tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8267838989626532292023-11-16T06:38:45.033-08:00Banana Pepper MartinisA blog about law, games and the space between them.Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.comBlogger295125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-34938004594464435132013-07-22T05:35:00.001-07:002013-07-22T05:35:21.294-07:00Space Lawyer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Hey folks, sorry for the long break in posts. I wrote a sci-fi novel and a short story collection in all the downtime. Amazon link to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Space-Lawyer-Kirk-Battle/dp/1482321084/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1374495743&sr=8-2&keywords=space+lawyer">Space Lawyer</a> and another link for <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Gerry-Factory-Other-Stories-ebook/dp/B00E2V0CEC/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374496310&sr=1-1&keywords=gerry+and+the+gin+factory">Gerry and the Gin Factory and Other Short Stories</a>. Kindle version of <i>Space Lawyer</i> should be out soon.<br />
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I've also moved operations to my <a href="http://kirkbattle.com/">new tumblr page</a>. Over the years I've spent so much time on facebook posting links and pictures that it seemed time to start tapping into the habit. I'm also on Goodreads now as Kirk Battle, where I post a decent book review or two. Most of my critical energy goes into writing fiction for now, I'm working on new short stories and planning out the sequel to <i>Space Lawyer</i> these days.<br />
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Take care and hope to hear from you!<br />
<br />Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-17029475015812056922012-05-04T06:41:00.004-07:002012-05-04T06:53:26.362-07:00Some Final Thoughts on Rule Theory in Video Games<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Between the <a href="http://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/06/gamification-and-law-1.html">Law & Gamification</a> series, <a href="http://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/09/mmo-judiciary-why-even-create-one.html">MMO Judiciary</a>, <a href="http://killscreendaily.com/articles/brief-what-can-games-teach-us-about-law/">Kill Screen</a> postings, the <a href="http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/110728">GWJ posts</a>, and <a href="http://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/11/whileworking-on-gamification-and-law.html">System Narrative</a> posts I think I've gone through this topic pretty thoroughly. After seeing the modelling article flopped on reddit I decided maybe it was time to take a step back and reflect a bit. When it comes to rule theory and video games, I think games are a lot more useful to rule theory than vice-versa.<br />
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I base this just on the common assertion that what I'm writing about is usually obvious to people or that I'm taking simple ideas and dressing them up in fancy words. This is true in some ways, if rule modelling (for example) is something you only know from the perspective of game design then these concepts are pretty simple. In computer software, all rules are automatically enforced. Approaching the rule from a binary perspective is the most efficient method and the idea of choice or costs is not really an issue. A choice in a video game is really just a question of whether or not the person does it. Issues like who, why, what if they don't like it, how do we change it, or by whose authority are irrelevant in single-player games. Or in an MMO's case, minimal problems for the developer.<br />
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This is formalism. Pure formalism really, so much so that it is probably better labelled as 'game' or some other concept legal philosophy has yet to really address. Normally when you say formalism you're talking about a rule system where the rules are taken literally and this is true in video games. Yet the idea of a perfect formal system, one where all choices are expected and accounted for, is really a fantasy. A world where there are no hard cases or if there is one, the entire system breaks down. As a lawyer, I take for granted that there will always be messy, complex perspective and people involved in any system.<br />
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When I first started digging into this topic about a year ago, it began with the question of why this subject wasn't really addressed more in-depth. Legal philosophy has always acknowledged games for their capacity to illustrate complex ideas in rules. Two people fighting over what's correct in chess. What's the difference between writing down the rules for reference and treating that written text as the source of authority? What makes that tactic unfair and that one acceptable if they are still obeying the rules? I can capture this notion through the example of a game fairly quickly, as opposed to delving into banking law or something equally byzantine.<br />
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Games, by their nature, deify complexity. They selectively arrange the portions of complexity that are gratifying to master and hail the player for their capacity to overcome it. The players are taught everything they need to know and conversely, the rulemaker knows everything that could happen in their system. In such a space, there is no reason to be afraid of rules. Which is really the emotion that makes my job possible.<br />
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I'd like to close on an anecdote about the development of the tort law to illustrate my point. This is the legal mechanism by which if you get injured and someone else is responsible, you can sue them for damages. This did not exist until the Industrial Revolution. Prior to that point, most injuries were generally considered to be your own damn fault. The very rare scenarios where someone else was responsible could be handled by squeezing the lawsuit into some other area, criminal assault or nuisance for example.<br />
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What changed was that machines have a bad habit of blowing up. Railroads, steamboats, and factories maimed and killed people in large quantities. You can't really tell someone that it's their fault the steamboat they were riding to New Orleans exploded. So tort law was invented. What was once simple and taken for granted suddenly got a lot more complicated. <br />
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So it is with video games at the moment. While everyone awaits their Citizen Kane or Art Gallery or...whatever the hell it is people are going on about now, the lawyer is more interested in something else entirely. I am waiting for them to get more complicated.Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-28516800822035057682012-01-29T16:45:00.000-08:002012-01-29T16:55:22.622-08:00The Wire and Breaking Bad<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGDJqM_VsMz1XK2UKxMgGKg7XTbVH0sbYOnxJJmZze1EW33Fnb_O2Ai1T_-d4HJ1ElBTj1h2Nn7ELuzGMv-dS9XVozupR3nPurnM7L4dQiSgP2Q0VTnox4ImNqK8jwmMcUHElRaC4ZoJgv/s1600/the-wire1.jpg" style="text-align: left; "><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGDJqM_VsMz1XK2UKxMgGKg7XTbVH0sbYOnxJJmZze1EW33Fnb_O2Ai1T_-d4HJ1ElBTj1h2Nn7ELuzGMv-dS9XVozupR3nPurnM7L4dQiSgP2Q0VTnox4ImNqK8jwmMcUHElRaC4ZoJgv/s400/the-wire1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5703221034784034338" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><i>This post is a part of a larger series about the kinds of stories video games tell. It is not the only kind they tell, but it is one the medium is uniquely good at because of the nature of games.<o:p></o:p></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>Oh, and spoilers.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><br /></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Throughout this <a href="http://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/11/whileworking-on-gamification-and-law.html">systems narrative</a> project I have said <i>The Wire</i> is a prime example of a popular system narrative. There have been precursors to its form, like the police procedural or a complex spy thriller, but there are few stories focused so strongly on system rather than character. I figured it was time I went into that a little bit more. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The best way to highlight the ins and outs of the show’s style and system is by comparing it to another show, <i>Breaking Bad</i>, which deals with similar subject matter in a very different way. This isn’t an argument over which is better, just a way to talk about how system narratives work. I’ve watched every season of <i>The Wire</i> twice. I’ve watched the first three seasons of <i>Breaking Bad</i> once. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The biggest characteristic of a system narrative is that the characters don’t really change personally, they move around the system into different positions and relationships with one another. McNulty in <i>The Wire </i>is roughly the same person in Season 1 as he is in Season 5. When he’s outside of Homicide or not working a detail, he’s calmer and sober. When he gets placed in that environment, he gets angry and drunk. That compulsion hasn’t really been resolved at the end of the show, he’s just more aware of it. McNulty has chosen to take himself out of that position for his own well-being. This observation applies for the majority of characters, even Bubbles and his recovery from addiction. Bubbles is affected by the events of his life to change, he’s not different in the sense that he is a different person.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheA91BXBcAkqkfbRiiqzP63XsVCOYxd2Y2CavR7-a9d0HddYBjKB7uF7qBNaCQG_T-2VjEtOso5Wo89ZeO5SJVuInxR19NFu_jrdw5HHHp2QKl2fsXx1z9WuNz2z6mcSUSfjDhbU9LpSUg/s400/breaking-bad-season-2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5703221185783800050" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); text-decoration: underline; display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In stark contrast is Walter White. At the beginning of Season 1 in <i>Breaking Bad</i> he retains his sympathies and conflicts. At the end of the pilot he is so paranoid and apologetic that he is contemplating suicide for his actions. By the end of Season 3 he has killed either directly or inadvertently 5 people and distributed pounds of meth throughout the Southwest. He has become addicted to the danger and empowerment of being a <a href="http://youtu.be/K0jKLM8HDfU">drug dealer</a>. This is very clearly a character arc.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">What McNulty or Bubbles undergo acts like a character arc. It’s not that system narratives don’t have arcs, it’s that characters moving around a system is depicted differently than focusing on an individual. In Season 3, after the detail has failed to bust Stringer Bell or Proposition Joe for almost a year, the detail is switched to an easier target. McNulty, being the asshole that he is, ignores orders and continues to pursue Stringer Bell. We see him try to flip D’s girlfriend Donnette by telling her D was probably murdered. We see String getting <a href="http://youtu.be/Z7csSch8oS0">angry with Donette</a> a while later, we see D’s mother Brianne hearing the news, eventually <a href="http://youtu.be/jHuCn34NMl8">confronting McNulty</a>, and then realizing the truth when she <a href="http://youtu.be/Dy2L05M1C5Q">confronts String</a>. The act of one individual reverberates out into the others. There are so many examples of this happening in <i>The Wire</i> that on a fundamental level it’s what the show is about.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Compare this to <i>Breaking Bad.</i> Each episode has an individual crisis, whether it’s finding a new supplier, finding a place to safely cook meth, or getting stuck out in the desert because the lab camper broke down. At the center of these crises is Walter White himself. We see him hiding things from his wife, reacting to Jessie, figuring out some kind of chemistry solution, or reacting to the struggle of dealing with meth. Most of this information is conveyed in that episode, he is on to a new set of issues an episode later. There are exceptions to this, like Walt’s decision to expand their territory playing out across multiple episodes when their friend dies. But it’s still at best two or three reverberations playing out as the catalyst for another series of moments where Walt is the central focus. In <i>The Wire</i>, McNulty is only present for two or three scenes of the 7 or 8 his initial actions stir up.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">These two approaches to telling a story are adept at conveying different sorts of information. The intricacies of actually being a drug dealer are never really discussed in <i>Breaking Bad</i>. Walt is handed sacks of cash for pure meth, it’s never explained that people are cutting it and making far more money than what they’re paying. Meth cooking montages are stylish <a href="http://youtu.be/icm2UscmEdU">music videos</a>. During Season 2’s brief portrayal of dealing meth we see one robbery, one arrest, and one murder by a rival gang. None of these characters are particularly significant and most have only a handful of scenes. You get the drama of dealing drugs but you don’t really have any idea of how it actually works. Instead you see how it impacts a small group of people’s lives.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipORW7_CxbMlYVL2_m0ajg7n-cc5ix4evky0DOqxY8InHkY8_7T7jPiSNOtVQIN9iZ_HhijGvwg32Z_zkMTPkBFmheukrwSNgt0T6f-a4lSwY5iNjisNTAyZ7X8BzJHWdKEI6mZL0-tPeB/s1600/The-Wire-Alignment-Chart1.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipORW7_CxbMlYVL2_m0ajg7n-cc5ix4evky0DOqxY8InHkY8_7T7jPiSNOtVQIN9iZ_HhijGvwg32Z_zkMTPkBFmheukrwSNgt0T6f-a4lSwY5iNjisNTAyZ7X8BzJHWdKEI6mZL0-tPeB/s400/The-Wire-Alignment-Chart1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5703221397958227970" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 323px; " /></a><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Contrast that to <i>The Wire</i> where by the end of show you have an intricate understanding of all the issues that go into selling drugs, along with how bureaucracies work, the shipping industry, etc. None of the characters dealing with these issues are anonymous. People at every level of the drug game are depicted in numerous scenes. The same goes for Police, whether it’s beat cops or homicide. Season 3 introduces how the bureaucracy affects the Police and Season 4 shows how the urban environments often puts people in impossible situations. It’s for this reason <i>The Wire </i>does not really have an individual main character as its protagonist. McNulty hardly makes up the bulk of the show and he’s absent for the majority of Season 4. The diverse cast and the time dedicated to showing the impact of various actions means that <i>The Wire</i> is ultimately about the system of relationships between these people.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The biggest thing <i>The Wire</i> can’t do is depict silent evidence. In systems this is just the idea of unknown elements, the multitude of absences or possible outcomes that did not happen for whatever reason. An example would be something like assuming <i>Harry Potter </i>is the best fantasy book about wizards. There are so many variables in play like books that never got much attention, books that have never been written, or old books we’ve forgotten. What if someone else had been in J.K. Rowling’s position? Silent evidence is just a way of saying unknowable variables because there’s no solid answer to that question.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In a show about numerous relationships that works by showing the impact of people’s actions, <i>The Wire</i> has no way of talking about things it can’t depict. This is most prominent in Season 5. David Simon has said that his ultimate message was to show how the media ends up <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8E8xBXFLKE">ignoring what’s important</a>. They go with a bullshit, made-up story about a serial killer rather than talk about Clay Davis’s corruption. This presumably leads to Clay Davis being able to fool a group of jurors into thinking he is innocent. The issue is <i>we’re never shown this</i>. We just have to assume that’s what would happen. Because the show is so busy showing so many other connections and reverberations in the system, all of the newspaper’s actions seem meaningless. This is because they ultimately are in a systems narrative, if your character is affecting no change in others, then they aren’t really a part of the system.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv02WrNk_aikj4zFtg8Y3AQQKX2GgnNogZ9SlTfY6L7KcD6g_O4Tzn2CSqqg4jvgeO3WrDQeoPNtSX6pdW0prEI0Qw4mXjjmWcoyFaSvkQPxK8zCElHWAag0sc-WzA1uR4cdg8BtQEkhb8/s1600/20100426_breakingbad_560x375.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv02WrNk_aikj4zFtg8Y3AQQKX2GgnNogZ9SlTfY6L7KcD6g_O4Tzn2CSqqg4jvgeO3WrDQeoPNtSX6pdW0prEI0Qw4mXjjmWcoyFaSvkQPxK8zCElHWAag0sc-WzA1uR4cdg8BtQEkhb8/s400/20100426_breakingbad_560x375.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5703221615217524466" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 268px; " /></a><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Silent evidence also gives the show trouble in its basic characterizations. I know how all of these characters work and interact together, but I don’t really know a lot about them as individuals. To borrow the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI">Red Letter Media Test</a>, without using their job, appearance, or clothing, how easy is it to describe a character from <i>The Wire</i>? More importantly, how much does that description do them any justice? In <i>Breaking Bad</i> you can describe Season 2 Walt as a guy frustrated with his life who has become hooked on being the best at something. That’s not all of it, but it covers a lot of ground. It’s easy for me to describe McNulty as an asshole or that the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn0ylNZhOJI">FBI profile of him</a> is hilariously accurate. But that doesn’t really describe why he’s important or admirable in the show. For example, I didn’t realize what a jerk McNulty was to his co-workers, particularly in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBqyOj39rEo">Season 3</a>, until I rewatched the show and caught the details. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>Breaking Bad</i>, with its devotion to Walter White, has no problem depicting silent evidence. Long shots of Skyler wondering where Walt is, him missing the birth of his daughter, or the tiny domestic moments that show his marriage falling apart all make you aware of what he’s doing. With so much time devoted to his character we are much more acutely aware of what his actions, in isolation, are doing to others. The question of “but for Walt’s meth dealing, his marriage would be intact” is not really open to debate even though it is never shown. In <i>The Wire</i>, we don’t really know if Clay Davis would have gotten off the hook if the newspaper had been talking about him. The show doesn’t really have a way to talk about this because it’s about things that didn’t happen. In many ways the absence IS a character, like a person in the room sucking the life out of Skyler and driving her away.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The difference can best be summarized by the plane crash at the end of Season 2. His family is in ruins, Walt is responsible for 3 people’s deaths, he has helped produce a lethal drug to thousands, and all he has to show for it is money and an empty house. Rather than show all this by depicting and developing all the characters necessary to show the systemic damage, a tragic airplane accident occurs. It’s a metaphor, a way to represent all the damage that has occurred succinctly and in one episode. <i>The Wire</i>, on the other hand, just shows all this happening episode by episode with its large cast.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix2FSo-npHgKui7aQ_ceVH1lgL87f87Xs9riuRsyqJp5jJIp5wtAW60ZxnuGJOShKhJCv1m_YZFgFJ53zNaBwSX4v8Day4PsQdKb8QB0tflfSjaFz2Zy3Ezx42GG4y-RiP7C6kodpGArZq/s1600/14_thewire_lg.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix2FSo-npHgKui7aQ_ceVH1lgL87f87Xs9riuRsyqJp5jJIp5wtAW60ZxnuGJOShKhJCv1m_YZFgFJ53zNaBwSX4v8Day4PsQdKb8QB0tflfSjaFz2Zy3Ezx42GG4y-RiP7C6kodpGArZq/s400/14_thewire_lg.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5703221756535936402" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 268px; " /></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">David Simon described his approach to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Luaoq1oEF0">writing <i>The Wire</i></a> as trying to appeal to the people actually involved in this world. The average reader, as an outsider, is encouraged to actually engage with the realities rather than just a brief visit. He compares it to spending a month in Paris as opposed to riding around on a tour bus. Simon even made this point literally in Treme when a tour bus stopped and stared at a local funeral dance. <i>Breaking Bad</i>, as a character driven story, is a tour bus of the meth world with an excellent tour guide. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Early in Season 3, Lester asks McNulty how he thinks it <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b54EEpdv9q8">will all end</a>. If he really believes everyone will think he was right and congratulate him when he finally catches Stringer. Lester warns him that he won’t find any satisfaction if that is all he has in his life. In <i>Breaking Bad</i>, we all know that there will be a distinct ending. It will be sharp and well-written, but the story of these individual characters must come to an end eventually. As the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT-7LCRpPVQ">ending montage</a> of <i>The Wire</i> plainly shows, in system narratives that never really happens.<a name="_GoBack"></a></p>Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-4435600946444857442012-01-10T04:08:00.000-08:002012-01-10T05:29:28.868-08:00The Money Saving System<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNxgAwDMEsD2olwzVPNCiAdj051avBXupQaxpkCLFDlwA_2QnGPixDUQJUErT94tqovhKV9qs7_M8RgitQ3t94-F_gTBZOD8I7dray39cE2YVrHnqd8WMHNQM9xQUPhCSweY1cdYDHWSDd/s1600/money-jar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNxgAwDMEsD2olwzVPNCiAdj051avBXupQaxpkCLFDlwA_2QnGPixDUQJUErT94tqovhKV9qs7_M8RgitQ3t94-F_gTBZOD8I7dray39cE2YVrHnqd8WMHNQM9xQUPhCSweY1cdYDHWSDd/s320/money-jar.jpg" width="248" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My New Years Resolution was to write out a systemic process
for saving money. I am, by
nature, a tight fisted bastard. This covers everything
from avoiding going out to dinner with large groups so I don’t get stiffed on
the check to leaving my cards at home when I go out to a bar. I’m also a single guy with no attachments living
in a very cheap apartment, so this method will not work for everyone. </span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The system doesn’t really require specific
values to work, so I’ve tried to keep it value neutral so that people across
different pay ranges may use it. The main idea is to take your paycheck and
divide it up into different portions and then apply different standards for
saving that money. Some portions are placed under lock and key, never to be
touched again. Others may be spent BUT there are rewards to not spending. There
are two separate graphs, one for the mid-month paycheck and one for the end of
the month paycheck.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDZ1DJW1deqbG4znIagEIHlZeTB0n8o2GibhO2FxHxoczjkpZ1-NLbeRWKfu215f4bRUEHEQwBCyVcYQk9RGIdXnImsoF6RUw4kys_zAW5T8u9GV4uJ4TPjV7wrVem-LAO6Yy3AD8BqdfW/s1600/Check+%25231.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDZ1DJW1deqbG4znIagEIHlZeTB0n8o2GibhO2FxHxoczjkpZ1-NLbeRWKfu215f4bRUEHEQwBCyVcYQk9RGIdXnImsoF6RUw4kys_zAW5T8u9GV4uJ4TPjV7wrVem-LAO6Yy3AD8BqdfW/s320/Check+%25231.jpg" width="296" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is the mid-month check. You need to decide on a set
amount you can spend each weekend on your social life, be it 25 to 100. Be
reasonable here, saving money is like dieting. If you try to starve yourself
you’ll just collapse and go back to spending inefficiently. Any money you don’t
spend should go into a lock box or under your bed mattress. This is for special
occasions or needs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The way I pay for groceries and gas is via a credit card
where I get a 2% return in the company’s monopoly money. I’ve never used the
stuff, maybe I’ll get a plane ticket someday with it. I pay this debt down
entirely each month. It has always bitten me in the ass when I didn’t and
suddenly I’m stuck paying off debt for months. Whatever is left goes into loan payments and savings. I leave about 100 in my checking account in case some charge goes onto
it that I forgot about. You can also make some life necessity purchases with
this money like shoes or clothes before it goes into savings. This should be
rare though.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The strategy is to have multiple reward layers
to encourage me to not spend money. I found in the past when I only had the
distant, fuzzy goal of ‘Saving Money is Good and Stuff’ that I forgot about it.
