Holistic World Design

Why We Do It

2007-03-08T16:28:00.000-06:00

I was doing this hot and heavy at first. It's typical for me to get into a project in the beginning, but lose steam down the road. This one, though, was different. It's tied to my own pet project, Urilia, so I was sure I'd stick with it.

If you look at the older posts, you'll see things got really political for a while. The whole Katrina-hurricane-New-Orleans situation brought that on. I noticed that afterward, a lot of people who were into this stuff dropped off the map, too.

What it demonstrated, was most of the people who are game developers are ardent socialists. Throughout the situation, this began to bleed through in their posts regarding the games for which they code. For me, this realization helped explain the backwards logic I so often see applied to problems in World Building.

I was looking to these guys for inspiration and some professional advice. What I got always turned into political arguements, because politics is everywhere. Politics isn't just an area of discussion, but it's a life-philosophy. When you hold a broken life-philosophy, it only follows that you will apply the same errant mental processes to everything you do. That's why so many crafters of game worlds create "fixes" that require more "fixes".

Anyway, now that I've got enough perspective on the situation, I'm going to re-apply myself to keeping this blog up-to-date.

Skill Check Part II

2006-05-30T00:47:00.000-05:00

Well, I finally realized I wasn't actually using the difficulty. Unbelievable as that might be, it's true.

Now that I've done it, will it work okay?

Skill Checking

2006-05-19T00:20:00.000-05:00

Welp, I'm going to start posting my code. What the heck. I'll share it.

Anyway, I'm starting with my skill check system. Basically, I think it's messed up.

I'm running a POL095 server. I do not use the core CheckSkill function, but a syshook_checkskill.src.

use uo;
use os;
use util;

include "include/attributes";
include "include/client";

program SyshookCheckSkill ( )

Syslog ( "Installing skillcheck..." );
return 1;

endprogram

exported function NewCheckSkill ( character, skillid, difficulty, points )

var attribute := GetAttributeIDBySkillID ( skillid );

Print ( "The Attribute is: " + attribute );

var player_Skill := GetAttribute ( character, attribute );
var deniedTest := BaseToRaw ( player_Skill );
var skillCheck;

Print ( "The skill used is: " + player_Skill );
Print ( "Your Raw Skill is: " + deniedTest );

if ( deniedTest == 0 )
SendSysMessage ( character, "You are untrained in this area." );
return 0;
endif

if ( player_Skill < 13 )
skillCheck := 13;
else
skillCheck := player_Skill;
endif

if ( skillCheck <= ( difficulty - 5 ) )
return 0;
elseif ( skillCheck >= ( difficulty + 15 ) )

var charMaxAttribute := ( "max" + attribute );
var maxSkill := GetObjProperty ( character, charMaxAttribute );
var rawMaxSkill := BaseToRaw ( maxSkill );

rawMaxSkill := ( rawMaxSkill + 1 );

var currentRawSkill := BaseToRaw ( player_Skill );
var possibleNewRawSkill := ( currentRawSkill + 1);

if ( rawMaxSkill > possibleNewRawSkill )
AwardRawSkill ( character, attribute, 1 );
StatIncrease ( character, attribute );
endif

return 1;
else

var dieRoll := ( skillCheck + 20 );

dieRoll := RandomInt ( dieRoll );

if ( dieRoll <= skillCheck )

var charMaxAttribute := ( "max" + attribute );
var maxSkill := GetObjProperty ( character, charMaxAttribute );
var rawMaxSkill := BaseToRaw ( maxSkill );

rawMaxSkill := ( rawMaxSkill + 1 );

var currentRawSkill := BaseToRaw ( player_Skill );
var possibleNewRawSkill := ( currentRawSkill + 1);

if ( rawMaxSkill > possibleNewRawSkill )
AwardRawSkill ( character, attribute, 1 );
StatIncrease ( character, attribute );
endif

return 1;
else
return 0;
endif

endif

endfunction

An excuse to stay up later

2006-04-26T00:08:00.000-05:00

That's what this is.

Even though I'm sure no one ever reads this, and it doesn't much matter if they do, I think about it often and feel guilty. Yes, guilt because someone might read it and wonder why I never update.

I bet a lot of blogs end up like this.

Well not me. This is about world design, and I've been designing my butt off. Creating an online world is damn hard work and it's only fair that I inflict it on the rest of the internet!

So, after taking a long 6 months or so off from scripting, I'm right back at it. As usual, in a flurry of activity I have created two whole new systems for the server, fixed a few, and broken one of the biggest.

I rewrote our skill gain scripts. Now you actually have to be successful in something in order to gain skill. Novel idea, eh? It is when you consider what I was working with. In any event, I also had to re-tie stat gain to skill usage. That actually wasn't that hard.

I fixed a bunch of bugs in my other new scripts, too. Character creation could be a bear on my server until I looked back through it, recently. All this, and I've broken magic.

Yes, magic. It's very frustrating. I think I can fix it, but I'd like to make it work the way it used to work before I start making it work differently.

pffft

Best Damn Blog About Katrina

2005-09-10T11:50:00.000-05:00

No, not mine...

Bill Whittle wrote an article titled, "Tribes". It's very well written, and is far more eloquent than I could be. I suggest you read it before swallowing one more single propaganda pill from the media.

To the rare few who actually drop in on my blog from time to time, you might notice I've removed Damion Schubert and Scott Jennings from the list of "Smart Guys". After taking a pounding on their boards (argue with stupid people and they will club you over the head with it), and noticing a lack of anything deeply meaningful regarding our world of on-line gaming, they are gone.

I have come to an understanding, however, of why so many developers are so good at identifying their failures yet are incapable of learning from them. It's the liberal mentality. I want my cake, and I want to eat it too, and in a theoretical world where Shreodinger's Cat can walk through walls, I can do just that.

The Katrina disaster has brought all of this clearly into focus for me. As such, I'm only linking up people who seem to have a genuine insight into on-line worlds and their creations. I'm quite sure many of them are probably liberals, but at least they have a significant contribution to make, instead of just commenting on press releases or yammering nonsensically about some theory based on circular logic.

Because I Doubt He Won't Delete My Post

2005-09-07T20:37:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I'm done with Damion Shubert and Scott Jennings. These guys have no clue what the "real world" is all about. They have no concept of what makes human beings tic. Read below. I copy/pasted a conversation on Damion's blog regarding the New Orleans situation. Similar conversations have occured on Scott's blog, so I'm finished with him, as well.

Musings on New Orleans
Filed under: General, Politics — Damion @ 10:06 pm
Sorry for the lack of updates this week. I’d blame the heavy workload I’m experiencing right now but, truth be told, the events on the Gulf Coasts seem to make any musing I could possibly put forth about game design to seem small and trite. I’ve recieved letters from people in the past thanking me for games that have resulted in meeting their soulmates and from cancer patients who have thanked me for allowing them to feel like fully functional human beings inside of a virtual space. But in the wake of the courage shown by the emergency personnel fighting this disaster, I feel like the maker of insignificant baubles and trinkets. I’ve given money to the Red Cross, and I’d urge anyone else so inclined to give what they can.

Not that everything has gone swimmingly. I have little doubt that the death toll of this event will surpass 9/11. The property damage already has. And yet, I’m continually surrounded by responses to the events I find appalling. Scott’s update points out the most egregious examples by our media, our government and our president. The Blame Game has started from the left while New Orleans still burns. Of course, that wouldn’t have been possible if the president had shown an iota of leadership with some level of gravitas instead of attending a birthday party, a sham ‘town hall’ for a failed political initiative and, most infamously, a guitar lesson.

And, of course, the pure hatemongers stepped forward to blame America’s sins for God’s Wrath. And here I thought the south were all Red States. Apparently, God destroyed New Orleans because the Southern Decadence festival was to be held this week, specifically today. Apparently, God was a couple days early, which sounds like a personal problem. Perhaps next time, God should think about baseball, or recite the alphabet backwards.

Oh, and can we please actually KNOW SOMETHING before we all put on the tinfoil hats?

It never fails to surprise me how surprised everybody is. “Nobody could have predicted this” is a common refrain on the news. New Orleans is, in fact, surrounded on three sides by a gulf, a lake, and the mightiest river in the US. The city is a bowl-shaped depression that rests below sea level. The levies were in desperate disrepair, but Louisiana’s economy was too depressed to fix it, and attempts to get the funding from the federal government failed. The city was long flirting with disaster. This, of course, makes the events only that much more horrific, because if government had functioned, it could have been minimized.

As a final thought: before every hurricane, major events or other whisp of trouble over the last 10 years, the press has gone out of their way to scare the hell out of us. This time was no exception- CNN trotted out an expert on the New Orleans topography to explain why this one could be the big one. This was on Saturday. I shook it off - the media has tried so hard to scare me with threads of shark attacks and millenium bomb threats that I just don’t even listen to it any more.

It turns out that guy was almost exactly right, every step throughout his description of what could go wrong. Sometimes, it turns out, the sky actually is falling.

• • •
17 Comments »
I actually spent the 6 days *flew out Saturday afternoon at 3pm* before the hurricane, just (literally) north of the tracks installing a machine. I was sleeping at 124 Royal Street at the Holiday Inn (1 block north of Bourbon St.)

I felt just a hair guilty because I spent the entire week wishing God would wash that rotting crap-hole into the sea. The poverty of the city is appalling. I was there with a trainee and tried driving about 10 blocks in each direction searching for something we knew was decent to eat (Outback, or Applebee’s, etc.) We finally found an extremely expensive steak house (Dickie Brennan’s) between Royal and Bourbon.

The hotel was so bad we couldn’t count on being able to eat breakfast there, so we just picked up pre-packaged junk and bottled water at a gas station in the mornings. We tried 4 different gas stations. Food stamps are apparently a huge part of the economy, as the last place we went to had a sign stating they weren’t able to take food stamps for a while (guess a machine was down or something). The clerk was complaining about how much money they were losing over the last few days because of the problem…

Everything was crumbling, and not just in the French-quarter. Most people you saw had dirty clothes and bums slept everywhere. Watching people pass at dinner each night, my trainee commented that the area was so bad you didn’t even see “different walks of life” pass by the window. Just the indogent and the freaks (piercings, tattoos, snakes around the 40 yr-old pot-bellied hippie). The highlight of the week was the old woman we watched for 3 nights stopping and talking to anyone who would talk to her on the street out in front of our hotel. She looked normal enough, but on the fourth night when we stopped to see what she was all about, she told us “The cops are payin’ me $100 to hit . He beats up women and children, so they say they’ll pay me $100 to put a hit on him.”

Add to this that the machine distributer was on-site, as well (we were just there to retrofit the control system). This guy was as big a racist jackass as you’d ever met. I didn’t think people actually said things like, “That guy’s a f’ing n’er in a white man’s position!” Man, the needle on the racist-O-meter was screaming off the chart.

It is rewarding that the president of my company is going to talk to the president of that guy’s company about our continued relationship and his continued employment. My people were floored by the situation.

Yeah, nutty week, but not as bad as it was for all the people that had to go through the storm. I hope that the devastation is so complete they move the city or something. I also hope that enough people give enough money to take care of the survivors. In an event such as this, it doesn’t even bother me if the federal government uses my tax dollars to help those people, though, frankly….my tax dollars have been carrying many of those people for most of their lives already.

So that pretty much lines things out, and puts it straight into the correct political light. Anything else is pure agrandizing garbage.

Comment by Jaycen Rigger — 8/31/2005 @ 11:33 pm
At the risk of sounding harsh…

Darwin (Australia) was destroyed by a cyclone in 1974. There wasn’t much storm surge damage because Darwin is 10m above sea level (for the most part), but 80% of the homes were destroyed by the wind. After that, Darwin required all houses to be engineered for category 4 cyclones. That has since been weakened to category 3. (I think 3 is too low. My house is rated for a 4, and I have a store room that will withstand higher. All the framing is welded steel, with thousands of cyclone-coded screws to hold on the roof and walls.)

1) Houses in the gulf look like they’re coded for a category 2… which is way too weak. Since hurricanes have been hitting the gulf and florida forever, you’d think that sometime 50 years ago they would have required stricter building codes! No way… building stronger buildings is more expensive.

2) If you’re going to build your house in storm surge (or flood prone) area, build it on stilts and make sure those stilts can survive a storm surge.

3) If TV spends 2 days broadcasting “this is the worst storm in 50 years” and “new orleans might flood” and “mandatory evacuation” and “if you can’t evacuate we’ll provide safe shelter for you”, and you still stay in your non-coded flood-prone house, you’re a fool.

Comment by Mike Rozak — 9/1/2005 @ 12:13 am
If TV spends 2 days broadcasting “this is the worst storm in 50 years” and “new orleans might flood” and “mandatory evacuation” and “if you can’t evacuate we’ll provide safe shelter for you”, and you still stay in your non-coded flood-prone house, you’re a fool.

To be fair, most of the people who stayed behind had no means to leave. New Orleans has (had) a huge population that lived below the poverty line. Many don’t have cars. It also is almost completely isolated - surrounded by swamps and rivers on all sides means no real suburbs to flee to. I suspect few bus tickets were available.

A government study in 2001 said that a flood in New Orleans was the number three most threatened US location for a disaster (#1 was terrorist attack in NY, #2 was major earthquake in SF) - natural terrain heightens the problem, lack of good escape roots makes it worse. The fact that a lot of the housing down there was, shall we say, substandard, to be appropriately priced for the shockingly low standard of living in NO, made things much worse.

Comment by Damion — 9/1/2005 @ 12:38 am
I was there with a trainee and tried driving about 10 blocks in each direction searching for something we knew was decent to eat (Outback, or Applebee’s, etc.) We finally found an extremely expensive steak house (Dickie Brennan’s) between Royal and Bourbon.

To be fair, you were looking for a chain restaraunt in the middle of the largest tourist trap in the Southeast. New Orleans actually has (well, had, I guess) the best restaraunts in the country, but you were looking for them in the middle of the red light district and wondering why you were only finding cheap strip clubs.

Comment by Scott — 9/1/2005 @ 6:25 am
Damion said:

Sometimes, it turns out, the sky actually is falling.

