August 2003

• A potential best-seller? Richard A. Bartle
• Identifying Players Scion Altera
• • Identifying Players Crosbie Fitch
• Metrics for assessing game design David Kennerly
• ADMIN: Crunch thread J C Lawrence
• Mapping real money into MUD money Alex Chacha
• • Mapping real money into MUD money Katie Lukas
  • • Mapping real money into MUD money David Kennerly
  • Mapping real money into MUD money Kent Peterson
  • • Mapping real money into MUD money Peter Tyson
  • Mapping real money into MUD money Matt Mihaly
  • Mapping real money into MUD money Paul Canniff
• Research in the Gaming Industry Damion Schubert
• • Research in the Gaming Industry Kerry Fraser-Robinson
  • Research in the Gaming Industry Richard A. Bartle
  • • Research in the Gaming Industry Matthew S. Ayres
• Mapping real money into MUD-Money Henrik Johansson
• Java or LPC (DGD)? Ben Chambers
• • Java or LPC (DGD)? Ammon Lauritzen
  • Java or LPC (DGD)? T. Alexander Popiel
  • Java or LPC (DGD)? ceo
  • Java or LPC (DGD)? Lars Duening
  • Java or LPC (DGD)? Torgny Bjers
  • • Java or LPC (DGD)? Ryan Underwood
• Reputation systems: a possible path for investigation J C Lawrence
• • Reputation systems: a possible path for investigation david.l.smith@mail-x-change.com
  • • Reputation systems: a possible path for investigation J C Lawrence
    • • Reputation systems: a possible path for investigation J C Lawrence
  • Reputation systems: a possible path for investigation Brian 'Psychochild' Green
  • • Reputation systems: a possible path for investigation J C Lawrence
  • Reputation systems: a possible path for investigation Andrew L. Tepper
  • • Reputation systems: a possible path for investigation Matt Mihaly
    • • Reputation systems: a possible path for investigation J C Lawrence
    • Reputation systems: a possible path for investigation Vincent Archer
• Reputation systems Castronova, Edward
• • Reputation systems J C Lawrence
• Mapping real money into MUD-Money Ren Reynolds
• MudDev Faq - part 2 Marian Griffith
• PHP muds Peter Harkins
• • PHP muds Torgny Bjers
• Slashdot story about review of Bartle's new book Christer Enfors XW {TN/PAC}
• • Slashdot story about review of Bartle's new book Dave Rickey
  • Slashdot story about review of Bartle's new book Evan Harper
  • Slashdot story about review of Bartle's new book Richard A. Bartle
  • • Slashdot story about review of Bartle's new book Tamzen Cannoy
    • • Slashdot story about review of Bartle's new book Kerry Fraser-Robinson
      • Slashdot story about review of Bartle's new book Richard A. Bartle
    • Slashdot story about review of Bartle's new book Dave Rickey
    • Slashdot story about review of Bartle's new book Marc Bowden
• The lack of Creativity and Beauty a game user james_nesfield@nesfieldcapital.com
• • The lack of Creativity and Beauty a game user Dr. Cat
  • The lack of Creativity and Beauty a game user Paul Schwanz
• Artists and Copyrights Derek Licciardi
• • Artists and Copyrights Paolo Piselli
  • Artists and Copyrights Marian Griffith
  • Artists and Copyrights Paul Dahlke
• Using Windows Scripting Host Owen Matt
• • Using Windows Scripting Host F. Randall Farmer
  • Using Windows Scripting Host Karl Dyson
  • Using Windows Scripting Host Tess Lowe
• Better Game Design through Data Mining David Kennerly
• • Better Game Design through Data Mining Chris "Diamonds" Stewart
• When Will Player-Avatar Integrity Be a Feature of Persistent Worlds? vladimir cole
• • When Will Player-Avatar Integrity Be a Feature of Persistent Worlds? Martin Bassie
  • When Will Player-Avatar Integrity Be a Feature of Persistent Worlds? Craig H Fry
  • When Will Player-Avatar Integrity Be a Feature of Persistent Worlds? Matt Mihaly
  • When Will Player-Avatar Integrity Be a Feature ofPersistent Worlds? Michael Tresca
  • • When Will Player-Avatar Integrity Be a Feature ofPersistent Worlds? Baar - Lord of the Seven Suns
• [Fwd: Metrics for assessing game design] ceo
• Examine/Look Elia Morling
• • Examine/Look Ammon Lauritzen
  • • Examine/Look Marc Bowden
  • Examine/Look Lars Duening
  • Examine/Look Eamonn O'Brien
• [BUS] Account-management systems ceo
  I've recently been working on a project where each game-server is
  limited to 512 players (for reasons that have everything to do with
  game-design, and nothing to do with performance...the limit is
  hard-coded and should never change).
  
