopher Allen
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Marian Griffith
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) rayzam
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) John Buehler
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Matt Mihaly
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Matt Mihaly
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Matt Mihaly
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Marian Griffith
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) John Buehler
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Matt Mihaly
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Sasha Hart
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Freeman, Jeff
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Matt Mihaly
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Matt Mihaly
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Madrona Tree
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Talies the Wanderer
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Marc Hernandez
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Sasha Hart
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Sasha Hart
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Caliban Tiresias Darklock
From: "Sasha Hart" <Sasha.Hart@directory.reed.edu>
> I was being flip - kind of. I do consider these to be like your
> ACG idea, because of their flexibility and my typical goals in
> playing them, although perhaps with a different sense of words
> like "aesthetic," "simple to learn" and so on.
I'm not saying they don't appeal to girls, I just don't think they
fall into that particular category. There are certainly more
categories that could be defined. There are definitely some things
they represent that are important.
> maybe I am just exploiting the wiggle room in "aesthetic," but so,
> I think, will anyone else reading your definition of ACG. :)
That's the tough part to explain, I think. In an ACG, any virtual
people have to somehow quantify "things I like" with a mathematical
model. That mathematical model is by necessity rather limited, so it
can be abused. When REAL people get involved, however, it's not what
*you* think that matters... but what OTHER people think. So your
own weird ideas of what constitutes "beautiful" are actually a
liability in an ACG, because neither the real people nor the virtual
people will "get" it. So there are two related problems with this
kind of game when you have virtual people:
1. Things that are not beautiful by any stretch of the imagination
are considered the MOST beautiful by the game engine.
2. Things that are exceptionally beautiful to some players are not
considered beautiful at ALL by the game engine.
The only "perfect" way to solve this is to remove the virtual
people, making real people the final arbiters of
beauty. Unfortunately, that generally means turning the software
into a toy rather than a game, as Maxis puts it; you can't easily
make "build something pretty" a goal unless someone is judging
whether it's pretty, and you can't really force people to submit
their creations for assessment by a real person.
> Conversely, I consider playing for score in Railroad Tycoon to
> have nothing to do with aesthetics, even if the score ostensibly
> involves the judgements of imaginary people. There is just a lot
> of ambiguity in the word, I suppose.
I don't think there's any ambiguity in it at all. If you are playing
purely for score, you're not investing any effort in aesthetics
except insofar as you can manipulate that mathematical model of
beauty applied by the virtual people. But that's not aesthetics,
it's exploitation of the system.
> I would articulate it as being a huge difference in the size of
> the design space, but also the possibility for multiple very
> distinct goals, nearly any goal you like, and maybe also the
> degree of enforcement of goals
That's where I think RCT shines. Ever played it? Here's how it
works:
First, you are given a scenario and a goal with a time limit. Then
you play. Time passes. When the time limit expires, the game tells
you whether you succeeded.
Then it gets the hell out of your way.
Time continues to pass. All the rules remain the same. And you can
keep playing in the park you've built for as long as you
like. Whether you succeed or fail, you get to keep playing. You
don't have to accomplish the goal. You don't unlock a new scenario
unless you succeed, but you don't have to drop everything and start
over when you fail. You can expand the game simply by adding new
goals to existing scenarios. Okay, so the game says I have to have
3000 guests in three years, but I'd rather try to get 5000 guests in
four -- and I can go for that, if I want. I don't have to stop at
three years, I can keep going -- even if I don't have the 3000
guests at the end of year three.
>> MUD development fails miserably on rule 1: you have a large
>> number of options, but it's HARD to learn -- there's little to no
>> documentation and nobody who knows what they're doing has any
>> time to help you.
> Well, I don't agree with this assessment, but maybe that's because
> I'm think of how easy it is to learn relative to how many options
> you get.
That's more or less the way I feel about C++. I can't think of a
single reason why anyone who uses a computer as anything more than
an appliance *wouldn't* know C++ and be a reasonably competent
programmer. It seems to me that it's just the obvious thing to do,
since we've all theoretically learned the basics of problem solving
through decomposition in grade school.
I don't think any of us would even begin to argue that this is a
reasonable thing to expect from the public at large. And it's not
because they can't learn it, it's simply that they don't *want* to
and shouldn't *have* to. People want things to be easy to use. They
want to push the button marked "popcorn" on the microwave, not read
the back of the package and type "2:45" on the front panel.
Some people like to learn lots of complex rules and their equally
complex exceptions and special cases. Those people become
developers. And the single biggest problem developers need to
overcome is the idea that the rest of the world bears any
resemblance whatsoever to themselves.
