Assume that a perfect matched liver was available:
Suppose *you* were the top liver transplant surgeon, and someone offered $50k to give up your day off, and instead perform a liver transplant on them. Would it be immoral for you to accept?
GDC, 2001 I think it was. We had a roundtable on this very topic - I was new to the games business, and there's all these absolute game design legends sitting around the table. At first the discussion was really good - ways that games can be made more addictive, for instance by varying the reward payout schedule to be more like a slot machine, or by alternating between risky feeling and safe feeling gameplay, etc.
Then the discussion kinda took a turn for the wuss - "Well, we *can* make games more addictive, but *should* we?" And each person that spoke was trying to look more socially conscious than the last.
Then the designer of Tetris - holy shit, Alexey Pajitnov himself, stands up and says "What the hell are you people talking about? I CHERISH the times I'm addicted to games. What else am I going to do? Read some stupid book?"
It would hold up in court because I agreed to this by contract, as do any merchants that accept Visa/Mastercard. Discover Card is totally fair though - they reverse the charge, but don't tack on fees, or have a punitive policy when the merchant contests the chargeback.
Actually, I should do my small part to use market pressure to combat this - give an extra in-game perk, or a token discount amount to anyone that pays by Discover Card. (Or Amex; not sure about the rules for that card.) With a game as small as ours it would be nothing more than a statement, but statements are important. Hmmm...
I run an online game and "chargebacks" are really annoying. How it works is that if someone calls their credit card company and says "I don't recognize this charge", Visa immediately removes the charge and debits our account the $13.95 monthly fee, plus a $25 "chargeback fee". We then have the opportunity to provide documentation that they really did sign up for the game.
If Visa then determines that the charge was legitimate, we get the $13.95 back (but not the $25.) If they determine that the charge was not legitimate, then we get neither back, and are charged an additional $25.
The worst that's happened is that someone used a bunch of stolen credit cards to create dozens of accounts over several months, always being careful to use open proxy servers. So we ended up with $1800 in chargebacks, and no way to stop them!
What we ended up doing was explaining the situation to everyone in the community, and when this guy contacted any of his in-game friends ("hey it's me, just had to create this new character") they would tell us and we would shut the account down right away and reverse any charges, but what a PITA!
Eventually this guy moved on, but we never did find him. Some social engineering indicated that he was from playing from internet cafes in Romania, but that's as far as we got.
This is a common sort of lawsuit, and is a textbook example of where the "A New Kind of Justice" legal system succeeds. NCS Pearson is (ultimately) threatening a lawsuit, knowing that:
* The risk (cost) to NCS Pearson for making such a threat is low
* The benefit to NCS Pearson of making the threat is low, but...
* The risk to AntiPolygraph.org of ignoring the threat is high
* The benefit to AntiPolygraph.org of ignoring the threat is low
In our current legal system, the risk (cost) of making most threats is low, and in some cases (not the one above) the benefit is high, so the system produces lots of lawsuits. ANKOJ evens the table: it introduces an element of risk to the plaintiff, and it requires the plaintiff to declare up front what sort of damages they believe they have suffered, so that the defendant can settle without a costly legal defense.
A cool algorithm that should be possible on a quantum computer is "perfect" data compression. IOW, "what is the smallest turing machine + input string that outputs the following string in less than 1 billion steps?"
Such an algorithm would need a quantum computer to run, but the decompression could happen on a classical computer.
Anyone aware if such an algorithm exists? The summary would seem to indicate not.
The motivation for lawsuits being impossible to drop is to prohibit exactly the sort of fishing/bullying lawsuits that you seem to be advocating. Overwhelming the smaller party with interrogatories is a strategy routinely used by the larger party in a lawsuit. If, given what a plaintiff knows, there's a greater than 50% chance of a win, then it's advantageous to bring a lawsuit. The number is actually somewhat higher than 50%, taking into account that the lawyer will want to be paid, but that's a good thing: lawsuits should happen only when a party was clearly wronged.
