PerlNomic - An Experiment in Cooperative Coding

Anonymous Coward writes "PerlNomic is a game consisting of CGI scripts which allow you to submit proposals to alter ... the scripts themselves. All proposals must be approved by a voting process--at least for now. The game is styled after Peter Suber's Nomic. Deep knowledge of perl is helpful, but not required." Nomic is a really excellent game if you like mental puzzles, but somewhat difficult to get off the ground.

Comments

OK, I'll bite

[Sp1n3rGy]

I'm a perl coder but... What the hell is this? I've read the "rules" but still don't really get it. Anyone have a better explanation?

Re:OK, I'll bite

[zudini]

A good starting place is suber's original nomic game:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/nomic.htm

The idea was to make a game out of making rules for the game. So each
turn, a player proposes a change to the rules, and people vote on it
and stuff. (This is usually done with people in a room writing on
index cards and posting to a bulletin board, though sometimes it is
played over email.) But when players disagree on the interpretation
of a rule, they call to a "judge" (who is just another player) to sort
it out for them.

Now think perl, and think self-modifying code, and think web forms
instead of index cards. No judges needed, because the script either
runs or it doesn't, and whatever the scripts allow are the "rules".

Now think obfuscated code, and hidden loopholes, and unfortunate
little bugs that allow you to get way more points than we expected you
would get when we all voted on your proposal.

That's the idea, anyway.

Re:OK, I'll bite

[snorklewacker]

Ever play bar games like quarters where when you get a quarter in the shotglass (or five into the tumbler) you get to make a new rule? And eventually the rules start referencing other rules, and then the game itself becomes more of a complicated meta-game where the rules themselves are the game?

That's nomic. Except it does away with the shotglass, everyone just makes a rule every turn. It's a parliamentary game about rule-making, where the one who can game the system to their advantage is the winner. Still, it's usually a lot more fun as a drinking game, so in-person games often get rules passed to that effect. Order decays quickly a few rounds after that.

problems of nomic

[snorklewacker]

Nomic's not difficult to get off the ground at all. Ask enough people online, and they'll be more than happy to play. Sustaining a game past 10 rounds or so is virtually impossible however. You can guarantee you will lose half your players in round 1 from normal attrition of people who sign up and don't bother checking back. The first several rounds are pretty dull, and if people don't start creating subgames that are actually FUN really quick, everyone else gets bored and drops off.

The ideal environment for hosting a nomic backed with code is a MUD, such as MOO. However, not everyone wants to write MOO code (it's a good language compared to other MUD languages, but that's not saying much). With a virtualized server or usermode jail, one could confine the nomic server relatively safely however. However, even hosting a MUD, let alone a full server is still a fairly expensive hobby. Webhosting has gotten dirt cheap, but everything else is still going to cost probably as much or more than your monthly ISP bill.

Scheme vs Perl

[Taral]

There was a Scheme Nomic around a while back. For people who want to know more about Nomics, go search google a bit, then going Agora Nomic. We need new people. :)

Ha ha... Slashdot got soooo used...

[Leadhyena]

Either morbus is trying to use scare-tactics to slow the game down, or abliss got this posted on slashdot in order to use the resulting /. effect to win the game by just saying yes a lot of times. . I'd like to believe the latter; it seems too clever of a tactic not to be tried.

What a cool way to run a Nomic game!