Case in point: if you've been around long enough, I'm sure you
remember some applications that differentiated between the left and
right "control" keys -- left control did one thing, right control
did another. This hasn't altogether stopped; a recent Rose
Electronics "ServeView Plus" manual gave these instructions: "To
enter the reset computer's mouse command, press and release the left
control key, then the O (alphabetic, not zero) key." This practice
primarily stopped because it did not make any sense whatsoever to
anyone EXCEPT a developer; it persists primarily in applications
that are targeted directly at engineers -- "ServeView Plus" is the
firmware installed on Rose's UltraView Pro KVM switches, which allow
network administrators to control multiple computers from a single
keyboard/video/mouse installation.
>> (It might also be argued that there are NO options in MUD
>> development on most servers -- you can only tell it to type text
>> on a limited number of available events, but no matter what you
>> do it will only ever type text.)
> And most games ever devised just boil down to a bunch of mouse
> clicking or hitting of keyboard buttons anyway.
You're trying to compare "many causes, few effects" to "few causes,
many effects". They don't really compare. I might have fifty
different kinds of hammer, but that's not comparable to one tool
that works as a hammer and screwdriver and power drill and sabre saw
and studfinder and spirit level. I may like hammers better, but it's
just not a sensible comparison. (They're both perfectly valid things
for people to like or dislike, though. I happen to like both of
them, and I'm sure there are people out there who *dislike* both of
them.)
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Rogue_Buddha
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Matt Mihaly
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Christopher Allen
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Sasha Hart
- Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls) Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- NEWS: Release of v0.21 of Murpg Core Mike Povoski
- story vs. screenplay Nicholas E. Walker
- story vs. screenplay Koster, Raph
- story vs. screenplay Sean K
- story vs. screenplay ghovs
- story vs. screenplay Nicholas E. Walker
- story vs. screenplay ghovs
- story vs. screenplay James Edward Gray II
- story vs. screenplay ghovs
- story vs. screenplay Marian Griffith
- story vs. screenplay Nicholas E. Walker
- story vs. screenplay Marian Griffith
- MUD Protocols? Neil Edwards
- MUD Protocols? Matt Owen
- MUD Protocols? Bruce Mitchener
- MUD Protocols? Andrew Wilson
- MUD Protocols? Phillip Lenhardt
- MUD Protocols? Lars Duening
- MUD Protocols? Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- MUD Protocols? Jon Leonard
- MUD Protocols? Chris Gray
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Koster, Raph
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Geoffrey MacDougall
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Matt Mihaly
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Rudy Fink
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Dave Shepherd
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Steve {Bloo} Daniels
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Derek Licciardi
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Dave Rickey
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Richard A. Bartle
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Blane Bramble
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Sellers, Mike
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights kuvasza
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Matt Mihaly
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Frank Crowell
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Freeman, Jeff
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Frank Crowell
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Dave Rickey
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Dr. Cat
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Alex Kay
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Jeff Cole
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights John Buehler
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Jeff Cole
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights John Buehler
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Dr. Cat
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Matt Mihaly
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Vincent Archer
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights John Buehler
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Steve {Bloo} Daniels
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights Marc Bowden
- [BIZ] Players - GMs ratio Mathieu Castelli
- [BIZ] Players - GMs ratio Robert A. Rice Jr.
- [BIZ] Players - GMs ratio Mathieu Castelli
- Ethical behavior ... a hijacking. Jeff Cole
- Ethical behavior ... a hijacking. Matt Mihaly
- Ethical behavior ... a hijacking. Koster, Raph
- Ethical behavior ... a hijacking. Matt Mihaly
- Ethical behavior ... a hijacking. Jeff Cole
- Ethical behavior ... a hijacking. John Buehler
- Ethical behavior ... a hijacking. Marc Bowden
- Ethical behavior ... a hijacking. Travis Casey
- Ethical behavior ... a hijacking. Matt Mihaly
- Ethical behavior ... a hijacking. John Buehler