Why do I get the itchy feeling that the neighborhood Jehovah’s Witnesses are going to be darkening my doorstep again this weekend? The ones ’round here seem to have a particular passion for natural disasters.

Mike said:

Darwin (Australia) was destroyed by a cyclone in 1974.

Do you live in Darwin, Mike? I’m down in Sydney…

Mike also said:

3) If TV spends 2 days broadcasting “this is the worst storm in 50 years” and “new orleans might flood” and “mandatory evacuation” and “if you can’t evacuate we’ll provide safe shelter for you”, and you still stay in your non-coded flood-prone house, you’re a fool.

As someone who has never owned her own TV in her entire life, I find this much less shocking than the fact that countless able bodied adults ended up in dire straits by the mere virtue of the fact that they couldn’t swim. I hope this encourages more people to learn swimming and lifesaving. I’m a terrible swimmer, but I’ll be damned if I ever get stuck in my attic in a flood.

Comment by Tess — 9/1/2005 @ 6:30 am
Scott said:

New Orleans actually has (well, had, I guess) the best restaraunts in the country, but you were looking for them in the middle of the red light district and wondering why you were only finding cheap strip clubs.

Scott speaks the truth. I have eaten wonderful food in New Orleans, and the prices were quite reasonable, as well. Also, were there still a New Orleans for you to go to, I would recommend staying at a Bed and Breakfast, rather than the Holiday Inn. There were some marvelous little B&Bs, which were priced insanely well, and had wonderful staff, and wonderful breakfast, and I’m gonna start crying in a moment…

Comment by Tess — 9/1/2005 @ 6:35 am
Yeah, and uhh…Brennan’s (the extremely expensive steak house you mentioned) is one of the finest steak houses in the US. The Brennan family restaurants are world-famous.

Looking for an Outback in downtown New Orleans…heh, too funny

Comment by Ray — 9/1/2005 @ 7:06 am
Ugh, sorry to pile on you, I didn’t read the rest of the replies before I posted.

Comment by Ray — 9/1/2005 @ 8:27 am
I know, I know, but I’m not a huge fan of that cuisine. However, I have developed a new appreciation for Jumbalaya. The smoked sausage (when cooked properly) is insanely delicious.

I’m not at all surprised by the news of the police looting SUVs, weapons and merchandise. I think it’s common knowledge just how rampantly corrupt the authorities in that area are.

I am, however, frustrated by the reports of certain morons in the area shooting at the military helicopters performing rescues. It’s disheartening to know that people (regardless of their socio-economic background) who want rescue are being denied the opportunity because of a few twits. Hopefully, they’ll track down the individuals responsible and those people will resist attempts at capture.

Comment by Jaycen Rigger — 9/1/2005 @ 11:53 am
I don’t think all of the police actions can be seen as corrupt. Reports have several of the police precinct houses as being underwater. Standard police cruisers aren’t well suited from crossing rubble and low standing water. Standard issue police weapons are no match for looters with machine guns. There’s undoubtedly some corruption, but an ill-equipped peace officer can either abdicate his authority or attempt to solve the problem as best he can. In this situation, I’d much rather he do the latter.

Of course, I also can see the other side of the looter’s mentality. They very much feel that society left them there to die. So fuck society. Does that excuse their current actions? No, but it might better explain them.

Shooting at rescue helicopters and overturning ambulances, though - that’s just ten kinds of inexplicable and wrong.

Comment by Damion — 9/1/2005 @ 12:59 pm
I see your point on the police situation. Considering how poor those areas are, I’m sure the cops are under-equipped. However, I’m hearing reports of cops snagging SUVs from dealerships, running looters off from Wal-Marts and then loading up their SUVs with goodies. THAT isn’t the result of being under-equipped.

I’m absolutely not interested in the thinking behind those lacking any moral compass. I grew up in a rotten situation at a level of poverty comparable to those people in New Orleans. Society has been doing everything it can to get those people out and help them.

Let me better explain that mentality to you; “I am the center of my universe. My feelings are the only thing that matter to me. I only really relate to other human beings in terms of how they make me feel about myself, or how I can use them to get something for myself. Other people exist to give me things.”

Undoubtedly, there are a variety of reasons people come to that attitude, but you can’t say it’s purely environment and how you’re raised. I grew up in that environment (until I was 11) and I was taught that attitude (until I was 15), and I was still smart enough to put 2 and 2 together. I have no empathy nor do I have sympathy for that life view, though I’m always willing to try to help someone think beyond it.

Comment by Jaycen Rigger — 9/1/2005 @ 4:01 pm
Damion wrote: “To be fair, most of the people who stayed behind had no means to leave. New Orleans has (had) a huge population that lived below the poverty line. Many don’t have cars. It also is almost completely isolated - surrounded by swamps and rivers on all sides means no real suburbs to flee to. I suspect few bus tickets were available.”

From some of the TV press conferences I’ve seen, I think (but am not 100% sure) that free transportation was offered.

Most of the people interviewed said they “didn’t think it would be that bad” and didn’t believe all the media hype. This is interesting; it shows that the media overhypes so much stuff that when something important is communicated people don’t believe it.

Tess wrote: “Do you live in Darwin, Mike? I’m down in Sydney…”

Someone else down under, and in a game company too (one of the 3 or 4 in australia)… Technically, I live an hour’s drive outside Darwin. After hearing my neighbor’s story of Cyclone Tracy, I wouldn’t be in Darwin if a 4 or 5 were going to hit, even in a cyclone-coded house. I’m 50 miles south, and should be a bit safer.

Comment by Mike Rozak — 9/1/2005 @ 5:37 pm
Oh of course, the Almighty must be angry at the sinners. I remember that from the Asian Tsunami too … all those heathens “deserved” it.

Such hatemongers have no right to call themselves Christians.

Comment by Josh — 9/2/2005 @ 10:16 am
Jaycen… RE:
“I’m absolutely not interested in the thinking behind those lacking any moral compass. I grew up in a rotten situation at a level of poverty comparable to those people in New Orleans. Society has been doing everything it can to get those people out and help them.”

I don’t know what you studied in school, nor what you do for a living. But when it comes to sociology, you are speaking madness. We seek understanding so that we can build models. We use those models to control outcomes. THAT is why their thinking is relevant. Furthermore, though you do seem mainly to focus on the “twits”, it’s hardly accurate to call anyone “lacking [in] any moral compass”. People are fully capable of doing things that they know are wrong. Why are they doing wrong things? They have their reasons, sound or not. If we understood when and why a human being (poor, rich, no matter) will choose to betray their morals, we can learn how NOT to push people until they break. Everyone breaks, sooner or later.

They shut down the city, taxis and all, BEFORE the evacuation. If you didn’t have a car they MIGHT take you to a hotel. This decision was made because no one gave a flying rat’s ass about the poor, or their need to leave. Friends of mine were trapped before they knew it. Society has chosen how to deal with emergencies, and that includes leaving the poor to rot. We (collectively) are hardly trying to “do everything we can to get those people out and help them”. Read the article, follow the links, if you haven’t already. Scott’s post is especially informative, if you need background.

I am disgusted by the incompetency of my country.

Comment by Justin Willcox — 9/2/2005 @ 6:44 pm
“People are fully capable of doing things that they know are wrong. Why are they doing wrong things? They have their reasons, sound or not. If we understood when and why a human being (poor, rich, no matter) will choose to betray their morals, we can learn how NOT to push people until they break. Everyone breaks, sooner or later.”

Thanks for letting us know where you come from right up front. It’s not theif fault, they were “pushed” into it. I see. Thanks, that’s very helpful.

“This decision was made because no one gave a flying rat’s ass about the poor, or their need to leave.”

Yes, I’m quite certain you’re correct. Know one cares about the poor, that’s why the liberal cause gains so much traction in America. It’s also why there are so many charity organizations. You’ve nailed it!

“Society has chosen how to deal with emergencies, and that includes leaving the poor to rot.”

SOCIETY chooses? I see. Here I thought the individual states and cities created their own emergency plans, much like San Francisco did just before the last major quake hit.

Obviously there is a conspiracy of hate/ignorance/un-caring going on in the U.S., and I think it’s time we all agree George Bush was at the center of it. Let’s impeach him.

“I am disgusted by the incompetency of my country.”

Huh, yeah… Sometimes I am, too. *shakes head sadly*

Comment by Jaycen Rigger — 9/5/2005 @ 12:58 am
Yes, I’m quite certain you’re correct. Know one cares about the poor, that’s why the liberal cause gains so much traction in America. It’s also why there are so many charity organizations. You’ve nailed it!

It’s beyond dispute that nobody, either in the Democrat-controlled local government, the mix-controlled state government or the Republican-controlled federal government stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, the famously impoverished underclass of New Orleans might not have a way out, or might not have had any money to buy a hotel room if they did get out.

Thanks for letting us know where you come from right up front. It’s not theif fault, they were “pushed” into it. I see. Thanks, that’s very helpful.

Making these sorts of moral judgments when you’re not ‘in the shit’ is very easy.

SOCIETY chooses? I see. Here I thought the individual states and cities created their own emergency plans, much like San Francisco did just before the last major quake hit.

The federal government is responsible for emergency plans when the level of catastrophe raises above a certain level. In the case of NOLA, the state government of LA requested a National Disaster be declared before the hurricane made landfall, and the federal government agreed. Once that happens, FEMA is supposed to take a much more active role.

Comment by Damion — 9/5/2005 @ 1:19 am
The problem with up-to-the-second news coverage is that often the newsmen (who we all know have no political agenda) get news to us before having all the facts in hand, not that it matters to them.

“It’s beyond dispute that nobody, either in the Democrat-controlled local government, the mix-controlled state government or the Republican-controlled federal government stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, the famously impoverished underclass of New Orleans might not have a way out, or might not have had any money to buy a hotel room if they did get out.”

We now know, Damion, that indeed many people knew the “impoverished” of New Orleans would have “no way out”. The emergency action plan, paid for by the Mayor’s office of the Parish of New Orleans, and created by a private company, said exactly that. The report said the city would have to begin evacutation 72 hours prior to the arrival of a category 3 storm in order to get all the poor people out. In fact, that’s explicity what the long evac shedule was for, because New Orleans has SO MANY people living off of welfare.

In fact, the school busses and the city transit busses were supposed to be used for exactly that purpose (72 hours before the storm was supposed to make land fall).

The fact that you are unwilling to “make moral judgements” about people who shoot at rescuers and rape people during a crisis shows that you have zero (0) common sense. You’re better off talking about whatever you would normally talk about when not talking about politics, humanity, or anything else requiring a smidgeon of brain power.

“Making these sorts of moral judgments when you’re not ‘in the shit’ is very easy.”

I don’t have to be “in the shit” to know what those people did was wrong. You are excusing the most barbaric and animalistic behavior because I was not directly participating in it? Tell you what, come on over to my house. Let me rape you and shoot at you for a while, and let’s see if I still have the same mindset when I’m finished with you.

If I don’t, I’ll post an appology. Then I’ll call up the victims and explain to them that they were over-reacting and if they were only on the other side of the shooting and raping, they’d have a better understanding of the situation.

“The federal government is responsible for emergency plans when the level of catastrophe raises above a certain level. In the case of NOLA, the state government of LA requested a National Disaster be declared before the hurricane made landfall, and the federal government agreed. Once that happens, FEMA is supposed to take a much more active role.”

The President proclaimed New Orleans a federal disaster area 48 hours prior to the storm. After that, it was the Governor’s responsibility to ask the federal government to step in. She did not do so for 24 hours AFTER the storm hit. The President can not unilaterally walk in and take over until the Governor asks for help. It protects the state’s rights and the rights of the people in that state. The federal government is not a grandfatherly old man with everyone’s best intentions in mind.

You have less of an idea of how the process works than I do, so you should stay quiet on this topic. FEMA took an active role when it was told to. FEMA did what they were supposed to do in this situation. They could not go into New Orleans because it was in total chaos, AND because the disaster was still occuring. It is their job to stay out of the disaster and to take care of those who get out of the disaster area. Then, after the disaster is over, they go in and clean up. They do not walk into a currently deteriorating situation to create even more chaos and loss of human life. Had FEMA and other relief agencies gone in before the situation was FINALLY brought under control by the feds, things would be MUCH worse.

Comment by Jaycen Rigger — 9/7/2005 @ 7:33 pm

More MUD-Dev

2005-08-28T13:55:00.000-05:00

The "Reasons for play" thread has been a great debate, so far. Reading it and other threads, a few generalized debating points keep springing to mind. I'm pointing to this particular thread and more specifically this particular post because it contains so many of the points I'd like to make. I'm certainly not picking on Sean, Damien, or Mike. All of you have made excellent points and counter points and I really like most of what you three guys have to say, especially when you disagree with each other;-)

In particular, my appologies to Mike, up front, as I'll be quoting him - though many of you guys tend to make the same points from time to time.

>Single-point anecdote explains nothing. Look at the population;
>look at what they buy. You can't generalize from what one person
>likes.

You MUST generalize from what one person likes....otherwise, where would any ideas begin? One person had to like "something" before another person could figure out that, "hey, maybe more people like that something and will pay me to provide it".

Single-point anecdotes DO explain some things. They may not be indicative of the largest population, but they point to smaller markets. Some people do very well selling to a niche.

>There's an image problem, sure -- but it's caused by the kinds of games we
>produce!

I just don't think that's true. This is one of those single-point anecdotes, so take it for what it's worth.

I have single-handedly brought "gaming" to my place of business. I've gotten 5 different people in my company to start playing MORPGs and a couple to start playing shooters like TFC. Currently, I'm trying to get my boss into playing TFC. I know he'd love it if he tried it, but his problem is getting past the hardware barrier and understanding that the game isn't as complicated as it looks. He's watched me play it a couple times, but isn't sure about installing it on his own and blundering through the controls.

Point? He's almost 40, much higher on the socio-economic ladder than me, yet his interest is piqued by a game played mostly by teens and 20-somethings that involves slaughtering your friends on-line. His reluctance has nothing to do with image, and everything to do with just being "old and out of the loop" when it comes to "doing that on-line stuff". That's a technology/confidence problem, not a game-image problem.