Particularly when I was out at a bar or trying to impress someone. Now when I
go out for a weekend in the back of my head I’m thinking, “If I don’t spend
this money now, I can get something even better down the road.” The result has
been that I find myself spending significantly less when I go out. I’m also
engaging in activities that don’t cost money such as bike riding or joining
clubs.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The second check is similar to the first, although there is
usually less put into savings if anything at all. It’s very important you keep
setting aside this play money though. These are the funds that are susceptible
to your vanities, marketing, impulse buys, and all the other things we dicker
with everyday. You create a wall between the money you’re actually saving and
the portion you’re still fooling with.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There are countless other tricks but they are particular to
one’s lifestyle. I ride my bike to work. I practice perimeter shopping in the
grocery store. I live near my family and we often have group meals where
everyone contributes. I rarely buy anything but discounted games. I keep a gigantic change jar that is half-full at this
point. No cable and I rarely air condition or heat my apartment. I also take advantage of several tax write-offs for business expenses like my cell phone bill, internet bill, and HSA funds. It takes a little reading and you might want to ask an accountant, but it pays out in the long run.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So far I am pleased with the system. I have been tinkering
with it for months and this is the latest model. Some weekends all the social
funds are spent and I even dip into the reserve to get by. But for many I make
a point of not going out so that my reserve funds get built back up.
I suppose there is a bit of gamification to it all and one of the lessons I
learned from game design. When it comes to goals, there is the long game and
the short game. And the less you try to worry about the long game, the better.</span> </div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-31942214489883800122012-01-05T04:00:00.000-08:002012-01-24T13:03:53.598-08:00Fallout: New Vegas and Bastion<div style="text-align: center;">
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<i>This post is part of a larger series on <a href="http://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/11/whileworking-on-gamification-and-law.html">system narrative</a> and uses several ideas from it. A version was posted January 5th that, after doing some edits with the GWJ forums and arguing on reddit, has been revised heavily. The revised version can also be found over on their <a href="http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/111023">excellent website</a>.</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpGVTigK61-DLnns-YQOGwjoy3nBW5b4ph5RPw2PZtdr1YEpSYQ0ShdVXduz29j-91CxoSVmDGhXhba94uHs_AMKDKj-Los4tYiDkpahJWHcoG6BC7TLMToMPSswek3Rfk6Rx_2-ErQvnk/s1600/Bastion-Meetingg-Zulf-Wallpaper-1200x800-510x340.jpg"><b><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694117540637459426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpGVTigK61-DLnns-YQOGwjoy3nBW5b4ph5RPw2PZtdr1YEpSYQ0ShdVXduz29j-91CxoSVmDGhXhba94uHs_AMKDKj-Los4tYiDkpahJWHcoG6BC7TLMToMPSswek3Rfk6Rx_2-ErQvnk/s400/Bastion-Meetingg-Zulf-Wallpaper-1200x800-510x340.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 267px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></b></a><br />
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Sometimes with game narrative it’s a simple question of where do you want to put the story in relation to the game mechanics. The method of delivery and its relationship with the game mechanics ultimately is going to define the overall meaning of the game. If the player has to process content to engage and understand what’s going on, you risk <a class="bb-url" href="http://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/11/content-degradation-in-modern-warfare-3.html" style="color: #d33a1c; text-decoration: none;">content degradation</a> as their mind grinds away at the meaning, turning it into a system of mechanics. You might instead sneak the information into the background, maybe as a loading screen or audiobook to play while you go. But then it might be ignored or totally missed. Amongst these different formulas, <span style="font-style: italic;">Bastion</span> represents a creative new technique: What if you shifted the majority of the narrative to a context-sensitive narrator?</div>
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It often illuminates a lot about how a system works by comparing one to another one. For the purposes of this essay I’m going to be comparing<span style="font-style: italic;">Bastion</span> to <span style="font-style: italic;">Fallout: New Vegas</span> as an example of a game whose content is an intermediary for the system, but I could swap <span style="font-style: italic;">New Vegas</span> for <span style="font-style: italic;">Mass Effect, Deus Ex, Bioshock</span>, etc. All of these games have a basic NPC narrative system: You talk to people, get information or quests, and then fight or stat-check for dialog options. None of those games tell their stories using any one technique 100% of the time. The departure from this setup is what makes <span style="font-style: italic;">Bastion</span> such an interesting game.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkEuT0TBpn1dzX-p9r4C-OlSblyG4Hb1ew_ePSA_Pqzch35TIc1X-aodHYDAIbNJPWrPLARM8KpGx2aJTnXlbIDrGTwGgvprPKPw4RVoXorpllD0WTasqlHIi-sz3Md-1ZkZ_vNOtp6DwW/s1600/fallout_new_vegas_2-original_1268065103_45P.jpg"><b><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694118122053200498" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkEuT0TBpn1dzX-p9r4C-OlSblyG4Hb1ew_ePSA_Pqzch35TIc1X-aodHYDAIbNJPWrPLARM8KpGx2aJTnXlbIDrGTwGgvprPKPw4RVoXorpllD0WTasqlHIi-sz3Md-1ZkZ_vNOtp6DwW/s400/fallout_new_vegas_2-original_1268065103_45P.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 225px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></b></a></div>
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The issue with intermediary content is that, over time, you just stop giving a sh*t about what all these people are saying. The NPC might be telling the most tragic story in the world, but the player’s motivation is still disrupted because they’re likely more focused on trying to resolve a quest. You click through the dialog, follow the compass, kill whatever is there, and report back for your reward. The dialog also falls flat because most of the time is spent explaining things. Walk up to an NPC and they have to identify themselves, tell you their motivations, and eventually ask you to do something for them. Almost all of the dialog is explaining the system, whether it’s how this New California Republic base is doing or who this important figure is in the quest. What’s missing here is character development — the moments where the person talks about their past and beliefs.</div>
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Bastion</span>’s narrative takes the backseat. It’s completely possible to understand everything going on and plow through the game without hearing a word of the story. You could play the entire game with the sound off. In many ways, it reverses the formula of systems narrative by having the design slowly come to represent the content. I perform an action, the narrator elaborates. For the first few hours of play I tuned the narrator out. I didn’t recognize the weird lingo and nothing seemed to be going on except smashing things. By the end, I was more engaged with the story than I was the design.</div>
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What enables the transition is both the lack of repetition in the design and Rucks as an unreliable narrator. Every level contains a constant drip of new items and materials to work with. By the end of the game I was exclusively using guns instead of melee weapons, but it’s possible to go in any number of directions. The game design heavily restrains grinding: you cannot replay old levels and upgrade resources are limited. There is little to no repetition unless you initiate a New Game Plus.</div>
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In terms of story, the moment Zulf turns on Rucks you begin to question the information you're receiving. What started as kind of background mirror begins to become more intriguing as it distorts and ceases to reflect the player’s motivations. Rucks reminds us repeatedly of the importance of rebuilding the Bastion and collecting the various shards. The creepiness begins to set in as he explains how the various creatures are just setting up their own homes, but that it won’t matter because the Bastion will help everyone. By the half-way point, Ruck’s commentary begins to diverge from the player’s perspective. He is telling us things about ourselves based on our actions, but they do not necessarily represent how the player feels.</div>
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As a storytelling device, there seem to be pros and cons to placing most of your narrative in the background. The con strikes me as duration; I’m not sure the game could be much longer than the 6 hours it took for me to beat it. I could not have handled Rucks rambling much more and the game’s barrage of new weapons was turning into feature creep. I may be critical of<span style="font-style: italic;">New Vegas</span>’s NPC system, but the game is certainly designed to last for hours. There are numerous forms of story-telling happening both spatially, in the background, and during NPC exchanges. You might learn about a quest involving Vault 34’s radiation leak through talking to NPCs, exploring the East Pump Station, or just stumbling upon the Vault itself. Wandering the wastes is a viable way to play. By the time I hit the 60-hour marker, I may be burned out on the quest format but I can just start exploring the unique sites at that stage.</div>
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The pro in <span style="font-style: italic;">Bastion</span>'s method is its ability to communicate background information. Take Zia’s backstory, for example, who was orphaned by the Caeldonians and lived as a social outcast. How much do you have to get across in order for me to feel empathy for her? I need to know what the ethnic conflict is between the Uras and the Caeldonians. I need to know how that impacted her life. I need to know at least a few specific cruelties she experienced that I can empathize with. And ultimately all of this has to make sense on an abstract level for me to project into it. The game explains all of this during an optional grinding level while the narrator drones out her past. It struck me as a vast improvement on <span style="font-style: italic;">Fallout: New Vegas</span>’s method of having every single person explain the NCR/Legion conflict over and over.</div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQW1WJWynZtbAGVxu4kf4VAJRvDHt_-PPkDMdYFcuz0ij_SMfP6p_KOFCAru4ycxKncASemWOxrp_QfviJBASyytyqUET03CWlRYhTLJ-E40u6hUryMFnPbWlBKS7eHaOe-FFUi7pvGzom/s1600/gamfovegas580.jpg" style="font-weight: bold; line-height: normal;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694119152406371618" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQW1WJWynZtbAGVxu4kf4VAJRvDHt_-PPkDMdYFcuz0ij_SMfP6p_KOFCAru4ycxKncASemWOxrp_QfviJBASyytyqUET03CWlRYhTLJ-E40u6hUryMFnPbWlBKS7eHaOe-FFUi7pvGzom/s400/gamfovegas580.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 225px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a></span><br />
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Similar to <span style="font-style: italic;">Bastion</span>’s narrator, the radio in <span style="font-style: italic;">New Vegas</span> comments on our actions via Mr. New Vegas’s radio show. It’s not as frequent or immediate, instead serving as a random reminder of something we’ve done in the game. Often this will feature interviews with the people we’ve affected or met, reinforcing the characterization of the NPC and the impact of our actions. It shifts the focus away from the player, unlike <span style="font-style: italic;">Bastion</span>’s constant litany of explaining your actions. The background feedback in <span style="font-style: italic;">New Vegas</span> can never disconnect from the player’s fantasy, because it’s never about you.<span style="font-style: italic;"> Bastion</span>’s feedback almost inevitably must disconnect; you couldn’t ever draft enough dialog to cover every single player action. Instead, as in the story, Rucks ceases to be an accurate narrator as he reveals his own prejudices and biases.</div>
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Clint Hocking coined the term "ludonarrative dissonance" to describe when what you’re doing in the game doesn’t really reflect what the story says is going on. Over the years, this has proved to be a bit of an impossible standard. Inevitably, game mechanics assert themselves, and the game’s story becomes less important as a motivator compared to gaining a level or grabbing that next powerful item. <span style="font-style: italic;">Fallout: New Vegas</span> doesn’t so much solve this problem as it doesn’t really care. There is so much to do and see in the game that numerous players are accommodated. <span style="font-style: italic;">Bastion</span>, as the smaller game, has a different solution. It lets the narrator completely diverge from the player and makes its points with that dissonance.</div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"></span></div>Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-66339814392591405042011-12-22T03:53:00.001-08:002011-12-22T04:11:25.320-08:00Telling Tales in Gabriel Knight 2I decided to post this one over at <a href="http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/">Gamers with Jobs</a>. It's a fun website that I've lurked on for years with typically more mature commenters. The offer to post something came up and I thought I'd give it a spin. I like running a personal blog and all but this kind of thing isn't very fun without a community to share it with. That's what Google+ does for me these days but it's important to keep branching out.<br />
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As far as my conclusions about systems narrative that I got out of playing the game, I'm adding that the main characters of a game inherently have no character development. They are always reacting, nothing is unveiled about them because we are the ones guiding their actions. It is the other characters in the game that we learn about. Which has been on the table for some time, I just now have a justification dating all the way back to a 1994 adventure game.</div>
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<a href="http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/110728">It was a lot of fun too, you should pick it up on GOG.com.</a></div>Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-14982456851695380972011-12-21T16:54:00.000-08:002011-12-27T04:57:27.398-08:00On-Line Dating Advice for Strange People<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiIblQUl6KPxGp6hB2iSEgyROHNsPjjsai6EIXPu4rq1kN3SvIwNxTJqtJpz-tS_KyWF_pDufgH1JvTT12zxXmkVCZ5AV6lLlPmOIbcNUPQ8vSgQDGfbVDOkTcc3AXcg9XrWu_aBRARt50/s1600/GrossePointeBlank1_4.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5688750640929231970" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiIblQUl6KPxGp6hB2iSEgyROHNsPjjsai6EIXPu4rq1kN3SvIwNxTJqtJpz-tS_KyWF_pDufgH1JvTT12zxXmkVCZ5AV6lLlPmOIbcNUPQ8vSgQDGfbVDOkTcc3AXcg9XrWu_aBRARt50/s400/GrossePointeBlank1_4.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 300px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i>All of these lessons were learned the hard way.</i><br /><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>#1 Always hug your date at the end and get their phone number if you were interested. <o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal">This happened because during the date we both agreed to meet at a friend’s party the following weekend. When I said, “Let’s meet up at the party next Friday”, I should have said, “Let’s meet up at the party next Friday. As this is our first date and I don’t really know you that seems like a safe place for a second date after our delightful brunch.” I did lean in for a hug but it hit that awkward chasm where neither of us were quite close enough and I bailed at the last second. I zapped her a friendly facebook message wishing her a good week a few days later. She refused to speak to me.<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>#2 When meeting new dates at parties, make sure she isn’t best friends with the woman you didn’t call.<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal">I realized my horrible mistake a few days after swapping phone numbers and friending her on facebook. A quick perusal of her photos and not only did I realize she was friends with the first date, they were into besties territory. I’m a quick learner so I made sure to hug and call often, but that seemed to make things worse. After the second date ended with the woman who taught me lesson #1 joining us for drinks, I decided to match their awkward social situation with an extensive explanation of spatial story telling in Bethesda Games. Never heard back from either after that.<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>#3 People don’t actually mean they like hiking when they say they like hiking.<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal">I love the outdoors. Mountain biking, camping, or hiking are all things I love doing when the weather permits. The problem is that most dating websites will frame this question in terms of, “Do you leave the house occasionally? “ or “Does sunlight hurt you?” Nobody wants to click that they don’t like hiking and it seems like a fun thing to say. Right up until you’re pulling out a map and explaining a 15 mile vertical climb that is a 4 hour drive away.<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>#4 It’s usually a bad sign if they cancel a date four days in advance because they’re too tired.<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal">One of the trickier problems that crops up is dating people who are too nice to be dating online. An overly nice person doesn’t really want to do the rejecting or hurt anyone’s feelings. So if you’re really into them and they want out, prepare yourself for a long and awkward period of never-returned calls and cancelled dates. If they stand you up once, shame on them. If they stand you up twice? Shame on you.<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>#5 Watch or read something the average person can relate to.<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal">On one date we were chatting about media and I realized I had been on a bad obscurity bender again. Between my job, rewatching old sitcoms on Netflix, GOG.com, and reading bizarre academic papers I did not have a single thing to say that the date would have any interest in. After a bit of pestering I finally just started talking about my latest crackpot theory about rules and video games. She was quiet when I finished and asked me how I related to people if that was what I did for fun. I told her, “I don’t really, I go on internet dates.”<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>#6 Joking that you’re going to get a dog if Match.com doesn’t work out can be easily misinterpreted.<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal">It doesn’t make it any better if you say you’re kidding and that you really like cats instead.<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>#7 When dating multiple women with the same first name, organize them by their last name.<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal">G-chat, cell phones, facebook, all of it. Apologizing will not undo this one.<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>#8 Don’t do dinner on the first date. Just meet for drinks of some sort.<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal">There isn’t actually any story behind this one, just pure statistics. Every girl I took out to dinner on the first date ended badly eventually. Drinks, be it beer or coffee, ended the best and we’re still friends. Well, I don’t wish something bad would happen to them. Lunch always ended up somewhere in the middle.<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>#9 If two dogs are fucking in a truck next to your outdoor table on the first date, just let it go.<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal">After realizing the giant Labrador had enough in him to last all day, I just ordered a beer and asked her if she was familiar with <i>The Wire.</i> She said no and talked about herself for the rest of the date. The dogs stared at me the entire time.<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>#10 It’s okay to ask them out more than once.<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal">I base this on the fact that most of the messages women receive on dating websites are incoherent, creepy, and often just asking for sex. If you’re writing a grammatically correct, polite message that comments on several things you have in common and invites them out for coffee somewhere, that’s okay. You don’t need to send it every single day, or even every week, but people are busy and things change fast with internet dating.</div>Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-59738989202774853102011-11-22T13:22:00.001-08:002011-11-22T13:26:21.659-08:00Kill Screen Article on Textualism and ContextualismA quick link to another Kill Screen post, this one on textualism and rule enforcement. I thought the idea had interesting ramifications in video games since we are all so used to to literal enforcement. The conversation about enjoying good old fashioned table top RPGs or looser experiences is nothing new, but it was interesting to twist the idea around to law then back into games.<br />
