Slynky's Demise

[AMF]

Well, yes, no, and yes.

I mean, I admit, that what I am saying is symptomatic of not being able to totally separate gaming from reality. And, yes, that is a bad thing, I would say.

But it isn't monolithic nor is it universal. For example, as to the former, in SE4, when at war, I regularly "murder" billions of digitized aliens when I glass worlds - something that I would never do in real life, even if I had the ability and the justification. So, there is a point at which my personality/ethics/whatnot do not apply and points in which they do. And I think that they apply when I am dealing with other people and I have a choice. Theoretically, I could draw a utility curve which would plot my reluctance to backstab against the cost of doing so and clearly at some point it would behoove me to backstab if the cost were too great to not do so. But, this is just a game, and so it is highly unlikely the cost will ever reach that point. If, however, we were talking about real life then it might be reached much earlier.

As to the second point, my "game ethics" are not universal - as Alneyan pointed out, when I play Poker (and I do, and I've got a pretty good poker face) there is no space at all for anything other than straight up gaming. the AH game Diplomacy is the same way - the very structure of the game makes it zero-sum and betrayal inevitable - in fact, necessary. SE4 is also, *pretty much* the same way due to the limited space, the bounded tech, and the general Malthusian construct it is based on. However, I *think* my point (and I am no longer entirely sure here) is that Se4 does *not* necessarily have to be that way.

Hence my greater enjoyment of the RPG style SE4 games than the "standard" conquer the universe ones. Really, I beleive that it is true that if one plays with a style that is geared only to the latter, then you'll eventually come to a point where the game really is just a very complex giant spreadsheet with random factors.

That's how it got to be with me before I discovered PBW. I played against the AI to such an extent that I got bored. Now, I enjoyed it for years but after a while I was just playing a giant spreadsheet.

With humans, it doesn't have to be that way. Humans engage in *politics* and role-playing, both of which I find quite enjoyable.

It's always a bLast for me to test my basic political outlook (something akin to neo-liberal institutionalism with hard-core waltzian neo-realism and neo-classical realism thrown together) against other political "styles" - when one mode of political thought meets another mode, what happens? Do they change each other? Will the realist always win out? I think it's fascinating. And then, throw in the role-playing aspects and unpredictability of humans into it, and it gets to be a downright stunning exercise in politics. I love it.

Alarik

geoschmo said:
Do you play Poker? Do you tell your opponents what cards you have? Do you bet when you have nothing in the hopes that they will fold? It's called a bluff, but it's a lie.

Do you play chess? Do you announce to your opponent that you plans ahead of time? Do you move your Bishop into a position to take one piece when in fact you are trying to take another? It's called a feint, but it's a lie. If your opponent unknowingly makes a move that puts an valuable piece at risk do you point it out to him? If you don't you are being less then honest. Perhaps you can parse this and say you aren't lying, but it's semantics.

If you are having trouble with your concience when you've done nothing wrong, or getting upset at what other players do to you when they've done nothing wrong, it's because as I said, you cannot separate what happens in the game from what is out of the game.

It's a game.

[geoschmo]

I totally agree that the politics and player to player interaction are what makes this game great. Without it SE4 would have been an interesting game, for about a month. About the time I spent playing SE3. But for me deceiving, and being decieved are a crucial part of that interaction.

I don't like team victory games of SE4. So by definition that means any allies I make along the way are going to end up being enemies before it's over. Even while working together to beat our common enemies I am always plotting the eventual demise of my allies. And I assume that my allies are doing the same for me. I try to be a good ally, as long as it suits my purposes. I work hard to make our "team" strong, but on the other hand I don't want my teammates stronger then me. I want them to be strong enough to help me, strong enough so that I don't seem a great threat to them, but not so strong they feel they don't need me any longer.

The question is which of us will reach the point of being ready to cast off the alliance first. Too late and your ally gets the drop on you. Too early and the distraction caused by the new war make sit impossible to completly dispatch the common enemy. And your ally turned enemy could turn and make allies with the former common enemy.

It's a great way to play. Unfortunatly I have found that few people get the same satisfaction from this style of play that I do. So I find that people don't want to be allies with me to begin with because of what they have heard abotu me form other players, or comments I've made in the forum. Or they take it personally when I turn on them, making what should be just a game issue into something that affects our friendship.

So at times I've had to modify my style of play, keeping alliances beyond the point at which they are actually useful to me in the game. Because I don't want to "hurt their feelings". That to me is as distateful as decieving allies is to some of you.

In real life I am a nice guy. I guess all the pressure of being nice and following the accepted norms of society manifest themselves subliminally in the way I play this game. Turns me into a bit of a jerk.

