Log edited with Logedit 2.7.0pl on Sat Oct 25 19:06:16 CDT 2003 Word-wrapping at 76 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Hall(#2548RaJ) / /^\/^\/^\ \ |"""""""""""""""""""""""""|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|"""""""""""""""""""""""""| | LECTURER |~~)~~~~~~~~~(~~| TOPIC | | |~~) (~~| | | Javelin |~~) ___ (~~| Respect-based economy | | | |~~) Y (~~| | | | |_________________________|\___ | ___/|_________________________| | |/ (_ (_ (_ (* (_ \|==\_____/==|/ _) _) _) _) _) \| \ (_ (_ (_ (_ (* \|___|/ *) _) _) _) *) / (_ (_ (_ (* (_ _) *) *) _) *) (* (_ (_ (_ A _) _) _) *) (_ (_ (_ / \ _) _) _) (_ (_ / \ _) *) (_ / \ *) / \ do: -help lecture Present: Ellis, Viila, Trispis, Chimera, Blue_Guest, Demae, Walker, Mystery8, Territan, Grinna, Huz, Nymeria, Balerion, Zebranky, Cheetah, China, Gallahad, Tyr, Elvira, Pozzo, Colputt, Boris Javelin says, "Classically, an economy is a system of production, distribution, and consumption of resources. When most virtual world designers talk about economies, they're interested in how players will trade scarce items, or how to design currency systems that are more or less realistic or playable. Dr. Bartle, for example, compares closed economies, in which resources are not created or destroyed, but can be assembled, traded, and disassembled, with open or "source/sink" economies in which processes create resources that can be traded, and other processes consume resources." Javelin says, "Respect-based economies are fundamentally different beasts. In a respect-based economy, the key resource is the respect or regard that one actor has for another. Today I'd like to talk about respect-based economies and some virtual world examples and simulations that have taken place here on M*U*S*H or that might one day do so." Javelin says, "Informal respect-based economies emerge naturally from the constant communication of helpful information that goes on in places like M*U*S*H. One quickly comes to appreciate players who consistently and patiently provide information that is useful, and these players gain respect and reputational advantage. They can often call on this respect when they themselves are in need of assistance, as others are more likely to try to return their contributions." Javelin says, "In a formal respect-based economy, on the contrary, measures of regard must be developed and quantified, so that they can be applied not only by long-term observers of actors' behavior but by new actors and even automated systems." Javelin says, "Formal respect-based economies are not unknown in virtual world design. One particular sort, loyalty systems, has had some currency in muds, including graphical commercial worlds. In a loyalty system, follower-players register or quantify their loyalty to one or more leader-players, and leader-players can draw on this loyalty in some fashion - perhaps through the ability to command follower actions or to achieve goals more rapidly when more followers are loyal. Such simple systems present several interesting challenges, particularly when loyalty is intended to be a hidden variable from leader-players, to prevent them from trivially exposing traitors-in-waiting by issuing simple commands or by measuring their total productivity." Javelin says, "A variation of a loyalty system was employed during the Family Feud LARP held last year during Mudtoberfest. In this LARP, which was loosely based on the final battle between good and evil described in the Book of Revelations, the GM used a system of "belief points" to adjudicate conflicts between groups of characters. Each character or type of character contributed a fixed number of belief points to whomever they followed (or a fraction thereof if the follower was in a remote location), and the group with the greatest combined belief could work their will over groups with less belief. This made an interesting game mechanic, but was obviously a very limited economy, as players could not express degrees of loyalty." Javelin says, "A more extensive respect-based economy was the whuffie system, which was deployed here for several weeks in January 2003. Whuffie was the name given to the measure of respect described in Cory Doctorow's novel "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom." In that story, a future society is posited in which everyone is neurally connected to a computer network and all basic material needs are satisfied. Desires beyond the minimum - including the ability of a group to take over possession and government of a region - are dependent on the amount of regard you have achieved from others, as computed instantaneously through the network as a numeric whuffie value." Javelin says, "Doctorow's novel was the basis for the implementation of whuffie here, which was aided by a flurry of player interest and willingness to participate in the system. On a virtual world, everyone *can be* instantaneously connected for the purposes of computing and viewing a player's whuffie, though the lack of a neural interface makes regularly and naturally updating one's regard for another considerably more problematical." Javelin says, "(Not unlike one of Bartle's issues with descriptions)" Javelin says, "The system implemented here allowed a player to assign whuffie to as many other players as they wished, using a 0-10 scale. 