As for your point #2, ANKOJ is a set of rules for civil procedure. Murder is still a crime.
Point #3: The 60% figure is correct. If each side were 50% responsible, then certainly no money "should" change hands - they "should" get 0% of the stated amount of damages. If one side were 100% responsible, then they should get 100% of stated damages. Of course ANKOJ only allows for a full amount of stated damages in either direction, so it's up to the plaintiff to factor in the above.
The RIAA's advantage would be mostly neutralized with A New Kind of Justice, a minimalist set of civil procedure rules designed to stop "bullying" lawsuits (among other things.)
Under ANKOJ, escalating the claimed damages would put them at increasing peril, and would make it easier for a defendant to hire a lawyer.
I designed (and run) A Tale in the Desert, one of the games on the list. About 3.1% of paid players currently use Linux. Also, 7.3% use OSX, and the rest use Windows.
Of all trial accounts, 7.3% of Linux users go on to pay for at least one month of the game. Of OSX users, it's 6.9%, and of Windows users it's 11.8%.
For some reason the Linux number has dropped significantly over the years (used to be around 10% IIRC), though the other two numbers have remained about the same.
Ok, I will discuss only the three prescribed candidates as mentioned in the header. I wouldn't want to break any Slashdot rules after all!
So, Romney... Negatives... Wants the federal government to continue to meddle with local education (No Child Left Behind; Department of Education), meddle with my right to own guns (Brady Bill; Assault Weapon Ban), amend the constitution over gay marriage, and mandate content filters on home computers. On the plus side, really nice hair.
McCain... Supports the Iraq war, wants to limit my right to support political causes (McCain Feingold), and wants to continue to grow the size of the government (Jan 8, 2008 report by National Taxpayers Union: $6.9B). On the plus side he must be in good physical shape because in the debate he said that he would "chase Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell."
Huckabee, the third and last of the ONLY THREE REPUBLICANS RUNNING. Wants the government to teach creationism in public schools. Grew the Arkansas government by 65% in just 8 years, and promises to continue jailing people who use (medical or other) marijuana. On the plus side: I giggle like a schoolgirl every time I say "Huckabee."
If only there was some other republican running - a FOURTH candidate, perhaps? Someone who opposes this insane Iraq war. Someone who has a decades-long record of NEVER voting to violate the constitution. Someone who would eliminate entangling alliances with foreign nations. A candidate that supports individual liberty above all else. A statesman and a gentleman.
Space Invaders, and the cool thing is that still whenever I hear the sound effects from that game, my heart starts pounding HARD. They say that fear of snakes is inborn, but few things cause such an intense involuntary reaction for me as the sound of space invaders.
Presidents can veto bills, make speeches ("Lead"), and a few other things.
I would make "does this law increase or decrease individual liberty?" the litmus test whether I'd sign a given bill. Now some things like invading Afghanistan probably are a net increase to individual liberty: they actively sheltered people who had already attacked us, and being under decreases one's liberty more than the resulting increase in taxes decreases it.
Nation building in Afghanistan, in my estimation, decreases individual liberty more than the gain realized by having a stable Afghanistan.
If there was a reasonable uncertainty whether a law would increase or decrease liberty, I'd err on the side of caution by having the government do as little as possible.
The Iraq war, the patriot act, and nearly everything done in the name of fighting terrorism are huge infringements on liberty, both directly and via taxes.
As for speeches, I would try to show the American people how the system of entitlements that now pervades our society has twisted our culture. I don't care that "every industrialized nation does X": Since when did we become followers?
I'd try to get one state to accept this deal: "If you are willing to forgo all federal entitlement programs for your people, then the federal tax rate in your state is $1000 per person - collect it any way you'd like." And when a hurricane hit the state, I'd get on TV and say to the rest of the country: "Your fellow Americans are hurting - please be a patriot and do what you can to help."