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I will have to think of something clever for the next one though, I'm not satisfied with the link ratios just yet. I can do better. With gaming culture there is always one sure-fire method for doing this: write about a classic hit. Unfortunately none of them seem to be about law. Or not yet anyways.<br />
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<a href="http://killscreendaily.com/articles/brief-who-rules-rules">Challenging material to produce, hopefully not to read though.</a>Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-38259810473459191342011-11-18T04:12:00.000-08:002011-11-18T06:58:57.817-08:00Content Degradation in Modern Warfare 3<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlzbASOCvnoJaHJeBNEvrVdxnqsff1lebhiccLgTP-TRKK7x9AwuI8AoBRZ8J0P0Sl1BdoreXYk5z6eyPkYOkHisXamNxzE32aNJo9fkIn0hz-eHmRi0PYnP9yT_zQxHfkeNY_HH_sWg9r/s1600/call_of_duty_modern_warfare_3_by_stiannius-d3g8llx2.jpg" style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5676310686883674306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlzbASOCvnoJaHJeBNEvrVdxnqsff1lebhiccLgTP-TRKK7x9AwuI8AoBRZ8J0P0Sl1BdoreXYk5z6eyPkYOkHisXamNxzE32aNJo9fkIn0hz-eHmRi0PYnP9yT_zQxHfkeNY_HH_sWg9r/s400/call_of_duty_modern_warfare_3_by_stiannius-d3g8llx2.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 225px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a></div>
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The leaves have changed and fallen, the days grow cold, and yet another <i>Call of Duty</i> game has been rented and returned. I picked up <i>Modern Warfare 3</i> from redbox and made a weekend of it with my Brother and Cousin. We drank Bushmills and passed the controller until the Bushmills finished us off. The following day I dusted off the short campaign and spent another few hours in multiplayer. I liked it better than MW2, it is still not as good as MW1. Treyarch still makes the best MP maps.<br />
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The gist of a <i>Call of Duty</i> game is modeling the map. In multiplayer this is learning the various fire corridors and hiding spots, then cycling through them carefully without getting caught by another player. In SP it’s about identifying choke points that the AI is streaming through, whether these are infinite spawns or just how to channel a group of enemies without getting hit yourself. That’s the game design, all it needs is a steady stream of new maps and there is always new material for veteran players to model. Like a new sudoku or crossword puzzle, FPS maps can be created in near limitless variation.<br />
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The biggest thing that caught my eye about MW3 was the de-emphasis on setpieces. The setpiece, which is usually in a narrow section and your options are extremely limited, is a zero system. There is so little going on in terms of game design that the player supposedly ends up focusing on the content. All you can do is press X or move forward. These have become a staple in these games, starting with the nuke scene from MW1 and continuing into MW2’s macabre ‘No Russian’ level. They’re both zero systems but MW1’s deserves credit for making sure you never quite hits its limits. You can only walk around for so long before you just fall dead, you can’t run around exploring. It goes back to the map modeling nature of these games: the nuke scene works because it is always an unknowable space. </div>
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Alternatively, I spent most of the ‘No Russian’ level wandering around and admiring the details of the airport. Which was fun, but not exactly what the game intended. MW3’s is barely worth mentioning, you have minimal control over anything except to sit and watch as a family vacation becomes a lot more interesting. MW2’s suffers because I just go back to playing the game and figuring out how the map works instead of paying attention. MW3’s doesn’t let me move or give me any control at all. <br />
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Keep in mind I’m talking about a player who is not new to these games, a beginner who is still fixating on content would have a dramatically different experience. For the seasoned player the meaning of the content is so thoroughly degraded that it’s only inducing apathy. As soon as I realize I’m in a closed map where there is nothing to model, my brain tunes out and I start debating what I want for dinner. The nuke scene stays relevant because I’m fussing about trying to move somewhere, anywhere, in a sad echo of the rest of the gameplay.<br />
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When I say content degradation, I mean my diminishing capacity to view the objects in the game independently of the system for which they signify. I don’t think a falling chunk of skyscraper may actually potentially kill me in-game during the opening level of MW3. I see a setpiece unfolding. It is no more startling than an animatronic on an amusement park ride. I enjoy the aesthetics of the experience and possibly the jolt it sends my brain, but it bears no relationship to the play system I am in. It has no <b>emotional</b> meaning to me because my understanding of the game comes from the game design, not the content. MW1’s setpieces and levels are still some of the most memorable things I’ve ever seen on a console because that was before I plowed through five <i>Call of Duty</i> games. </div>
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Of course this is speaking for my own personal experience, I imagine someone whose very first shooter was MW2 would be blown away by it just as they would be by MW3. What’s going on here is that familiarity with the game design breeds contempt for the content. The moment I started playing MW3 I was analyzing the space and figuring out where to shoot. I wasn’t aware of the content on an emotional level anymore. The content isn’t a differential for the game design, it’s just a signifier now. And a setpiece signifies nothing except that I can’t move until it’s over.<br />
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This issue extends out to the game’s narrative itself. On a literal level I understand what’s going on in these games: Makarov wants a big global war and used the airport attack to make it happen. He’s ticked about the guy I shot in MW1. The General is upset about…the nuke or something from MW1. By the time MW3 comes around we’re just resolving various global conflicts and hunting down Makarov. The problem isn’t so much that the story is incoherent or that images of urban chaos are unmoving, it’s that the dialog, cutscenes, and setpieces no longer have any emotional meaning. It’s all been degraded because of their minimal relevance to the system itself. I’m only aware of signifiers and their value as defined by the system.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr3YTEy9f2_fj5Wwfp8YEaKgzoRRmerCQeVVazqcAJWXFEx2F49V-483vCdg7mlB0vQHP_fwAlMmZKxl4ebm4wgKnTrhtvlRFN6iDrZq0FH1KUzUqnQNMEA88ED2RTZld5lJDI-eAASVII/s1600/phase+2.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5676312314389926882" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr3YTEy9f2_fj5Wwfp8YEaKgzoRRmerCQeVVazqcAJWXFEx2F49V-483vCdg7mlB0vQHP_fwAlMmZKxl4ebm4wgKnTrhtvlRFN6iDrZq0FH1KUzUqnQNMEA88ED2RTZld5lJDI-eAASVII/s400/phase+2.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 225px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a></div>
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There is not a black-line test or moment when this happens for any player. We are talking about the dynamics of the subconscious and conscious as the symbols which represent things in the game become interchangeable. At moments the game is able to jolt me into paying attention to the content. Often this is in a new or unique situation where I don’t know what’s going on in terms of the system, forcing my brain to model new information and thus look at the content. <br />
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I focus on these minor aspects of the game only because so much of it is similar to the previous two iterations. I already wrote about <a href="http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/121167-modern-warfare-2s-multiplayer-map-style/">map-modeling</a> and the <a href="http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/65751-za-critique-call-of-duty-4/">roller-coaster aesthetic</a> years ago. Like eating a bag of Doritos or drinking Bushmills with family, these games are guilty pleasures. I am a year older, the world continues its cycles, and <i>Call of Duty</i> has stopped by for its November visit. I look forward to doing this again next year.</div>Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-24555937325796671522011-11-10T05:55:00.000-08:002012-01-05T10:28:51.561-08:00Systems Narrative<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS7I6T5BgBcSiHbHKgltN0x06sbEpFLquSZB3uTPiZ7TSvPKeRa3gv7xTqZRSmaGjfSNXCi_Mo4RkXxTrDogRkRgTxzXjitv3aJEvRx6Ys_T4FbnLtqBpoaVB1qOHP12NalFqhRXXpC6ow/s1600/Catherine-Deneuve-1976.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS7I6T5BgBcSiHbHKgltN0x06sbEpFLquSZB3uTPiZ7TSvPKeRa3gv7xTqZRSmaGjfSNXCi_Mo4RkXxTrDogRkRgTxzXjitv3aJEvRx6Ys_T4FbnLtqBpoaVB1qOHP12NalFqhRXXpC6ow/s400/Catherine-Deneuve-1976.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">While
working on the <a href="http://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/06/gamification-and-law-1.html">Gamification and Law series</a>,
I got curious enough about advertising to start thinking about the reverse
idea. Games offer a new way for people to advertise crap, but do advertisements
offer games a new way to communicate? It’s not really that strange of an idea,
ads are basically meaning generating systems where values are assigned to
various abstractions. Applying a few ideas from advertising to games has made
me wonder if perhaps video games have worked like advertisements all along. I
will be borrowing extensively from Judith Williamson’s excellent book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Advertisements-Progress-Judith-Williamson/dp/0714526150/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320155705&sr=8-1">DecodingAdvertising</a>. Just bear with me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">The
above image is from a famous ad campaign featuring Catherine Deneuve for Chanel
No. 5. She is, or was I guess, famous for her sophistication and classic
beauty. You slap the product next to her skull and print it into every single
magazine you know potential consumers read. They glance at it, shrug, and keep
flipping pages. The subconscious makes the connection, your conscious mind
doesn’t have to do anything. The basic formula is “Fame and Glamour = Catherine
Deneuve = Chanel No. 5”. You dump enough cash into this and eventually people
will eventually just think, “Fame and Glamour = Chanel No.5”. That’s a basic 1
to 1 ad system with only one intermediary. Williamson’s theory is that, “this
is the advertisement…constantly translating between systems of meaning, and
therefore constitute[ing] a vast meta-system where values from different areas
of our lives are made interchangeable.”</span><br />
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Here is the catch: unless you know who Catherine Deneuve is,
the ad is just an empty system. It has no content, no value assignment.
Williamson points out that an observer needs exposure to the referent system,
the fashion and modeling industry, because this allows the observer to apply
differentiation. This might be a bit tricky to understand if you don’t give a
shit about modeling so I’ll try a different example. Pretend you live in a
vacuum and there is only one chair. You have never seen or even heard about any
other kind of chair existing, this is it. As a consequence, you have no
conception of the chair being good or bad. There is no other chair to compare
it to in order to generate value. It just is. Williamson explains you need to
know about the whole system the referent exists in to fully understand
the ad.</div>
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Like Deneuve’s skull and Chanel No.5, in a video game two
systems are being juxtaposed so that the player will eventually connect them. The
formula is “game system = game content.”
On a very superficial level you can already apply some of Williamson’s
ideas to content you see in games now. The space marine image derived from
<i>Warhammer 40K</i> or <i>Aliens</i> is borrowed heavily. Sexualizing the female form to
play to male conditioning. Elves that look like Tolkein’s elves because people
recognize that shape. Orcs that look like green nasty things because that’s
what other people have done. This is obvious and you don’t need me to spell it
all out. Games borrow these preconceptions and expectations because it’s likely
their referents are already in our heads. We’ve all seen these movies, played
previous games, or read these books.</div>
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What’s interesting about games is that they also generate
their own referential and differential systems at the same time that all of
this stuff is being juxtaposed with our models of reality and our models of the
game’s system. That is, it’s borrowing the visuals for the orc but also
assigning various values like HP, damage, and other values generated by the
game design. Unlike the ad, interaction in the video game creates an additional
layer of meaning. </div>
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Several interesting questions are raised by this, the
largest being how much conflict can there be between the referential visual
system and the differential game design system? This isn’t a new concept, Clint
Hocking coined the term <a href="http://clicknothing.typepad.com/click_nothing/2007/10/ludonarrative-d.html">ludonarrative dissonance</a> to describe when the content and design are experiencing disconnect. The issue,
when using Williamson’s formula, is the fact that she asserts there is no need
for there to be a connection between the two. The dissonance is what
gives it meaning, not the corroboration. Hocking is presuming the opposite.</div>
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The revelation here is abandoning the notion, like ads long
ago did, that the content is speaking to the player. It goes beyond just a
translation between visual images and systemic values. It isn’t just X =
attack. Instead a vast web of associations and meanings that cross from content
to system, then back again are all in play. The NPC giving you a quest is not
JUST a downtrodden peasant nor are they JUST a quest-giver. They are metaphors
for one another with two separate sets of values. One comes internally from the
game design and one comes from the content and our own cultural values.</div>
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This constant system of visual and audio metaphor taking on
systemic meaning is akin to a specific kind of metaphor. James Geary breaks
down the metaphor process in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Other-Secret-Metaphor-Shapes-World/dp/0061710288/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320679907&sr=8-1">I is an Other</a>. Metaphors are an extension of our natural desire for pattern recognition. We
naturally assign agency and consciousness to things we don’t immediately
understand. A knock on a wall becomes a ghost, a flash of light a UFO. You deal
with something new by basing it on the familiar. Geary goes over many different
types of metaphors but I think with games it might be better to focus on the
scientific variety. This is because scientists have to struggle with the presence
of literal scientific information and the need for analogy so people can
understand it.</div>
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J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoted in the book, explains it like
this, <i>“We cannot learn to be surprised or
astonished at something unless we have a view of how it ought to be; and that
view is almost certainly an analogy. We cannot learn that we have made a
mistake unless we can make a mistake; and our mistake is almost always in the
form of an analogy to some other piece of experience.”</i> Scientific analogies
develop slowly. You begin in the subjective by asking something basic like is
the Earth formed like Tapioca. You do tests, you compile results, and
eventually you start to put together a model of the system. Metaphor tells you
what things are <i>like</i>, not what they <i>are.</i> Eventually as you gain complete
understanding of the system you dispense with the metaphor.</div>
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When we say the dissonance is what generates meaning in a
system narrative, we mean that the relationship between unrelated systems, the
referential mechanism of both value from game design and the analogies in
content is where it comes from. Sticking these two things alongside each other
establishes the connection, our minds will find it in the same way they make
associations with an ad. Pressing X is attack. This does damage. I need to
damage this thing. I know all of this because of the complex series of
animations and signals the game sends to me. Competing with all this is the
slow erosion of those first subjective impressions as the player goes from
subjective to objective, from the analogy to the system. That transition
process is where the bulk of the narrative takes place through metaphor and new
experiences. New subjective information must constantly be added for the player
to base their constantly developing model of the game design.<br />
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The necessity for this kind of approach is that most games
already look like this. A systems narrative has several common features.