[AMF]

You know, this gets to an issue that has always begged for resolution in PBW and PBeM games: player anonymity. WE've all been playing these games for years probably, and we build up an understanding of how certain players play. I make good use of this, I think, in that I "hype" my trustworthiness in the beleif that people will treat my empires differently than they would if I were not me. And, I admit, I trust some players more than others based on similar criteria.

BUT, if we're talking about a simulation game, wherein we all represent the guiding forces of fantasy space empires, then none of that should come into play.

In one series of games I have played for nigh on fifteen years now, we contemplated setting up a dedicated server to allocate email addresses based upon position, rather than a player's ID. It was a historical simulation wherein each player was a medieval empire. So, the email addresses would be "France@..." "Japan@..."

In this way each player could play however they wanted, without fear of out-of-game effects or tarnishing their reps.

Of course such a situation is not really enforceable, since a player could choose to "spill the beans" for tactical advantage.

However, perhaps a deedicated group of SE4 players could make a good go of it. It would require a dedicated set of email addresses and stock empires ("Abbidon@...", "AmonKrie@...") or that players ALWAYS engage in IC Messages, OR only send Messages in-game and IC. Furthermore, the game host might have to be ready to enforce it, but I'm not sure how that would happen unless they were ready to kick out any player that broke the rules.

I would play such a game - and I could backstab without feeling too crappy about it.

It might be tough to pull off, though...thoughts?

Alarik

EDIT: actually, rather than email addresses, if we could set up a website wherein we could send Messages to the other players but their identities and email addresses were hidden, then it would go a long way towards a better system like this. Players could still choose to tell others their email/IDs on their own for tactical advantage, but it gets harder that way, a bit at least...

[Gandalf Parker]

The Dominions crowd have had similar discussions. I worked it into the threads of creating a web-based PbEM games handler site. One way to go would be to create user logins and tie all of their games to them. I would be "Gandalf Parker" and my reputation would follow me from game to game, and would be important to me to maintain.

Another way to go would be to offer anonymous games. Such as actually creating a mail account for each player in each game. Not as big a deal as it sounds if you own the server. That way I could play a game as KissMyAsteroids. If efforts were made to provide enough communication channels then there would be no temptation to break the anonymity

The mechanics, and pros/cons, of different arrangments are usually tied into whether or not you build the site as a webmaster from the top down, or as a system admin from the bottom up.

Anyway, I digress. There are definate advantages to both the known logins, and the unknown ones. It would be nice to have both supported.

[geoschmo]

Anonymous games is one of the fetures on the PBW to do list. As I understood it, it would have been a simple options to be checkemarked by the game owner which would simply not display the player names on the game info page. Probably wouldn't be that complicated even. Admiral intended to, but never got around to coding it in.

[tesco samoa]

why not get a new hotmail account and create a new id on pbw... there you go... no one knows...

[Ragnarok]

tesco samoa said:
why not get a new hotmail account and create a new id on pbw... there you go... no one knows...

Because he would need a yahoo account...much better then hotmail...

[Alneyan]

Hear the wisdom of Ragnarok! Incidentally, is the US Yahoo mail now on par with the European Yahoo mails? A few months ago, it was much better to have a Yahoo.co.uk mail rather than a Yahoo.com, which doesn't really make much sense.

I currently have 100 mo of storage space, a limit of a few mo for attachments, and the ability to download my mail from Thundermail. I am supposed to get some ads because of this feature, but not a single ad has been sent since I signed up, so. Is the current Yahoo.com offer equivalent to this?

[AMF]

well, no, because part of the risk on anonymity is someone screwing with the system. You don't want to have a system wherein people can play multiple positions, or otherwise get wacky. So you'd want a system that opaquely mapped actual email accounts to a player position, so other players only saw the player position but the site admin could have code that ensured that only one email account per player existed.

Of course, anybody could just go to yahoo and set up two accounts, but at least you're increasing the cost/annoyance to them to do so.

Although, thinking more, anybody caught doing this would likely be seriously blackballed, so I doubt anyone would. And, hey, we all love to play fairly - why decrease the challenge by cheating...

tesco samoa said:
why not get a new hotmail account and create a new id on pbw... there you go... no one knows...

[Phoenix-D]

Alneyan said:
Hear the wisdom of Ragnarok! Incidentally, is the US Yahoo mail now on par with the European Yahoo mails? A few months ago, it was much better to have a Yahoo.co.uk mail rather than a Yahoo.com, which doesn't really make much sense.

I currently have 100 mo of storage space, a limit of a few mo for attachments, and the ability to download my mail from Thundermail. I am supposed to get some ads because of this feature, but not a single ad has been sent since I signed up, so. Is the current Yahoo.com offer equivalent to this?

Except for the Last part, yes. And I have a program that takes care of that for me (YahooPOPs)