Re: Content (Legos and Potato Heads)

[WFreitag@aol.com]

In a message dated 10/16/01 11:37:19 AM, mantic@mbo.net writes:

>>         To some degree, this is a challenge to engineers to build these
>> mechanisms.  At the same time, it is also a challenge to producers to
>> relax their grip on the reins, even if it means the end users scribbling
>> all over the software's wonderful polished content.
>
>   I do not believe that it is necessary for end users to scribble all
>over the sim software's content in order to customize it and shape new
>content. Because talents vary this could even be prohibitive to the
>player who cannot scribble well. I am of the opinion that engineered
>customization tools should provide all users with building blocks in the
>fashion of Role Playing Games, Mr Potato Head and Legos. Such elements
>have an exponential effect on variety, but are more manageable.

Legos are a particularly interesting metaphor because Legos actually 
represent a whole continuum in themselves, ranging from parts that are not 
representative of anything and can be used in a great many ways (e.g. small 
yellow blocks), to parts that are high fidelity representation of things with 
little flexibility in how they can be used (e.g. molded green tree branches). 
Users can choose for themselves which types of parts to use, and whether to 
build the highly representational models on the box covers or mix the parts 
for creative innovation. One _can_ scribble with Legos, and that's not a bad 
thing.

It's interesting to note that interactive storytelling concepts usually start 
out with the notion that all their "pieces" are similar, but when put into 
practice they usually end up with a mix of more mutable general-purpose 
pieces and more specialized pieces.

The issue of scribbling is very different depending on whether or not the 
world is shared with other users. Many text MUDs allow users to scribble to 
their hearts' content in their own proprietary spaces, but no changes at all 
in public spaces or other users' proprietary spaces. Graphic MUDs have stayed 
closer to the Mr. Potato Head approach. 

For simple single-player interactive stories, persistent effects on the world 
are not an issue except insofar as they affect the current story. 
"Scribbling" in this case translates not into "spoiling the polish of the 
world" but into "spoiling the polish of the story instance." In the ideal 
case, reasonable well-meaning choices should never result in a bad story, but 
no system should be expected to maintain story quality in the face of 
deliberate let's-screw-with-the-system behavior such as the hero killing 
people for no reason.

>   Wedding these kinds of content customizations to simulated environments
>offers other possibilities. Perhaps a player might create and play a
>character awhile, and then decide to leave that character in the world.
>By using a rules based neural net learning system in addition to other
>tables and systems such user-created denizens would be very dynamic,
>shaping the experience of other players. And this wholly on the basis of
>simulation.

Wow, this sounds very ambitious. Aren't there way too many potential input 
bits? I could see things like if attacked, run away or fight back, but 
resolving competing drives (e.g. I'm hungry, I'm also being pursued, so 
should I keep running or stop to eat?) isn't a strong point of neural 
networks. To say nothing of all the important interactions that are primarily 
conversational.

On the other hand, since the neural net is self-learning, nothing would be 
lost from the user experience in trying it out. As long as the ones that 
don't work well are removed from the world promptly. (Now there's an idea, 
define the neural net with a genetic algorithm, breeding the most successful 
previously created neural net bots to create the new learning net schema for 
each newly created player character. The fitness function could simply be 
autonomous survival time [or perhaps EPs gained during autonomous survival 
time could also be figured in], selecting in favor of those that can learn to 
protect themselves from monsters and player-characters and to play the game 
at a minimal level such as obtaining food when hungry.)

- Walt