Characters do not change independently, they are static until the system coerces
change. The narrative consists of ever-shifting viewpoints of the system and
various changes enacted there. These effects are observed as they spread and characters
respond to them. Examples of this in other mediums would be something like <i>The
Wire</i>, Virginia Woolf’s <i>To The Lighthouse</i>, or Joseph Heller’s <i>Catch-22</i>. I
am mostly proposing abandoning half-ass attempts to shoehorn in literary
conventions and conversely avoiding totally ignoring the attempts of games to
tell their own unique brand of story. </div>
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We’ll see how it goes, it is time for me to focus on
individual classics and modern games with a particular critical lens. We’ll see
if this has any legs when going over a variety of individual examples.</div>Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-87103922024267665752011-10-22T05:57:00.000-07:002011-10-22T06:16:09.607-07:00So Long Buzz<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCQYfznaw_sTUYP6BJTk0Lx88dcPXlO8tp2NooO8FXcOlzle374U1nIMeVkwTnH8Bq8AWJWfIPNqFYJdYPndMnxVxKQzTF_uXOcqADezTlSWGyBDrE-cLClSB9pQEVHnKA8eCxqoyVSSeY/s1600/gilligan.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 295px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCQYfznaw_sTUYP6BJTk0Lx88dcPXlO8tp2NooO8FXcOlzle374U1nIMeVkwTnH8Bq8AWJWfIPNqFYJdYPndMnxVxKQzTF_uXOcqADezTlSWGyBDrE-cLClSB9pQEVHnKA8eCxqoyVSSeY/s400/gilligan.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5666301590651868082" /></a><br /><p class="MsoNormal">I was inspired enough by Courtney Stanton’s eloquent rant on the <a href="http://kirbybits.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/wherein-i-try-to-explain-why-google-reader-is-the-best-social-network-created-so-far/">loss of Google Reader</a> that I decided to do my own homily for Buzz.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’ve been bonking around social media the same way most people have: right on the cusp. Instant Messenger got big while I was in college and I had a long list of friends. Remember Away Message culture? Those funny little AIM icons at the bottom with those white faced cartoon characters? Repeating a funny quote from a convo or selecting that choice line from a movie that just really described your mood. I had a Prodigy account where I insisted on writing everything in all caps. An AOL account for logging in and jabbering in those awkward chatrooms. I even got onto that MTV show once where they livecast chats. I typed in all caps for that one too.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Facebook came to my college right as I was graduating and it was initially a lifeline to old friends as we all scattered around the country. I remember life before the newsfeed. G-mail was a no brainer and g-chat quickly became a staple of any lecture in law school. I signed up for Twitter as all the friends I’d accumulated writing about video games made the same migration. For the longest time my relationship with digital media was to connect with as many people as possible. To find as many points of view as possible and absorb them. My path was to always go where the people were. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’m not quite sure why that started to change. The fighting, probably. I think I was known for having a temper back in the day but I’m not even sure what I was mad about. Law school was no picnic certainly. And I do have a blunt attitude. There are plenty of people out there who don’t have a high opinion of me and for good reason. It’s just…the noise. The endless waves of links, opinions, ideas, caps on, caps off, cacophony that hundreds of people generate when trying to talk all at once. I would turn on Twitter and spend 20 minutes just sifting through what I’d missed, only to have to spend another 10 sifting through what got posted in that time. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This got so intense that I would literally turn on Twitter and it would put me into a bad mood. Sarcasm has been an emotional crutch for me for so long that it might as well be a third leg. Combine these two things with waves of people talking at me and it just brought out the worst. And let’s not forget that this is true of people online in general. Why on Earth someone could ever think it’s a good idea to tweet to me that my article is completely wrong and I should read their correct article is beyond me. The fact that they meant it innocently, phrased it politely, or were totally correct was something you could only cling to for so long. I’ve begun to believe that being an internet celebrity has a lot more to do with patience than actual production.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I finally realized one day that something had to give. So I shut it all off. There is about a 9 month period where I basically vanished from the web. I moved to a new town where I had to make new friends. I had to start a new job and start all over again as a first year associate. I resigned from my post at Popmatters after 3 years of working for free there. I quit writing in general.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Buzz was something that I handled the same way most people did when it came out. I flipped it on, followed a bunch of people I recognized, lost interest, and went back to Twitter. I’d turn it on occasionally but never paid much attention to it. At my new job I found myself sitting in front of a computer all day. I don’t even remember why I was reading it that first time, boredom probably but I imagine the desire to share was finally coming back after 9<span> </span>months of silence. You can only go so long without sharing with others, particularly about your passions. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Buzz was a pretty crude place. The people I found talking there were venting their rage and frustration at life and video games. You could call a popular, well-connected writer a fucking moron without worrying about them getting offended or blacklisting you. Even if they did hear about it, Buzz had so few active users that it wasn’t the same level of insult as saying it on Twitter. It’s the social difference between a whisper and a scream. But it was a well-designed forum. Topics could be posted and commented on indefinitely while new ones kept piling up to give each one a natural lifespan.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">What interested me was that none of the usual social media vanities cropped up. Nobody cared how many people they were following. There was almost zero desire to vapidly increase the number of people they were broadcasting to. As a consequence you had less nonsensical posts of cats or wonk. Less desire to hit ‘post’ without even considering who would find it interesting. My theory is that like Facebook, Twitter began to sabotage itself by coercing people into connecting to so many others that you could no longer actually talk. If you criticized something, a dozen or so people would jabber at you about why you were wrong. Like Reddit, only positive and polite things would get encouraged by the system. The desire to ever say anything controversial or different was steadily eroded. I was on Twitter for 2 years. I can't think of a single meaningful exchange I ever had on there. At a certain point, the social service just became another mask.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Buzz was different because it stayed small. I've lost count of how many brilliant ideas or great links I've gotten from people on there. You got to know the people around you. People didn't take it personally if you mouthed off because they knew it was just you being you. You can't force something like that to happen, it's just a matter of time and place. I could post an elaborate ramble on a game I was playing, post a cool quote I saw, or just spout nonsense. On Twitter, you couldn't do that because everyone was watching.</p><p class="MsoNormal">And now, as with many others, the only online forum I give a shit about is being shut down. I’ve tried using G+ a few times but it is essentially the same problem as Twitter or Facebook. It’s a numbers system, people broadcasting their views on as many people they can while Google charts clicks and exchanges on a global scale. It’s not the privacy thing I’m bothered by, I accepted what these services were a long time ago. It’s being channeled into the same kinds of services I stopped using 2 years ago because they mostly seem to bring out the worst in people. Myself included.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Buzz was not a perfect service. The very thing I enjoyed about it was that so few people used it. But it is still a place in the way that all forms of social exchange become places. The occasional drunk rant. The rapid fire comment sections. The long, wordy<span> </span>posts and responses when someone suddenly had the impulse. Posting quotes from random books. The unspoken codes of conduct about not posting nonsense or delving too deeply into narcissism. You hold these things close even though they aren’t really yours or anyone else’s. They are the space we have between one another. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And now it is fading away.</p>Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-20101142301006495672011-10-17T08:07:00.000-07:002011-10-17T08:07:09.101-07:00Complexity in LawsI've been really enjoying Friedman's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/History-American-Law-Third/dp/0684869888/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318863560&sr=8-1">History of American Law</a> and discovering all the experiments, problems, and resolutions the country has adopted over the decades. It's probably a surprise to many people that many of the problems we're experiencing today with Banks and Wall Street are just one of the many times this has happened. Different solutions have been proposed over time, often involving getting rid of all the lawyers and making everything simple to understand.<br />
<br />
That process of things getting complicated and the issues it poses for fixing it started to fascinate me. It has been discussed at length by various sources and you can find dozens of proposed to solutions. I decided to use my experiences with a particularly complex game to just illustrate the how and why of complexity with laws.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://killscreendaily.com/articles/complex-life">It just getting people to accept the very notion that nothing is simple with large rule systems is a start.</a>Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-37984923879024089802011-09-30T06:08:00.000-07:002011-09-30T06:08:46.327-07:00What Can Games Teach Us About Law?I had the good fortune to get a column published over at <a href="http://killscreendaily.com/">Kill Screen</a>. It's a relatively new webzine that is exploring the range of topics for games. I always manage to find a new angle that surprises me there.<br />
<br />
The column is about the inherent knowledge gamers develop about systems and how this approach applies out into the real world. A lot of these ideas are in the gamificaiton series, but I tackled some relevant issues instead of getting bogged down into theory. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://killscreendaily.com/articles/brief-what-can-games-teach-us-about-law">Here's hoping the gaming generation keeps getting bigger.</a>Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-65470119940937292242011-09-22T06:04:00.000-07:002011-09-22T06:14:26.631-07:00MMO Judiciary - Functions and Solutions<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">In the United States we are used to a court system
whose focus centers on rule elaboration and enforcing public norms by handing
down rulings. Joanne Scott, in her essay <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=982281">Courts as Catalysts</a>, discusses the
changing role of courts by focusing on their capacity to share information,
fact check, and test the authenticity of government decisions by weighing their
evidence. It’s a new model meant to reflect the role the courts may play in a
steadily de-centralizing government. She inadvertently presents a potential
template for resolving the conflict between Coding Authority and player. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The basic idea in Scott’s paper is that courts can
serve to check the evidence of the governing authority while still fulfilling
important obligations in the community. It’s a kind of PR, a government
institution separate from the authority who handles disputes in the system. The
institution does not have the power to make new rules, only legitimize or
overturn existing ones. Scott’s vision of a system where, “courts become a
source of communicating ideas and experience, without being the source of their
creation, and without being specifically prescriptive in relation to any
particular form” may find its most useful application in virtual space rather
than reality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The necessity for this kind of system, as noted in
the previous essay, crops up when you have the strange type of tyranny that’s
possible in an MMO. All laws are automatically enforced, traditional methods of
feedback are cut-off and players are often forced to quit. It’s unlikely any
developer would actually do this on purpose, it’s just inevitably going to
happen in any system of rules. An essay by Leslie Green <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1374608">on the causes of Judicial Decisions</a>
reminds one that rules are indeterminate, not merely in dramatic or marginal
cases, but in most cases, because indeterminacy flows not only from vagueness
but also from pervasive unresolved conflicts among the laws of the system.
There is always an unintended consequence or unexpected application stemming
from the rules of conduct or the code itself. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Application of this
will vary from game to game. You probably do not want the judiciary to have any
authority over the actual design such as nerfing items. A more debatable issue,
such as perching in Asheron’s call, duplication, hording or some other in-game
strategy, is more ideal because it’s allowed by the Coding Authority. It just
has the unintended consequence of disrupting the entire game for players.
Rather than have the designers fret over financial impacts or disrupting the
economy, you just have a hearing where people make their case. Evidence is
drawn from the servers and personal accounts. The dispute gets resolved
quickly, transparently, and with player involvement occurring throughout.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s important to remember that in many cases
transparency just means communicating your reasons for acting clearly. Most
concerns about the language of a judiciary becoming unwieldly aren’t really
necessary. As Peter M. Tiersma notes in his book <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Parchment-Paper-Pixels-Technologies-Communication/dp/0226803066/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316464139&sr=8-1">Parchment, Paper, Pixels</a>, the reason the
modern legal system is so wordy and difficult to understand is because the
language is meant to only have one meaning. In America we practice common law,
meaning each court ruling is binding on all future rulings. To avoid multiple
interpretations of a contract, bill, or law you have to phrase it a manner
that’s very alien to most people.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">That’s especially true today where the internet has
enabled rapid communication. People write like they talk now and it’s
understood in the same manner. Unless the judicial system wanted to impose some
kind of common law model, precision in the writing to that degree would be
unnecessary. You just ask the judge for clarification. You can already see an
example of this practice with Xbox Live’s <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://whywasibanned.com/">Why Was I Banned?</a> forums. Having a clear
explanation from another person helps give authority and clarity to the rules
of the Xbox Live service. The average person should be able to understand
everything going on but having a model for dealing with people always helps. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The same goes for pleading a complaint: if they can
form a complete sentence then there’s no reason they couldn’t make a complaint.
Lawyers exist because just one part of the legal system takes months or even
years of study to understand. It got this way because the bigger the
population, the more rules you need to protect all those competing interests. An
MMO is not ever going to become large enough that the average player does not
already know everything they need to when crafting a complaint.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Diversity in judicial
opinion, both between judges and their views vs the Coding Authority, should
also not be taken as a huge problem. Uniformity must occur in the results of
rules, but not necessarily in the way those results are reached. A textualist
approach, where the Judge reads everything literally, may have various uses and
appeals depending on the game. Alternatively a Judge who discusses the issue
with the Coding Authority and adds weight to the views might be more favorable.
A great Judge would be able to juggle multiple perspectives to get a result
satisfactory to all. As </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/downloads/324/Solum.pdf">Lawrence B. Solum</a> explains, “Good judges are clever in using the resources
within existing law to solve the legal problems that come before them. The very
best judges are experts at avoiding originality. And the very worst judges may
be the most original. Very bad judges may use the cases that come before them
as the vehicles for changing the law, transforming the rules laid down into the
rules that the judges prefer.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">At the end of the day, the existence of a judicial
system would ultimately be derived from the Coding Authority, who is in turn
controlled by the Developer, Publisher, and their shareholders. While mounting
arbitration costs and threats from the outside world are a good reason for
creating a means of resolving disputes in-game, perhaps the best reason of all
is simply advertising. In his guide to building a successful MMO <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/laws.shtml">Raph Koster</a> explains that the key is
ownership of <i>something</i> in the game. Whether it’s buildings,
characters, or a job the player needs to, “<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #484848;">feel a sense of responsibility to
something that</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #484848;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #484848;">cannot</span></i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #484848;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #484848;">be removed
from the game.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #484848; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Examples of MMOs violating this sense of ownership are
everywhere. Despite the strong sales of the latest <i>WoW</i>
expansion, players quitting the game </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.incgamers.com/News/27763/half-a-million-world-of-warcraft-players-lost">by the thousands</a>. The anger at the
expansion varies from being <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.incgamers.com/News/27763/half-a-million-world-of-warcraft-players-lost">being too short</a> to <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">stripping the game of <a href="http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/wowcataclysm-worst-mmo-expansion-ever">all complexity for newplayers</a>. One scathing comment explains, “<i>Cataclysm</i>
is the end result of an MMO design by numbers philosophy inspired the wishes of
accountants and avarice of shareholders. This is one picnic basket of childish
quests and facile gameplay expressly designed to appeal to the lowest common
denominator out there.” These complaints have nowhere to go and no one who will
listen to them. And while the expansion might make money in the long term, it’s
also costing them the veteran players who have stuck with the game for years.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">At other times it’s problems that arise from a
GM acting carelessly. A huge controversy arose in a Bioware forum when a
moderator </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.afterelton.com/blog/lylemasaki/star-wars-the-old-republic-the-latest-mmo-in-a-gay-controversy">closed a thread</a> because a group was
debating homosexuality in the Star Wars universe. Such blank and total
censorship generated massive amounts of negative PR even though the forum
moderator was only attempting to prevent a flamewar. A similar example was the
removal of </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://hzero.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/real-life-controversy-boils-up-in-mmo-update/">Nazi soldier’s name</a> from an in-game
badge. No discussion, no explanation, and nothing but negative PR for the game
for operating in a totalitarian manner.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The benefits of this will vary depending on the
game, there is no one model for every MMO. A judicial branch mediates the
conflicts that arise between the hard laws, the social standards and the
general strangeness of humanity. All of these things clash and overlap in
constantly changing ways, creating indeterminacy for the outcome of disputes.
Introducing a third party relieves the Coding Authority from assuming a
totalitarian approach to all conflicts, gives transparency to the process, and
creates a more legitimate avenue for conflict resolution outside of enforcing
the EULA.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Judith Williamson, in her seminal text on </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Advertisements-Progress-Judith-Williamson/dp/0714526150/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316637626&sr=8-1">Decoding Advertising</a><span class="apple-style-span">, explains that an ad is essentially </span>the
transference of human qualities and characteristics to consumer products.<span class="apple-style-span"> Concepts like fairness, loyalty and safety are
generated and projected onto the game. An internal MMO judiciary represents a
concentrated effort to form that connection with the player as a kind of
background association. First and foremost, they should be enjoying the game
and having fun. But if things go wrong, they can know they won’t need to deal
with an expensive legal system or negotiate a EULA. Their problems can be
resolved in-game, fairly and transparently.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-79512758403527527412011-09-22T05:52:00.000-07:002011-09-22T10:58:08.167-07:00MMO Judiciary - The Balance of Power<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSg_on1rq49tIRuZ9FThHobRogCvgTz2bMyjMXaryC3sOuFBXpKRAcB2OVXSYXJz1JCGWRP_IhSTE6ldOAtsjc7W2zj3ioYsqPex4Nb0tiXFlsBOpGLateWm4H63K4Zp_UDeG7pBcxrGQp/s1600/authority_pin_21.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSg_on1rq49tIRuZ9FThHobRogCvgTz2bMyjMXaryC3sOuFBXpKRAcB2OVXSYXJz1JCGWRP_IhSTE6ldOAtsjc7W2zj3ioYsqPex4Nb0tiXFlsBOpGLateWm4H63K4Zp_UDeG7pBcxrGQp/s320/authority_pin_21.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">A model for resolving internal MMO disputes should
be built around the perspective of the player. A player primarily understands
the parts of the game that affect them directly so any breakdown of authority
begins with recognizing those forces. The first and most profound authority in
an MMO is the Coding Authority. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://works.bepress.com/john_nelson/3/">John William Nelson</a> in his breakdown of
virtual property writes, “Code affects transaction costs because all
transaction involving virtual resources are regulated by code at some point.
Purely internal transactions clearly rely upon the code regulating trade among
users. Partially external transaction rely in part upon external regulation,
but they all inevitably return to the virtual world and its code-based
regulation to complete the transaction.” All value, all rights, all methods of
exchange boil down to what the designers have permitted in the game. So, from
the perspective of the player, an MMO judiciary begins by putting the Coding
Authority at the top.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">What this means in principle is that the rights
given in the game are the only rights you’re entitled to. An example of this
would be <i>Ultima Online</i>’s thief skill. It is possible to
steal things from people by looting their corpse or picking their pocket. When
a player complained about being robbed, the thief was not punished because the
Coding Authority allowed this kind of conduct. A massive Ponzi scheme was
permitted in <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/08/12/biggest-eve-online-scam-ever-recorded-nets-over-a-trillion-isk/">EVE Online</a> because financial corruption is
a way you can play the game. In this sense the Coding Authority shapes the
culture of a game because it controls how people interact, resulting in an authoritarian
power dynamic.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">There are limitations
to this model. Video game code is a unique kind of rule system because it has
enforcement automatically built into it. I can’t jump over that cliff because
an invisible wall exists that stops all progress. Even if I got past it, the
game does not support the existence of the space and will probably crash. There’s
no concern about police, tickets, courts, or all the other mechanisms that come
with enforcing a rule. Nor can people just break the rule or ignore it. While
this is handy in terms of costs, the problem is that costs are an essential
form of feedback in a rule system. The more a rule costs to enforce, the more
likely it isn’t favored by the population. People cannot express their
discontent by breaking the rules in an MMO, their only option is to complain or
quit the game.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">In an ideal MMO, a judicial system would represent
the bridge between these two forces. The players are given a way to express
their grievances with the absolute power of the Coding Authority that makes
them feel empowered. The power of the Coding Authority is not superseded or
changed, but their relationship with their players becomes a more hospitable
one. It is not the court’s job, when a dispute comes before them, to invent a
new rule saying how it should be resolved. It’s the court’s job to say how the pre-existing
rule should be enforced. The greatest virtue of this branch is their ability to
explain the decisions of the Coding Authority. Andras Jakab explains in his
paper <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1918421">Concept and Function of Principles</a> the criteria
for a legal system as, “(1) the greatest number of legal phenomena can be
explained (2) coherently (3) with the highest possible degree of simplicity and
(4) political and ideological factors can also play a role.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">For example, a bug or design imbalance is up to the
Coding Authority to fix, in our model the Judicial system would not have the
authority to change it. How the court system empowers the user is giving them
the ability to complain about an imbalance and have it declared as one. A
duplication bug is brought to someone’s attention because of a complaint. A
ruling is issued explaining why the bug is unfair and why a person has had
their account wiped. The action was introduced by a user, the results were made
public, and the logic was clearly explained with references to social rules and
the Coding Authority. Actual enforcement powers would not really go beyond what
a GM already possesses. Nor is this any different than the Dev Blogs many games
already operate or <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://whywasibanned.com/">Xbox Live’s user forums</a>. What’s
different is the transparency of the action and the empowerment this provides
for players by giving them an official forum to act in. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Making a model like
this successful means delegating priority to various complaints from the
players. You would want to avoid lumping everything together: personal feuds,
bugs, balance problems, property disputes, not everything can be resolved effectively
under the general ticket system with a GM. Nor does having a single individual
resolve them on the fly always cause social discontent. A GM pulling me out of
a wall I glitched into is not really on the same level as a player claiming a
character is using a bug to mass duplicate gold. The key to a sound judicial
system is recognizing the problems that users are concerned about and giving
their resolution as much transparency as possible. The day to day issues that
need to be resolved speedily can be explained with rules of conduct and quick
references. More complex issues can be separated on the basis that they will
affect the entire game or some other criteria.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">While one justification for an MMO judiciary is that
the Coding Authority needs an agency to bridge itself with the players, it is
equally important that the players have a means of organized communication. The
frothing rage of the forums is not a viable means of feedback because it’s just
too knee-jerk and unfiltered. Traditionally this is the role an elected
official would play in a system of governance, in this case selecting judges by
popular election. The delays in election keep people from throwing them out on
a whim while the electoral process also filters unqualified participants out. The
issue here would be impartiality. As Raph Koster points out in a <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/laws.shtml">basic outline of MMO laws</a>, the
playerbase is rarely ready or willing to police itself. They signed up to play
a fun game, not engage with politics, and they may not be willing to separate
the two.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Various MMOs have experimented with elected
officials with varying results. <i>EVE Online</i> maintains an
elected council to give feedback on the game by airing grievances. The council
is currently mounting a PR war because of the company’s failure to expand the
game in ways <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/eve/news/eve-online-csm-chairman-takes-aim-at-ccp">the council desires</a>. On some levels a
thing like this can only exist in <i>EVE</i> because it only has
one shard. It is not broken down into multiple spaces consisting of smaller,
easier to govern populations. The council also has an inherent authority problem
because after airing their grievances, the makers of <i>EVE
Online</i> decided to ignore them. A judicial system, then, offers a
means of self-governance that doesn’t necessarily have to put the Coding
Authority in direct conflict with popularly elected officials.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">A prime example of an
MMO that features popularly elected Judges is </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://users.nexustk.com/webreport/Judge.htm">Nexus TK</a>. Note that page highlights
their activity levels and rank in the game, you can already see unspoken
criteria for what constitutes a good judge in public information. The game
features extensive self-governance. A post on </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.gamedev.net/topic/448431-socialpolitical-based-mmo-vs-level-based-academic/">gamedev.net</a> by a disgruntled player
highlights the issues that formed. Top tier players formed cliques that
controlled everything in the game. Developer appointed players had extensive
powers to silence or blacklist people who spoke out against them. Actual trials
simulated the actual real world process: a player could accuse someone of
stealing and all you needed was two witnesses to get a conviction. This
exacerbated the control of one clique in the game. This, in turn, drove away
players.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fafbfc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #1c2837; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fafbfc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #1c2837; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The point of these
two examples is that players are inevitably influenced by their relationship
with the game in ways that does not make them the best choice for being a
judge. The impulse to operate like an elected official influencing Coding
decisions, as in <i>EVE Online</i>, can lead to challenges to the
Coding Authority which they might not be able to resolve peacefully. On the
other hand Judges are susceptible to corruption and influence just like anyone
else. Like most GMs today, a member of the judicial system would be someone
disconnected from the game. That disconnect can be ensured through monitoring, transparency,
and establishing a clear relationship with the Coding Authority. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">In this discussion we’ve gone over who has the
authority and how one may go about delegating communication with that authority
in a way that leads to what players perceive as fair resolutions. Such a broad
goal has to be approached by remembering that fairness itself is a social
value, it changes from group to group. Saying someone has a keen sense of
fairness does not necessarily make them a good judge, just that they do what’s
popular. In an essay on judge selection <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/downloads/324/Solum.pdf">Lawrence B. Solum</a> comments that people
often mistake impartiality with meaning a person does not care or understand a
person’s complaint. He writes, “the impartial judge is not
<i>indifferent</i> to the parties that come before her. Rather, the
virtue of impartiality requires even-handed sympathy for all the parties to a
dispute.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">It is impartiality
that the judicial system must offer if people are to rely on it for resolving
their grievances. A fair chance for both the player to be heard and the Coding
Authority to present its side of the dilemma. Whether or not it achieves this
objective comes from the perceptions of the players.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/09/mmo-judiciary-functions-and-solutions.html">Link to Part 3</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-26312764424758605032011-09-22T05:43:00.000-07:002011-09-22T11:31:26.080-07:00MMO Judiciary - Why Even Create One?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibBIlX47TpJhR9vjROfADIyIGlp2Q4aaZdXWWFEtYG0tW8jBiQmyHB6Xnwol9vCYjZrJapdwnlL36SOOywzzlSUVfSfC_cAMxMdDltEKVaGCObKaWBeDlqMirbo3ECY_2HaYA4Pg52BhBO/s1600/microtransactions2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibBIlX47TpJhR9vjROfADIyIGlp2Q4aaZdXWWFEtYG0tW8jBiQmyHB6Xnwol9vCYjZrJapdwnlL36SOOywzzlSUVfSfC_cAMxMdDltEKVaGCObKaWBeDlqMirbo3ECY_2HaYA4Pg52BhBO/s400/microtransactions2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">With the growing buzz around Diablo 3’s <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/arts/video-games/blizzards-diablo-iii-video-game-to-offer-real-trades.html?_r=1&src=tp&pagewanted=all">in-game auction system</a> comes several
tricky questions about how the virtual world and the real world should
interact. Issues like taxation, property rights or possible litigation between
players become legitimate once money enters the system. Each MMO will have
their own unique ways of addressing these problems as they draw the line between
seriousness and play. Maintaining that division means making sure the play
world can resolve its own disputes to the satisfaction of players and
developers. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Let’s start with why our current legal system should
be kept out. For most MMOs you don’t have any property rights and until
recently you could not even sell the items legitimately for money. The game
needs this because anytime the designers need to nerf an item or character it
will lose value on the market. This could very easily cost thousands of people
money. Considering they’re already unhappy because their in-game prowess is
reduced they will be all the more upset that their wallets are being hit.