>Frankly, that you don't seem to see the significance of the gender
>issue here is an exemplar of the blindness endemic in many game
>developers.

This is a personal pet-peeve. As my high-school German teacher always said, "Words have gender, people have sex." See? It's very easy to remember. When speaking about the difference between men and women, it is inappropriate to use the word gender. Just because some knee-jerk ninnies have made it popular, doesn't make it right. You can use the word sex. We're all big kids. We can handle it. Thanks.

>I've worked with people in the past who discounted
>women's general distaste for games as coming from anything in the
>games or the industry itself.

Totally agree. Too many devs are content to "blame the players" instead of focusing on the real problem; the devs.

>It couldn't possibly be because our games are made by, for, and with
>a young white unmarried male world view, could it?

SUPER big pet-peeve of mine. Please explain what my world view is, since you seem to have the handle on it? I'm married though, so does my world view differ significantly from unmarried, white males? When people who use phraseology such as that speak, they sound sexist, racist, and socialist.

I'm willing to bet money that black men are pretty much excited by the same game elements as white men. Maybe what you meant to say was "rich, white, unmarried men who grew up and live in the suburbs"? Because then maybe those kind of men aren't turned on by the same things that "poor, black unmarried men who grew up and live in the inner-city" are turned on by. Or maybe they are. Either way, it makes my skin crawl to hear someone who's probably a young, white unmarried man talk about a "world view" as if he can speak for everyone else.

>There is abundant data that men and women vary
>neurologically from the gross anatomical to molecular scale, in
>structures ranging from the cortical sulci to the amygdaloid nucleus
>in the limbic system to the corpus callosum and cortical neuronal
>density. There are significant gender differences in attention,
>reaction, verbal and spatial reasoning, bilateral activation, and
>memory formation, among other areas.

I'm surprised Sean wasn't already more aware of just that. You can hardly watch the Discovery channel or pick up a copy of Scientific American without seeing information to this effect. I thought everyone was already on-board with these concepts. The fact that Mike points out the social injustices tied to the research is just an annoyance. For one, I don't care. For two, I'm sick of hearing it. For three "social injustices" just aren't that un-just and have already faded in American society for most reasonable people.

Men and women are very different. They can still have the same personality types, but those categorizations are typically broader definitions of human behavior. I think it's important to examine both sides of how the sexes are alike and different in their emotional/psychological responses to games.

>I wasn't aware we were in the business of creating gamers.

In fact, I'm quite sure you are aware, Mike. You DON'T want more people to start playing games? I thought that was the sole purpose of the corporate angle on gaming. The more people who game, the more money your companies make. If your companies AREN'T in the business of drawing in more clients, then they ought to be.

>More to the point, I think we're better off creating games that *people*
>will play, rather than trying to create new kinds of people.

Oh....I see....more of that mentality. Ugh.

You can't categorize *people* because that dehumanizes them, or something? What do you think you've been doing already, Mike? Leave the politics and ideology out of the discussion. Your logic starts to wane when you attack the problem from this perspective and it just sounds like wishy-washy hippie-talk.

>Drive the game to the people, don't try to make the people conform to the
>game.

See what I mean? "Don't label me, man."

What I think you're trying to say is "devs shouldn't want the player to be a better player for the game they create, they should want to make the game cater to the player they're trying to draw in", or something like that. But I don't want to put words in your mouth. I just want to drag the conversation back into the realm where red-staters like me won't turn off as soon as we read your posts.

>The 'low-end machine' thing is interesting -- EA execs were
>concerned that its graphics looked dated when it was released. And
>yet, it went strong for several years, eclipsing hundreds of games
>with "killer graphics" but same-old same-old gameplay.

Interesting in that we've already heard a lot of this already. Graphics and immersion don't seem to be as important as content, or mechanics.

I think Sean's real point was that the game sold big partly becuase it ran well on cheaper and older machines, regardless of whether that was because the graphics didn't require the hardware. Memory and speed don't always get eaten up with graphics.

Maybe there are really TWO very good points here.

>I was at Maxis when The Sims was released, and I can tell you, it's nothing like
>what you assume (and interestingly, at the time the studio had more
>women in senior positions than any other major game studio I know
>of).

I don't have an opinion on that part of the discussion, except to say that what you point out about women in senior positions just helps to underscore my points above regarding sex and social justice. No matter how "just" or "equal" our society becomes (or vice versa), human beings will still make bad/good decisions.

Those are the points I wanted to make. I hope I was able to draw the line and succesfully seperate the politics from the philosophical points. We can keep the discussions theoretical without getting "liberal".

40 yr old men talking sexy to teenage girls is icky!

2005-08-16T21:11:00.000-05:00

Yes, I'm talking about Nickelodeon's Teen Choice Awards. Ignore the fact that one of the winners was a woman from "Desperate Housewives" who even voiced concern that, "I'm not sure teens should be watching us."

Then, we had to listen to Jim Carey, Will Farrel and Adam Sandler spew garbage to children. Will Farrel was exceptionally creepy, and Adam Sandler actually talked about how women don't enjoy having sex with him and then goes on to shout explitives to the crowd.

Yay! Great job Nickelodeon. Your executives are mentally damaged and morally bereft.

0.7% of Women Need Birth Control

2005-08-15T21:37:00.000-05:00

PBS Channel 9 in St. Louis, Missouri was just telling me that the development of Birth Control wasn't (their emphasis) a matter of a sexual revolution, but a matter of life and death. When the first birth control was developed, as many as 7 out of 1000 pregnancies resulted in the death of the mother.

A matter of Life and Death! 0.7% of women will die giving child birth. It's an epidemic.

Ship Deck Designs

2005-08-14T02:06:00.000-05:00

Autorealm is an awesome tool for creating maps for just about anything, but in particular for fantasy "strategy" maps. My only critique is that you kind of have to have some training in AutoCAD to get past the interface.

I picked up the tool over a year ago and like many little "utility" programs, I fire it up every once in a while and try to play with it. Finally, after getting AutoCAD training from work, I opened this up and realized that suddenly I could actually transform the digital landscape using the alchemical symbols set out before me.

Anyway, as I do work, I'll post that work and share it with the rest of the world. If you play any table-top games, feel free to download this stuff and use it for your own purposes.

My first work is a top view of a galleon. I'll break the decks out in the future and post those, too. We're playing a AD&D 2nd. ed. sea faring campaign.

Minrothad's Might

1" = 4' on 11 x 17 Map

Founding Fathers are "over done"

2005-07-26T22:41:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry, but when I read things like the following snippet, I instantly tune people like this out.

Yes, I know what the U.S. Constitution says about copyrights. I focused on how the law encourages "the progress of science and useful arts" in particular. The law does this by giving people a monopoly so that they can profit from their work, which is what "exclusive right" means in today's capitalist society.

To be honest, I was trying to stay away from the "founding fathers" arguments because that's not only U.S.-centric, but also a bit overdone these days. And, although there are examples of people creating things for free, I'd argue that the profit motive is behind a majority of IP creation; remember it doesn't have to be some giant company profiting from IP, it's also small developers like me (and I assume like you) that would like to provide for their families doing what they know best.

Let us examine this quote and take things to the most basic level.

Yes, I know what the U.S. Constitution says about copyrights. I focused on how the law encourages "the progress of science and useful arts" in particular.

At this point, we simply acknowledge what someone else has said. Second, we alter the context of what was said and set up our arguement that the source of information is invalid. Invalidating the original context is accomplished by requoting a piece of it and drawing an extension from the original thought. Here, the "how" allows us to extrapolate something else from the wording.

The law does this by giving people a monopoly so that they can profit from their work, which is what "exclusive right" means in today's capitalist society.

Now, I don't always knee-jerk frown at text that includes the word capitalist, though certain left-ists in our society use the word like a curse. In this case, I begin to have my suspicions because capitalism in this context was qualified with "today's". Yes, the statement is true that "exclusive right" means monopoly in today's capitialist society. That's also what it meant when it was written in the Founding Father's capitalist society. The difference was, back then the entire country was HAPPY to live in the freedom and prosperity of a capitalist society.

To be honest, I was trying to stay away from the "founding fathers" arguments because that's not only U.S.-centric, but also a bit overdone these days.

This is the most alarming and infuriating statement I've ever read in the gaming industry. I'm tempted to add my "Socialist Content" warning to Brian's blog link.

U.S.-centric? Hey dumbass, which country's laws do you think we've been talking about? What a dipshit.

The Founding Father's have been over done? What the hell does that mean? I might not have Brian's scope, but I haven't seen any "founding father arguements" in context of this discussion.

But, this is typical of people disconnected from reality. Immediately after:

And, although there are examples of people creating things for free, I'd argue that the profit motive is behind a majority of IP creation; remember it doesn't have to be some giant company profiting from IP, it's also small developers like me (and I assume like you) that would like to provide for their families doing what they know best

Suddenly, Brian likes capitalism again because it's benefiting him. I think a lot of neo-libs are confused about what they should believe. Thier college proffessors teach them to hate their country, their parents, and themselves for a plethora of reasons, but then faced with the reality of being an adult in the real world, they are torn by the need to drink coffee at Starbucks and own high end computer systems.

What do I do?

2005-07-25T21:17:00.000-05:00

Apparently, I'm a theif.

I tried to argue it, but in the face of over-whelming logic, I have to admit the truth. Now, it's time to make a choice.

I could stop. I could pull everything down and go some other direction. There seem to be some other game platforms out there that you can buy and develop.

I could continue as I have, accepting that what I'm doing is morally wrong and knowing that I'm actively working against an ideal I personally hold as sacrosanct (Capitalism).

I was seriously torn for about 5 seconds. That's a long time for me, as I usually know immediately what the right course of action is. But what surprised me most about the answer is that it's the wrong answer.

I'm going to keep going. When EA starts cracking down on people (perhaps even me, since I've made myself a plenty big target), then I'll stop. Until then, I've just got too much invested. Oh yeah, and I want to. I love this game. I love creating this world, and I have no intention of giving it up now.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Oops! Wait a second. I'm not charging any money for what I provide! God, how dumb I am. I got so caught up in arguing a point, I allowed Brian to lead me astray.

That guy is really tricky, so you have to watch him. No, really...he's just passionate, and I got caught up in it.

So, back to where I was before. Not making any money, putting in ass loads of my time and money, and getting damn little thanks for it!

Legend of the Dragoon

2005-07-25T00:40:00.000-05:00

Does anyone know how the game ends? What happens to Dart? Is Rose good or evil?

World Crafting 102 - Refurbishing Existing Worlds

2005-07-23T21:12:00.000-05:00

Oh my god this is hard. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. This is the longest time I've ever spent on any project, concurrently or total.

I spent the last two days kind of "flipping out on my wife" because she gave me an honest critique of my server. She said, "Don't be mad, but if I was a "real" player on our server, I'd have quit a long time ago."

Her biggest complaint was the fact that I forced all starting skills to 0.1, which is the lowest you can rate short of 0.0. What's worse, there's practically nothing you can do with that much skill. So unless there's a "free skill award" for failing to perform a skill, you'll never advance to the point where you can do anything useful. Even if there is a skill award for failure at low levels, it's a long time to spend not getting any other reward than a small skill gain.

The fact is, we're in beta. I knew before I did anything on the server at all, I'd eventually have to re-adjust the skill requirements for crafting, combat, etc. Little did I know when I started working on my server, just how many more important and fundamental systems required re-writing and tuning up.

Urilia used to be the DarkenWood scripts. DarkenWood was originally a Sanctuary clone. For those who don't know, Sanctuary has what many would call "a totally custom script set". Mithril took the POL095 distrobution scripts and completely re-wrote or wrote from scratch his own script set. What's more, he exported many core functions from the POL Core and re-wrote those functions.

What does all of this mean? First, it means I was able to get a serious jump start on creating my server. I knew for a long time that I'd have to export some core functions to do what I wanted to do. Mithril had already done what I needed.

It also meant that I have a third-hand set of scripts. Mithril was brilliant, and really knows what he's doing when it comes to programming, but the guy makes some really HORRIBLE deicisions when it comes to game design and implementation.

Everything in this script set was designed to push the Player Character's skills as high as possible, as quickly as possible. In combat, the scripts would award skill gain before it even calculated whether you had a chance to hit or not. Your character started with 50K gold and was permitted to "buy training" in any number of skills from NPC vendors. Characters were maxing out skills in under a week.

The server was cut up into classes (a DarkenWood feature, I think). All classes could perform the skills of any other class, at almost the same level of ability. Non-crafting classes were able to create their own Master Crafted items.

Players Characters could hire "henchmen". Henchmen are AI NPCs that follow the main character around and can heal the Player Character and his friends, carry extra loot for them, and fight for them using any of the weapons and armor available on the server.

Player Characters could earn gold by selling raw resources, crafted items, and adventure loot to NPC vendors. NPC monsters dropped a lot of "loot". Gold could also be earned by asking NPC vendors for a "job". A job consisted of standing still while your character auto-looped a crafting skill. None of your own material or tools were used, everything was provided by the NPC vendor. When the "job" was completed, the vendor would pay more gold. The higher a Player Character's skill, the more gold they earned for the job.

Some people might be surprised to hear this was a strictly PvP- server. PvP was only allowed under "role-played" circumstances...whatever that means. The incredible skill gain was supposed to help Players role-play their characters better. How you can role-play a powerful character without actually experiencing anything to gain your power is beyond me. At one point, I was told that the reason for the skill gain was so "Player Characters don't have to power game to get to the top". Apparently, doing things that gain skill is "bad".

The out of control influx of gold into the game created MUD-flation much as it does on other servers. Players were selling incredible spells and powerful magic weaponry on their vendors for very little gold. This made the admin mad on a regular basis, but I couldn't understand his anger when he had control of everything.

Tinker characters could make "magic jewelry". What do you expect to happen?

