Yes, but let us have some sympathy for the strong religious believers. Humans are genetically predisposed to religion, to believing in a supernatual creator who loves us or hates us. As such, it is hard for people to overcome religion even when all evidence is to the contrary. Equally, we are wired to understand basic physics, so we should sypmathize with how difficult it is for us to understand quantum mechanics.
We have instinctual systems that make it hard to apply these seven rules, and it helps to be aware that people who seem to believe lies are mostly following their gut.
I'm a programmer, and I enjoy many computer games, but over the past few years I have been doing much more non-computer game design. The best of those that I had the privilege to work on is Zendo, best described as an inductive puzzle game where the first player to figure out the puzzle wins. But there are hundreds of other great games out there that don't require electricity.
Here are several essays on game design, many focusing on simplifying a game to focus on the interesting mechanics and decisions. Clearly this applies to computer games as well, but non-computer games are also more accessible to non-programmers.
I'm enjoying the surprisingly-usable keyboard on the Handspring Treo. I was pretty proficient with graffitti, so I was sad to see that I could not get a Treo with it, but now I prefer their keyboard.
Now if it only came in Dvorak, I'd be even happier....
>Why can't email be like instant messaging where only
>those on my buddy list can email me. The Spammer would have to guess
>my email address and some complicated guid to send me email.
I'm already doing this, using Eudora's filters. I filter any mail that is from somebody not on my address book into another folder which I rarely check. Once my address book is sufficiently accurate, I'll set up an auto-reply on mail sent to me that is not in the book, explaining that I'll also accept any mail that has a certain key word in the subject line. I'll then set up another filter in Eudora that accepts such mail.
I'm a little worried that people will be annoyed at having to jump through a hoop to send mail to me the first time, but this is my best solution yet.
Eudora's latest version, 5.2, includes the ability to filter mail against your address book. If someone sends me mail and they are not on that address book or they don't use a special key word in the subject line, they get an automatic reply telling them to try again with that key word. Spammers will ignore that reply, so I'll only real people will include the key word, and then I can add them to my address book.
This, comibined with some clever regex filters I already had means that I can reliably get the 10% of my mail that I actually want to read.
I wish I had a copy of Are you a Werewolf? to play with people. It is a game about lying and figuring out who is lying. It's fun, in a paranoid way, and would have told me a lot about my fellow students.
I think the bots don't fall for your fake pages and mail addresses because not enough people link to your page. If you had a little more traffic there, more bots would fall for it. Write something interesting and get slashdotted, would you?
OK, I'm going to come clean here. I prefer to clean myself with soap and water instead of toilet paper. I've been interested in a good toilet seat that makes this easy, and I've looked many times over the years. Those seats are simply very expensive, much more than I would expect for something with a simple water spray and soap dispenser. It seems like the price is inflated because this is a luxury, or that such seats have far more features than I want. Maybe things have changed, and it is time to redo my research.
Not all diplomacy is petty. King making and simple attack-the-leader come up in games with petty diplomacy. Good games with diplomacy, such as Diplomacy, involve complicated deals, short and long term alliances, and sophisticated planning. Boring and obvious diplomacy can kill any game, and good diplomacy can really enhance one.
I've designed many non-computer games for a few years now, and I see all the same issues discussed in this article that we've seen in face-to-face multi-player games. He covers the basics quite well. There are two aspects that he does not discuss which I believe are important.
First, good games are cohesive. The rules and the plot and the mechanics should flow together. The fundamental structure should dictate the higher behaviors in the game. This creates a game world that makes sense and learning a few basic guidelines are all that you need to get started.
Second, many games with three or more players and player interaction can suffer from petty diplomacy. If someone gets ahead in the game, other players can take time to squash the leader. If bad enough, there is a disincentive to get ahead. Balancing this problem can be quite tricky, and I would like to see more discussion about how designers deal with it on-line. IRL, we use hidden information, randomness, or high complexity to keep petty diplomacy from breaking a game.
Still, a good article, and it distills years of game design experience very well.
I understand Tilden completely. I design games for use with Icehouse pieces, and while I hope that the creators of Icehouse sell a lot of sets, I am much more interested in having people make lots of interesting new games with them.
Inspiring creativity is much more important than being successful in business, and much more rewarding.
I worked at a company for seven years, and in that time I knew who to call for help without going through a chain of command. I also knew the systems better than management, usually because I wrote them, and so managers generally trusted my work. Mostly I did whatever development I thought was important without consulting management too much. Management would tell me what they wanted the systems to do, and I would make it happen when it was reasonable and talk them out of it when it was not. I got a lot of really good work done.