Expansions and updates are the lifeblood of an MMO and the only way to make
them possible is by keeping ownership of the items strictly in-game. The
developer can’t be concerned with legal liability if it’s going to maintain the
game.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s also unlikely our current legal system would be
any help for resolving in-game disputes. Picture the following e-mail going
out:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #021324; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><i>I have this Elvish Bane Sword in Diablo 3 but
unfortunately my account has been banned. If you just give me the password to
your account, I can get the sword. Of course I would be happy to give you a
small cut of the profits from the sale.</i><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #021324; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #021324; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Someone falls for it, gets stripped of their possessions and
wants their cash value back. First, if the person lives in another state or
country you have massive jurisdiction problems for even bringing the lawsuit. A
person outside your own nation does not have to obey your laws or care about a
claim brought against them. Second, if you don’t have any property rights to
the item then you don’t have any grounds for suing them anyways. Even if the
EULA or ToS contains some clause about theft it won’t help you get your money. The
contract is between you and the game company, not the person robbing you. Third,
if the person turns out to be a minor it’s debatable whether they are bound by
the contract anyways.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The thing that keeps all of these issues out of the
game is the EULA. It’s not that the courts don’t recognize the potential for
property rights, it’s that everyone playing them signs a contract agreeing that
they don’t own anything in-game. For the most part this creates an effective
legal barrier that has survived several lawsuits for different games. The
problem is that, as with any click-wrap contract, they contain the litigation
by insisting you resolve your problems with arbitration. This has been an
effective deterrence to litigation because of the expense and the fact that
business wins <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110427/11434514058/supreme-court-says-business-favorable-arbitration-clauses-can-block-class-action-lawsuits.shtml">96.8% of the time</a>. <span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">It takes extraordinary
circumstances for a court to rule that an arbitration agreement is unfair.</span></span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">While the solution may be effective, it obviously
has a couple of problems even if it keeps working. Presuming that the addition
of real world auctions increases litigation, defending the EULA will cut into the
game’s profits. The EULA isn’t going to protect player versus player property
disputes. Furthermore, EULAs are increasingly viewed negatively by consumers as
companies use them to <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.qj.net/qjnet/playstation-3/fw-330-eula-lets-sony-tinker-with-your-ps3-without-your-permission.html">change their contract terms</a>, fostering
distrust and negative perceptions.<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">What could potentially threaten a EULA is if the courts decide a person
has been forced into an unfair bargaining position. The hypothetical scenario
would be someone accumulating a large amount of virtual wealth and then being
forced to agree to new terms in a EULA which damages them. They can’t transfer
the money out of the game and they don’t have any kind of recourse inside of
the game either. It’s a question of options given to the player, do they have
an alternative besides signing a contract that hurts them? If they do not, then
the courts may step in and take matters into their own hands.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Preventing this from
happening means taking a long, critical look at how MMO’s resolve their own
internal disputes and considering alternative ways of distributing authority
and enforcement in the virtual community. There is no one solution, every game
has its own needs and community surrounding it.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The majority of MMOs practice a kind of
authoritarian approach to governance. They own everything, they resolve all
disputes on their own, and they decide how to design the game on their own. Input
is evaluated from the players but no real authority is granted to them. Enforcement
occurs either automatically or through GMs. Both of these methods of
enforcement are problematic. Automatic enforcement means the developer is often
acting without proper feedback because there are no immediate costs to their
rules. Nor can players break the rules like they do in real life: invisible walls
and code law are final. It’s arbitrary and often leaves the player feeling
powerless when bold changes come out for the game. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">GMs, on the other hand, can be inconsistent. A forum
thread on GMs in <i>World of Warcraft</i> at <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/863588-Using-the-GM-ticket-system-to-grief">MMO-Champions</a> gives a pretty common
example of how this gets expressed. One player thinks the community rule about
no swearing should be more heavily enforced, so they constantly report these
players to GMs. Others don’t see it as a big deal while several others didn’t
even know it was against the rules since the game self-censors. A thread on
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?380031-Question-for-anyone-working-as-a-MMO-GM/page2">rpg.net</a> points out that GMs must deal
with everything from code issues, gold farmers to social conflicts and
harassment. Results vary depending on the GM’s background even though they are
all lumped together. Another thread <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://wow.allakhazam.com/story.html?story=19316">allakhazam</a> complains that they feel
increasingly like a subscriber rather than a customer. There are so many
complaints that GMs can’t attend to them all and the issues go unresolved.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Greg Lastowka in his book <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Virtual-Justice-Laws-Online-Worlds/dp/0300141203/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1316444226&sr=8-6">Virtual Justice</a> points out that the
biggest problem with GMs is their inconsistency. You can just hassle a
different one until you get the result you want by filing complaints over and
over. This kind of conflict resolution may suffice in the current MMO system,
but as real money enters the system many players are not going to take
arbitrary decisions lightly. As Lastowka explains, “When virtual worlds empower
users with a wide range of creative freedom and encourage them to take economic
ownership in their productions, those worlds are more likely to attract
lawsuits from all directions. Large scale financial stakes and uncertain rules
are a dangerous mixture.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">So the reason one should
at least consider overhauling their current MMO dispute methods are two-fold.
One, if you don’t create something the players believe is fair the real world courts
may be tempted to do it for you. Two, a fair and transparent judicial system could
make your players happier and improve their overall experience. The knee-jerk
response that lawyers, property rights, and all of the costs and expenses
associated with these things is neither an inevitability nor really necessary.
As John William Nelson points out in his essay </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://works.bepress.com/john_nelson/3/">The Virtual Property Problem</a>, “Virtual
property is a solution looking for a problem.” Perhaps we should keep it that
way.</span><br />
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/09/mmo-judiciary-balance-of-power.html">Link to Part 2</a></span></span></span></div>
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Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-72439882386525459042011-08-22T14:02:00.000-07:002011-09-02T06:27:02.140-07:00Gamification and Law - 5<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXKrL73rkwiJtKbktg1O2cWybfwz6iOPsTo-f_YFnVgJEOkQy3VLNWRzOhsz7J_LqfDiuYRBZXyD04f6OW0j48JG4mug2Lm_7zq6Cv5yGc45yhg0GCMM7cLA08chlNuGv0hmIKMVUiPSIi/s1600/kids_playing1.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5643792406733043826" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXKrL73rkwiJtKbktg1O2cWybfwz6iOPsTo-f_YFnVgJEOkQy3VLNWRzOhsz7J_LqfDiuYRBZXyD04f6OW0j48JG4mug2Lm_7zq6Cv5yGc45yhg0GCMM7cLA08chlNuGv0hmIKMVUiPSIi/s400/kids_playing1.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 309px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a>
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To borrow a popular criticism of gamification, a feedback system alone is not a game. It is, however, a potential application of game design principles to a system that employs both seriousness and play to produce tangible benefits. Going back to <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Chttp://www.amazon.com/Virtual-Justice-Laws-Online-Worlds/dp/0300141203/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314024061&sr=8-1%22" target="_blank">Greg Lastowka</a>, he identifies three key differences between a legal system and a game:
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1) Games are disassociated from life in a way that makes them less serious than ordinary life.
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2) Play absorbs players intensely and utterly.
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3) Games are not materially productive.
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Gamification, if we were to condense it into a form, provides a means for 2) to exist in a system that otherwise does not necessarily have the other two elements. Huizinga’s example of this occurring was the Renaissance and I narrowed it down to something like the art patron model in the <a "="" href="http://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/08/gamification-and-law-4.html" target="_blank">previous post</a>. A person is given the freedom to totally absorb themselves in an otherwise productive task. This was possible because the patron environment creates an accelerated feedback system. The artist is paid before the work is completed so they have something to live on and to give them supplies. Nobody yet knows if the work will be any good nor is this payment indicative of that.
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Donella H. Meadows, in her great book <i>Thinking in Systems</i>, explains that the information delivered by a feedback loop can only affect future behavior. It can’t deliver the information immediately and so can’t have an impact fast enough to correct behavior that is driving the current feedback. An example she uses would be letting the water out of your bath tub. The water isn’t all gone immediately, it takes time to flow out and you don’t notice until the water is gone. In the patron’s case above, you don’t know if the money is going to lead to a great work of art until it’s too late.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2efQ7MNAvZrDJhD8asZuL1Bms1410ev9NR41fWnaJORRyn6vwVGLOO8jJyHnZxPw-YJEZVFwwnZlWcP7fcdLKtZDUFQdzeHZjHhU5PxJsIY3uQ5oTR1jxNJDhVIwss5FRqQYEsLYJ-LrC/s1600/weight-scale.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5643792672663660386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2efQ7MNAvZrDJhD8asZuL1Bms1410ev9NR41fWnaJORRyn6vwVGLOO8jJyHnZxPw-YJEZVFwwnZlWcP7fcdLKtZDUFQdzeHZjHhU5PxJsIY3uQ5oTR1jxNJDhVIwss5FRqQYEsLYJ-LrC/s400/weight-scale.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 265px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a>
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This situation can play out in dramatic ways because people are often making bad decisions based on improperly interpreting feedback. For this reason a system often cannot self-regulate and repair itself, the feedback may take decades to resolve itself and by then it’s too late. On an individual scale this is something as simple as not exercising. On a marketing scale this could be a person failing to use a product properly or not experiencing the full benefits of its use. Gamification would be an attempt at making a system capable of self-regulation because it has good enough feedback to where people can make proper decisions based on their own self-interest. They’ll introduce their own corrective behavior and engage more fully.
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Advocates of gamification being used for social change would use this to help people experience immediate benefits for tasks like recycling or exercise where those rewards often take time to play out. You get some bonus points every time or your score competes with other participants. That way, even though recycling itself is not giving positive feedback until many years later, the system can still provide it. Marketers, assuming they actually understand what they’re doing, would be using a similar approach by creating a more coherent feedback when engaging with a product.
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Just as a law requires a certain amount of social acceptance to function properly, a gamified system would have to align itself with the individual’s own self-interest. Meadows explains, “The most effective way of dealing with policy resistance is to find a way of aligning the various goals of the subsystems, usually by providing an overarching goal that allows all actors to break out of their bounded rationality.” That bounded perspective simply refers to the limits of our perceptions of any system. The feedback helps prevent the “drift to low performance” problem that occurs because people can misperceive negative feedback and cause the system to go into drift. That is, people are no longer behaving based on what’s going on but rather a misperception. The lower the perceived state of the system, the lower their self-interest propels improvement through corrective action because they don’t think it’s working.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh66wC_pJpsOJANqJERCpob_ipm5RkZe5G9WPzpQGpQSbohpeIAcdntIetICzEZFZfunbceAKfkaYyZ6NlARy-kpJrCLBqvyBrfv8hRH2YlnCl-zcX3YMEi50SZJqpi6Ss-MMBrmtzZb16a/s1600/f-body-score.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5643792999201084194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh66wC_pJpsOJANqJERCpob_ipm5RkZe5G9WPzpQGpQSbohpeIAcdntIetICzEZFZfunbceAKfkaYyZ6NlARy-kpJrCLBqvyBrfv8hRH2YlnCl-zcX3YMEi50SZJqpi6Ss-MMBrmtzZb16a/s400/f-body-score.png" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 225px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a>
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A gamified system will have to be sophisticated and carefully tuned to the individual’s wants while also guiding them to longterm goals. This would be the basic dividing line of the play elements (individual wants) versus the longterm goals (serious elements). The problem is that, as noted above, a feedback system is not a game. It does not have the play element in it because it’s a static system. You need a certain degree of competition, creativity, something generating the play form to allow the absorption aspect we’re trying to maintain.
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Which is where the complications begin to arise because like the comparison between a utopian society and a more diverse community in a <a "="" href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Chttp://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/08/gamification-and-law-2.html" target="_blank">previous post</a>, a game is not composed of one play standard. For each cultural sphere there will be a unique play sphere that applies. More realistically, a culture can support numerous play spheres of different types and in varying states of solidity. The classic example of this is Richard Bartle’s <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Chttp://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm%22" target="_blank">different types of MUD players</a>. If the play sphere exists independently of the game, then it’s important that one maintain a system that is always adapting to the varying needs of the individual to maintain alignment.
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Most legal systems are built around the reality that feedback is often slow to arrive. Laws take a long time to create and then long periods of fine-tuning are expected via the common law. Things simply do not change fast enough to necessitate a legal system that quickly modifies itself and preventing improper reactions to feedback is a virtue in this case. One area where this is changing is environmental law because you need to be able to respond more quickly than a traditional front-end system allows. If a natural disaster occurs in an area that has been protected or a species is put at extreme risk, you may need to change the rules that day, not in four years. This is the topic Barbara Cosen tackles <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Chttp://epubs.utah.edu/index.php/jlrel/article/viewFile/333/273%22" target="_blank">in her work.</a>.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8CBQQc2pXO8f9wTR9IOOSpA9uqHvjz3sBzCocxVLeHZhaj9rYZVE1lKC_ixGrbAeuIg_NDVdIbSFvI_6tvUC-1fldOymBQ3mzw8v69C4aLWjDyZH2Zp4D33-cPfvL4y6KnU65eDbt6ZeJ/s1600/part_12.gif"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5643793235340094754" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8CBQQc2pXO8f9wTR9IOOSpA9uqHvjz3sBzCocxVLeHZhaj9rYZVE1lKC_ixGrbAeuIg_NDVdIbSFvI_6tvUC-1fldOymBQ3mzw8v69C4aLWjDyZH2Zp4D33-cPfvL4y6KnU65eDbt6ZeJ/s400/part_12.gif" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 259px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 333px;" /></a>
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I’m going to borrow from J.B. Ruhl’s essay <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Chttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1694187%22" target="_blank">on dynamic system theory for this section.</a> The issue with systems that have random elements is how much space do you allow it to deviate before its fundamental structure and purpose has changed. Sticking with our Renaissance example, certain restrictions are imposed on the artist by the patron like make it classically themed or painting the patron standing next to Jesus, while creative independence is also allowed. Excessive control would be like the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Chttp://thebigbearaircraftcompany.blogspot.com/2011/07/must-share-document.html%22" target="_blank">Big Bear Plane Company</a> example, where the boss is insisting the plane have a propeller because he likes them. There isn’t any one specific element that corrupts the system, it’s the complex nature of their relationship that creates the dynamic
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Resilience is the key test for a dynamic system because it gauges what kind of changes it can handle. Ruhl defines it as, “the capacity of a system to experience shocks while retaining essentially the same function, structure, feedbacks, and therefore identity.” This comes in various forms, with Ruhl outlining ecological resilience as the magnitude of disturbance the system can absorb without changing versus engineering resilience tries to channel and minimize disturbances through design. Ruhl uses the analogy of a bowl and ball with the ball representing an occurrence in a system. Engineered design is a vase: the ball has a limited opening to enter the system and it is tightly channeled into a small area of possible outcomes. Ecological resilience is a large bowl: there is more space for the ball to land but it will roll around and potentially stop in multiple places.