The henchmen made sure that adventurer players never had to mix with other players. They could not only pay for training for themselves, but they could set their henchmen to train for days straight on "training dummies" at no cost. This meant that even though you were restricted to 2 henchmen following you at a time, you could walk into almost any dungeon and wipe everything out "by yourself". As a Game Master for a short time on that server, I always saw groups of 3 fighting in dungeons; the player and his henchmen.

How do these things encourage role-play again?

That only scratches the surface, unfortunately. I've spent about 9 months killing myself to re-write major systems, create new systems, and tweak things that work but don't quite work the way they should. In the last couple of months, we decided we needed play-testers to come on and help us figure out what needed tweaking most, first. It's been good for us, players find broken stuff like no programmer can.

The negative side of things is, players also expect things that might not be reasonable, and they have no idea what doing the work is actually like. It's not their fault, and everything they complain about is my fault. That doesn't change anything. It's a thankless, brutal job. But it's still an awesome job to have. Little by little, we're creating our own little world. It's going to work the way I've always wanted a world to work. Someday.

Why Damion and Brian can kiss my ass.

2005-07-19T01:08:00.000-05:00

Recently, I commented on a post by Damion Schubert regarding White Wolf's misguided attempt to punish their customers. The result was a scathing replay by Brian Green.

I post the pertinent part of the article here, because I'm going to take Brian apart piece by piece. I don't think the ommission of the first 3 paragraphs changes the context of what Brian has to say, but for the full article and comments, follow this link: http://www.zenofdesign.com/?p=379#comments .

As for freeshards, let’s not fool anyone here. You’re not curing multiple sclerosis (we can always use more volunteers), you’re not feeding third-world children, you’re setting yourself up as god in your own little playground. Dave Rickey said long ago that online RPG developers have to have a bit of ego in order to get into these things; we’re setting ourselves up as gods of these worlds, in effect, and that takes at least some ego. The difference is that some of us create our worlds legitimately (or, hey, buy them from other companies), and some of us steal from others and claim to be doing things “right” this time.

Of course, we know from history how doing things “right” goes. Yep, you get all the corruption, favoritism, and mismanagement (and more!) without any guarantee that your account is going to be maintained. Once you set yourself up as god and then see what a pain in the ass it is to deal with other people that sure they could do a better job than your overworked ass, you’ll start feeling a kinship with Milo. Of course, that $10/month (which is really $15/month for almost every game these days) keeps the professionals a bit more honest. I’m a lot less likely to “help my friends” when it’s my income on the line.

And don’t pretend you’re anything other than the large company’s puppet. They can close you down at any time they want. It’s a simple thing with the current laws, it barely even takes a lawyer anymore. But, the freeshards serve a useful purpose so they keep them around. Consider this: it only takes one moderate length CS call to wipe out the profit the company would make from a player. Raph once said it would have been more cost-effective to ban people that needed CS help than it would be to help them in many cases. Guess what kind of people often leave the game and play on freeshards! And you don’t even have the subscription income to offset the costs of dealing with them.

But, let’s talk turkey now. Do you want to change things? Do you really want to stick it to the man? Then take all that self-righteous energy and work on your own damn game. Stop pretending you’re doing anything else than stealing (even if it is stealing from a large company, it’s still stealing). Go out there and find out what it’s like to really have to make one of these things. Set up whatever little utopia you want. Make a real game to compete with the games you hate instead of taking the lazy road to success.

I couldn’t be more serious about this point, either. Making your own game is the best way to stick it to the larger companies. The more people we have working on new games and coming up with new things, the more options players will have. Of course, the more likely outcome is that the project will collapse in on itself because making a game like this is a lot harder than you think. It takes more than downloading someone else’s work a few times, copying and pasting in a few scripts, then setting the game up on your cable connection.

Some things to think about.

Comment by Brian 'Psychochild' Green — 7/17/2005 @ 4:47 am

Brian, buddy... I never said anything about curing disease, laying on hands, or raising the dead. Let's try to maintain the slightest perspective on the matter.

I'll try to take your points roughly in order.

We pay for the client. Everyone I know does. If other people pirate it, there's nothing I can do about that except to discourage them verbally. We do not steal code from anyone. Our emulator is a custom data base manager written by a disgruntled player. The graphics, animations, sounds, etc are all on the client, which my players already bought, so we didn't steal a dime. The fact that the players are using the product in a way that you didn't forsee, does not mean it's stealing.

I'm definately not out to stick anything to "the man". I want the man to make money, and the people who work for the man to make money, and the places those people frequent to make money. I'm a capitalist. Go capitalism! Yay!

Apparently, OSI/Origins has done very well for themselves NOT catering to the consumers who play on the free shards. We are capitalizing on that, but only in terms of status. Is that what pisses you off the most? Not only are you unable to win back those dollars, but we aren't even getting the dollars you don't get? Wow, what a "tear it all down" attitude.

You developers are so blind to your own collosal failures, Brian. Your comments regarding Raph Koster's quote are disheartening. Yes, players who got ROTTEN CUSTOMER SERVICE (is that what C.S. stands for?) come to free shards. So what? I wasn't getting paid for the work I'm doing anyway, thus the word FREE!

Players who tried Customer Service in your business model were sick of the crap they got from the rotten players who pay to play BECAUSE it gives them the "right" to do whatever they want. You won't enforce behaviors on your servers, so you drive the people who would have logged in for years away and keep the punk kids who bounce from game to game, looking for the next thrill that puts them at the center of the "content". Christ man, can't you see the developers are their own worst enemies? When you have a "nightmare problem", that should be an immediate red flag that YOU, the company, are not doing something right; you haven't explained the new feature well enough, you didn't make it intuitive enough, you came up with a bad idea, players don't like doing that in a game.

I know about the favoritism and corruption. I've been on enough servers to see it happen. The difference here? I am directly involved in everything. I won't walk away from my work and let someone else flub it up. Yes, that means I've created a benificent dictatorship and when I'm gone, everything will go to hell. So what.

As for working on my own damn game, that's what I'm doing. If you had actually read my posts on MUD-Dev, you'd know that I see things from a radically different perspective. What's funny is, the perspective is yours, or people like you. I took what I thought to be good ideas, then read everything I could find on sites like yours, Raph's, Damion's, hell... look at my list on this blog. I honed and refined and threw away parts of everything I thought I knew. Yeah, I have the dream of "doing it right", but I'm not a programmer. I'm not some kid with too much time and not enough parental supervision.

I'm just a dumb, knuckle-dragging breeder who lives in a red, fly-over state; eeking out what meager existance is available to someone of my low breeding and stature. I have a family of 5 and a full time job that requires me to travel. I spend what little spare time I have working on this game to create solutions even the best developers in my list can't seem to figure out.

I don't have the time, skills, or wherewithal to create my own game from scratch. However, I do have time to slowly customize this existing game. It's not even about building a game, it's about proving there are answers to these problems. It's about proving that players on a virtual world can create a community with religions, working economies, and political structures. For me, this is my chance to move beyond the group of 8 players I've been running and playing with for 17 years. This is my chance to play with hundreds of players at once, to try all the large-scale ideas I've had pinging around in my head since 2001, when I sat down on a work-break and just started scribbling notes for an idea that just clicked into place.

Making a good game is not that hard, Brian. You just have to be willing to do what has to be done. You can't let yourself become a victim of inertia. And you probably can't be tethered to someone else's idea of a "safe idea" for a game.

Good luck dude.

Urilia

2005-07-10T01:40:00.000-05:00

Urilia is a small world floating in the etheral mists of the Internet. This world is currently under construction, please observe all posted work zone speed limits.

I started playing Ultima Online in 1999, after my wife had been turned on to this "cool online game that's just like Dungeons & Dragons" by a friend at work. I was appalled, at first; internet games were a pale bastardization of the "pure" form of role-playing that my friends and I enjoyed.

The first time I allowed my wife to convince me to try the game out, I loved and hated it at the same time. This thing was graphically just like you'd imagine the towns and characters in AD&D. The number crunching and die rolling seemed to be fairly handled by this invisible Dungeon Master called "the server". Still, the emulator the shard ran on was so unstable, there were times I could count 20 seconds between taking a step with my character.

See, this Ultima Online shard was running on a free server. If you paid the money for the installation CD, you could put the standard client on your hard drive. Go make a few file changes and instead of paying $10.00 U.S. a month to play on the corporate servers, you paid only your ISP fees to connect and play on a free server.

Apparently, some internet geek with too much time and brains on his hands got sick of dealing with jerk players on the pay-for-play servers and reverse engineered the code in order to create his own server-emulator. Within 6 months, we had moved on to a more stable emulator running a similar set of scripts as our first server and were hooking back up with old friends on the new server, Mytharria.

3 months later, my wife and I were making names for ourselves on Mytharria. She was friendly and fun and would help anyone at any time. She went out of her way to welcome new players and help show them "the ropes". We were careful to maintain the context of the game and encourage others to stay in character and make our virtual world a better place for all. I was known for killing player characters who were rule breakers. At the time, I caught flak from the staff because most of the people I was killing were flagged PvP-, but the fact that they were breaking the rules often let me slide by. I was also the kind of guy who would open a gate to a remote part of the map, run through, let my persuer come through after me, kill them and then leave their ghost trapped on the remote island. It was cool to be helpful to Game Masters. They often gave you Runes to locations that were only accessible to a GM, but then they'd forget to ask for them back:-)

Mytharria was a pretty cool server run by a guy who went by the Internet chat handle, DreamWeaver. Mytharria ran on the POL (Pen-Ultima Online) emulator and E-script scripting language. The creator of this most stable and customizable of server emulators was Eric Swanson. Eric was a Canadian who had moved to St. Louis with his wife. His day job was a programming gig for a place that did slide-card readers.

Eric was going through an ugly divorce with his wife when we first heard of him, and later started hanging out with our group of Pen & Paper gaming buddies for a couple years. Eric went on to bigger and better things, no doubt, and has since handed over maintenance and developement to a group of guys.

Anyway, my wife, Stacey, was asked to become a GM for Mytharria. At the time, DreamWeaver was busy making preparations for a huge wedding to his new fiance. Many of his Game Masters had stopped logging in (people just get busy with real life). By default, Stacey became the only GM to log any real time in-game. At that time, Mytharria sported an active account base of 300 players, with a peak player count of 21 players on big nights.

Stacey was the Lone GM for about 3 months before she convinced the 1 or 2 guys who did occasionally log in to make me a Game Master as well. Inside the next month, we brought the peak online player count to 50+ on an almost nightly basis.

In the months before I came on board, Stacey and I found we made the perfect GM couple. Every idea I proposed, she would hone and vice-versa. We'd be breathless with excitement building idea upon idea and then jumping on-line to make things happen in-game. We both learned a great deal about what it meant to be a Game Master and what players expect from you and from other players in that time.

As with all good things, those times had to end. DreamWeaver's old Head Game Master (Internet handle of Razi) dropped by after an 8 month absence and saw this incredibly vibrant world. He immediately contacted DreamWeaver and convinced him to bring on 5 other "old buddies". Suddenly, we found that Razi was "back in charge" with a brand new group of friends to run the server AND he had some new rules for how things would be done moving forward. I think I lasted 15 minutes in the IRC meeting that morning before Stacey told Razi and DreamWeaver they could "F" themselves. I quit about 5 minutes after that.

We had put so much of ourselves and our lives into that little world, we felt totally betrayed by DreamWeaver. The "new rules" included telling us we could no longer do anything we'd been doing before without prior approval from Razi. Where were we going to go, and what were we going to do?

It was probably 6 months of major Mytharria withdrawl before I realized I'd never be happy playing on anyone else's server. I convinced one of my best friends (Eldred) to buy a server class machine and host some bandwidth.

Sounds easy, I know. Actually, I'd been formulating some of the ideas I thought would make a good server for many months and convinced Eldred and Stacey that we could do the whole thing. We could put up a server to end all servers.

As are many people who dive into something unprepared, I was totally lacking in the requisite skills to put together my own, on-line world. You'd think that a vision of brilliance would be enough. It's not.

I poured on all my charm and personality in an attempt to put together a staff of scripters. It was actually easy to get scripters to come and help, but it was impossible to get them to script anything I wanted scripted. It ended badly time after time and I burned a lot of bridges by firing scripter after scripter.

Finally, I taught myself VB6 and came back to scripting. Now, I'm able to do about 70% of what I need done on a pretty regular basis. I badgered Eldred until he learned some scripting and now he's doing it with us. I also got REAL lucky when an old gaming buddy contacted me from out of state and it turned out he was a scripter, too.

Death

2005-07-02T23:50:00.000-05:00

Death and knockouts. Don't know why I'm having such a very hard time getting it right, but sure enough, it doesn't want to come together.

Official POL Website

2005-06-22T20:02:00.000-05:00

Is it just me, or has the POL site and forums been down for days now? What's up with that?

Urilia is open for beta

2005-06-21T19:51:00.000-05:00

Urilia is open for beta. A lot has happened in a short time and we decided this is the best way to do things.

There will be no character wipes.

Go to the main website for an account.

Quick Announcement

2005-06-19T02:02:00.000-05:00

Urilia is my free UO shard that's currently running 24/7 and has been for 3 years. I have not opened her to the public yet. There are still just a very few tweaks to make so it won't be too unplayable.

In the interim, I am inviting anyone interested to go ahead and make up a character and try it out. The website is the best place for information, and the discussion boards are up and running. New accounts are explained on the website homepage.

I'll post more on this as soon as I can devote the time to say something useful.

Some of these guys are just a-holes.

2005-06-07T21:58:00.000-05:00

From: "John Buehler" Add to Address Book
To: "Discussion of MUD system design, development, and implementation"
Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] Blog about GDC implies changes to MMORPG population
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 10:43:14 -0400

Jaycen Rigger writes:
> John Buehler wrote:

>> I'll certainly agree with the latter point. Stuff hangs around.
>> I'm actually okay with degradation, wear, etc. I'm averse to
>> using degradation as a mechanism to handle the unreasonable pace
>> of introduction of items in current games. It takes us back to
>> the factory model. Monsters are factories. Crafters are
>> factories. It's American consumerism. Crank 'em out, throw 'em
>> away, make some more. As has been stated, without degradation,
>> the crafters would have nothing to do. That's a sign of a
>> dangerous design mindset as far as I'm concerned.