And then I'd try to get a second state to take that deal.
Actually, that's wrong: Suppose you like Ron Paul best, Barack Obama almost as much, and Hillary least. If you were to vote Paul (100), Obama (100), Hillary (0), and the election was very close between Paul and Obama with Obama slightly ahead, your "strategic" voting would elect the candidate that you like slightly less.
Of course situations can happen where strategic voting pays off, but the simulations done by Warren D Smith involving mixtures of strategic and honest voters indicate that RV produces the best results (beating aproval, all studied condorset methods, plurality, etc.) of any studied system.
To be perfectly nit-picky: RV with instant runoff between the top two produces marginally better results than pure RV. Here's the comparison chart.
Range voting only applies to domains where selcting the best (acheiving maximum happiness when summed over the electorate) of many alternatives is the goal. Rating your boss, or rating comment quality are both single axis results.
If the question was "who would make the best boss?", or "which of the following comments is most insightful?", then Range Voting acheives the best result.
The latest thinking on allergies is that we live in such a clean environment that our immune systems, with few actual germs to fight, starts "looking for stuff to attack." Children raised on farms seldom have allergies, nor do kids in third world countries.
Perhaps nations do the same. The US has no enemies left that will go toe-to-toe on the battlefield. So we make war on "terror", war on "drugs", and now copying.
Maybe this is the human condition: we're just wired this way. How depressing.
It may be that "no patents" more closely approximates the above ideal than our current system does. I would argue that "no software patents" certainly approximates the ideal more closely than our current system.
Actually, most Libertarians think that a system of intellectual property *is* one of the legitimate functions of government.
A strictly libertarian approach to patents is that if you invent something, then you have the right to licence that to others, for eternity, and if someone steals your idea, then you can sue them. If someone else independently invents the same thing, then they also have the right to licence it to others, for eternity. The two of you would be in competition, or you could collude to keep the license price high. As soon as someone declares that their invention is free to use, then that invention is in the public domain, and the other inventors' licensing business is over.
In software, this would probably happen in a matter of weeks or months.
Perfect implementation of the above system is probably impossible, but as a Libertarian, I would evaluate proposed changes to our current system based on how closely they approximate the above.
The NDC is long expired on this, so I guess it's OK to talk about it.
Before A Tale in the Desert, we proposed an episodic MMORPG to Disney based on A Bug's Life. We built a playable (2D) prototype that was a lot of fun. Characters from the movie were NPCs - for instance, Flick would give you "blueprints" for crazy contraptions, and you'd have to scavenge and make all the parts for each one.
You could find grain and plant it to grow wheat shoots to use as rubber-bands. You could climb the tree and toss down acorns to other players. They could show them to Flick who would suggest an invention to pry the nut from the cap, and then the cap could be used with glue that came from sap as part of a gear for other contraptions.
Ultimately you'd build a little ant-sized sailboat/raft to get yourself and trhe others off the island, and that would lead to episode 2. IIRC, the content that we had could be played through in an hour or two by a team of 3-5 people.
Unfortunately the project never made it further than the prototype - I think this was all in 1999. But I still think that A Bug's Life is *the* Disney property that needs an MMO.
The phone people get a kickback spiff for every customer they keep from leaving and will do anything to get that kickback. Interesting. I wonder how much? So if it were $20 each, and I were to place 50 calls in a row to AOL asking to cancel and then changing my mind: "Oh, you're right, I'll stay!" would I cost them $1000?
Re:The big problem with players self-governing...
on
Gamers Don't Want Grief
·
· Score: 2, Informative
A Tale in the Desert does this exactly. Players can pass laws that ban a specific player, or players. They can empower certain players with the ability to ban, jail, or creatively restrict others.
In ATITD 2 (or maybe it was 1), a high profile player liked to mentor new players. But, he was terrible at it - turned off new players by the dozens (or more). Veteran players passed a law limiting his access to new players via the chat, mentorship, and guild systems. Then, they taught him how to be an effective mentor, and finally repealed the law.