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Resilience can be problematic if the system is so stiff that it’s producing results outside the acceptable spectrum of standards. A gamified system would have to be a much looser and employ more adaptive reward structures than a traditional game if it wanted to maintain its play element. Ruhl identifies the five key features of a system contribute to the capacity to endure through surrounding change: 1) define problem, 2) determine goals and objectives for system 3) determination of ecosystem baseline, 4) development of conceptual models, 5) selection of future restoration actions, 6) implementation and management actions, 7) monitoring and ecosystem response, 8) evaluation of restoration efforts and proposals for remedial actions. The goal of this approach is to increase response diversity so that unexpected positive behavior can be rewarded without having to change the entire system. It’s the Renaissance, with all its limitations, but still that possibility that you can do something new and amazing.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCfqJI2H89gw9wgJg6tLCH9Sq1bsZDMgCiRGJvKNacsd_uOpowuln30DtVjbJyWlxAuzW-bDvsxpaKabrRP8Twus3G7tbmygVdQ7MEiJPLoI87r2mvYk0eU58okTjAc7ZFbiLQrZQRtukF/s1600/assistant-manager-bot.gif"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5643793786271024882" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCfqJI2H89gw9wgJg6tLCH9Sq1bsZDMgCiRGJvKNacsd_uOpowuln30DtVjbJyWlxAuzW-bDvsxpaKabrRP8Twus3G7tbmygVdQ7MEiJPLoI87r2mvYk0eU58okTjAc7ZFbiLQrZQRtukF/s400/assistant-manager-bot.gif" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 370px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a>
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You need a lot of authority delegated to an individual or agency for this to work. Administrative systems focus too much on the front end design without making changes on the fly. The Renaissance was able to work because it mainly boiled down to the artistic tastes of one eccentric patron in the exchange. They could be bartered with and changes could be made more easily than if one were dealing with a corporation or committee. Whatever elements of play you were extracting out and relying on to induce absorption from the user would have to be carefully maintained in an environment where the serious aspects are always in flux. Large dynamic changes are going to have be made to a gamification system on the fly, you can’t just change the scoring model every year and expect it to hold together.
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Which brings us full circle on this series. The very first post on Gamification and Law began by stressing that the most important game design has to offer law is <a href="http://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/06/gamification-and-law-1.html" target="_blank">crowd sourcing techniques.</a> Dynamic legal systems represent that idea by proposing laws that can change quickly and respond to social conditions on the fly. Legal theory, in turn, has a lot of nuanced ideas about how to study and address rule systems once you get outside closed-off play systems. My goal with this series was to cross pollinate a wide range of ideas and disciplines on the subject of gamification, something the public dialogue has sorely been in need of. If gamification is to make much progress, it will be in the hands of people who do not care much for boundaries and other static ways of thinking. As Donell H. Meadows comments, “It is great art to remember that boundaries are of our own making, and that they can and should be reconsidered for each new discussion, problem, or purpose.”
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<br />Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-12351278029509359922011-08-22T07:31:00.000-07:002011-09-02T06:20:49.890-07:00Gamification and Law - 4<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNxvyiLVQ3KFeqSRhudJ_uswZV6Q8fo4aXUemm8vAj9ABj5c7_0cYHIeDV8zLd1TwTE7mKhGUglp1FbL-aXasDDS1mRX_FDZRQlXUscZTy_IZBsD1kM5lVVzpaqOXjrM348I0NSIchoBgj/s1600/794+Serious-Games.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5643688152060361042" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNxvyiLVQ3KFeqSRhudJ_uswZV6Q8fo4aXUemm8vAj9ABj5c7_0cYHIeDV8zLd1TwTE7mKhGUglp1FbL-aXasDDS1mRX_FDZRQlXUscZTy_IZBsD1kM5lVVzpaqOXjrM348I0NSIchoBgj/s400/794+Serious-Games.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 323px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 372px;" /></a>
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If you had to boil down gamification to a single issue, one relevant to academics and marketers alike, it’s how far can you structure an organized system before it stops being play? When does the form finally break and become something else? Ian Bogost, channeling his inner-Lakoff, declares that the whole enterprise is <a href="http://www.bogost.com/blog/gamification_is_bullshit.shtml" target="_blank">bullshit</a>. Christian McCrea comments that <a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ChristianMcCrea/20110810/8167/A_Declaration_of_Independence_From_Gamification.php" target="_blank">gamifcation just wants</a>, “the glamour of play; the legitimacy of its culture." It stopped being about play the moment they changed the purpose of the system to selling stuff instead of producing play. Lian Amaris counters that even if there is less play than your average game, it hasn’t <a href="http://enole.com/?p=423" target="_blank">stopped being play</a>.
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This is the juncture at which legal theory has something to offer the debate because lawyers and judges have been fighting about a similar issue. Except we don’t deal with the play form, we deal with the forms of justice or morality and it’s on a much larger scale. To make better laws you have to get at the core of why people obey them in the first place. Do people do it because it’s what the herd does when authority, sometimes with force, tells them to act or do they obey the law because they personally believe the law is correct and good? For gamification, the issue is are they buying your product because of its intrinsic value or are they buying it because it levels up their stats? Because whether you’re marketing toothpaste to kids or organizing a reward program for recycling, you can’t fix it or improve it without understanding the underlying mechanisms at work. As Ronald Dworkin points out in his <i>Introduction to the Philosophy of Law</i>, the problem is not which answer is right but how do you tell the difference?
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The best place to start answering that question is by pointing out that you’re going to be disappointed if you’re analyzing a closed-off play system. <i>World of Warcraft</i>’s appeal is diluted when it crosses into the real world because people behave differently around things they take seriously. What works in a pure play environment must be adapted for things like real money, products and marketing to be effective. You need to study systems that incorporate play alongside things people take seriously. <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Chttp://www.ted.com/talks/seth_priebatsch_the_game_layer_on_top_of_the_world.html%22" target="_blank">Promises to the contrary</a> are indeed, as Bogost points out, bullshit.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjZ8R311R6sUwDGlnFXn2Q4omkXcrFXSjADwLw8234-Fwf7Ga_60zXci__0J9dKkngjhvd0EBmY8ZJubY3YdBdGp5_e-Hu0ShqyY8YPgHBgiaKTtnepjZa2vKl6FVTyWwrFMQvLdopJX31/s1600/HomoLudens.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5643688539752298898" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjZ8R311R6sUwDGlnFXn2Q4omkXcrFXSjADwLw8234-Fwf7Ga_60zXci__0J9dKkngjhvd0EBmY8ZJubY3YdBdGp5_e-Hu0ShqyY8YPgHBgiaKTtnepjZa2vKl6FVTyWwrFMQvLdopJX31/s400/HomoLudens.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 262px;" /></a>
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Johan Huizinga, whose book <i>Homo Ludens</i> does an excellent job of outlining the play form, identifies the Renaissance as an example of play co-existing with seriousness. He explains, “The spirit of the Renaissance was very far from being frivolous. The game of living in imitation of Antiquity was pursued in holy earnest. Devotion to the ideals of the past in the matter of plastic creation and intellectual discovery was of a violence, depth and purity surpassing anything we can imagine…and yet the whole mental attitude of the Renaissance was one of play.”
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Which sounds nice but why don’t we give a literal example. Florence, Italy was able to produce a fantastic art scene because of its patron culture. A person who funded a grand public work of art gained popularity and fame in the city, which gave them political leverage which led to money, power, and all the stuff that comes with it. When <a "="" href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Chttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosimo_de%27_Medici" target="_blank">Cosimo de ‘ Medici</a> was looking for a way to get famous and gain political leverage, he noticed that the roof of the <a "="" href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Chttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Maria_del_Fiore" target="_blank">Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore</a> was unfinished. He hired Filippo Brunelleschi to figure out a new method of creating roofs and had him complete it. Every day, every single Florentine looked up and saw that roof. And they got to see it fully finished because of Cosimo’s patronage. It’s not hard to understand why Cosimo was considered “king in all but name.”
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The Renaissance was able to produce grand works of art through the creative force of play because the extreme seriousness of that time period gave room for play to form. Artists could be creative and produce something unique while still adhering to many fiscal and social limitations. Patrons, in turn, gained notoriety and influence because of the advertising. The term Renaissance itself was coined by someone the Medicis hired to describe the hundreds of works of art they created. This is not a new idea, a modern critique comes from an animator <a href="http://thebigbearaircraftcompany.blogspot.com/2011/07/must-share-document.html" target="_blank">complaining about management and writers</a> interfering with the play element with their own draconian measures. That example better shows a culture that does not allow play.
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So, going back to Lian Amaris’s point about it doesn’t stop being play because of gamification, he is correct. Play is a kind of form, which is explained <a href="http://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/06/gamification-and-law-3.html" target="_blank">more in-depth</a> here or <a href="http://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/08/forming-better-lawyer-game.html" target="_blank">here</a>. It’s not a solid state or a specific list of characteristics but rather a series of relationships and conflicts that criss-cross into a basic, recognizable form when it occurs. Forms can vary in their restrictions and requirements. A law is a strict space in that certain fundamental things must be present. It’s usually written down and does its best to confine people within a single meaning. On the other hand a cultural standard is a much more amorphous and changing form. It’s rarely very clear when something violates a cultural standard, but one can tell when you are very far out of bounds. This idea is covered <a href="http://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/06/gamification-and-law-2.html" target="_blank">here.</a>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii1PSbUSL2CQ29kTkQAZPgdeIL-rfn1xSQsIsKrHHOu0ERfhYfvhRfvHUp5xc7gXRV7ASy-ILL_yDU_nBs4yF2kPHGilsru8iFtyaU5Se3uQ15syahG5N4Un7_HsV2QYh5tYqfjlscbu0x/s1600/Play+Circle+and+Games.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5643688713136520370" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii1PSbUSL2CQ29kTkQAZPgdeIL-rfn1xSQsIsKrHHOu0ERfhYfvhRfvHUp5xc7gXRV7ASy-ILL_yDU_nBs4yF2kPHGilsru8iFtyaU5Se3uQ15syahG5N4Un7_HsV2QYh5tYqfjlscbu0x/s400/Play+Circle+and+Games.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a>
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So following the same format of my original depiction of the relationship between cultural standards and law, above is a representation of play, games, cultural standards and the legal form. Light blue blocks are game spaces, orange circle is what is acceptable within the play form, red is the culture standard, and the purple block is that society’s laws. Two things bear pointing out. First, the play sphere cannot exceed the culture sphere nor does it extend all way out to the border. The space between the two represents the necessary traits of seriousness that must exist. Second, games are not confined to the legal space. I owe this observation to Greg Lastowka and his exceptional book <i>Virtual Justice</i> for pointing this out to me.
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Lastowka cites the example of Ray Chapman, who was accidentally killed when an inside fastball struck him on the head during a baseball game. If a person intentionally threw a rock at another person’s head and killed them, that would be a murder conviction. Baseball, however, has its own rules and operates in its own separate sphere of society. As a professional player, Ray Chapman knew there was some risk that an inside fastball might be pitched. The rules of baseball were never broken. As a society, we seem willing to allow arenas of sports and games to persist as a special social setting where separate rules apply. Similar scenarios apply to other major sports like football or hockey that present physical risk: United States law has deemed that the player consents to the risk of harm from another in those games.
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Gamification, in terms of the above image, would represent a game that falls between the cultural standards of seriousness and play. It would probably have some grounding in laws (although it doesn’t have to), cross into the realm of play, and extend out into the serious space. This is what the culture of art patrons during the Renaissance would look like or Big Bear’s new business model at the end of the story. Please remember that the above image is just meant to depict the relationships between these forms, it’s not a literal depiction. I’m speaking in terms of visual space and location because it’s easier to understand rather than me blathering about a bunch of abstract ideas.
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So the answer to the question of how do you tell the difference between someone buying your product because of their needs versus buying it because you installed gamification rewards is that you don’t. The ideal scenario, as with a legal system, is that you’ve got a little bit of column A and a little bit of Column B. A law is present to clearly define the goals and limits while everything is still within the cultural standards of that group. Gamification would be aiming for something similar by striking a balance between serious objectives and play.
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<a href="http://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/08/gamification-and-law-5.html">Link to the Conclusion.</a>Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-20259896049781673632011-08-02T16:13:00.000-07:002011-08-03T04:39:22.092-07:00Forming a Better Lawyer Game<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQE8nhKIUszXH9MwpgfMvbYSszwES4VqaOw9C-LOzkIVo0SK_jEHDnUcKbUa-7kTEIzlBEBmByqEkcWP6LhA7dKEtb0uTGJY4giM0FNxRL_SKEgif01Awm2r2w-B3ci53Vv_Jbl59x3NMG/s1600/phoenix-wright.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 256px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQE8nhKIUszXH9MwpgfMvbYSszwES4VqaOw9C-LOzkIVo0SK_jEHDnUcKbUa-7kTEIzlBEBmByqEkcWP6LhA7dKEtb0uTGJY4giM0FNxRL_SKEgif01Awm2r2w-B3ci53Vv_Jbl59x3NMG/s400/phoenix-wright.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5636401602564135250" /></a><br /><br />I once got asked by someone what I thought of the <i>Phoenix Wright</i> games since I’m a practicing lawyer. Truthfully the series never clicked for me despite being a solid adventure game. The way it depicted law and how a lawyer works bothered me immensely. At the time I said it was because it communicated the idea that all I have to do in a lawsuit is click on things and just puzzle it all together. That there was always some way the lawyer could magically fix everything when in reality my job can involve making bad situations just less bad. The design felt wrong to me and it spoiled the rest of the game.<br /><br />This idea was refreshed in my mind when I saw a great post by Simon Ferrari on <a href="http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2011/07/the-frightening-real-world-strength-of-channel-4s-sweatshop-game207.html" target="_blank">Channel 4’s Sweatshop Game</a>. Modeled after the tower defense genre, you put workers on a conveyor belt and try to win the gold medal. The content matches the theme, but the design works to help one appreciate the struggle of sweatshop labor because you realize that it’s always cheaper and easier to just use child labor. Simon Parkin, the game’s designer/writer/producer, explains, “It was one of those rare cases where the mechanics and the message seemed to align neatly, and once we began speaking to experts in the field of sweatshop labor it became clear that there was a huge amount of relevant content that we could bake into the game mechanics.” Ferrari goes on to point out that this is an example of what Ian Bogost calls “tight coupling” between design and content. The two compliment and conform to one another.<br /><br />This brings us back to the concept of form, which I went on about in <a href="http://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/06/gamification-and-law-3.html" target="_blank">Gamification and Law - 3</a> and I’m going give a more concrete example here. To repeat a few ideas: form = content/design and because of this you identify form by its ‘family resemblance’ to other forms. There is no one specific thing that makes something an FPS, a game like <i>Portal 2</i> is still an FPS while at the same it’s a puzzler and it’s a story about a woman escaping a giant lab. Alternatively a game like <i>Amnesia</i> is a survival horror game even though it’s nothing like <i>Resident Evil</i>. The concept of a ‘family resemblance’ comes into play because there are just certain things in varying combination that must be there for a game to be like something. At the same time it’s not a concrete list either, new and different combinations can still fall into a familiar form. The form is just that unspecificed, abstract idea of what something is based on its resemblance to other things.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJzFfpvTnSuVvAkWdk59SxgW-HGEkHVRrcvVpg8QQZt6NBnX89qlf69jwY9Leg9vrVQ7TuHXEUch71DbDMVRKfV-DYyPhlroUB0p_OlV8PA44bl5EGDPwRN2zxoNluJCdZLxzG-esOPO2d/s1600/jamestownscreenshot1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 219px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJzFfpvTnSuVvAkWdk59SxgW-HGEkHVRrcvVpg8QQZt6NBnX89qlf69jwY9Leg9vrVQ7TuHXEUch71DbDMVRKfV-DYyPhlroUB0p_OlV8PA44bl5EGDPwRN2zxoNluJCdZLxzG-esOPO2d/s400/jamestownscreenshot1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5636401733547299698" /></a><br /><br />Now when I say something like form = content, it’s important to remember that we’re talking about a multitude of relationships interconnecting. It's a kind of system but instead of working around economics or game design it's abstracted out to any topic. Consider a great post by <a href="http://gangles.ca/2011/07/31/mechanical-drama-in-jamestown/" target="_blank">Matthew Gallant</a> on the dramatic pace of the game <i>Jamestown</i>. Like a play or movie or book, games have dramatic arcs that are traced by the tension of the player. Gallant comments, “If we acknowledge that game mechanics have inherent dramatic arcs that superimpose the authored content, then we can begin to analyze mechanics in terms of their storytelling potential.” The idea being the dramatic bits of the story ought to coincide with the tension in the design, like the final boss also being the villain of the story, etc. It’s taking the conflict of one medium and finding a similar conflict in another, here a visual narrative coupled with the mechanical designs. You’re matching them based on their similarity in form.<br /><br />Going back to the <i>Phoenix Wright</i> point I began with, the strong reaction I had to the game comes from the disconnect between the design form and the form of practicing law in real life. Consider the trial room mechanics. You read what a witness is saying and spot when they’re lying based on prior detective work. This happens all the time when practicing law. In this regard the narrative of the game is fine and even does a great job of paying homage to a trial. The problem is that there is always a solution to the witnesses in the game. As in, if you just object and say the right things you’ll eventually resolve the case. You’re never trapped. The same is true for the detective work, I just have to find the right clues and everything will be alright. The game design isn’t really creating the same sort of form as the actual practice of law because it has different sorts of conflicts and characteristics.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKy3bJIxd3RRhuoblakAZdU6m0fnMPMHUmrNPepyQ29PTSn_C-M4T-gYNSQB8OiKBUqY4be6g4SqtNYWaAsTGYI54PFmnjVpbeJvO7aRMyNh_kNUccIPy5vze6kLyPi50up-8cCG7Peep0/s1600/magic-the-gathering-duels-of-the-planeswalkers-20090113031431363_640w.