>> Your first point (hoarding) is a philosophical issue for me
>> because it is a statement that underscores how people don't
>> resist selfish temptations. Hoarding in a game is like sex and
>> violence in movies. I don't like hoarding in games because it
>> feeds a simpleminded desire in players, just as sex and violence
>> feed simpleminded desires in moviegoers. I'm always looking for
>> some higher-order stimulus for players, to draw them into
>> entertainment that they will find more enjoyable than the
>> simpleminded stuff. I believe that the online communities that
>> result from higher-order stimuli will be better-behaved than
>> those that result from low-order stimuli.

>> I don't contest that people like to hoard items. I wouldn't
>> contest that people like sex, or that they are fascinated by
>> violence. I'd contest the notion that a game must cater to those
>> impulses, and I'd argue that there are forms of entertainment
>> that transcend such simple impulses. Such as being a part of
>> empire-building. Falling in love. Helping others. Less selfish
>> stuff. (I said it was philosophical)

> So....back to some of the things I've suggested in the past. Most
> of us agree that people like to accumulate THINGS. We don't want
> to be punitive in our attempt to remove THINGS from the game, yet
> we need to pace the rate of new THINGS entering the game.

> Why don't we approach it from the perspective of creating
> something that encourages players to get rid of THINGS on their
> own? Taxation was one avenue I suggested. I want to pay my taxes
> (removing GOLDRESOURCE) because I receive some percieved service
> for doing so. In order to pay my taxes, I must accumulate wealth
> by selling off my extra or less desirable THINGS (removing
> THINGRESOURCE).

You're talking about the current Source and Sink model for dealing
with game resources. Sources introduce stuff to the game and sinks
take them out. I believe that everything you've described has been
tried or is in use in current games. Incentives to pursue sinks are
always part of gameplay. NPCs that provide services that no PC can.
Imperfect repairs to objects, eventually turning them to unwanted
junk. Consumables that players actually want to buy (possession
customizations are a classic here). And so on.

> In this case, the player doesn't have to participate in the
> system. Certainly, by killing monsters he could possibly earn
> enough income to pay his taxes. It's also likely the player will
> want to have extra money to buy other consumables (food for
> example, if your characters must eat like mine do to maintain
> their regen rates).

Note that roleplayers are the only ones who get a kick out of eating
virtual food and paying virtual taxes. The other 99% of the
population prefers to actually experience some stimulus that
entertains them. But we all have our personal pipedreams, I
suppose.

To be more clear about what I was getting at, I'm looking for the
following:

1. Commercial and military experiences are two distinct types of
entertainment.

2. Those interested in business should have a fully-developed
system of commerce in which to participate. Such a system is
about making money and having stuff.

2. Those interested in warfare should have a fully-developed
system of fighting in which to participate. Such a system is
about tactic

Qur'an Abuse

2005-06-04T13:34:00.000-05:00

This term has been introduced into the lexicon of common parlance for journalists and commentators. The term is rediculous and insulting to all peoples.

When the police come to your home on a call of Qur'an Abuse, do they take the Qur'an and place it with another family until the alleged abuse can be confirmed? Or is Qur'an Abuse more like Spouse Abuse? If the police get called for Qur'an Abuse, do either you or your Qur'an have to go to jail for the night?

I guess I'm just confused as to where the Qur'an fits into the family picture for the average American. I am not a Muslim, so perhaps I don't have the correct perspective. I am not a Christian, either, but it occurs to me that defacing Christian books, artifacts, and symbols is typically considered art (crosses in jars of urine, celebrities ripping up pictures of Pope John Paul II on nation television.)

Is that hypocrisy? It seems like it to me, as a neutral observer.

Why do so many Americans hate America?

2005-05-29T01:54:00.000-05:00

Even in the gaming industry you see this vitriolic hatred. As I read posts by bloggers who publish "gaming industry blogs", I'm struck by the number who inject their political views into those posts.

The people who comment to blogger posts aren't doing any better. The majority seem to have the exact same feelings against America.

I've characterized this anti-Americanism as socialist propaganda, which is what it is in nearly every case. I just went through several blogs that are devoted solely to bashing the U.S., especially the Bush Administration and the War in Iraq.

I keep thinking that I just don't understand the mentality, the blind devotion to the anti-American cause, but I understand it perfectly. It doesn't matter what the truth is. It doesn't matter what's right or wrong. These people have an agenda and they're going to push it no matter what anyone else does or says.

Personally, I think we're well to the point where it's time for an up-rising. The "average American" has to stand up for his rights against the socialists who want to destroy what little we have left. It's been an on going process of cultural transformation for the last 80 years (maybe more) that has brought our country to its knees societally.

Patriotic Americans must refuse to be intimidated by claims of "elitism" or "arrogance". Americans are proud of what they have, just as everyone else is. We aren't bad people just because we live well.

When you hear someone regurgitating the propaganda and rhetoric they heard on the Nightly News or in their Sociology class, stand up and set them straight. Ask them some questions about why they think what they think. Get them talking. They will immediately expose themselves for what they are. Many can't even mount a thoughtful defense of their "beliefs". Most don't even know what they believe except "America is bad" and "George Bush stole the election".

Folks, President Bush has some bad policies. His idea of how our border with Mexico should function is destructive to our country. That doesn't mean he's out to get the entire country, or that he's trying to make "fat cat buddies" rich. Personally, I think it's a mis-guided attempt at what he sees as "creating opportunities".

Regardless, the anti-American movement gains momentum because they will always find people who are disgruntled with something. They take the anger and redirect it to fit their ends. That doesn't make their cause, or the anger valid.

FPS masquerading as RPG

2005-05-27T00:03:00.000-05:00

Writing the following response to a blog post on Scott Jennings' site, I came to feel that this is the most cohesive and coherent statement I've probably ever put together regarding on-line worlds. I think it is a holistic observation.

I highly recommend reading the entire post and especially Brian Green's comments.

What follows is my response to Brian's response to Scott's post. I think it fits in with the theme of this blog regardless of the original context:

Brian Green nails it perfectly. Most of the problems and complaining I'm hearing from everyone else is about some particular sub-problem of the core issues.

Most of the on-line MMORPGs seem only barely to be related to RPGs and more akin to MMOFPSs. The structure of the game has changed to more accurately fit the model expected by kids with no real socialization skills (they don't have them because once they find the on-line world they only socialize there where socialization is of the "removed and anonymous" sort). Those kids start out playing FPS's and migrate to the on-line communities looking for "something more". When they find out the game doesn't revolve around them they complain (not having developed the socialization skills required to walk into a role-play situation and not expect it to revolve around "me".)

In the "old days", they were pushed into meeting other players and communicating in more meaningful (less me-centric) ways. This naturally caused some friction that I'm afraid many developers mistook for "we'll lose money". They mistakenly tried to fix the problem through accomodating the path of least resistance and in so doing have built in a shallowness to their games that translates to shallow player relationships and shallow players.

Working on inter-personal systems as solutions to the core problems is hard. It's really hard, and getting it wrong can be a death-knell that leaves a lot of people with very hurt feelings. I'm guessing this is why many developers avoid it altogether. Perhaps they were burned before.

This doesn't mean that it isn't the answer, though. Many of you agree (if I read your comments correctly), but I don't see anyone really championing the cause. Even mentioning it seems to incurr ire in some forums.

Has the industry given up trying to create communities and simply abandoned the concept in favor of creating MMFPS?

And my response...

2005-05-26T01:07:00.000-05:00

If you bother to drop by this dark corner of the internet, I appologize for what you've had to put up with for the last few days.

I promise I'll get back to actual "game-speak" after this post. Okay, from time to time I'll slip in some tid-bits of political ranting, but this is the last from the Kearns vs. Rigger bout.

Barry,

You aren't particularly interested in addressing anything I had to say in regards to taking responsiblity for not communicating my meaning to you.

You don't want to go point-by-point because your arguements fail at that level. If you can't mount an argument based on a mountain of emotional evidence, you aren't interested in talking at all.

Admittedly, I probably butchered some of your lengthy words, but that was purely out of carelessness and had nothing to do with malicious intent. Despite that fact, my negligence did nothing to detract from your meaning. You couldn't be concise if your life depended on it.

Your consent is not needed for me to post your words, publicly. If you don't want your words posted publicly, then don't say them. When I speak, I assume my words might come back to haunt me, that's why I never say anything I don't expressly mean.

I'm thrilled you (or your twitty friend, "Jeff") chose to post links to the MUD-Dev thread in its entirety (on a blog that has fewer comments than even mine does). It only helps to build my case and add validity to my remarks.

Regarding your leftist propaganda - your assertion that "everyone does it" is untrue and rediculous as a logical premise for an arguement.

I don't really care if you respond to me or not. If you do, I'll try to put things into perspective for you, but since you aren't interested in a logical view-point I don't know what good it will do. Ah, but that's how I am. I'm the kind of guy who will rail against the darkness even when I'm the only one doing it.

Thanks,

Jaycen

P.S. If you're so bent out of shape by what you've read in my e-mails and my blogs, you can start your own blog (rather than referencing other people's) and say anything you like. Heck, I'd be thrilled to have a hate site devoted to me. Then I could tell my family and friends "I've finally made it!"

Just when you thought it wouldn't get any worse...

2005-05-26T00:38:00.000-05:00

Welp, apparently I was a little slack in copy/pasting Barry's remarks. That is completely and likely possible. It certainly wasn't "creative editing", any less than it was "fat-fingering".

I did read the entire post, and I still can't understand portions of it. I suppose the arguement that "other kids are jumping off of bridges" suffices for an explanation of how someone includes irrational bits of propagandism in their posts as if they were logical arguements. If you say so.

Anyway, since I certainly wouldn't want Bar-Bar to feel like I was marginalizing his words, I've posted them in their entirety.

If you read the whole thing, you deserve a cookie. In fact, just go eat it now.

More than anything, I want to thank Barry for referencing some of my most coherent thoughts on the entire subject. That which he criticizes me most vehemently for, I consider right on target.

And so it goes...

> Hah.
>
> What I find most unbelievable about your reply is that you don't even
bother to respond to most of what I had to
> say to you.

I'm not terribly interested in participating in a point-by-point
addressing
of every single little thing that you write. My time has more value
than
that, and the resulting size of the responses and counter responses
would
grow explosively. Much of it isn't comment-worthy, and I'm not going
to
descend to the level of addressing childish outbursts like "shit-eating
cock-sucker" and "Fuck you, Barry".

If you want to communicate like an adult instead of an apoplectic
teenager,
I'd be willing to speak to a larger percentage of what you write. In
general, I'm not interested in addressing personal invective and
bile-spewing... it's counter-productive. In the interests of space and
time, I chose a few things to respond to which I could address
productively,
and provided the needed context that you had chosen to chop away in
your
public blog posting.

> I have no idea what you mean by "creative edits".

Chopping the middle out of one of my sentences with no indication
whatsoever
that you had done so, leaving a result that is incomprehensible is a
start.
Since anyone bothering to read that post didn't have the underlying
context
to verify my writing, that gives the impression that I actually wrote
that.
I'm not that stupid, but you made it appear (through your creative
editing)
that I was.

Likewise with the select context-free snippets of my words that you
chose to
use for your posting. Absent the underlying context, these can create
impressions about me that simply aren't accurate. You start off
talking
about my "appology" (sic) entirely out of context... no one else
reading
that would know the extent of what I said and the qualifiers that I
provided. There's a distinct possibility that someone else could look
at
that and assume that I had offered an unqualified "I'm wrong, you were
right" type of apology, when I clearly didn't.

That's why it's generally considered very poor form to post snippets of
someone else's email in a public manner without their consent... it's
generally considered worse than posting the whole thing, where context
is
(at least)preserved. You edited out the portion where I mentioned that
I
was offering you the opportunity to respond person-to-person in a
non-public
format first... leaving that in there might have made you look bad,
though.
More strategic to creatively edit that out before posting, eh? That
way, it
doesn't look like an attempt on my part at private communication that
you
decided to take public without consent.

Now, it certainly helps you look better (and more the victim, and make
me
more out as the bad guy) if you choose to creatively edit it to look as
much
in your favor as possible. I can understand why someone might choose
to do
that... doesn't mean I have to like it.

Likewise with posting that you can't see why I would take it
personally,
when no one reading your post would have the actual context to see
why...
and by extension, see why my reaction was reasonable. Leaving out the
context allows you to paint me as the unreasonable one in the
transaction...
again, by the creative and selective use of editing. I provided the
full
context for the "taking it personally" aspect in my response so that
anyone
reading would be able to see for themselves.

> And you continue to blather on about things that make no sense
what-so-ever.
>
> You wonder why I accuse you of being a rank socialist? Because these
tactics are typical of someone who uses
> propaganda to get their point across.
>
> 1. Avoid the real issue, and only speak to that which you can take
out of
context or blow out of proportion.
>
> 2. Lie outright, and accuse those with whom you disagree of the
things
for which you, yourself, are guilty.

I'd recommend studying a bit more history and social science.
Propaganda,
rhetorical devices and hypocrisy are an expected part of the landscape
in
almost *every* political environment... seeing them is no more an
indication
that someone is socialist than saying that they breathe, eat food, and
sleep
at night. Socialist do those things too... but it's a logical fallacy
to
then assume that everyone who breathes, eats food and sleeps at night
must
therefore be a socialist. Imagining the behaviors when they aren't
present
is even less evidence.

By your two-point definition above, someone would be forced to conclude
that
you must be a rank socialist, since you appear to be doing precisely
what
you accuse me of. How utterly self-referential.

> You completely ignore large sections of my post and pretend like I
only
answered in a negative context. You
> also intentionally ignore the meaning of my words and insert or
construct
your own meaning to suit your own
> agenda.

The majority of what I wrote is not in response to "negative context".
The
entire first half speaks to an entirely neutral point where you are
expressing (what I took as) a genuine lack of understanding. That's
hardly
a negative context... you're simply expressing that you don't
understand how
I came to my conclusion.