Actually, the new Principles that I mentioned in the article submission may appeal to you. Each one is a miniature version of a corresponding Test. For instance, Principles of the Obelisk challenges you to build a 7 cubit tall Obelisk. All Principles are fixed-goal, and nearly all are non-competitive. Tests, including the Test of the Obelisk that you describe, are still mostly competitive.
Completing a Principle advances your level by one (yes, we have levels now), and unlocks new Principles/Tests, Skills, and Technologies.
It's still going to be difficult (impossible) to lead construction of one of the final 7 Monuments with a solo spproach, but you may find Tale 3 to be much more fun for your playstyle than Tale 1.
If you do decide to come back, play for a bit and then tell me if I'm on-track with this analysis. (In-game,/chat Pharaoh)
We almost had a major publisher for A Tale in the Desert. They projected around 30,000 subscribers. Now, 3 years after release, the actual amount of money we put in our pockets each month is just a bit less with ~1300 subscribers than we would have made with a large publisher at 30,000.
And, no bureaucracy, no suits second-guessing me, and I can try any crazy thing in the game that I want. My advice: If you can self-publish, do it. If you can't, find a way that you can;)
I attended a session at Game Developer Conference in 2001 or so, titled "Addiction in Online Games". It started out pretty good - it was about reward patterns that tend to create "stickyness" (addiction) in online games. For instance, rather than using a fixed-per-time reward schedule, use a slot-machine type schedule.
Then it turned all touchy-feely. "Well, we know we *can* make games addictive, but *SHOULD* we." All the developers took turns trying to prove that they were more caring and concerned than the person who spoke last.
Then, Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris (!!!) stood up and said in a thick Russian accent: "What the hell are you people talking about? I cherish the times I've been addicted to games. What else am I going to do - read some stupid book?"
Slashdot Mirror
Assume that a perfect matched liver was available: Suppose *you* were the top liver transplant surgeon, and someone offered $50k to give up your day off, and instead perform a liver transplant on them. Would it be immoral for you to accept?
GDC, 2001 I think it was. We had a roundtable on this very topic - I was new to the games business, and there's all these absolute game design legends sitting around the table. At first the discussion was really good - ways that games can be made more addictive, for instance by varying the reward payout schedule to be more like a slot machine, or by alternating between risky feeling and safe feeling gameplay, etc.
Then the discussion kinda took a turn for the wuss - "Well, we *can* make games more addictive, but *should* we?" And each person that spoke was trying to look more socially conscious than the last.
Then the designer of Tetris - holy shit, Alexey Pajitnov himself, stands up and says "What the hell are you people talking about? I CHERISH the times I'm addicted to games. What else am I going to do? Read some stupid book?"
The discussion got back on a proper track.
It would hold up in court because I agreed to this by contract, as do any merchants that accept Visa/Mastercard. Discover Card is totally fair though - they reverse the charge, but don't tack on fees, or have a punitive policy when the merchant contests the chargeback.
Actually, I should do my small part to use market pressure to combat this - give an extra in-game perk, or a token discount amount to anyone that pays by Discover Card. (Or Amex; not sure about the rules for that card.) With a game as small as ours it would be nothing more than a statement, but statements are important. Hmmm...
I run an online game and "chargebacks" are really annoying. How it works is that if someone calls their credit card company and says "I don't recognize this charge", Visa immediately removes the charge and debits our account the $13.95 monthly fee, plus a $25 "chargeback fee". We then have the opportunity to provide documentation that they really did sign up for the game.
If Visa then determines that the charge was legitimate, we get the $13.95 back (but not the $25.) If they determine that the charge was not legitimate, then we get neither back, and are charged an additional $25.
The worst that's happened is that someone used a bunch of stolen credit cards to create dozens of accounts over several months, always being careful to use open proxy servers. So we ended up with $1800 in chargebacks, and no way to stop them!