  From the same fundamental gameplay reasons, lots of aspects of the
  game are explicitly per-server, and are exposed to the players in
  that way. Each server is explicitly a self-contained "island" in
  game-terms.
  
  I've been having fun looking at how this kind of situation impacts
  account-management and player-identity. I don't want to re-plough
  the MCS/SCS ground again, although I find myself re-visiting much of
  it now with a slightly different perspective. It seems to me to be
  similar to thinking about MUD's which share a player-export/import
  function, but in this scenario it's a bit closer to home, because
  the islands in this game (as opposed to the different MUD's) are
  mostly part of the same game, so that player's expectations of how
  much integration there is are different.
  
  On the one extreme, you can just declare each server as 100%
  independent of the others. This is quite easy, and sidesteps the
  issues of accounts and identities which span multiple servers. On
  the other, accounts and identities can be explicitly "global" in
  nature, so that if you see someone on server 123 called Bubba, you
  know it's the same person you've been competing against viciously on
  server 34 called Bubba (and this time around, he might be an ally).
  
  In the middle ground, you have the "human player --- game avatar"
  2-level identity system, and variants thereof (e.g. 3-level system,
  with human player --- global avatar --- local avatar). In this case,
  some aspects of identity are local, some are global. On the whole,
  in-game you interact with other avatars using almost entirely local
  identity, but you are always (as a player) able to view the
  global-identity associated with a local-identity. This is generally
  used for making friendships, etc. And players have the option of
  building these relationships either locally, or globally, at their
  discretion.
  
  W.r.t account-management, a similar 3-horse race seems to exist: all
  local, all global, or somewhere in-between. If all accounts are
  global, then account-management is greatly simplified for the
  players. However, the game-designers lose various gameplay options,
  e.g. to do with allowing / denying single human players (accounts)
  to have multiple characters in a single server (this is where I
  start to venture into SCS/MCS issues. I'd prefer not to go there
  again :) unless it's brief, to the point, and doesn't fork into
  another massive debate on SCS/MCS).
  
  Personally, I'm inclinded towards the in-between approach for both
  topics. However, I'm running into an awful lot of unknowns (mainly
  due to my lack of experience with global/local account
  dichotomies). I.e. when going in-between, which parts should you
  make global, which local, and why? What are the gotchas. etc?
  
  In the current scenario, the situation is further complicated by the
  fact that you do NOT create new characters/avatars when you join the
  game - you only ever take over an existing uncontrolled avatar
  (...hence characters-per-server is constant (512). Assuming player
  numbers increase over time, this adds a little more complexity to
  the identity debate - because it can make it much harder to play
  with pre-existing friends (and/or places further requirements on the
  process by which players join a server - they need lots of info
  available to make their decision about which one they join) ).
  
  It all brings to mind Skotos's account system, and I suspect that
  Christoper Allen and co (and others on this list who have also
  developed similar systems?) have all this licked by now...from what
  I've seen e.g. the Skotos system handles a wide variety of games,
  under a wide variety of conditions - e.g. Skotos own-branded
  servers; Skotos-managed, but externally branded servers etc (IIRC -
  correct me if I'm wrong!) etc. In fact, the issue of "servers we
  manage, but which are re-branded by someone else" is also one that
  occurs almost immediately in the game I'm currently working on. This
  adds some more questions to the mix, like "How do identities mix
  across different-branded servers?".
  
  I'm currently most tempted by a 3-level identity system, where the
  middle-level is made up of non-intersecting sets of
  global-identities. I.e. A human player has a single account. That
  account can create a global identity in any one of the
  (separately-branded) planets (to stick with the islands metaphor
  from the beginning of this post). Each planet-wide identity can be
  used to control any local-identity on any of the islands of that
  planet...
  
  ...but worrying that it's either over-engineered (and wastes
  implementation and maintenance time), or else too constrictive (and
  will have to be replaced in the near future :( ).
  