Parenthetical observations aside, the last half is also geared towards
addressing things that are not primarily "negative context". I spoke
to the
fundamental aspect of fallibility as a response to the
trivial-but-not-negative assertion that you can determine what other
people
really mean because you have a mind.

I also addressed why people might not see your statement of "I don't
know
how to approach this in a way that you'll understand" as "totally took
the
responsibility for my miscommunication", as you characterized it.
Again,
the premise I chose to address was not a "negative context" one. It
was a
neutral assertion, and I offered a different perspective.

You are again assuming in the paragraph I mention above that you know
my
intentions. IMO, you've been an abject failure at accurately
determining
them so far, and you've done no better in this instance. You're likely
less
qualified than a random stranger to determine my intentions... random
guessing would have given you a better record than you've amassed so
far.
Your deductive process may therefore actually have NEGATIVE utility.

> I think the dumbest part of your post is where you deride my blog as
something of a place of "non-interest"
> whereas you continue to respond as though your reputation on it meant
something.

I would generally prefer to clarify matters if someone was making
misrepresentations about me in a cocktail-party setting where five
other
people heard, and likewise in a setting where someone was saying
similar
things over a public-address system at a football stadium.

I can think (rightly) that one environment is less public than the
other,
but it doesn't change the basic transaction. I prefer that people have
the
truth available to them, and they can judge for themselves rather than
rely
only on the slander. That's why I was interested in providing (some of
the)
accurate context that you had left out.

> You are a walking contradiction.

Your failure to understand my underlying motivations does not imply a
lack
of coherence or consistency on my part. I doubt that you could come up
with
more than a single alleged "contradiction" of mine that doesn't
disappear
once the context is provided to someone who is actually rational, let
alone
show that contradiction is somehow my default state. You're free to
imagine
whatever you like... that doesn't make your imagination into reality
(Thank
God).

> And you wonder why I think you are motivated by a liberal (read
leftist)
agenda?

At this point, I've stopped wondering much of anything about you. I've
pretty-much given up on my original premise that you might be rational.
It
would probably be more productive to attempt to reason with a Markov
chain
generator at this point.

> You're fun. Thanks for all the entertainment. Jaycen

I can't control (nor would I want to) what amuses you.

I've responded to everything you wrote in this email. As you can see,
it
increases the size radically if I provide enough context and a full
answer
to each point you think up.

A requirement of my extending such a courtesy to you again, would
likely
hinge on your ability to consistently interact like a rational adult,
rather
than acting like a petulant, foul-mouthed schoolkid who's still
seething
that someone had the sheer audacity to direct a bit of sarcasm towards
them
in a public forum... when they were the one slinging the invective in
the
first place.

If you can act like a grown-up, we can continue corresponding. If not,
good
luck with that whole poor-impulse-control thing. I've probably wasted
large
chunks of two different lunch hours now in treating you like you might
be
rational, and I'm not keen on wasting any more if you can't control
your
emoting.

And in case you were wondering, there's other blog traffic about the
MUD-Dev
thread in question, with an archive of the thread in question provided
to
any non-subscribers, showing the real set of transactions to the world.
The
easiest way to find that particular blog entry is to Google the
combination
of the words Jaycen, Rigger, and "idiot".

HTH. HAND.

Barry Kearns

FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE

2005-05-22T22:18:00.000-05:00

Hi back, Barry,

While I wasn't looking for an appology, and usually don't accept them (since it does nothing to "undo" what's already been done, and if it wasn't meant originally, why'd you say it?), it's appropriate of you to take this particular trek off the general discussion forum of MUD-Dev.

That being said, I find it more than a bit ironic that you've posted the observation "How will someone know he's being an asshole, if no one tells him he's being an asshole?" on your blog, as well as a venting screed about me. To me, the obvious take-away from the whole MUD-DEV affair is that you were, in fact, the one who started being an asshole, and I (as well >as a few others) told you so.

Excellent, man. I can't tell you how pleased I am that you are trying to be "part of the solution." So many people let what they see as "unacceptable behavior" and simply watch it happen, instead of standing up to the perpetrator and saying something to them. I'm willing to do it, and I appreciate it when someone else reminds me of the social debt I owe to others.

My take on the transaction is this: When I offered the my first and second replies to your post, they were considered, calm, and rational... and not at all personal. Please re-read them if you're unsure. In your reply to the second one I offered, on the other hand, you decided to get extremely personal, condescending and insultingly portrayed me as unable to comprehend arguments and see distinctions.

This part is a real shame. I really and honestly and unabashedly didn't think that I was communicating my thoughts to you in a way that was meaningful. The more I tried to clarify my position, the more out of context you seemed to take me.

While I could have said, "You sucking twit, you can't understand the most basic concepts", I find that rude and intrinsicly in error. I was the communicator. The oneous is on me to communicate in a way that is clear and leaves no room for misunderstanding. I thought I was admitting my own failings, but again, obviously I wasn't communicating well again since you really took me at 180 degrees of my intended meaning.

You portrayed players as hopeless addicts who'll put up with anything to get their "fix", and GMs/Admins as lacking the courage to discuss "judgement".

Here's yet another misunderstanding. I thought it was clear that in the context of our previous discussion "players" meant "my kind of player", or "my personality type" and that I was putting myself into the same category. I think that if I include myself in the same group I'm describing, I'm well within my rights to deride myself and my bretheren, just a little bit. The "fix" I was talking about was a "social need for human interaction". I also thought that was clear from my original posts and the way the conversation was moving. Apparently, it was not.

In short, you were being an asshole. I responded based on being thoroughly insulted... and should have known better than to do so.

What I don't understand is how you felt directly insulted. To this point (in this particular e-mail and to the point of the discussion we've covered) I don't think I applied any of my characterizations directly to you. I'm usually very clear when I'm trying to insult someone. My blog post is a great example of when I'm deliberately trying to insult someone. Compared to that, I might have called your logic into question, but if you can't stand to that kind of criticism on an e-mail forum like this, you should find another forum. Maybe one that focuses on kitty's and care-bears.

I'll offer some unsolicited advice. Feel free to take it or leave it, but please know that it's offered in the spirit of trying to improve communications. I've had similar advice offered to me when I was on that end of the incident, and I think it has helped over the years.

Awesome, I'm all ears. Maybe afterward, I can offer some to you in return.

In my experience, there are certain lines that simply shouldn't get crossed

I totally agree.

... and you crossed a bunch of them. IMO, you don't insult someone by characterizing their argument as a "vacuum of developmental pontification" unless you're asking for a fight.

Right! I love being controversial. You'll notice that one e-mail thread had an "ass-load" of e-mails and sub-threads spawned from it. I'm thrilled that I inspired so much conversation about a topic that TO THAT POINT had consisted of "Great! That's just neat!" I was beginning to feel like the whole MUD-Dev group were a bunch of yammering syncophants.

More to this specific statement, though. I read the blogs and webpages of many of the MUD contributors on a daily basis. I've purposefully immersed myself in this culture on a quest for the smartest/best/most efficient/most contextual/most player-friendly/best balanced ideas I could find in regards to running an online community.

When I read many of the arguements (logical thought processes) put forth by contributors who are paid by a game company for what they think and offer to the industry, I'm annoyed by the number who preach one set of standards in their "papers" they publish, but then argue from the perspective that 1 particular system only affects itself. I've seen some of these guys say that a particular idea will "drive all the players away" but completely ignore the rest of what someone has to say.

Many of the MUD contributors pontificate ad naseum about their ideas and how players interact with each other, etc, etc. However, some refuse to acknowledge that systems affect each other. It's almost like they are incappable of conceptualizing the fact that mulitple factors can contribute to how players will react to each other and to various game systems. Once some of these guys have formed a notion about how a particular game mechanic didn't work on one particular server, they simply can't see beyond that point.

I am not a detail-oriented kind of guy. That is one of my biggest failings. I have a tendancy to get distracted looking at the whole big, beautiful picture and never notice that I bought a fake because the brush strokes are all wrong and Da Vinci's name is mispelled. That's why I like to throw my ideas at this group. Let some smart guys who are very detail oriented pick my ideas apart and expose the weak points and "holes" in my arguements.

On the other hand, I'm a very big-picture kind of person. I have an absolute knack for immediately seeing the results of changes in one system and how they'll affect other systems down stream. It's really what makes me so good at my job. People who lack my ability to see the broader picture tend to argue as if their concept existed inside of a vacuum, where it is unaffected by anything else and where it does not affect other things beyond it's immediate vicinity.

THAT's where my snide remark came from. If I was off base, well....naw, I was right on the mark.

Likewise, I don't know that it's ever justifiable to TELL other people that THEY don't see a distinction. THEY are the only ones qualified to say whether they do or not, because they're the only ones in their head. It's important to allow for the possibility that you're misunderstanding someone else's argument or reasoning. Telling someone else that they have "forgotten what it's like" is also likely to be a powder keg for the same reason... you're not inside their head, so you really have no way of knowing. Better to ASK rather than TELL.

Barry, one of the great things about the human brain is its ability to reason out a logical conclusion. I can read your statements, and begin to piece together a picture of what's going on behind what you write in response to my ideas and words. Within that context, I can immedately tell that you are not comprehending that I see two seperate issues that you are not seeing, either because you can't, or because you don't want to. I don't have to ask you whether you see it or not, I can tell. I'm not stupid.

A simple qualifier like "It seems to me that you don't..." would have gone a long way towards defusing those observations. It allows for the possibility that you're simply misunderstanding them, and you make it clear that you're offering a personal impression rather than talking about indisputable facts.

My way also allows for the possibility that you are misunderstanding my meaning, which, in fact, is what I said. Maybe I'm not understanding you.

My way is also far more efficient. It avoids all the pussy-footing and bullshit.

In general, it's considered "asking for a fight" if you portray someone else as too stupid to understand what you're saying. In the vast majority of cases, a lack of understanding should be taken as evidence of a poorly phrased argument rather than stupidity on the part of the other person.

RIGHT! I totally agree, dude. I kept telling you that I wasn't making myself clear, and that I didn't know how to make myself clear to you. I thought it was BRUTALLY clear that I WAS THE ONE WITH THE PROBLEM.

You kept taking me out of context. Again, my context was probably poor, so maybe it's not your fault. That doesn't make you less of a jackass for the way you responded. You got really nasty, and cherry-picked comments of mine in an attempt to make me look bad in front of the group. Not only were you taking me out of context innocently, but you began to do it on purpose, which makes you a shit-eating cock-sucker:-)

That's what makes the phrase "I don't know how to approach this in a way that you'll understand" into a complete grenade when thrown into a conversation, IMO. It tends to "dumbed down" in order to understand.

No, it portrays me as the one who can't express himself in a meaningful manner. I totally took the responsibility for my miscommunication.

A relatively harmless alternative might be "I'm having trouble coming up with an approach that makes the distinction clear."

Yeah, those are a lot of extra words that are meant to make you feel fuzzy on top of admitting that I'm not doing a good job on my end of the conversation. Fuck that.

Likewise, throwing out terms like "fascist"

Fascist is what it is. It is a term that is well defined. I personally think that certain behaviors on MMORPGs can ONLY be dealt with through the direct application of FASCISM. Does that start a fight?

Barry, you have to read the words AROUND the word that makes you feel uncomfortable if you're going to keep up with me.

and portraying people as afraid to use the term "judgement" are definite fight-starters.

HEY! I was talking about the game companies when I said that. Go check. The game companies, like many in our modern society, refuse to "judge others" like it's some kind of anti-social behavior. It's exactly the opposite. Only when we walk around judging the behaviors of others in society can we maintain a level of civility.

I can't think of how to convey the proper contexts in a less inflammatory way, because I'm unsure of what your intent was. It's hard for me to see that as anything other than simply being provocative... which has a natural tendency to provoke people. =/

Great, because that's how it was intended. When people refuse to judge others on their bad behavior, they are helping to make the bad behavior more acceptable in the society. People like me have the testicular fortitude to stand up and call them on it. It wasn't meant to come off in a "nice" way.

In general, I try to approach public conversations as an opportunity to
learn. Assume that the person you're talking with knows something that
could benefit you if you understand it.

I do, that's why I joined the MUD-Dev forum to begin with. That's why so many of their members make it into my "Smart Guys" column on the blog, even some of the guys with whom I VEHEMENTLY disagree. I still learn a lot from those guys.

Assume they have a valid differenceof opinion, rather than assuming they are just "wrong" right out of the gate.

Your logic is flawed on both points. First, I don't assume that people are wrong out of the gate. I always listen even when I don't agree. You never know when something will change your mind about a situation.

Second, you shouldn't "assume they have a valid difference of opinion". Validity is EARNED, not ASSUMED. It's just like respect. Your validity will be judged as we move through the arguement. By your line of logic, I should start out assuming that pedophiles have valid differences of opinion on why children and babies should have sex with them.

As to your blog-post screed, I think you have some definite erroneous impressions of me. Politically, I'm a significant distance from "liberal"... if I land anywhere, it's within a triangle bounded by modern conservatism, Jeffersonian and Objectivist.

How nice for you. Now go back and study the subject matter again, because it hasn't done much to shape your thought processes.

I found David Reim's predictions for E3 compelling not because I agree with him, but instead because he has an obvious gift for painting word-pictures succinctly. I can only dream of being able to convey a spectrum of ideas that well in only 130 words or so. It's his writing gift I envy, not his politics.

But his politics were right out there in the open in the rant he posted. Why, if you don't agree with him, didn't you make that clear? Why didn't you simply clarify that you love the way he writes, but disagree with his message?

Because it doesn't matter. He's as nasty as you were to me, that's why you love him. He'll shit all over other people in the worst way, and you'll both sit back and call it "enlightened".

Fuck you, Barry.

As to the "socialist" nature of the proposed ruleset, I'm simply exploring the boundaries of what we can do to make eBaying a non-starter and still have a playable game. It's not designed or intended to be a commentary on politics. I would never espouse anything remotely like that for the real world... but many people turn to virtual worlds precisely to ESCAPE the real world. In games, we can explore themes that can be entertaining without having to make them a mirror-image of what we'd like to see in the real world. I can enjoy FPS games without ever wanting people to go out and do that in real life, after all.