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKy3bJIxd3RRhuoblakAZdU6m0fnMPMHUmrNPepyQ29PTSn_C-M4T-gYNSQB8OiKBUqY4be6g4SqtNYWaAsTGYI54PFmnjVpbeJvO7aRMyNh_kNUccIPy5vze6kLyPi50up-8cCG7Peep0/s400/magic-the-gathering-duels-of-the-planeswalkers-20090113031431363_640w.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5636401933170015650" /></a><br /><br />A game that more accurately represents what it’s like being a lawyer is <i>Magic: The Gathering</i>. Like a real case, you don’t really have a lot of say in what my initial hand is like. You just get whatever problems the client is having that day. If you have shit cards and get land-starved then there’s not a lot you can do to turn the tide. Alternatively if you do well in discovery and the law is on your side then you can make a lot of progress and deliver good results. There’s a stronger element of chance that captures the perspective of being a lawyer while at the same time still retaining enough emphasis on skill. Games of <i>Magic</i> are won or lost on tiny decisions and mistakes. Screw up the timing of a counter and it’ll be too late to play it. Fail to attack one turn and you’ll have lost the opportunity when you can’t quite make the killing blow. Bluff your way into having the player block your creature and you can use a giant growth to finish off their monster. <br /><br />The problem with <i>Phoenix Wright</i> is that there is nothing left to chance. It’s linear, one need only discern puzzles and you can progress. The form of the design does not really mimic the form of the real thing. As a consequence the form and content don’t really equal out and thus don’t tightly couple.<br /><br />The final point I’d make is that none of these criticism are really going to matter to anyone except another lawyer. The <i>Phoenix Wright</i> games have a huge fan base and I’m pretty sure if I hadn’t made the horrid mistake of going to law school I’d like the game a lot more. The linear form the game employs may not mimic the real thing, but it does mimic the popular public perception of the lawyer. In fact, if you were to make a lawyer game like <i>Magic: The Gathering</i>, it would probably sell horribly because of how technical it would get. So I’ll conclude by saying that as important as form may be for supporting a game’s content, the perceptions of form need not always derive from the real thing.Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-32279752582286100692011-07-22T03:14:00.000-07:002011-07-22T03:21:41.117-07:00The Systems of Chrono Trigger<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnlFFGV8MoC7BFxFrjJOhmsEQ9SE1EZ58eFLqHroC_WHinF_oCrVyhBXGIQ6teO47iasWrJ9pyVJY01hF8Dtavl4Gh5vB9kk2ryOsfeA0_MHgl-g4ryk-4AjPPFazxQlTmWagfeqt5RJF5/s1600/chronotrigger-sfc.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 270px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnlFFGV8MoC7BFxFrjJOhmsEQ9SE1EZ58eFLqHroC_WHinF_oCrVyhBXGIQ6teO47iasWrJ9pyVJY01hF8Dtavl4Gh5vB9kk2ryOsfeA0_MHgl-g4ryk-4AjPPFazxQlTmWagfeqt5RJF5/s400/chronotrigger-sfc.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5632119252647118658" /></a><br /><br /><i>This article is a companion piece to the Gamification and Law series. It’s meant to give a very specific example of one way a video game can communicate the idea of system to a person.</i><br /><br /><i>Chrono Trigger</i> is unique among JRPGs because of its focus on place instead of story. Incorporating time travel into the game puts certain limitations on the narrative while also opening up unique storytelling opportunities. What makes the game so special is that when you start focusing on place instead of linear narrative in a game you begin to talk about the interconnected relationship between things. The why and how of events in the game is the central focus of the story, which are the very questions that drive our own relationship with systems. <br /><br /><i>Chrono Trigger</i>’s cast, while charming in a <i>Dragonball Z</i> sort of way, are static with the exception of Magus. Chrono is your basic silent protagonist while Marle stays in love with him and generally happy throughout. Frog is always the dutiful soldier, Lucca loves science, Ayla talks like Yoda, etc. This is not to say the characters do not have backstories or that they are bad characters, but compared to FF3 there is a notable lack of change in their dispositions. They overcome obstacles, usually in their past, but it does not change their outlook on the future.<br /><br />The reason for this is because if your game is about time travel and you allow people to muddle in the past then you have to figure out a way to keep characters consistent. You can write tons of dialog to cover all the different scenarios. Or, more realistically, you can just keep everyone as one-note as possible. Lucca can go back in time and save her mother from the accident, but either way she resolves to dedicate her life to science. Frog can put Cyrus’s spirit to rest but it only increases his resolve, it does not particularly change him personally. This is important to note because it demonstrates that the characters are not affected by the world around them. They are beyond it.<br /><br />The game is about slowly piecing together the timeline of <i>Chrono Trigger</i>’s world and figuring out what happened. After a brief introductory adventure, we travel to 2300 AD and discover the inevitable Armageddon of 1999 because of Lavos. Then we deduce it must have been Magus in the year 600, only to discover Lavos actually arrived millions of years ago when dinosaurs still roamed the planet. The arrival of Lavos brings about an Ice Age and ultimately causes the distortions in time that allow the protagonists to succeed in the end.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBZmE2JD-QqaF3HloIiSCta1n4n4zb1Z4EJ2rFPkeT56qCrxg4O2X3_jFbFUS2CjkXQc-7heZOtVsJXrFK6RRxSsJdZN6zAVTPHRS6_2AmQybqY7tkokEMq9hxwvECG15t1Ty5a8AsNcwK/s1600/65000000bc.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBZmE2JD-QqaF3HloIiSCta1n4n4zb1Z4EJ2rFPkeT56qCrxg4O2X3_jFbFUS2CjkXQc-7heZOtVsJXrFK6RRxSsJdZN6zAVTPHRS6_2AmQybqY7tkokEMq9hxwvECG15t1Ty5a8AsNcwK/s400/65000000bc.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5632119444153156018" /></a><br /><br />This is a systems narrative. The game is about observing the various stages of a system, putting together the causes and effects, becoming empowered by that knowledge and then moving to correct the problem. In systems thinking the individual never totally understands what’s going on because of the limitations in feedback. Sometimes it can take years or decades for the consequences of your actions to play out. By then it is too late to change anything. The same is true for the issues one is currently facing: the causes have already happened and the relationship between the event and the feedback is not always clear. Uncertainty is always present for those working with systems in real life. <i>Chrono Trigger</i>, as a story about time travel, is about the unique chance to understand a system as it spans over thousands of years. <br /><br />These ideas are outlined in Donella H. Meadows’ excellent book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/1603580557/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310823947&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Thinking in Systems</a>. Meadows defines a system as, “an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something.” She explains that everything we think we know about the world is actually a model of it. There’s no way for a person to fully understand the past because they aren’t there and they can’t know the future for the same reason. So we build a mental model based on our observations and use it the best we can to make decisions. She calls this ‘bounded rationality’ or the fact that people don’t always have perfect information when they are making choices. <br /><br />Almost all video games are composed of systems that ultimately make a kind of limited model of reality. Ian Bogost referred to this as the simulation gap, but technically in systems thinking there’s never really such a thing that doesn’t have a gap. It’s impossible to know all the data to create a 100% accurate model and you just accept it. The difference between a game and a system in real life is that it is a closed system. It’s conceivably possible to fully comprehend a closed system because you can observe all of its connections. Or at least the outer edges of those connections, they can rapidly generate so much complexity that it’s too much for the human mind to follow. Game designers who would assert otherwise are either delusional or making extremely linear games.<br /><br />So how do you study a system when you acknowledge right from the start that you can’t know everything about it? What you’re looking for are levers and places where your input can affect other parts of the system. How long should you wait before deciding how much inventory you’ll need for the next month in your shop? How much money can you spend on that new car, even though anything could happen to it later on? Should you get dental insurance, even though the premium will cost more than just out of pocket expenses most of the time? These issues are not systems themselves but rather the questions they generate, which in turn can become the story of one’s own life. What should I do with my life to accomplish my goals?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvjh5Ku2UftiEidmJtvqHpz8iNQfA7xWygv9wH4OD7D66yt5wCsk22OVFh4qfWQ6XeTz09FlWiOYIjfCcvuDIF5TRAcNygCnVnF48oetvvkKa4-nHtmqZ9uVcsX7o-4YhLguoJh4KgPBEc/s1600/Lavos.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 196px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvjh5Ku2UftiEidmJtvqHpz8iNQfA7xWygv9wH4OD7D66yt5wCsk22OVFh4qfWQ6XeTz09FlWiOYIjfCcvuDIF5TRAcNygCnVnF48oetvvkKa4-nHtmqZ9uVcsX7o-4YhLguoJh4KgPBEc/s400/Lavos.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5632119587361957938" /></a><br /><br /><i>Chrono Trigger</i> is the story of a closed system and a group of heroes who study its various levers and bring about change. While most games can easily tell a story about cause and effect <i>Chrono Trigger</i> is more concerned with those specific relationships rather than discussing consequences. The entire game is about fighting destiny. Lavos, as a being that can control time, has crafted a timeline that always ends with its victory and the destruction of the planet. On the Black Omen the player discovers it is even repairing the timeline with clones of the protagonists to replace them to ensure continuity. Before the last battle each character opines that Lavos has been controlling their entire species, guiding their evolution with its own DNA to maintain power. Such perceptions echo the ones you encounter when studying similarly large and frightening systems, a sense of powerlessness as larger forces control and bind your future.<br /><br />This complex relationship between actions, consequences and trying to control them is depicted throughout the game. The trial sequence involves several possible acts the player can take and their interpretation as to Chrono’s guilt, no matter what the player intended. Even if you play through the sequence perfectly Chrono still goes to jail because of the Chancellor’s corruption. The newgame plus option is all about encouraging the player to explore and see what happens when you do things differently. <br /><br />This idea of systems is probably best represented in the Fiona’s Forest mission where you transform a desert into a forest. First you have to realize the desert is not just there, it was caused by something 400 years ago. Then you have to undo that cause. Afterwards Robo volunteers to help plant a forest and revitalize the area. Feedback is observed in the form of a desert, a lever is detected, pressure is applied, then corrective action is taken. All of this is uniquely possible because of the time travel mechanic and the fact that you, the player, are observing the system as a whole. Compare that to your original perspective of the desert when you walk through it in the year 1000. It’s just there. Nothing you can do will change its status as a desert because it’s too late. Only by travelling in time do you become aware of the underlying feedback and lever, the relationship, which created the desert. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpH6nViCHHdXsOkRNp86cKLH_xWktAOZ0lRX6jHFr4iKxSDb6GLlMGbFPmUYokxbjqCpHmICgOMHsWUNQs7y7oQ65hyphenhyphenfRmAVfRRcLSd7lmU0WLsyESooGFkAI5feyQRQLr5XF1g-ZHeC5u/s1600/chrono-trigger-ds-20080709040734088_640w.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpH6nViCHHdXsOkRNp86cKLH_xWktAOZ0lRX6jHFr4iKxSDb6GLlMGbFPmUYokxbjqCpHmICgOMHsWUNQs7y7oQ65hyphenhyphenfRmAVfRRcLSd7lmU0WLsyESooGFkAI5feyQRQLr5XF1g-ZHeC5u/s400/chrono-trigger-ds-20080709040734088_640w.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5632119754381725858" /></a><br /><br />Narratively the game involves one of the inherent flaws that systems thinking notes about understanding the system: you can never fully control a system because it becomes static when you do. Lavos is a being that tried to be in total control of the world, its reach going so far as to even predict and attempt to counter the heroes seeking to destroy it. Yet once that happens the static nature allows a person to step outside of the system and change it. Or put another way despite how much Lavos was overwhelmingly in control of the timeline in the game, it still didn’t have the power to stop its own death.<br /><br />It’s not my goal to claim the creators of the game were thinking about systems theory when they made <i>Chrono Trigger</i>, rather to point out that time travel games are invariably about systems. You could cite <i>Majora’s Mask</i> or <i>Day of the Tentacle</i> and build a similar argument easily. It’s another example of the point I made in the <a href="http://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/06/gamification-and-law-3.html" target="_blank">Gamification and Law</a> series about how games are uniquely suited for communicating the concept of systems and form to people. Since you can’t really start by trying to communicate something concrete to the person, games are handy because you can get them to picture how a series of relationships can be used to craft anything, be it a JRPG or a dynamic legal system. Like the desert puzzle in the game, I’m not really talking about the desert but rather a series of relationships that culminated in the desert.<br /><br />As Robo considers his reflections after 400 years of turning a desert into a forest, he argues that something much larger than any of the heroes is involved in the time gates. That something wants them to see these various moments. When pressed on the issue he concludes that it is simply, “something beyond our comprehension.” That truth, more than any other, is the first step towards understanding systems, design and form.Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-7256546636285504182011-06-29T16:34:00.000-07:002011-06-29T16:36:40.295-07:00Army of Darkness Defense Review<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdJ3xTN1a6phBmijqxMYGkqnQeSV6G4GUmKbf_dTK4CcwsTNmY3bnIpJzaKXp55SgPZuPMCQ_qYh3pThGnwdLlQDcLAqsii4ffsSXDnbf7tYYIQdHopB5vEY8_Whscf4zij5unAUH1EPuj/s1600/armyOfDarknessTD_02.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdJ3xTN1a6phBmijqxMYGkqnQeSV6G4GUmKbf_dTK4CcwsTNmY3bnIpJzaKXp55SgPZuPMCQ_qYh3pThGnwdLlQDcLAqsii4ffsSXDnbf7tYYIQdHopB5vEY8_Whscf4zij5unAUH1EPuj/s400/armyOfDarknessTD_02.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5623789669109520082" /></a><br /> <i>Army of Darkness Defense</i> is the first game that ever convinced me to buy in-game money. Not <i>Farmville</i>, not <i>Team Fortress 2</i>, but rather a defense game about fending off never-ending waves of enemies. It pulls you in with easy gameplay and movie quotes then yanks the rug out with a brick wall difficulty curve.<br /> <br />You play as Ash defending the Necronomicon. Each level begins with a sound bite from <i>Army of Darkness</i> then you move Ash up and down the level to fight skeletons. Your iron stash slowly fills as you play and that gets spent on troops. Enemies drop money, which buys upgrades, and you can probably guess the rest. Every troop is a reference to somebody in the movie and you re-enact the final battle over and over with steadily increasing number of enemies per fight.<br /> <br />What’s interesting about this game is that it’s an example of how microtransactions affect the way the game flows. I don’t think I died in the game until Wave 30 or so, and then I just had to start being more careful. There’s a bunch of different attacks, troops and defenses you can dump your money into while this is going on but I got by just spamming swordsmen and Ash’s special attacks. This is all taking place in a 2-D plane so really there isn’t much strategy to it. <br /> <br />All that changes on Wave 50 when the difficulty curve spikes right into your face. You get to keep the money you make even if you die in a level, so you can keep playing even when you’re stuck like this. You scrape money together and buy upgrades, but Wave 50 was so much harder that the spam tactics I’d been using couldn’t even put a dent in it. All the troops I’d been neglecting had to be upgraded and all the defenses needed to be at Max.<br /> <br />Stuck in an airport, obsessed with this little defense game, I realized I’d have to keep grinding for hours to get up to speed. And for just five bucks I could save myself an hour of grinding and finally beat this last boss. <i>Army of Darkness Defense</i> was so good I was willing to pay money to have it end.Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-48702521011821879522011-06-28T15:53:00.000-07:002011-09-02T06:08:38.753-07:00Gamification and Law - 3<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2qWyCQMSjePB4IyyHdSGLDSxKBiFDjuVa_uOqcI2Vk2sIh3hTVv38S8yd7NeQah-jsHTzxpgmZszPVZxORr-tix6vup9ex3-uS6YYHz6u9TfJ2EeeppjmbOONWwtl9pUlQ8hTMfX25r9n/s1600/0712ifyoutalkedtopeople.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5623409427401890210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2qWyCQMSjePB4IyyHdSGLDSxKBiFDjuVa_uOqcI2Vk2sIh3hTVv38S8yd7NeQah-jsHTzxpgmZszPVZxORr-tix6vup9ex3-uS6YYHz6u9TfJ2EeeppjmbOONWwtl9pUlQ8hTMfX25r9n/s400/0712ifyoutalkedtopeople.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 224px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a>
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The goal of this post is to discuss the potential changes in perception that come with a society who is accustomed to playing video games.
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Game academic <a href="http://www.jamespaulgee.com/node/28">James Paul Gee</a> called the growing understanding of video games in modern society the semiotic domain or “modalities used to communicate distinctive types of messages." The more people who play games, the more familiar they will become with their conventions, which will in turn allow for that means of communication to cover more topics in society. This is one of the most common selling points for gamification when explaining why it would be so effective with marketing. An entire generation of people who grew up with and continue to play games today is just beginning to hit their 30’s. One can assume that a growing semiotic domain implies that those people are at least playing several different games, more likely dozens. Each of those games is an independent system with similarities and differences. Learning to detect those features and differentiate them is one of the first steps in developing the critical skills needed to think about systems on a larger scale. This, in turn, is the key towards creating an informed population about how a legal system works.
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The chief critical skill for systems is learning to think in terms of the whole rather than the individual. An excellent Youtube series by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdBiXbuD1h4&NR=1">Dr. Russell Ackoff</a> introduces the basic ideas but he begins by pointing out that most people in America are taught to analyze things individually. That is, the answer to how something works or why it came about can be found by examining what’s inside the system. You see this idea in liberal arts most often, such as looking at a painting and analyzing what it means through various critical lenses based on politics or method. Systems thinking is the idea that the explanations always lie outside the system, never inside. You look at the thing and try to understand its relationship to the rest of the whole.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTDopRMy41OEuAWSe1LCwtbETGAfD3vSFcXhEQoTE2uS8qAPmwrnAJeaT29exjRe4PCK7uzhidQrA-uuez6lZ9x-rFvZZo0temp6PM2mryk6vr_RcU8FS3U76LVIG9nH2alAdu7Rm_lne8/s1600/Figure-2a.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5623410781211133202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTDopRMy41OEuAWSe1LCwtbETGAfD3vSFcXhEQoTE2uS8qAPmwrnAJeaT29exjRe4PCK7uzhidQrA-uuez6lZ9x-rFvZZo0temp6PM2mryk6vr_RcU8FS3U76LVIG9nH2alAdu7Rm_lne8/s400/Figure-2a.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 236px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a>
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Every system is contained in a larger system. An essential property of a system is that it cannot be divided into individual parts. Ackoff uses the example of a car and deciding the value of the vehicle based on how well the fuel regulator works. You don’t base the value on just that, you want to know how well all the parts work together as a whole to become a car. Analysis is incompatible with this approach because it’s inherently taking things apart. You break down each component and isolate their function. This often leads to bad decisions on how to improve or repair a system because it over-emphasizes a single function without gauging the effects on the whole. A system is never the sum of its parts, it is the product of its interactions.