What we ended up doing was explaining the situation to everyone in the community, and when this guy contacted any of his in-game friends ("hey it's me, just had to create this new character") they would tell us and we would shut the account down right away and reverse any charges, but what a PITA!
Eventually this guy moved on, but we never did find him. Some social engineering indicated that he was from playing from internet cafes in Romania, but that's as far as we got.
This is a common sort of lawsuit, and is a textbook example of where the "A New Kind of Justice" legal system succeeds. NCS Pearson is (ultimately) threatening a lawsuit, knowing that:
* The risk (cost) to NCS Pearson for making such a threat is low
* The benefit to NCS Pearson of making the threat is low, but...
* The risk to AntiPolygraph.org of ignoring the threat is high
* The benefit to AntiPolygraph.org of ignoring the threat is low
In our current legal system, the risk (cost) of making most threats is low, and in some cases (not the one above) the benefit is high, so the system produces lots of lawsuits. ANKOJ evens the table: it introduces an element of risk to the plaintiff, and it requires the plaintiff to declare up front what sort of damages they believe they have suffered, so that the defendant can settle without a costly legal defense.
Yeah, I went in there yesterday for the sale. Got a pretty sweet deal on a Divx player. Anyone know how long the "waiting for server" screen takes?
A cool algorithm that should be possible on a quantum computer is "perfect" data compression. IOW, "what is the smallest turing machine + input string that outputs the following string in less than 1 billion steps?"
Such an algorithm would need a quantum computer to run, but the decompression could happen on a classical computer.
Anyone aware if such an algorithm exists? The summary would seem to indicate not.
The motivation for lawsuits being impossible to drop is to prohibit exactly the sort of fishing/bullying lawsuits that you seem to be advocating. Overwhelming the smaller party with interrogatories is a strategy routinely used by the larger party in a lawsuit. If, given what a plaintiff knows, there's a greater than 50% chance of a win, then it's advantageous to bring a lawsuit. The number is actually somewhat higher than 50%, taking into account that the lawyer will want to be paid, but that's a good thing: lawsuits should happen only when a party was clearly wronged.
As for your point #2, ANKOJ is a set of rules for civil procedure. Murder is still a crime.
Point #3: The 60% figure is correct. If each side were 50% responsible, then certainly no money "should" change hands - they "should" get 0% of the stated amount of damages. If one side were 100% responsible, then they should get 100% of stated damages. Of course ANKOJ only allows for a full amount of stated damages in either direction, so it's up to the plaintiff to factor in the above.
The RIAA's advantage would be mostly neutralized with A New Kind of Justice, a minimalist set of civil procedure rules designed to stop "bullying" lawsuits (among other things.)
Under ANKOJ, escalating the claimed damages would put them at increasing peril, and would make it easier for a defendant to hire a lawyer.
I designed (and run) A Tale in the Desert, one of the games on the list. About 3.1% of paid players currently use Linux. Also, 7.3% use OSX, and the rest use Windows.
Of all trial accounts, 7.3% of Linux users go on to pay for at least one month of the game. Of OSX users, it's 6.9%, and of Windows users it's 11.8%.
For some reason the Linux number has dropped significantly over the years (used to be around 10% IIRC), though the other two numbers have remained about the same.
Ok, I will discuss only the three prescribed candidates as mentioned in the header. I wouldn't want to break any Slashdot rules after all!
So, Romney... Negatives... Wants the federal government to continue to meddle with local education (No Child Left Behind; Department of Education), meddle with my right to own guns (Brady Bill; Assault Weapon Ban), amend the constitution over gay marriage, and mandate content filters on home computers. On the plus side, really nice hair.
McCain... Supports the Iraq war, wants to limit my right to support political causes (McCain Feingold), and wants to continue to grow the size of the government (Jan 8, 2008 report by National Taxpayers Union: $6.9B). On the plus side he must be in good physical shape because in the debate he said that he would "chase Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell."