Fair enough. After reading your buddy's post, and then looking at that system and the reasoning behind the player interactions, I made a poor assumption. I'll take that part back.

By my own poor logic, other people could assume that I'm an Imperialist, which I'm not.

Our current design is about trying to prevent "counterfeit achievement" on at least some servers... that's definitely NOT a liberal idea. We want to celebrate and reward in-game individual (and group) achievement and success, not water it down into "everyone's a winner". We've had to shuffle the landscape around a bit to make it eBay-resistant, but it's still a great place to play for achievers, explorers and those who are attracted to MMOs for the social aspects as well. It's certainly less "mercenary", but I don't think every fun game has to be about selling stuff to other players. There are plenty of games I can play if I want that.

I think my real problem with this kind of system, is that it restricts the freedom of the players to trade in any way they like. You might say that I'm contradicting myself, but I'm not. I want a fair trade. If that means that some people will take advantage of the system and cheat, then that's what it means. It also means that the designers need to motivate players not to cheat, and that administrators have to castrate players when they catch them cheating.

In the real world, I'm all about extracting dollars from happy customers. I'm just trying to create environments that cater to as many different styles of play as I can, and thereby hopefully attract and keep the maximum number of players. I try to do that by listening to customers and trying to meet their desires where I can. It's all about customer satisfaction for me.

"I'm just trying to create environments that cater to as many different styles of play as I can, and thereby hopefully attract and keep the maximum number of players."

That's exactly what I'm trying to do, too. Only, I'm not getting paid for it, which really doesn't mean anything, other than I am the master of what I do, and I'm not bound to concerns of "this might make 20% of my base quit" (which is great if it means I lose a bunch of "jerk-players" and pick up a 30% increase in "casual gamers".)

Barry, I'll put this up and those who actually bother to read my blog can look at my first post and this one and judge for themselves. You've had your say on the matter and I've responded.

I don't hope you get hit by a bus, but that could always change tomorrow.

Thanks,

Jaycen

Societies: Virtual and Real

2005-05-20T10:10:00.000-05:00

This is a fundamental truism for all societies. I think it is the distillation of the purpose of society:

How will someone know he's being an asshole, if no one tells him he's being an asshole?

When this element of society begins to break down (i.e. "Don't judge me."), then society breaks down. If this element isn't present at the outset (e.g. Virtual Communities) society never has the chance to take roots.

TableSmith and Pen & Paper Gaming

2005-05-17T22:37:00.000-05:00

As someone who used to have enough free time to laboriously roll up and create cities worth of content, I submit my newfound favorite software, TableSmith.

This is a terrific software set for randomly generating anything you could possibly want. There are already several content-packed tables created and available free of charge that can be used to create anything from humorous Kung-Fu Fighting Techniques, to Entire cities (including inhabitants, shops, shop inventories, pricing, economies, etc.).

The ability to create your own custom tables is built in to the system, and the "scripting language" is one of the easiest to understand I've seen. Bruce A. Gulke has done a wonderful job, and I hope many people visit his website and pay him money for his free software. He deserves it.

Dave II

2005-05-17T22:33:00.000-05:00

Spoke to Dave on Saturday night. I think I finally convinced him that he had to think of the kids above all else, and give up the damned affair if he was going to have any chance of working on his marriage.

He reitterated his wife's desire NOT to be divorced, but sounded like she wasn't getting the seriousness of the situation. This could be true, but I don't know her side.

As I told him, I don't really care. I am the advocate of their children.

The two "adults" in this situation have trivial, meaningless problems which they can eventually work out. The children have no say in the matter, and are going to suffer the greatest impact of all involved parties.

He said, "I guess I have some more things to think about." That was about the end of the conversation. I offered him my support in anything that would help keep the marriage together.

I haven't heard from him since.

Dave

2005-05-13T02:29:00.000-05:00

Whew. Flew home from Los Angeles on a 4 hour flight. Took the kids to the pool for three hours. I've just spent the last 4 hours catching up on MUD-Dev and taking the beating of my life. I refuse to respond to a lot of it. One of these guys was just so incredibly nasty I couldn't believe it. I wonder how he made it passed the moderator. There were more presonal attacks than actual commentary on my posts.

Barry Kearns is an incredible jackass. Read his recent blog Nailing E3 to the wall, dated May 10, 2005. If that's the kind of guy he "worships", no wonder he felt free to treat me like dirt on a public forum.

Whatever, it's pretty typical liberal ranting. "I hate people, they're all so stupid. No one feels as deeply as I do". Even his proposed virtual world economy is a socialist system. Good luck with that one, fuck head.

So, all of this got dumped on top of the real kicker for the day - my freind, Dave.

Yeah, the same one I mention in my First Post. Dave had some marital issues for a while. There was at least one affair that I know of, but I thought that was over and done with. Apparently not.

Dave has been seeing some little honey named "Penny" while he's still married. He apparently gave the marriage "a couple months" to start getting better, but since it hasn't he's just putting an end to it.

He told his wife he wanted a divorce, and she said, "If you aren't happy, I won't make you stay, but this isn't what I want." Apparently it is what he wants.

He's leaving his wife and two young sons. I guess what shocked me most was his demeanor as he related all of this to me on the ride home from the airport. He was just so cavalier about the whole thing. He seemed happy that he was getting the chance to start his life over.

I haven't confirmed it yet, but he apparently talked about some of this to one of our other gaming buddies, Shad. I phoned Shad to talk about it (he's been in Nevada on vacation) and it sounds like Penny is married with kids, too (though, she's apparently been seperated from her husband once before).

So, here we are, all primed to destroy two families - at least two children's lives - so that two very selfish people can feel good. Did I mention that he's moving out next week, the same week as his oldest son's birthday? Happy Birthday, Ben.

Well, I've already talked to most of the rest of the group, and I told my wife tonight; I'm out. If they want to keep playing on Friday nights they can all go somewhere else and play with Dave, because he's not welcome here anymore. I won't hold it against the guys if they choose to "support Dave" on this thing. Not all of them have my strength of character or any kind of perspective on what it means to be a father and a husband, much less what it's like to grow up under divorced parents.

I just get sick every time I think of the kids. The oldest boy is a year older than I was when my parents destroyed my world. I cried and begged my dad to stay. I cried for days. How do you sit down in front of your 6 year old son and ask him to choose which parent he wants to go and live with? What kind of chicken-shit piece of garbage puts that responsibility on the shoulders of a child?

Well, Dave isn't doing that at least, he doesn't want to have to take the kids. He's just going to let Robin take them, though I'm sure he'll see them, from time to time.

I'm very sorry for his Wife, Robin, and his two sons, Ben and Calvin. I tried calling the house tonight to talk to her and offer some kind of support, but I got the answering machine. I noticed it's been changed recently. It's her voice and it doesn't mention "we", just "I". Christ, you guys.

Lords, Vassals, Serfs and the Clergy

2005-05-07T02:06:00.000-05:00

(Why player governments never work in fantasy MMORPGs)

I’ve been on a lot of “player-run” servers. I’ve been a Game Master (GM) on a few. One concept that never works out is a player-run city.

The reasons for this vary, but rarely do those reasons have much to do with the ability of the “mayor” to be a good leader. The problem is that designers don’t write game mechanics to handle the position.

Sadly, administrators think that voting (handled either by the players, or by a GM) is a good way to choose a ruler. Worse, they think the players should be able to enforce the rule of law through “good role-playing” or by shear Lord of the Flies governance (if you don’t listen to me, I’ll get my 4 buddies to kill your character and loot you). The worst scenario is when an administrator thinks that a player can rule a city through the beneficent influence of a GM assigned to that player’s city.

VOTING is the basis of democracy. Democracies make no sense in terms of a fantasy role-playing game. Beyond the fact that it’s difficult to get a fair and accurate account of votes from your player-base (people might not log in for weeks at a time), democracies make “getting things done” hard to do. When things are left up to a committee, progress grinds to a halt. In an on-line world, where there’s no real consequence to your choices (you don’t have to live with the effects) it’s hard to get people to understand how important those choices are. This is especially true if much of your player-base is young.

PLAYER ENFORCEMENT doesn’t work because when it comes to role-playing, there is no set standard. If someone chooses not to “go along” with your idea of role-playing, then the system instantly breaks down. Without the ability to actually enforce your will through the mechanics of the game there is no way for you to actually have any authority.

GAME MASTER ENFORCEMENT is the worst policy because it always leads to favoritism. Even when it doesn’t, everyone will think it does. A Game Master or group of Game Masters will not be able to objectively and fairly apply all rules all the time to all players. It simply isn’t possible.

It is possible for player governance to be a success, but certain changes to the game will be required:

• A player government must be built into the game mechanics to function. Game Masters should only have to intervene in rare circumstances (the ruler doesn’t log in for long periods of time, etc).
• There must be an in-game system for players to become rulers, and for those same players to have their rule deposed.
• The ruler must have real authority over his lands within the game and that authority must be backed by the game mechanics.
• There must be some motivation for the rest of the player-base to:
1. Put another player into a position of power.
2. To actually follow the rule of that player or another with similar power. (i.e. What’s in it for me?)
• Removal of the ruler from his position of power must result in a negative impact for that ruler’s subjects.
• A system must exist to back up the ruler’s reign so the negative effect of the ruler being deposed is thwarted.
• The entire system must support the ruler’s power and make removal of the ruler difficult in order for the system to attain stability.

History provides the perfect model for a societal structure that will function in the context of a fantasy MMORPG. The rigid hierarchy of feudal Europe is an ideal system on which to model the typically chaotic social disorder of a virtual world.

To support the ruler and “begin the process” of erecting a society, a system for religion is required. In most societies, the “chief” rules by divine right, or the two power structures are closely linked.

Religions give characters sub-groups in which they can participate and upon which the greater societal structure is formed. The religious orders must have the ability to police themselves via a game mechanic for indoctrinating new priests and followers, as well as excommunicating priests and followers who fail to participate in the religion in a way that is deemed appropriate by the group. Ultimately, the gods of the religion(s) should be played by Game Masters who can help “influence” the direction the order follows.

Priests must not be allowed to be rulers through the game mechanics. That is, unless a pure theocracy is desired, and the entire game world is built upon this principle. Otherwise, that’s what you’ll get.

A priest should be necessary to the creation of a ruler. My suggestion is that each major city be laid out similarly, such that each city has its own castle. The castle is the seat of power, and is the place in which the ruler should be required to conduct his official business. If commands which are accessible to only a ruler are only accessible while the ruler is in the castle, then the ruler is encouraged to spend time in the place which serves to maintain the context of the game. It is in this castle that the potential ruler and priest must meet in order to confer the title to the new ruler.

I’m also suggesting that multiple religions be capable of performing the same “anointing ritual” on the ruler, so a ruler can strengthen his rule by garnering the support of multiple faiths. This also leads into regional banking.

Once a character has become a ruler, he can immediately begin to subject other Player Characters. If a PC agrees to subject himself to the ruler’s power, that PC instantly gains any and all benefits conferred by the active improvements in that ruler’s city, and the PC begins to pay taxes on the next, and subsequent tax cycles.

PCs should be taxed at a standard rate set by the game. Rulers should have the ability to adjust the prime tax rate by +/- 10% for their particular city. PC tax burden increases for property ownership and merchant status (owning a player-vendor and vendor stall). This places an increasing tax burden upon those most likely to create and hoard the most junk, encouraging those players to sell off junk to pay taxes.

Each tax cycle, gold is collected from all the subjects of a city. This takes the form of a pop-up window asking the player to pay their taxes. Requiring players to pay taxes directly and from their pack (as opposed to having the gold automatically taken from their “bank account”) keeps the tax obligation in the mind of the player. There is no penalty for failure to pay if the player has not logged in for a few cycles. The total tax due is simply collected on their next log in. At that time, the PC can pay their taxes, or go get the gold required to pay and log out and back in, re-prompting the PC for tax payment.

If a PC refuses tax payment long enough, however, the ruler can choose to jail the character. If the character’s tax burden becomes greater than their property value, the ruler can choose to repossess the PC’s property. This removes the higher tax burden from the PC (assuming the ruler doesn’t kick them out of the city entirely), and it grants the ruler ownership of all the PC’s possessions within that property.

Once a city accrues enough tax money in the “coffers”, the ruler can begin to buy improvements for his city. Each city improvement has a start up cost and then draws gold from the coffers for upkeep. Each tax cycle, the system checks to see if there’s going to be enough gold in the coffers to cover each improvement. If not, improvements begin to disappear in order from the most expensive upkeep to the least, until there is enough gold in the coffers to cover the burden of the remaining city improvements.

City improvements should confer some skill or attribute bonus to subjects of the city, or provide some service that is greatly desired. In any case, the reward for removing gold and items from the system should be a service. This resource/item sink helps to increase the efficacy of the ruler system as a whole, and helps to drive the entire system in a realistic fashion, even when the actual systems for removing the resources aren’t totally realistic. Even so, the realism with which these systems have been implemented in some games ended up being a serious negative due to player expectations of what a game should be (see Raph Koster’s treatise on player economies - work equals profit).

Finally, to add stability and longevity to the entire structure, and in order to deal with those players who inevitably collect insane amounts of gold, a “hierarchy” system needs to be in place. The ruler needs to be able to sell “titles of nobility” to the richest players. Titles are priced by the system, but who is allowed to buy a title is the purview of the ruler. The nobility must pay a one time price for their title and then an upkeep fee that is higher than the standard tax rate, but is not applied to the tax coffers, but is kept in a separate fund.

If there is no hierarchy in place when the ruler is deposed, then the entire political structure of that ruler’s city collapses. All the city improvements and their conferred bonuses are lost. If a hierarchy exists, on their next login, each member of the top tier is prompted for a vote. If the vote succeeds, the new ruler is chosen from the top tier, the second tier is then prompted for a vote to move a member of that level to the next tier, and so on. Assuming the top tier successfully votes in a new ruler, the gold in the hierarchy fund is moved to the tax coffers to cover the cost of all current city improvements until the next tax cycle as the “ruling families use their own money to prop up the government during the time of turmoil”.