  What are other people doing about this? I've categorized the
  possible approaches, but have I missed some out entirely?
  
  Adam M
• • [BUS] Account-management systems Rayzam
  • • [BUS] Account-management systems ceo
    • • [BUS] Account-management systems Rayzam
  • [BUS] Account-management systems Christopher Allen
• Job opportunity on Star Wars Galaxies Koster, Raph
• NCSoft yearly report Mathieu Castelli
• MUD using the .net framework Norman Beresford
• • MUD using the .net framework John Buehler
  • MUD using the .net framework James F. Bellinger
  • MUD using the .net framework Linder Support Team
• Virtual property lawsuit in China Koster, Raph
• • Virtual property lawsuit in China Nicolai Hansen
  • Virtual property lawsuit in China Daniel Anderson
  • • Virtual property lawsuit in China Kerry Fraser-Robinson
  • Virtual property lawsuit in China Vladimir Cole
  • Virtual property lawsuit in China Ren Reynolds
  • • Virtual property lawsuit in China Nicolai Hansen
    • • Virtual property lawsuit in China ren@aldermangroup.com
• Expected value and standard deviation. Jeff Cole
• • Expected value and standard deviation. Scion Altera
  • • Expected value and standard deviation. Jeremy Hill
  • Expected value and standard deviation. katie@stickydata.com
  • Expected value and standard deviation. Ben Chambers
  • • Expected value and standard deviation. Zach Collins {Siege}
    • • Expected value and standard deviation. Ben Chambers
      • • Expected value and standard deviation. Robert Zubek
        • Expected value and standard deviation. Kwon J. Ekstrom
        • • Expected value and standard deviation. Eamonn O'Brien
          • • Expected value and standard deviation. Kwon J. Ekstrom
      • Expected value and standard deviation. Freeman, Jeff
      • • Expected value and standard deviation. Zach Collins {Siege}
  • Expected value and standard deviation. Bernard Graham
  • Expected value and standard deviation. Freeman, Jeff
  • • Expected value and standard deviation. Jeff Cole
    • • Expected value and standard deviation. Koster, Raph
      • • Expected value and standard deviation. Katie Lukas
        • • Expected value and standard deviation. Fidelio Gwaihir
          • • Expected value and standard deviation. Katie Lukas
          • Expected value and standard deviation. Matt Mihaly
          • • Expected value and standard deviation. Martin Bassie
            • Expected value and standard deviation. Katie Lukas
            • • Expected value and standard deviation. Matt Mihaly
              • • Expected value and standard deviation. Paul Schwanz
                • • Expected value and standard deviation. Matt Mihaly
          • Expected value and standard deviation. Koster, Raph
          • • Expected value and standard deviation. Paul Schwanz
            • Expected value and standard deviation. Amanda Walker
            • • Expected value and standard deviation. John Buehler
            • Expected value and standard deviation. Kwon J. Ekstrom
            • Expected value and standard deviation. Jeff Cole
            • • Expected value and standard deviation. Paul Schwanz
            • Expected value and standard deviation. Dr. Cat
            • • Expected value and standard deviation. David Loving
              • Expected value and standard deviation. Pat Ditterline
              • Expected value and standard deviation. Michael Chui
              • • Expected value and standard deviation. Matt Mihaly
              • Expected value and standard deviation. Kwon J. Ekstrom
            • Expected value and standard deviation. Chanur Silvarian
            • Expected value and standard deviation. Katie Lukas
            • • Expected value and standard deviation. Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
            • Expected value and standard deviation. Oliver Smith
        • Expected value and standard deviation. Daniel Anderson
        • • Expected value and standard deviation. Koster, Raph
          • • Expected value and standard deviation. Nicolai Hansen
        • Expected value and standard deviation. Dark Lamenth
        • • Expected value and standard deviation. Fidelio Gwaihir
        • Expected value and standard deviation. Ola Fosheim Grøstad
        • • Expected value and standard deviation. gbtmud
          • • Expected value and standard deviation. Tom "cro" Gordon
            • Expected value and standard deviation. Sheela Caur'Lir
            • Expected value and standard deviation. Roger Hicks
            • Expected value and standard deviation. Ola Fosheim Grøstad
      • Expected value and standard deviation. Freeman, Jeff
  • Expected value and standard deviation. Matt Mihaly
  • Expected value and standard deviation. Tom "cro" Gordon