Huckabee, the third and last of the ONLY THREE REPUBLICANS RUNNING. Wants the government to teach creationism in public schools. Grew the Arkansas government by 65% in just 8 years, and promises to continue jailing people who use (medical or other) marijuana. On the plus side: I giggle like a schoolgirl every time I say "Huckabee."
If only there was some other republican running - a FOURTH candidate, perhaps? Someone who opposes this insane Iraq war. Someone who has a decades-long record of NEVER voting to violate the constitution. Someone who would eliminate entangling alliances with foreign nations. A candidate that supports individual liberty above all else. A statesman and a gentleman.
Space Invaders, and the cool thing is that still whenever I hear the sound effects from that game, my heart starts pounding HARD. They say that fear of snakes is inborn, but few things cause such an intense involuntary reaction for me as the sound of space invaders.
Presidents can veto bills, make speeches ("Lead"), and a few other things.
I would make "does this law increase or decrease individual liberty?" the litmus test whether I'd sign a given bill. Now some things like invading Afghanistan probably are a net increase to individual liberty: they actively sheltered people who had already attacked us, and being under decreases one's liberty more than the resulting increase in taxes decreases it.
Nation building in Afghanistan, in my estimation, decreases individual liberty more than the gain realized by having a stable Afghanistan.
If there was a reasonable uncertainty whether a law would increase or decrease liberty, I'd err on the side of caution by having the government do as little as possible.
The Iraq war, the patriot act, and nearly everything done in the name of fighting terrorism are huge infringements on liberty, both directly and via taxes.
As for speeches, I would try to show the American people how the system of entitlements that now pervades our society has twisted our culture. I don't care that "every industrialized nation does X": Since when did we become followers?
I'd try to get one state to accept this deal: "If you are willing to forgo all federal entitlement programs for your people, then the federal tax rate in your state is $1000 per person - collect it any way you'd like." And when a hurricane hit the state, I'd get on TV and say to the rest of the country: "Your fellow Americans are hurting - please be a patriot and do what you can to help."
And then I'd try to get a second state to take that deal.
I'd never get elected.
Actually, that's wrong: Suppose you like Ron Paul best, Barack Obama almost as much, and Hillary least. If you were to vote Paul (100), Obama (100), Hillary (0), and the election was very close between Paul and Obama with Obama slightly ahead, your "strategic" voting would elect the candidate that you like slightly less.
Of course situations can happen where strategic voting pays off, but the simulations done by Warren D Smith involving mixtures of strategic and honest voters indicate that RV produces the best results (beating aproval, all studied condorset methods, plurality, etc.) of any studied system.
To be perfectly nit-picky: RV with instant runoff between the top two produces marginally better results than pure RV. Here's the comparison chart.
Range voting only applies to domains where selcting the best (acheiving maximum happiness when summed over the electorate) of many alternatives is the goal. Rating your boss, or rating comment quality are both single axis results.
If the question was "who would make the best boss?", or "which of the following comments is most insightful?", then Range Voting acheives the best result.
The latest thinking on allergies is that we live in such a clean environment that our immune systems, with few actual germs to fight, starts "looking for stuff to attack." Children raised on farms seldom have allergies, nor do kids in third world countries.
Perhaps nations do the same. The US has no enemies left that will go toe-to-toe on the battlefield. So we make war on "terror", war on "drugs", and now copying.
Maybe this is the human condition: we're just wired this way. How depressing.
If I were a juror, I would under no circumstances punish someone for pirating this guy's book.
It may be that "no patents" more closely approximates the above ideal than our current system does. I would argue that "no software patents" certainly approximates the ideal more closely than our current system.
A strictly libertarian approach to patents is that if you invent something, then you have the right to licence that to others, for eternity, and if someone steals your idea, then you can sue them. If someone else independently invents the same thing, then they also have the right to licence it to others, for eternity. The two of you would be in competition, or you could collude to keep the license price high. As soon as someone declares that their invention is free to use, then that invention is in the public domain, and the other inventors' licensing business is over.