The ruler would receive pressure from his own subjects to sell titles to players who can afford them, so everyone doesn’t suffer should his rule be deposed. At the same time, the ruler will want to put players in positions of power whom he trusts.

The ruler enforces his law through his knights. Knights are standard fighter classes who are 1.) members of the same religion of that anointed the ruler (or one of the other supporting religions in the city) and 2.) a current subject of the city. The ruler can knight a fighter class character and turn him into a Paladin, the sword arm of the Priests. Priests can excommunicate a Paladin and strip him of his powers should the priests wish.

I’ve got some more detailed ideas about rewarding crafters and other classes with experience points and using those points in conjunction with this system, but I’ll save that for the next article.

Broken Storefront Windows

2005-05-01T01:21:00.000-05:00

Sony Entertainment is now officially condoning the sale of in-game items via an outside site that is maintained by the company! That means, instead of encouraging players to deal with someone in-game, the creators and maintainers of the game are actually encouraging players to break context and cheat.

What’s going on, exactly? In the realm of on-line gaming there are those who play the game, then sell the virtual property and/or characters acquired in-game through some out-of-game service, such as e-bay, to other players who are less-than-scrupulous. Apparently, some players are willing to pay real-life money in order to get a jump on other players in these games.

Aside from the fact that this is sad and pathetic, it’s really annoying to players who feel that they worked hard for what little they’ve been able to achieve in the game. Since every player must pay the monthly subscriber fee to play, it’s unfair that some players are able to pay a little extra in order to circumvent the mechanics of the game.

Sony calls their service “Exchange”, as if it were simply another place for player characters to congregate and trade goods and services. Except, it isn’t. Sony thinks that by offering certain “Exchange-enabled servers”, and servers that are not “Exchange-enabled”, they can avoid pissing off their non-cheating player base, and cheating will actually go down on the servers where it isn’t specifically condoned.

This seems like a non sequitur, but I’m finding a lot of industry people (a.k.a. designers) are acting as cheerleaders for this mentality. I think that G. Gordon Liddy said it best, “How do you get more of a behavior? Subsidize it.”

The same people who have pushed the Broken Windows theory in reference to bad player behavior now act as though the theory doesn’t apply to this behavior. This blows me away after reading several accounts of the "virtual sociopath". The virtual sociopath thinks it’s okay to kill other player characters for personal enjoyment because the game implicitly makes that behavior legal. After all, if it wasn’t built into the game, you couldn’t do it, right? That’s the kind of logic I see in the Sony Exchange fiasco.

My question to the industry is this; Why not just let players buy anything they want to buy directly, in-game? You could have a window that’s always available and just scroll through the list of possible junk in that game and rack up a charge on your credit card at any time to buy something for your character. You could even pay $2.50 to do an automatic 50 points of damage to a creature you’re currently fighting. That seems like it would cut out the middle-man and the need to leave the game to go to some other web-site. It’d be a hell of a lot more profitable, too.

What the hell is the point of playing if the rich can do whatever they want, while the rest of us have to slog through the normal game mechanics to get by? Buying virtual property outside of the game mechanics is cheating, pure and simple. You could police it if you wanted to, but you’re too damned lazy and greedy to do it.

Congratulations, Sony. May your blackened souls rot in digital hell.

That is why you fail...

2005-04-25T23:06:00.000-05:00

Or, How Political Beliefs Damage World Design

You might wonder how a designer’s political views could “damage” their philosophy as it applies to the design of an on-line world. Currently, politics in the world describes a range of beliefs that form a spectrum. The beliefs are not just in how people should be governed, but also in how people should live their daily lives.

Conservative beliefs tend to fall on the “political right” side of the spectrum. These beliefs generally support the ideals of Capitalism as the most fair and equitable economic system. Personal responsibility with very little government regulation is the basis for how people live their lives. Conservatives tend to believe that most people are generally decent and if left to their own devices, will make the “right moral choice”.

Liberal beliefs tend to fall on the “political left” of the spectrum. This belief system generally supports the ideals of Socialism as the most fair and equitable economic and governmental system. Under this belief, the government is responsible for almost everything that happens in a person’s life and government regulation is necessary to maintain “an even playing field” for everyone. Liberals tend to believe that most people are basically stupid, and if left to their own devices will make the “greedy” or “wrong moral choice”.

This is not really a political forum, but since political beliefs color the way we approach life and other human beings, even the way we understand the relationships between human beings, the two ideals are linked. If you believe that most players will make choices which annoy or work against other players, then you are starting off with an adversarial view point toward your player-base. Not only will you end up creating systems to deal with the perceived iniquities between players, but the over all structure of the game will tend to oppress all players in an attempt to keep any players from behaving in a way that goes against the desires (and belief system) of the designer.

I’ve been reading through a lot of the material on other developer’s websites, particularly those I’ve listed on the right under the “Smart Guys” section. All of those guys are smart. Some of those guys are still wrong, a lot.

I don’t see “being human” as a negative quality. If it is true that the majority of people derive enjoyment from throwing daggers at targets, then you should write code with that in mind. You ought to attempt to expand and expound upon that desire and broaden the game from that starting point.

After learning that the majority enjoys dagger throwing, some colleagues are “disappointed” by the apparent lack of diverse interests. They can’t see that they’ve found a human truism which can be exploited and turned to their own advantage within the game. Instead, they see this human truism as some kind of human failing.

I empathize with the potential players who might be spending time and money on servers designed to discourage dagger throwing.

Name Change

2005-04-23T22:31:00.000-05:00

I doubt anyone even noticed this site existed yet, but I'm going to explain myself anyway.

Originally, I named this blog RPGDesigner. I was pressed for a cool name and fell back on what I knew. As I've been building up the site, though, Musashi's posting about Holistic Game Design came back to me and I went with that.

I've been working on the concepts (more recently the code) for Urilia for 6 years, now. Even before I knew I was going to create my own world, I was working on it. From day one, I knew there were some basic failures in the game I was playing. As I've learned and grown, I've been honing my solutions to those failures.

When I read the article on Holistic Game Design I came away realizing this was exactly what we were all about. My friends and I are creating a world with an eye to "the Big Picture". Any time a change is proposed, or something new introduced, we pick it apart from every direction and follow every path to its most logical conclusion. Anything that seems to encourage an established "bad" behaviour is modified or tossed out.

Anyway, that's what the blog is for (that...and to shamelessly promote my free UO shard, Urilia.) That is why you will only find links to other people's sites who seem to be of the same kind of mind set when it comes to world-building. Otherwise they were included because they still have something useful to contribute. OR, they were included as an example of the kind of world-building mentality that drives me crazy. Hey, you still have to keep an eye on what doesn't work, too.

Perma-Death?

2005-04-22T11:17:00.000-05:00

The following is from an e-mail conversation between me and another MUD-Dev contributor regarding Permanent Death for player characters. It was spurned by my question to him about what an “avatar” was after reading the link he sent to me on the same topic on Damion Shubert’s blog:

From what I think I know: 'Characters as avatars' refers to how people relate to the world. Is the character on the screen an extension of who the player is (my skill at quake makes me a bad player, consequently, my avatar is bad, too) or is it a fictional creation that has no connection beyond the strings that you pull upon (e.g., a puppet that is really good at quake).

Another way of thinking about it: by in large, people just don’t role-play elves. Instead, they role-play themselves acting in the particular context of the v-world that they find themselves. I can give you the example of someone in my pen and paper group.

This person created a character whose general back-story demonstrates a personality of gutsy heroism and adventurism. But they play the character as themselves in the context in which their character appears. So when their character is in a crowd, they tend to be shy, not bold or audacious. In online games, it is the same sort of thing at work.

Many designers think that players will bear in mind the scope of the toon that they plan, so that if you are, say, a dark elf walking through the shire, then you’ll likely kill someone. But what happens is that the player doesn’t. They go about their business, using the toon as an extension of themselves instead of a puppet. But the dominant concept is the person creates a character as an avatar, as a puppet that they will interact faithfully with what the cultural or designer’s perspective intentions are for that character. Again, if they play as a wizard, we sort of expect them to act intelligent and not like an ass.

Only the best of actors and role-players are able to separate themselves and use the avatar for what it is, but when they do, few people respond to it in kind. Instead, they’re blacklisted or put on /ignore for that RPG-Speak.

That's how I interpret and experience 'characters as avatars'.

>>>>>>><<<<<<<<

Okay, that's kind of what I thought that meant.

So, we're really talking about 3 separate issues: is permanent death an acceptable game mechanic?, is your character an extension of yourself or a role-play tool?, and how do you deal with high level characters?

As for perma-death, my approach is to have as much to keep the high level characters entertained as the low and mid level characters. I do provide for perma-death situations, but only in certain circumstances. For instance, when we're done, there will be 4 uber-dungeons (beyond all the others) that each have a lich as the "boss". The lich tries once every X seconds to perma-kill a character nearby. Liches don't wander around, but anyone stupid or brave enough to go into their lair has the chance for permanent death. To extend that idea, I'm placing a demi-liche that will kill your character, but won't perma-kill him. Your ghost is prevented from leaving the lair of the demi-lich until the demi-lich that killed you is destroyed, and a cleric casts "Remove Curse" on your ghost. Only then can you be resurrected. Almost as bad as permanent death:-)

In the context of my gaming group, I think that we always understood our characters to be "what we're supposed to be role-playing" but at another level understand that our characters often end up being an extension of our own personalities. Some of the guys in my pen and paper group always play themselves, even though each new character "is a real departure from what I usually play" (hah). The rest of us recognize that our first characters were basically super-extensions of our own egos, and have gradually tried to expand our role-playing abilities into new and different territories. Stretching yourself mentally and emotionally (playing a character in a game is definitely an investment in both) is hard to do for anyone and I think most of us understand that change comes slowly and in small increments, if at all.

I've never played on a pay-for-play server before, so I've never seen what you're talking about to a great extent. I think most of the more mature players, especially those with a pen-and-paper background, think of their characters in the same way as we do; this kind of duality between "an alternate persona" and an extension of the player's own personality.

My best experience was a place where most of the players were mid-20s with some 30- and 40-somethings mixed in with a few teenagers. Most of the players had prior experience with pen and paper gaming (experience that is lacking in many younger players and SO shows itself in their behavior, attitude and general approach to the game) so they were used to a more relaxed role-play atmosphere. When players would walk up to us and start talking in a way that was out of context, we acted as though they were trying to cast a dark spell on us, or as though they were insane. They either got frustrated and went away, or they got the hint and started to behave more like us. With any minimal amount of effort, we would then be more patient with them and try to encourage that behavior. I think that's absolutely the best approach.

Anyway, it's just strange. I'm glad I'm not in the game of "they're paying for it, so we have to eat shit". It's my world and I'll run it any way I like. If people don't like it, they can take a hike:-)

There's a lot to be said for that philosophy.

First Post

2005-04-22T01:26:00.000-05:00

So you may be wondering what this is about. It's about role-playing games, man.

It's about my Ultima Online shard, Urilia. It's about my experiences running and playing various role-playing games. It's about the desire to be part of the gaming experience in general.

I've been running and playing RPGs every Friday night (sometimes more frequently, sometimes less) for the last 16 years. I've been playing with almost the same group of 7 people that entire time (players come and go, but this group is my core). One of those people is now my wife and the mother of our 3 children. Since the rest of the gang figure prominently into my bid for world domination via our MORPG, I guess I'll introduce the group to you...

Stacey - My lovely wife. She keeps our home in shape, keeps my kids breathing (often running interference to my autocratic parenting), runs my younger daughter's Girl Scout troop, is a very active member of our PTO, and generally volunteers a great deal of her time and energy to being a pillar of our community. It's awesome, by proxy, I'm respectable.

Mike - Mike was my first and best friend when I came to St. Louis. I was 15 at the time. He made me listen to RUSH until I realized I loved it (came from a die-hard headbanger background). He showed me Highlander for the first time (no idea what I was in for, but he told me it was a wrestling movie when it first started....I thought he'd lost his mind). And we played Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1st edition) for the first time in his basement. We butchered the rules and rejoiced when the second edition came out.

Shad - Shad was "Mike's friend" for the longest time. I can't even remember how he suddenly ended up showing up to regular sessions of Vampire: The Masquerade, playing his flamboyant, but ever-cool Eldred Fleming. Shad owns, maintains, and provides the bandwidth for "our" server. He's been really patient with this whole gig, and I hope we live up to his expectations when it's done. Actually, recently I've even gotten him to start slaving over code...

Dave - Dave was Mike's next door neighbor as they grew up. Dave taught us about serious gaming. The group Dave hung out with was older and immenently more mature about their approach to games. It was in Dave's basement that I met the one and only person to ever play a Druid well. The guy (I can't remember his name) was a brilliant Neutral. To this day, Dave is probably the player in the group who actually sticks to his characters and the personas he creates for those characters.

Shawn - Shawn was my first and only friend at my new school when I moved back to St. Louis in my sophmore year of highschool. He shared a stick of gum with me in Biology. He somehow ended up playing AD&D and later Vampire (Shad and I blood bound his character in the second night of playing) with us at my house. Shawn's the youngster in the group.

Darrell - "Shawn's brother" for years until that first time I helped him and his friends make up Vampire characters that night at their parent's house. After that, Darrell was hooked. Darrell was a convert to the conservative cause, and it took me a couple years to do it, but now he and I are probably the closest, politically.

Me - I'm the guy always trying to bring fresh blood into the group. Urilia was my concept and my dream. It's going to be the pinacle of my gaming career when it's finished. It's everything I ever wanted in a game that the pen-and-paper games could never be. Of course, I'll never stop playing the pen-and-paper games, because they'll always be something on-line games can never be.

Matt - Matt doesn't play with the group anymore, and he never had time to play with us for long, but he was the most regular outsider we ever brought in. He's since moved to Wisconson but stays in regular touch and helps us write code for Urilia. Thank god for Matt, as he's the only one of us with real programming experience.