0 whuffie was equivalent to no regard, and was the default assumption for players you had not met (or did not wish to rate). Players could view their own whuffie or any other player's whuffie. Interestingly, M*U*S*H players often seemed to make fairly radical swings in their ratings of one another on the basis of rather small interactions, and this could add up quite quickly so that a player who said something foolish on a channel could soon find themselves with much lower whuffie." Javelin says, "Two particularly interesting aspects of whuffie were whuffie weighting and adhocracy. When examining another player's whuffie, it was reported not only as a total score, but also divided into "righthand" and "lefthand" whuffie. Righthand whuffie is whuffie the player had earned from other players who were well-regarded by the examining player; lefthand whuffie was the rest of the whuffie (from players not well-regarded by the examining player). By examining yourself, you could see how you were regarded both by those you respected and those you didn't. By examining others, you could get an impression of how others you thought well of regarded them. This was further extended into the idea of "weighted whuffie" - each point of whuffie on the player I'm examining is multiplied by the amount of whuffie I assigned to the giver, and the total is summed. More ways to give people information about the regard level of others." Javelin says, "Adhocracy was far more controversial. How should the game world reward whuffie? What additional privileges should a high-whuffie player have? Although I had several ideas, the most interesting seemed to be to allow groups of players to decide - the group with the greatest total (unweighted) whuffie would be allowed to determine whuffie privileges. If they made bad choices, other players would lose regard for them, and another adhoc would soon come to control the whuffie rewards." Javelin says, "Not surprisingly, the results were largely conservative choices: whuffie (either absolute levels or percentiles) was proposed (and allow) to control abilities like setting the @poll, using @wall, idling, hiding from the who list, scrawling on room descriptions with a magic graffiti marker, and having a room in the "whuffie palace". The administration generally opposed granting powers that were disciplinary in nature, and the players opposed requiring a certain amount of whuffie to prevent the *loss* of an existing privileges. Players asked to be able to opt out of the system, and soon it appeared that the experiment had nowhere productive to go. Although I think a whuffie system like this could well form the basis of a very interesting model of government and development for a MUSH as a whole, one important lesson we learned was the difficulty of introducing a respect-based economy piecemeal into an existing system of privileges. (Softcode for this system is available in the PennMUSH archives)." Javelin says, "A final example of respect-based economy is a thought experiment that I call "human capital". In human capital, players issue bonds redeemable for a given amount of time that they're willing to donate helping someone else. These bonds can then be traded, forming the basis for an in-game economy based on respect for the knowledge or helpfulness of players. Such a system could be bootstrapped by requiring that in order to redeem player capital one must issue player capital of one's own as well." Viila saw recently on BBC World a news item about time banks in England which operated on similar principle. Javelin says, "For example, in order to get a half hour of skilled work from Viila's character (or player), I would have to issue a bond for a half hour of my time, in addition to whatever else Viila (or the market for Viila-bonds) demanded as a price." Javelin says, "Heh. I don't know if that's Life Mirrors Art or vice-versa." Javelin says, "All of these three examples share a common theme. In a free virtual world, and especially a social world (or among characters in an RPG that emphasizes social status), there is often little *but* respect that players can "barter". Although respect-based interactions occur naturally and implicitly, I think there's still a great deal of interesting possibilities to be explored in explicit or formal respect economies." Javelin says, "So I want to leave you thinking about those ideas - I am, for a future game - and I'll see if there are any questions." Balerion says, "I find the idea of loyalty/respect systems very interesting, especially in RP games. To what degree can the "whuffie" of a person you look at be negatively or positively affected by the "whuffie" of people you dislike/like? When whuffie was first introduced here, I admit, I couldn't really wrap my head around right/lefthanded whuffie..." Balerion says, "I'm probably not very clear... Lets say you respect someone. You give him whuffie. Whuffie is good. But then someone you absolutely hate gives the same person whuffie. Now you're suspicious -- why does this person I despise like this person I like? Are they pals? Is the guy I like leading me on? Etc. As I recall, this was reflected in right/lefthanded whuffie ... but, well, I never did wrap my head around it. Heh." Balerion says, "Done." Javelin says, "Nice question. I thought the left/right thing was actually a really brilliant part of Doctorow's concept." Javelin says, "All the