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
• • [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
    <EdNote: Please do NOT reply to multiple different messages in one
    message, most especially when they are from two different threads as
    in this case. It makes thread tracking, splitting, and other
    management excessively difficult.>
    
    Jeff Cole wrote:
    
    > And that got me to thinking. In MUDs/MMO* advancement entails
    > (ridiculously?) increasing the expected value of a player's
    > performance. Gameplay would certainly be more complex if, like
    > poker, advancement required one to balance expected value with
    > standard deviation--if advancement involved more decreasing of
    > standard deviation and less increasing of expected value.
    
    > My concern, though, would be that players, like my friends, would
    > have a difficult time recognizing such "advancement." Dunno.
    > Such an approach would necessarily require rethinking other
    > "standard" gameplay systems.
    
    I'm not sure that system would work, but less because players would
    have a hard time understanding it, and more because of the nature of
    a standard-deviation-style reward system.
    
    Essentially, what you appear to be arguing here is a system wherein,
    as the character advances, the character is spending more and more
    time failing, even though when he or she does succeed, he does so in
    a "bigger" way. I personally believe that this would be incredibly,
    incredibly frustrating. Frequent smaller rewards give consistent
    positive feedback to the player in a way that helps him feel that he
    is accomplishing something. If you are talking about expecting
    players to essentially gamble, and gamble well - meaning perform
    some kind of mathematical analysis of the probability of any number
    of possible outcomes, and choose a single route of play in the hopes
    that the chosen route will be the "winning" route - I think you're
    expecting way too much.
    
    Several games already do implement related systems: DAoC's Crafting
    is representation of a very basic implementation of the idea, and
    SWG's Surveying implements almost an inverse concept, wherein
    players start out with a great deal of deviation while Surveying
    (choosing from a list of a number of things to look for, in the
    hopes of picking something that shows up in a survey), and as the
    concentrations of that item become higher, it becomes easier to
    locate other high concentrations and also to collect samples and
    therefore earn advancement points. There are a number of
    illustrations of how much high-level crafting is enjoyed in DAoC -
    not very much at all. It winds up being a chore wherein you poke a
    button and at some point, probability indicates that you will
    succeed in your attempts to craft. The higher the level of the
    item, the further from the highest probability of creation it gets,
    resulting in sometimes hours of poking a button. Even though the
    reward is pretty good, for most players it rapidly becomes both
    boring and frustrating.
    
    Vladimir Cole wrote:
    
    > To put it another way, as soon as you allow in-game objects to
    > have out-of-game value, you are no longer a game designer but a
    > central bank for your game's economy. You'll have to behave in a
    > consistent, defensible, central-bank manner or the citizens under
    > your rule will complain loudly (best case) or take you to court
    > (worst case).
    
    I wonder what would happen if games stopped resisting being a
    central bank and instead adopted value control systems that were
    very different from real-world value control systems.
    
    For example, in the U.S., any mass produced item that can be traded
    (physically) for another item or for cash is considered currency and
    must be granted a value. Camel Cash (little pieces of paper you can
    send in for rewards like jackets and keychains) here is labeled as
    having a value of 1/1000 of a cent. Meaning, technically, if you
    collected 1,000 Camel Cash, you would be entitled to redeem that
    Camel Cash for a penny. It might be interesting to look at the
    ramifications of quite literally associating extremely small
    real-world currency values to in-game items as a solution to
    liability. If the game from the outset declares that, say, Happy
    Fun Staff of Doom is worth 1/10,000 of $0.01 USD, unless a player
    manages to amass billions of those items, it would be impossible to
    redeem them for any real quantity of money. It would not even be
    necessary to relate that value to outside markets, since in-game
    items, just like real-world items, have a value to an individual
    player that is determined by personal investment, not by currency;
    the player's time is worth X amount of value to that player, and
    usually a value close to X by other players.
    
    By associating such an infinitesimal currency value to items, it
    would seem to preclude anyone's ability to sue over that value (or,
    if they did, to issue them a check for, say, 23/10,000 of a cent),
    notably since players pay by the month rather than by hour or day.
    If players paid by the hour, I think there would be a much stronger
    case for determining real-world value by associating it with time -
    since all players pay the same amount regardless of hours in-game,
    it would be difficult to say that any specific unit of time was
    worth a specific amount of currency.
    
    -k
  • 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