- Ethical behavior ... a hijacking. Jon Lambert
- "Advanced" use of virtual worlds? (MMORPGs & MUDs) Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- "Advanced" use of virtual worlds? (MMORPGs & MUDs) J C Lawrence
- "Advanced" use of virtual worlds? (MMORPGs & MUDs) Matt Mihaly
- "Advanced" use of virtual worlds? (MMORPGs & MUDs) Travis Casey
- "Advanced" use of virtual worlds? (MMORPGs & MUDs) Michael Tresca
- Merc++ the_sage2000@juno.com
- ADMIN: Bullets. conservation of momentum etc J C Lawrence
- EULA Structure Eli Stevens
- EULA Structure Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- EULA Structure Matt Mihaly
- EULA Structure Frank Crowell
- EULA Structure Bruce Mitchener
- EULA Structure Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- EULA Structure Steve {Bloo} Daniels
- Thank you from MudWorld ucmm@inetsolve.com
- Thank you from MudWorld Matt Mihaly
- Thank you from MudWorld Matt Owen
- Thank you from MudWorld Chris Lloyd
- Re[4]: "Advanced" use of virtual worlds? (MMORPGs & MUDs) Travis Casey
- What's Important in a Driver? Jonathan Ross
- Everquest player survey with interesting points Olof Ekström
- Myth II Game server has gone open source Frank Crowell
- Question about threads. Anderson, David
- Question about threads. J C Lawrence
- Question about threads. Nathan F. Yospe
- Question about threads. Sean K
- Question about threads. Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Question about threads. Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- TECH : MUD game on a multi agent system Cyril MudDev
- TECH : MUD game on a multi agent system Marc Bowden
- TECH : MUD game on a multi agent system John Robert Arras
- TECH : MUD game on a multi agent system Robert Zubek
- Using the survey Info to make real factual argument WAS: Everquest player survey with interesting points Sasha Hart
- [BIZ] Selling Sex, Power, and Prestige Dave Kennerly
- [BIZ] Selling Sex, Power, and Prestige Sasha Hart
- Mob (NPC) behavior William Murdick
- Mob (NPC) behavior Freeman, Jeff
- Mob (NPC) behavior Valerio Santinelli
- Mob (NPC) behavior Sean K
- Mob (NPC) behavior Sasha Hart
- Mob (NPC) behavior J C Lawrence
- Mob (NPC) behavior Kevin Reid
- Mob (NPC) behavior Mike Povoski
- Mob (NPC) behavior Sasha Hart
- [TECH] Event Queue System the_sage2000@juno.com
- [TECH] Event Queue System Lars Duening
- [TECH] Event Queue System J C Lawrence
- [TECH] Event Queue System Phillip Lenhardt
- [TECH] Event Queue System Lars Duening
- [TECH] Event Queue System Blane Bramble
- [TECH] Event Queue System John Robert Arras
- [TECH] Event Queue System Kwon Ekstrom
- [TECH] Event Queue System Jon Leonard
- Immersion lawsuit Frank Crowell
- Spouse play (was Using the survey Info to make real Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Spouse play (was Using the survey Info to make real Lars Duening
- RP definitions J C Lawrence
- roleplaying Matt Mihaly
- Girl's Perspective (was: Boys and Girls) Katy Morris
- Girl's Perspective (was: Boys and Girls) Paul Schwanz
- Girl's Perspective (was: Boys and Girls) Katy Anderson {Morris}
- Girl's Perspective (was: Boys and Girls) Amanda Walker
- Spouse play Sasha Hart
- Student Interview Steve Wilson
- Statistics (was: Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls)) Sasha Hart
- "Advanced" use of virtual worlds? (MMORPGs & MUDs) Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- I 0Wn Y0o, d00d (Latest 'Biting The Hand' column at Skotos) Christopher Allen
- Online Worlds Timeline Update Koster, Raph
- Online Worlds Timeline Update Richard A. Bartle
- Online Worlds Timeline Update Christopher Allen
- Online Worlds Timeline Update Travis Casey
- Online Worlds Timeline Update Jeff Freeman
- DCMA -- another weapon in the fight against Emulators Frank Crowell
- DCMA -- another weapon in the fight against Emulators Eric Rhea
- DCMA -- another weapon in the fight against Emulators Frank Crowell
- DCMA -- another weapon in the fight against Emulators Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- DCMA -- another weapon in the fight against Emulators bruce@cubik.org
- DCMA -- another weapon in the fight against Emulators Frank Crowell
- DCMA -- another weapon in the fight against Emulators Frank Crowell
- DCMA -- another weapon in the fight against Emulators Frank Crowell
- DCMA -- another weapon in the fight against Emulators Jon Lambert
- DCMA -- another weapon in the fight against Emulators Travis Nixon
- DCMA -- another weapon in the fight against Emulators Frank Crowell
- [TECH] Peer-to-peer downloads for MMO games Olof Ekstrom
- [TECH] Peer-to-peer downloads for MMO games Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- [TECH] Peer-to-peer downloads for MMO games Oliver Jowett
- [TECH] Peer-to-peer downloads for MMO games Jon Leonard
- character longevity statistics Val Trullinger
- MajorMUD recollections. Online Worlds Timeline Update Patrick Mahle
- MajorMUD and other BBS MUDs (was: Online Worlds Timeline Update) Scott Jennings
- DaoC postmortem at Gamasutra Azeraab
- DaoC postmortem at Gamasutra Buddy Grizzard
- DaoC postmortem at Gamasutra Dave Rickey
- DaoC postmortem at Gamasutra Marc Bowden
- DaoC postmortem at Gamasutra Scott Jennings
- DaoC postmortem at Gamasutra Vincent Archer
- DaoC postmortem at Gamasutra Steve {Bloo} Daniels
- DaoC postmortem at Gamasutra Buddy Grizzard
- Skotos TT& Christopher Allen