I also argued with management many times, butting heads with people who wanted things done poorly. Sometimes I acquiesced and later fixed the system, and other times I kept at it until we found a good compromise. I was eventually laid off when the company was acquired, and I am sure I was selected for lay off because I was contentious with management.
Actually, Looney labs sells a set of gaming pieces called an Icehouse Set, and one of the games you can play with it is RAMbots, which is much like RoboRally. I prefer it, personally. I also really like Falling, sold by their Contagious Dreams site.
Slashdot Mirror
We have instinctual systems that make it hard to apply these seven rules, and it helps to be aware that people who seem to believe lies are mostly following their gut.
OK, so exactly when did they jump the shark, in your opinion?
Here are several essays on game design, many focusing on simplifying a game to focus on the interesting mechanics and decisions. Clearly this applies to computer games as well, but non-computer games are also more accessible to non-programmers.
I'm enjoying the surprisingly-usable keyboard on the Handspring Treo. I was pretty proficient with graffitti, so I was sad to see that I could not get a Treo with it, but now I prefer their keyboard. Now if it only came in Dvorak, I'd be even happier....
>those on my buddy list can email me. The Spammer would have to guess
>my email address and some complicated guid to send me email.
I'm already doing this, using Eudora's filters. I filter any mail that is from somebody not on my address book into another folder which I rarely check. Once my address book is sufficiently accurate, I'll set up an auto-reply on mail sent to me that is not in the book, explaining that I'll also accept any mail that has a certain key word in the subject line. I'll then set up another filter in Eudora that accepts such mail.
I'm a little worried that people will be annoyed at having to jump through a hoop to send mail to me the first time, but this is my best solution yet.
This, comibined with some clever regex filters I already had means that I can reliably get the 10% of my mail that I actually want to read.
I wish I had a copy of Are you a Werewolf? to play with people. It is a game about lying and figuring out who is lying. It's fun, in a paranoid way, and would have told me a lot about my fellow students.
I think the bots don't fall for your fake pages and mail addresses because not enough people link to your page. If you had a little more traffic there, more bots would fall for it. Write something interesting and get slashdotted, would you?
OK, I'm going to come clean here. I prefer to clean myself with soap and water instead of toilet paper. I've been interested in a good toilet seat that makes this easy, and I've looked many times over the years. Those seats are simply very expensive, much more than I would expect for something with a simple water spray and soap dispenser. It seems like the price is inflated because this is a luxury, or that such seats have far more features than I want. Maybe things have changed, and it is time to redo my research.
Not all diplomacy is petty. King making and simple attack-the-leader come up in games with petty diplomacy. Good games with diplomacy, such as Diplomacy, involve complicated deals, short and long term alliances, and sophisticated planning. Boring and obvious diplomacy can kill any game, and good diplomacy can really enhance one.
I've designed many non-computer games for a few years now, and I see all the same issues discussed in this article that we've seen in face-to-face multi-player games. He covers the basics quite well. There are two aspects that he does not discuss which I believe are important.
First, good games are cohesive. The rules and the plot and the mechanics should flow together. The fundamental structure should dictate the higher behaviors in the game. This creates a game world that makes sense and learning a few basic guidelines are all that you need to get started.
Second, many games with three or more players and player interaction can suffer from petty diplomacy. If someone gets ahead in the game, other players can take time to squash the leader. If bad enough, there is a disincentive to get ahead. Balancing this problem can be quite tricky, and I would like to see more discussion about how designers deal with it on-line. IRL, we use hidden information, randomness, or high complexity to keep petty diplomacy from breaking a game.
Still, a good article, and it distills years of game design experience very well.
I understand Tilden completely. I design games for use with Icehouse pieces, and while I hope that the creators of Icehouse sell a lot of sets, I am much more interested in having people make lots of interesting new games with them.
Inspiring creativity is much more important than being successful in business, and much more rewarding.
I worked at a company for seven years, and in that time I knew who to call for help without going through a chain of command. I also knew the systems better than management, usually because I wrote them, and so managers generally trusted my work. Mostly I did whatever development I thought was important without consulting management too much. Management would tell me what they wanted the systems to do, and I would make it happen when it was reasonable and talk them out of it when it was not. I got a lot of really good work done.
I also argued with management many times, butting heads with people who wanted things done poorly. Sometimes I acquiesced and later fixed the system, and other times I kept at it until we found a good compromise. I was eventually laid off when the company was acquired, and I am sure I was selected for lay off because I was contentious with management.
But I have no regrets.
Actually, Looney labs sells a set of gaming pieces called an Icehouse Set, and one of the games you can play with it is RAMbots, which is much like RoboRally. I prefer it, personally. I also really like Falling, sold by their Contagious Dreams site.