regard that someone has accumulated can be divided into respect from people you like/trust, and respect from others (people you don't know, people you don't like)." Javelin says, "Clearly, someone with a lot of righthand whuffie is someone you are likely to think well of." Javelin says, "But the presence of an equal amount of lefthand whuffie tells you that this is a person who is well-regarded by a diverse group of people, which is also useful information." Javelin says, "On the other hand, someone who has no righthand whuffie and lots of lefthand whuffie might be someone to watch out for - well-respected among those you distrust." Javelin says, "To coded systems, of course, as in the novel, it's only the total that counts, because coded systems don't have their own view of people. Having left/righthand whuffie is a guide for people, not for code." Javelin hopes that answers? Balerion nods. "It does. Thanks. :)" Demae says, "How do you think the problem of 'Tyranny of the Majority' would tie into respect-based economies?" Trispis thinks . o O ( interesting. ) Javelin says, "That is a serious problem with most of these systems that I've outlined, as the more players, the more they can share regard with one another and gain more economic power." Javelin says, "On the other hand, I don't think they actually worsen the problem so much as make it explicit." Demae noticed how the M*U*S*H administration refused to grant powers like See_All just because someone had high whuffie. Viila says, "Because that infringed on all players rights. Even those who didn't want to participate." Javelin says, "It's possible that a respect economy based on gift-giving or debt (like human capital's bootstrap), for example, might avoid some of that, but I haven't thought hard about it yet." Trispis says, "measure it/account for the transactions assumed to be occurring anyway." Javelin says, "And, as Viila says and I noted, grafting a whole-game respect-based economy onto an existing system of rights, rules, and expectations is no easy task." Demae nods. Javelin will take two more questions and then has to go. Trispis says, "an image that went through my mind during this presentation was that of some sort of automated system to replace the 'neural interface' bit from the book. Is your interest in this (the results of which I find truly fascinating, btw) motivated toward AI conceptual advancement?" Javelin says, "No. That was easy. :)" Javelin says, "Although I *am* interested in the problem of providing a fast intuitive interface for players to change character aspects in general" Blue_Guest goes home. Javelin says, "Mostly because of experience on WoD games where auras were based on character emotions, and players rarely adjusted their character's emotions often enough to make that sensible. In that respect, the high volatility of whuffie, at least initially, was of interest to me. Although as people got used to it, they tended to make adjustments less often." Êlvïrå says, "You say that saying something 'foolish' on a channel could result in a player losing large amounts of whuffie. Doesn't this encourage groupthink and alienate players who think differently, or scare players from questioning the voice of the majority?" Colputt nods Êlvïrå is playing devils advocate because she's a bit of a whuffie fan really, but struggles to get round that part Javelin says, "It definitely caused some players to think about what they said. In the right environment that could mean a pressure to groupthink. In another environment, it could mean a pressure to try to say things that are at least intelligent and defensible (or funny) even if they're not in agreement with the majority. Slashdot's moderation system is a sort of example of the latter." Javelin says, "It does help if the society in question has some shared values about what's worth respecting." Viila says, "Troll (-1)" Viila says, "Interesting (+4)" Êlvïrå nods Cheetah says, "Ogre (-3)? ;>" Javelin says, "For me, that would include civility in discourse as well as interesting content -- whether or not I agree with it -- although there are certainly things people could say, intereting though they be, that would cause me to lose respect for them." Territan says, "RTFA (-1). >:)" Viila grins. Javelin says, "I'd like to thank you all for coming to ITBG 2003, and I hope that you've enjoyed what you've heard and that it will spark discussion in the future. Before we leave, I have one closing announcement to make." Viila applauds and cheers. Êlvïrå hurrahs Ellis applauds Javelin says, "I'd like to congratulate Gallahad, who will be named the first M*U*S*H Architect-in-Residence for his proposal of "Afterliving MUSH", which you should talk to him about. He'll be receiving 12 months of free hosting from Betterbox.net, a program sponsor, and will be presenting 6 educational programs here at M*U*S*H over the coming year, so you'll see him again. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, see http://mush.pennmush.org/air/" Ellis claps. Êlvïrå cheers! Gallahad smiles. Grinna says, "OOooo" Cheetah cheers! Boris yeaaas!!! Trispis applauds. Balerion applauds. :) Javelin says, "Good night, friends." Boris cheers Viila cheers at Gallahad. Javelin goes down the few steps to the seating area. Javelin comes down the few steps from the stage. Javelin has arrived. Trispis says, "gratz, Gallahad."