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 Forum index » Meta » General META Discussion
[META] Organic Farming article by SpaceBass
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rose
...and then Magic happens


Joined: 26 Nov 2003
Posts: 4117

 		[META] Organic Farming article by SpaceBass
I just noticed this article posted by SpaceBass on the unforums page on April 1st.

I did search but didn't find a discussion about Space's article or about the ARGN article Fence Building that Space was responding to.

Organic Farming is a solid discussion of the philosophy of unfiction and the unfiction community. I think everyone might like to read it over.

Thoughts?
----
My feeling is that unfiction isn't the best place or most appropriate forum for an adversarial game. By adversarial, I mean a game design that requires teams of players (or individuals) who must keep information secret from each other. Unfiction forums are for collaboration. While in theory unfiction being out of game means that posts here can't be used by the other players, in practice it is difficult to enforce.

The games ilovebees, last call poker and perplexcity are not adversarial in the sense of players needing to protect information from other players. In only one instance was a player asked by the PMs not to reveal information for a few days. That one instance was part of a spontaneous change in the game design - not the overall plan of the game. Each of these games require a large collaborative community for success. The game design is primarily to encorage collaboration.

I recall that in the post game chat after ilovebees, the PMs mentioned that they relied on the community to develop tools needed. Players like inio and darkforge created sites to help get the data on GPS locations and time of phone calls out to other players. The PMs applauded their efforts in sharing the knowledge.
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I love this site for being free, in every sense of the word~Spacebass

Mankind was my business, the common good was my business.~ Dickens

PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 11:07 pm
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MageSteff
Pretty talky there aintcha, Talky?


Joined: 06 Jun 2003
Posts: 2716
Location: State of Denial

 		Re: [META] Organic Farming article by SpaceBass
This is my response:

Competitive vs. Cooperative, another reply to Mr. Eisner

Spacebass has already talked about what he sees UnFiction's role as a source of information to be shared. I want to answer Mr. Eisner's comments, and explain why I prefer the cooperative aspect of play.

It was the cooperation that that kept me hanging around when I first found the ARG community. There are plenty of places that thrive on competitive head to head competition., but relatively few that encourage working together. While real life has some areas where one must be competitive to succeed, it more often requires cooperation. You have to learn how to get along with others, be it your family, your coworkers or your friends in order to get the most out of life. Being competitive in everything generally will leave one very alone and isolated. ARGs, in trying to mimic what really happens in life, also should reflect that as well, otherwise they degenerate into "just another game." By being competitive a mindset that requires not sharing information, one does not have the additional brainpower that comes with having several sets of eyes, ears, and minds all working on the same problem. Given that some puzzles require input from many people along the way to reach the final solution, by "hoarding" information one only hurts oneself by cutting off that extra power that cooperation allows. It would mean that Puppetmasters would need to decrease the overall difficulty of the puzzles since they would not be certain how many players could solve them alone.


Mr. Eisner also mentioned Last Call Poker as a competitive game. I really disagree about this. While there was "head to head" competition for chips in the poker game, the true game was the eliciting of information. Yes, in the early days of the game there was some discussion regarding how the ARG community could plant a player at the weekly tournament table, what ended up happening really made me happy. There were several people playing who had initially joined because it was a poker site. Within the first couple of weeks, several of the high chip count players were helping the ARG community group at the tables when a game character showed up. These poker players did not start out from the ARG community, but they whole heartedly were willing to help us gain the information we needed. As the help neither hurt nor enhanced their winnings at the table, why should they do this? I strongly believe it is because in the long run, cooperation gains everyone more than strict competition.


I personally believe that splitting the community into competing factions everyone suffers. The main way it suffers is that it reduces the amount of brainpower available to the group. By cutting off people, you may miss out on the person who has the one bit of trivia that will help solve the puzzle. I have been directly involved with one game where the community was split - and each group had difficulty with solving problems for that very reason. While there are a few games that involve prizes - by and large the majority of ARGs do not involve any "prize" material " at solving a problem, or set of problems, first. There is no compelling reason to split the community when a "prize" is not involved, other than players who desire to create factions, or PM's who desire to create factions within a game. While society in general does sometimes have an "us vs. them" mentality, especially in the work environment, I would like to think that such creations are more the exception rather than the rule. I would like to think that we are all here to help each other have an enjoyable time, rather than having those who desire to play the game in a manner that might ruin the fun for others. Most ARGs have more going for them than a strict single goal oriented drive. Project Syzygy (Perplex City) for example may have a prize associated with finding the cube, but there is much more going on in that world to experience and understand - the only way to experience it is to share the wonder and excitement of learning new information about that society. It isn't just a scavenger hunt to find a limited list of items, or track down the winning game piece.

To hope that the future of ARGs degenerates to one in which the sole reason for playing is to compete against others to "win" the game, I think really lowers expectations for the genre as a whole. There is room for games in which competition may be a main driving force, but I for one hope that ARGs will offer much more than that. I can get competition from video games, MUDs, and other such game venues. There are far fewer venues where cooperative action is encouraged to the extent that it is in the ARG community. Learning to cooperate with others is a very valuable life skill that really doesn't get enough attention in other areas.

I want to see cooperation in games. I think the ARG universes are large enough to be able to offer something for everyone. I just want the game designers to know that not everyone wants to be competitive.
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A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead


PostPosted: Thu Apr 20, 2006 11:19 am
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Rolerbe
Unfettered


Joined: 01 Mar 2005
Posts: 330
Location: North America

 		While I too enjoy the cooperation that is unique to the ARG phenom to date, there is room for a wide variety of stories to be told in an immersive way.

Coopetition is much more fragile than competition, and there's a lot to say that, overall, it is less effective in producing grand results. I have long maintained that the most effective, and sometimes only, way to move forward on most fronts -- be it scientific progress, social reform, or whatever, is to make it a competitive sport.

Take for example the space race. When it was a race, the progress was phenomonal, and culminated in putting men on the moon only 11 years after the first satellite reached orbit. What about since then?

I don't care for the 'winner take all' treasure hunts where a single player takes the big prize. So I don't play them. But I could see a very exciting game where the player base had to back one or another in-game character, where those characters where competing in a time pressured plot (e.g. two protagonists -- maybe one more pragmatic and machiavellian, and one more pure and noble). I think that would be grand. Cool
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 20, 2006 2:25 pm
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krystyn
I Never Tire of My Own Voice


Joined: 26 Sep 2002
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 		I think it all depends on the individual game.

Boundaries are comforting, true play can be surprising.
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 21, 2006 12:37 am
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