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Chain World — Innovative Game Design Sparks Debate
A story at Wired charts the course of Chain World, a video game designed by Jason Rohrer to be different from any game that came before it. Quoting:
"It would exist on [a USB flash drive] and nowhere else. According to a set of rules defined by Rohrer, only one person on earth could play the game at a time. The player would modify the game’s environment as they moved through it. Then, after the player died in the game, they would pass the memory stick to the next person, who would play in the digital terrain altered by their predecessor—and on and on for years, decades, generations, epochs. In Rohrer’s mind, his game would share many qualities with religion—a holy ark, a set of commandments, a sense of secrecy and mortality and mystical anticipation. This was the idea, anyway, before things started to get weird."
On the morning of February 24, Rohrer took a break from coding and pedaled to the local Best Buy. He paid $19.99 for a 4-gigabyte USB memory stick sheathed in black plastic.
He overpaid.
Rules are made to be broken. Everybody knows that.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
People don't like games where they have only one life. They already are playing such a game, for free - why they need to learn some other universe if one mistake just voids all their effort?
One person at a time is stupid. That's not how anyhing in this Universe is happening. We live in the world where everything happens in parallel, where events can be triggered by other players.
Most gamers don't want to play a single sentient being in the whole universe. This game by definition doesn't permit other human players. Too bad.
The religious stuff is fluff that is TL;DR. I only commented on obvious gaming issues. I will gladly leave the religion to priests.
AD 3100. You place the thumb drive in your PC.
You appear in a vast land, completely paved over with dead bodies to a great depth. The stench overcomes you. You are dead. Please transfer this thumb drive to the next player.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
So, I'll take the USB drive, and put it in my computer, and then I'll
dd if=/dev/sdj of=/dev/sdk
And then there will be two. Oops.
Does Chain World have some of that nasty Internet-based DRM to prevent copying?
Soon everyone will be claiming that your USB stick of the game isn't the real USB stick and that their's commanding them to kill you for for worshiping the wrong version of the game. Modders will be burned at the computer recycling center for modcraft! Heresy is afoot!
uhh, when the in-game character dies
Sorry, the community around pretty much every sandbox game out there does this already.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Chain World, Rohrer explained, was a mod, a customized version of Minecraft and a set of scripts that govern how it’s played.
So basically he automated what the minecraft community has been doing already and people went full-on moron.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
... already did this with Minecraft?
Oblivion Awaits
First person to die in possession of the memory stick without telling anyone what it is ends the game.
From reading the article it seems like everyone involved with this is a pretentious twit.
Anyone else remember "Obi" or "Obii" from perhaps the Seventies? The idea was something like a note in a bottle, with an expectation of return. This sounds like a game-ified version of the Obi. Since IIRC the Obi was about the shape and size of an egg, the form factors aren't all that incompatible.
I don't really see the draw here. If nothing else, ONLY ONE person gets to see your awesome high score at a time (the current player). Since a huge part of gaming is to best others' scores and have "everyone" know you're the champ, how smug are you gonna feel knowing that only one person at a time is ever gonna know what a l33t g4m3r you are?
“We become like gods to those who come after us,” Rohrer told the crowd.
But gods with tin heads and cold hearts.
Jung. Look him up.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
In the early '90s I used to play hot potato with a floppy loaded with just Nethack or Hack. We passed it around on a character death so we can build up that death list and laugh at each other.
I remember Passages. You start on the left side of the screen, move towards the right, then die. You get double the score if you choose to have a partner, but your score is irrelevant. That had a glimmer of meaning -- a brief comment on mortality. It had the weight of a typical New Yorker cartoon.
Chain World, from the article, is simply stupid. Religious mysticism is stupidity and confusion. Deliberately cultivating mysticism is deliberately cultivating stupidity and confusion. The entire set-up is intended to subtract meaning, not add it. It's entirely appropriate, though it isn't pointed out, that they use a flash drive for Chain World. Flash drives wear out.
The whole thing sounds like Rohrer forgot about the competition until the day before, then spent an hour throwing together a Minecraft mod, and spent the drive there trying to think up a speech.
The idea that if you gave me a program now it would still be working in 30-50 years when I am likely to die is pretty silly.
I was written in COBOL. It will outlast the pyramids.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
We already have minecraft and terraria
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Come now. How many types of malware spread by USB stick, again?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
No backup. Data that is not backed up could as well not exist. This is not innovative, it is just incompetent.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Congratulations, you are player 6,534,862,514.
You can expect to receive the thumb-drive for play some time shortly before this universes energy death. What, no PCs? Huh, no human race? The earth is a cinder and the sun is cold dead lump? Bummer dude.
Jason Rohrer is known as much for his eccentric lifestyle as for the brilliant, unusual games he designs.
Doesn't seem so bad.
He lives mostly off the grid in the desert town of Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Admirable and practical.