In software, this would probably happen in a matter of weeks or months.
Perfect implementation of the above system is probably impossible, but as a Libertarian, I would evaluate proposed changes to our current system based on how closely they approximate the above.
The NDC is long expired on this, so I guess it's OK to talk about it.
Before A Tale in the Desert, we proposed an episodic MMORPG to Disney based on A Bug's Life. We built a playable (2D) prototype that was a lot of fun. Characters from the movie were NPCs - for instance, Flick would give you "blueprints" for crazy contraptions, and you'd have to scavenge and make all the parts for each one.
You could find grain and plant it to grow wheat shoots to use as rubber-bands. You could climb the tree and toss down acorns to other players. They could show them to Flick who would suggest an invention to pry the nut from the cap, and then the cap could be used with glue that came from sap as part of a gear for other contraptions.
Ultimately you'd build a little ant-sized sailboat/raft to get yourself and trhe others off the island, and that would lead to episode 2. IIRC, the content that we had could be played through in an hour or two by a team of 3-5 people.
Unfortunately the project never made it further than the prototype - I think this was all in 1999. But I still think that A Bug's Life is *the* Disney property that needs an MMO.
The phone people get a kickback spiff for every customer they keep from leaving and will do anything to get that kickback.
Interesting. I wonder how much? So if it were $20 each, and I were to place 50 calls in a row to AOL asking to cancel and then changing my mind: "Oh, you're right, I'll stay!" would I cost them $1000?
A Tale in the Desert does this exactly. Players can pass laws that ban a specific player, or players. They can empower certain players with the ability to ban, jail, or creatively restrict others.
In ATITD 2 (or maybe it was 1), a high profile player liked to mentor new players. But, he was terrible at it - turned off new players by the dozens (or more). Veteran players passed a law limiting his access to new players via the chat, mentorship, and guild systems. Then, they taught him how to be an effective mentor, and finally repealed the law.
Actually, the new Principles that I mentioned in the article submission may appeal to you. Each one is a miniature version of a corresponding Test. For instance, Principles of the Obelisk challenges you to build a 7 cubit tall Obelisk. All Principles are fixed-goal, and nearly all are non-competitive. Tests, including the Test of the Obelisk that you describe, are still mostly competitive.
/chat Pharaoh)
Completing a Principle advances your level by one (yes, we have levels now), and unlocks new Principles/Tests, Skills, and Technologies.
It's still going to be difficult (impossible) to lead construction of one of the final 7 Monuments with a solo spproach, but you may find Tale 3 to be much more fun for your playstyle than Tale 1.
If you do decide to come back, play for a bit and then tell me if I'm on-track with this analysis. (In-game,
We almost had a major publisher for A Tale in the Desert. They projected around 30,000 subscribers. Now, 3 years after release, the actual amount of money we put in our pockets each month is just a bit less with ~1300 subscribers than we would have made with a large publisher at 30,000.
;)
And, no bureaucracy, no suits second-guessing me, and I can try any crazy thing in the game that I want. My advice: If you can self-publish, do it. If you can't, find a way that you can
I attended a session at Game Developer Conference in 2001 or so, titled "Addiction in Online Games". It started out pretty good - it was about reward patterns that tend to create "stickyness" (addiction) in online games. For instance, rather than using a fixed-per-time reward schedule, use a slot-machine type schedule.
;)
Then it turned all touchy-feely. "Well, we know we *can* make games addictive, but *SHOULD* we." All the developers took turns trying to prove that they were more caring and concerned than the person who spoke last.
Then, Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris (!!!) stood up and said in a thick Russian accent: "What the hell are you people talking about? I cherish the times I've been addicted to games. What else am I going to do - read some stupid book?"
Got things right back on track