He doesn’t own a car
No big deal, better for his health and the environment.
or believe in vaccination.
Ding ding ding ding ding, we have ourselves a Grade-A dumbass!
I mean sure, vaccination has only pretty much wiped out smallpox, polio, and a few other diseases, but the scary stuff in the needle is made in a factory and designed by scientists! Surely Mother Earth will provide for us!
I honestly hope his children never get really, truly ill, because he'll have a very hard lesson to learn.. I have the feeling he'll attempt to heal them by mumbling over the carcass of a dead chicken. Morons like him and Jenny McCarthy are doing loads of harm.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Players will play the game the way they want to, not the way you intended them to.
That's just plain elementary to all game design (or even anything interactive... remember that awful dungeonmaster who freaked out when you didn't play his campaign "the way you were supposed to"?).
It honestly makes me a bit sad that he took a definitive open-ended sandbox game, and turned it into a bogged down experience where you are arbitrarily expected to do only what the dev (or should I say modder) wants.
Additionally, the tweet where he condemns the guy for doing a charity auction made me lose a lot of respect for Rohrer (as both a person and a game designer). Adding in retroactive expectations of play for a supposedly "organically evolving games-as-art project" shows a distinct lack of foresight and ruins the entire allure of the project for me.
how long before it's lost, stolen or broken in shipping?
I was written in COBOL. It will outlast the pyramids.
I doubt it - they were written in stone.
"The idea that if you gave me a program now it would still be working in 30-50 years when I am likely to die is pretty silly"
Counterexample: I can still play "Adventure".
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
You have infinite lives in nethack. Your character may die, but you just create a new one and use what you learned to do better.
The really great thing about NetHack is that it lulls you along into thinking you learned something, then kills you even more brutally the next time (and often before you even reach your remains).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In Rohrer’s mind, his game would share many qualities with religion—a holy ark, a set of commandments, a sense of secrecy and mortality and mystical anticipation.
I don't care what he's been smoking, but I want the same!
Then, after the player died in the game, they would pass the memory stick to the next person, who would play in the digital terrain altered by their predecessor...
That already exists for many games, it's called "Pass It On", but is done on a larger scale, true.
...and on and on for years, decades, generations, epochs.
Except...if you have a different OS...or if somebody breaks the API/compatibility...or somebody breaks the USB-Stick...
All in all, cool idea.
I'm starting a pool to guess how many uses before the game is erased and replaced with porn. Put me down for 3.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
This was the idea, anyway, before things started to get weird.
You mean more than what it's now?
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
- Doesn't "believe in vaccinations"
- Or God
- Gives kids names from a random license plate, apparently not recognizing that it has a real meaning in Spanish
- Doesn't own a car.
- Got taken advantage of by someone with a profit motive (like many game programmers are by a studio)
In the end, all this added up to a guy who came up with a pretty unique game-concept, even though he essentially ripped off Minecraft.
On the morning of February 23rd, video game designer Jason Rohrer decided that he really didn't need to take his meds anymore.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
to punch this guy in the face? I mean, for fuck's sake. And I'm a nonviolent person.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
As with all the best examples, it is impossible to tell definitively whether that is a brilliant troll, or you're just fucking stupid. I think you get the benefit of the doubt, as it's difficult to post to slashdot with just a crayon and a piece of paper.
As several people point out below, you pass it on when your game character dies, not the player IRL. And, I know, I shouldn't be feeding trolls, but this was a classic.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Apart from the joy of eccentricity I don't see any real advantage in only one copy of the game existing, as opposed to multiple copies each residing on its own USB stick. You'd have the same effect of a world passing from person to person, maintaining all the modifications made by previous players. Each copy would be unique. More people would get to participate.
Little seems to have developed since Gamasutra posted a very similar story about this on March 15th: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/33536/InDepth_Jason_Rohrers_Chain_World_Meets_Controversy.php The 'news' in Wired's story is the revelation that someone named Positional Super Ko won the auction and is now making cryptic Go-related tweets. The fact that Jia Ji went hiking in Hawaii and that Jason Rohrer doesn't believe in vaccinations is just padding. The only thing I really learned from this article is that Wired must pay their writers by the word...
Dwarf Fortress games are often passed on, and there are tales, horrible tales, of many such fortresses. In the dark corners of the Interwebs one often hears whispers of one such fortress, one which was known by the name of... Boatmurdered.
I thought it was an interesting concept. Sure, the world doesn't work like that exactly, but, in a way, it does. He just simplified it. How many things have we enjoyed only because of our predecessor's efforts? Quite a lot. In fact, quite a few things change only because of one, and only one, person. It's just that a whole lot of people have done that, most of which at the same time. It's not supposed to be a full-on game. Jason Rohrer does this in his works [games]. They're supposed to make an overall statement. I like the idea...probably wouldn't play it long, not saying that I could, but very interesting.