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This line of thinking is best developed by multiplayer games. In an MMO players learn about superior builds for their characters by studying how they handle combat with other characters. The conflicts are what allows a person to grasp how a system works. These occur much less often in single-player games because of the lack of competing interests.
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://epubs.utah.edu/index.php/jlrel/article/viewFile/333/273%22">Barbara Cosen</a> explains that most past legal scholarship focuses on isolating legal mechanisms and explaining how they work. She compares this to someone performing an experiment in an isolated lab then presuming it will be applicable to the real world. The truth is that there are hundreds of other factors going on in a legal system that all influence the outcome of a conflict. It is never down to one component or exchange.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiStduHuN42ZE7xJ2Ma_Kb1OBqhiFYlFug0TN2jcgvpwZ3Gxdszp46jVOL7va8j0hKI4a4TRTwVrLTnAgA4S8EkShIUbw5E7NFLMNJuCB7Lyj5wOp2UccGrrOtQDVVpAhWucjij8jxcpKxL/s1600/footpatrol-1-0310-dcgjpg-ed2f7401271ff774.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5623411216998049874" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiStduHuN42ZE7xJ2Ma_Kb1OBqhiFYlFug0TN2jcgvpwZ3Gxdszp46jVOL7va8j0hKI4a4TRTwVrLTnAgA4S8EkShIUbw5E7NFLMNJuCB7Lyj5wOp2UccGrrOtQDVVpAhWucjij8jxcpKxL/s400/footpatrol-1-0310-dcgjpg-ed2f7401271ff774.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 273px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a>
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A great example of the dangers of using analysis on a system is an article on police foot patrols in <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/4465/">The Atlantic</a>. Crime statistics and victimization surveys measure individual losses, but they do not measure communal losses. The article explores the impact of foot patrols in Newark, NJ and explains that while it did not lower the actual number of crimes, it did increase the overall community satisfaction. The reason is that the foot patrols break up drunks, disorderly youths and identify strangers in the community. They theorize that these factors tend to act like a broken window in a house: it attracts more crime the same way a broken window attracts vandalism. People believe they can get away with it after seeing that someone else got away with a different crime. With the cops walking the neighborhoods people felt safer and happier despite the lack of change in other statistics.
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The article explains that studies of police behavior ceased, by and large, to be accounts of the order-maintenance function and became, instead, efforts to propose and test ways whereby the police could solve more crimes, make more arrests, and gather better evidence. If these things could be done, social scientists assumed, citizens would be less fearful. The law defines <i>my</i> rights, punishes <i>his</i> behavior and is applied by <i>that</i> officer because of <i>this</i> harm. It’s a basic analytic approach and solution: we fix things for the individual and then everything will resolve itself. What the experiment in Newark, NJ discovered is that this approach often misses the mark when dealing with truly complex issues. Or as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBrEJjT-dWU&NR=1">Ackoff explains</a> we are improving the performance of the part while worsening the performance of the whole.
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Why does playing games help with teaching systems thinking instead of analysis? Because the more systems a person engages with, the more familiar they are with the concept of form. While it’s easy to make grand statements about recognizing the forest for the trees, it’s conceptually harder to do this with insubstantial systems like laws or games. Ancient legal systems such as the Roman Empire’s, for example, have a noted tendency to only deal with the physical. This is <i>my</i> property, that is <i>your</i> property and here is what I can or cannot do in regards to <i>this</i> property. Insubstantial concepts like free speech, freedom, racism or other modern legal ideas are more difficult to grasp because they are so abstract. Most people understand what freedom is and they believe they have a right to it, but they also simultaneously recognize that there are limitations on that right if one wants to co-exist with others. I’m not free to go over to your house and make a sandwich, for example.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-dIMGUiCJldrUwLaE37NciEh9Uc64pGEEbKITV1-XJSObpp0lJSFmmb0oNaFqP8RQYllaScpwgV3jzbffkNvj7XZKg9QU4-zBq55Dbkx85bXtftbLLreaQlMwOT1hjK4WaJu4L6qNNG9K/s1600/mccloud.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5623411631129899122" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-dIMGUiCJldrUwLaE37NciEh9Uc64pGEEbKITV1-XJSObpp0lJSFmmb0oNaFqP8RQYllaScpwgV3jzbffkNvj7XZKg9QU4-zBq55Dbkx85bXtftbLLreaQlMwOT1hjK4WaJu4L6qNNG9K/s400/mccloud.png" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 203px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a>
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This problem when making laws for abstract forms like freedom or equality is that by its nature there is no specific thing I can say to identify it because it’s not a thing. It's a series of exchanges and interactions that culminate into that state. One of the best essays on legal formalism is by Ernest J. Weinrib entitled <i>Legal Formalism: On the Immanent Rationality of Law</i>. Weinrib argues that form is content and content is form because the ensemble of characteristics that we consider to be the form represents what the content really is and, equivalently, when what we consider to be the content adequately expresses the thing’s form. The thing is a single entity comprised of the set of characteristics that define it, and it has the unity of an articulated whole that is not reducible to – is therefore greater than – the sum of its parts. Or put more simply, not all tables are alike, but they all share similar properties that designates them each as a table.
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Gamers don’t explain it like this and hopefully they don’t bore their friends by debating our inability to articulate inherently abstract limitations, but the basic principle is still there. The idea is explained by <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=vdB7ML1xuKQC&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=legal+philosophy+and+games&source=bl&ots=er5V-7AYKz&sig=3CbvXx215l826aJorM2g4EIvO8s&hl=en&ei=manKTcaYA8X10gG067iACQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=legal%20philosophy%20and%20games&f=false">Wittgenstein</a> when he was discussing the relationship between various games. What does a board-game have in common with a card-game or ball-game? Certain things are present like amusement but features like the cards or math drop away. The criss-crossing of conflicts and features creates a ‘family resemblance’ by which we categorize rule systems without limiting those categories to any one specific thing. This is why a legal form is considered a kind of pure abstraction: you defeat the purpose of it when you start limiting it by content considerations.
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Gamers do this all the time. <i>Portal 2</i> is an FPS even though it’s a puzzle game. <i>Fallout 3</i> is an RPG even though it could conceivably be played as an FPS. They are accustomed to loose definitions of systems that are based on numerous factors compromising a whole. The various components of a system are observed and based on that the system is categorized. This method of thinking is often difficult to communicate with a person because they are so accustomed to emphasizing the individual. This approach has its place and advantages, but when dealing with something as large as gamifying society it requires a different approach. If gamification is correct about gamers, then there should be large number of people who are significantly more capable of thinking about legal systems entering the populace.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFHuI93yxALA4xM7LZgiIoPG6399Yg_szLj9GQZUdSg7oEdFGOfiLwmv3QtvPbfk7yaN09gC62Y2UDdnqUUD1PlrVKPbXlQDNUP95Qr5kuvtISSnSdI1Ho5D2u7b7twRGgmi0k6MLbauEE/s1600/crazy-city-ii-by-patricia-pinto.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5623413140975087106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFHuI93yxALA4xM7LZgiIoPG6399Yg_szLj9GQZUdSg7oEdFGOfiLwmv3QtvPbfk7yaN09gC62Y2UDdnqUUD1PlrVKPbXlQDNUP95Qr5kuvtISSnSdI1Ho5D2u7b7twRGgmi0k6MLbauEE/s400/crazy-city-ii-by-patricia-pinto.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 396px;" /></a>
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There’s not really any quantifiable way to measure whether or not the populace has an enhanced sixth sense for changes in the systems that govern their lives. Ideally they would be more capable of discussing issues from the big picture perspective rather than focusing on individual parties or agendas. The intangible nature of a legal form means that it does not have any specific moment of understanding, just acceptance. Some legal scholars resort to comparing this idea of legal forms to an artistic sensibility, others denounce the idea as nonsense used to defend bureaucratic injustice. I don’t expect anyone’s Xbox 360 will be resolving these questions. The development of a greater sense of legal forms will allow people to adopt systems thinking more clearly. This should allow people to understand that designing a better legal system with gamification at its core means recognizing that those designs go beyond their immediate consequences.
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Legal scholars, gamers, pundits, activists, politicians, game critics, hack lawyers…basically everyone still analyzes problems instead of using a system approach. There are moments where this is appropriate but the growing reality is that what is good for the individual is not always good for the group. Growing environmental pressures with food, land and energy will require a more dynamic society willing to adapt while at the same time finding a way to still retain its overall character. The question of what to do with gamification may find its answer with helping to usher in this new understanding of law and society.
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<a href="http://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/08/gamification-and-law-4.html">Link to Part 4.</a>Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-57627011040641304892011-06-09T16:26:00.000-07:002011-09-02T05:53:01.869-07:00Gamification and Law - 2<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb1e3VPRUk2nT1zezXbNuM7YKRnskJqqSfg6VsdxevAyHPpn1B5_XnKua-2OWc_IJzHsvNemmwv1xBHkJcZFVTaedpmvECxo52dLey-hTIyKVcl-vRx2Xx7lARXqUyXpLZxaViNq7DijAt/s1600/pawned3.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5616366024967295938" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb1e3VPRUk2nT1zezXbNuM7YKRnskJqqSfg6VsdxevAyHPpn1B5_XnKua-2OWc_IJzHsvNemmwv1xBHkJcZFVTaedpmvECxo52dLey-hTIyKVcl-vRx2Xx7lARXqUyXpLZxaViNq7DijAt/s400/pawned3.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 226px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
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In order for something like gamification and applied crowdsourcing to work in law, the designers have to understand the relationship between rules and standards. You can’t just walk up to someone and expect them to obey a rule because it works more efficiently. It has to fit within their social standards and their beliefs about how the world should work. Addressing this problem is a lot trickier than the initial task of designing more efficient laws. <br />
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Improving the design of a law requires understanding the difference between a game not working and a law not working. In a game rules aren’t really broken in the same manner because doing so disrupts play and the game itself. In a legal system people are allowed to break the rules because there are so many players that no rule system could ever accommodate all of them. More players means more unintended consequences. When those situations rise up, strict rule enforcement might cause something unfair or cruel to happen. There’s a strong sense of morality or virtue that enters the equation because the consequences are permanent. In the legal system this is called a ‘hard case’.<br />
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The term was coined by a legal philosopher named Ronald Dworkin in <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/30000604/Dworkin-Hard-Cases" target="_blank">an essay by the same name</a> and in it he discusses a potential hard case in a chess tournament. Let’s say you have a rule which says, “If you taunt another opponent, you immediately forfeit the game.” Seems innocent enough, right? Two players sit down and one smiles at the other. For cultural reasons, the opposing player is insulted by smiling and flips out. They demand that their opponent be forced to forfeit for taunting them. How do you call that? If the player is genuinely offended, then technically the other player broke the rule. Is it a fair outcome to let them win in this manner? What if they’re just abusing the rule?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLUXbpwNL5T4yZ_MKRPHzSxICwDXAExFOETh1awdoUZOY9bVWXFR586VKYgRhz7eLF2Fhbzj2XFFpPGc1NaXGS140zDXPjkKJ2_jx2nui9xJPxIMN65MmQ_naQ9w1ZzDsYFsUijiZ0YJpX/s1600/miskolc15.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5616366283238525394" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLUXbpwNL5T4yZ_MKRPHzSxICwDXAExFOETh1awdoUZOY9bVWXFR586VKYgRhz7eLF2Fhbzj2XFFpPGc1NaXGS140zDXPjkKJ2_jx2nui9xJPxIMN65MmQ_naQ9w1ZzDsYFsUijiZ0YJpX/s400/miskolc15.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 285px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
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One of the things Dworkin points out about resolving the chess tournament issue is that it’s comparatively easy to resolve. Everyone there has agreed to play chess. They like chess. People may bring different social backgrounds to the game but the two players in the above example are still there just to play chess. Obeying the rules of the game is included in that relationship. So all you really need is a Judge to tell them what the rules mean and they'll go back to playing. That’s one of the inspiring things about play and one of the unpleasant things about law. In the real world there are serious issues that people have very strong opinions about how to handle. When designing a legal system one must recognize that part of the challenge is getting people to agree to the rules at all.<br />
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There’s a couple of basic reasons a person might follow the rules of a society. A key distinction is one Judge H.L.A. Hart makes about the difference between a rule and an order. A law you absolutely have to obey is an order. It would be something along the lines of me pointing a gun at you and asking for your wallet. Not giving me the wallet will result in consequences involving the gun. In that situation your feelings about that exchange aren’t relevant. The way they do become important is when automatic enforcement stops being present. You’re not going to give me your wallet if I’m not standing there with the gun. Hart explains that there has to be a certain element of acceptance by a society for a law to be obeyed otherwise you have to enforce it. <br />
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Duncan Kennedy makes the point that the acceptance of a rule is a sign of its conformity with social standards. He explains, “Standards refer directly to the substantive values or purposes of the community… by contrast, formally realizable rules involve the finding of facts. Factfinding poses objective questions susceptible to rational discussion.” Put another way, rules are concrete and clear, standards are amorphous and ever-changing. The clarity of rules means it’s possible for something like a legislature to create them, the larger and nebulous nature of a standard means it has to come from the community while remaining undefined.<br />
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The dynamic between rules and standards is a necessary element of a healthy legal system. Rules, by their very nature, are imprecise. The broader you make a rule so it can apply to more people, the more over and under-inclusion that occurs. Standards are much more effective at covering broad types of behavior and they help narrow overly-broad rules. The social standard that hurting people is bad is more effective than having a rule listing off the millions of ways you can hurt someone. Standards are not very good at resolving specific disputes. A standard like free speech doesn’t really tell me how loud your car stereo can play before you become a nuisance. That’s what you need laws for: specifics.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC2Sky3lD-OGAH1Q1GSzB-XWVIll6WoElZW4jEcDoZpjXMnordMMJC-oIJBTtEDQI4GOlhfuAJzCdkcJDVYJc8LUJlaKlCKe4ZCic7JOYE-jPdDJyTNJGxmaEv0pZwa7j-zHhTJEGGM1xh/s1600/Utopia.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5616366516237854914" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC2Sky3lD-OGAH1Q1GSzB-XWVIll6WoElZW4jEcDoZpjXMnordMMJC-oIJBTtEDQI4GOlhfuAJzCdkcJDVYJc8LUJlaKlCKe4ZCic7JOYE-jPdDJyTNJGxmaEv0pZwa7j-zHhTJEGGM1xh/s400/Utopia.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 225px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
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Above is a diagram of what a utopian society would look like. The red circle represents the social standards. The purple square is the legal system. The laws are all well within what the society is willing to permit. It’s a depiction of a legal system as a possibility space, a style based on the magic circle principle of game design. The space inside the square represents all possible conduct that is legally permissible and socially acceptable. The space between the square and the circle is the gap between law and social standards. Conduct that occurs in that space represents something that is technically illegal but society is willing to accept. That’s where your hard cases are occurring. Anything outside the circle is offensive to this system and also illegal. Notice that the rules and social standards don’t perfectly conform. You can’t ever create a perfect legal system that will be able to totally avoid hard cases. People are too bizarre and dynamic for that to be possible.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiplszRkUtBVz5Ijww5NB9yNcnAQxSnnRidZy_bSdOLPToqZwa59s2wHVz2_aL5yS_2FKnE02ta7pBDSJIbenBylFHTd5ZglNIw6WZhP2cz10YPvi_ARldwwU42LCjIp96D0UM105rZ0Uws/s1600/Real+World.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5616366667556047970" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiplszRkUtBVz5Ijww5NB9yNcnAQxSnnRidZy_bSdOLPToqZwa59s2wHVz2_aL5yS_2FKnE02ta7pBDSJIbenBylFHTd5ZglNIw6WZhP2cz10YPvi_ARldwwU42LCjIp96D0UM105rZ0Uws/s400/Real+World.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 225px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
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Above is a graph of a more realistic depiction of a society. Each circle represents a different set of standards for a group of people. For some of those standards there is overlap and that represents where the groups agree on social values. In other parts they do not. The laws depicted reflect this reality by showing laws that go outside one group’s standards but are supported by another group’s. As noted above, laws outside a group’s social standards have to be enforced. They won’t do it voluntarily. <br />
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The potential for seemingly unfair legal resolutions is high in this situation and may lead one to rightfully question why anyone would accept laws outside their standards. Ronald Dworkin explains that people put up with hard cases because when people consent (assuming that they are consenting) to be in a legal system, they commit not just to a set of rules but to an enterprise that may be said to have a character of its own. Each of those social standards is engaging with the other and accepting the legal system for the larger purpose of a greater community.<br />
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It’s here that some of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE1DuBesGYM" target="_blank">Jane McGonigal’s</a> ideas are applicable. One of the points she stresses is that games can be used to build stronger communities. Initially this is just addressing the entire problem of people with differing social standards not communicating, but it also enables a way for them to participate in the governing process itself. The game designers going about fixing a legal system must be given specific goals for those designs to induce. Those goals must still be decided in a democratic manner. This process can be influenced with community games that specifically address what those goals should be.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNpSxhUIVNK89LYVLH5F0IxIyKSjr0IseRpURkmoNZpDtUFFsaDWK8Gn1qbA5B5rDhG_9LHBCgFIoGZOQN_CVLheO530OPxgeonWxIDy5awEdxRvXW5ps_B7XILg0H9k72PsUfkfHoqmtI/s1600/culberson+at+town+hall+meeting.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5616367100763894914" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNpSxhUIVNK89LYVLH5F0IxIyKSjr0IseRpURkmoNZpDtUFFsaDWK8Gn1qbA5B5rDhG_9LHBCgFIoGZOQN_CVLheO530OPxgeonWxIDy5awEdxRvXW5ps_B7XILg0H9k72PsUfkfHoqmtI/s400/culberson+at+town+hall+meeting.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 246px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
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A great example of this is a recent budgeting experiment in San Jose. A company called Innovation Games created a game called <i>Buy a Feature</i>. Community leaders from various backgrounds were paired into teams of eight and given a finite amount of virtual money. They could buy certain budget features but never all of them. Each group created their own budget which reflected a model for how the actual city should dispose of its funds. Writer Jeff Lopez explains, “The event seems deceptively simple but by bringing collaboration, feedback, and play into the equation, participants were able to build consensus in a very positive way. In a political world dominated by yelling between the Right and the Left, this type of collaboration provides a breath of fresh air…The quantitative results from the event can be found on the <a href="http://www.sanjoseca.gov/mayor/goals/budget/PDF/2011_2012PrioritySettingSessionResults_V2.pdf" target="_blank">city’s website</a> and the <a href="http://www.sanjoseca.gov/mayor/news/memos/11March/MarchBudgetMessage_03112011.pdf" target="_blank">mayor’s proposed budget</a> was released earlier this month. The results are in, and the official document explicitly cites the budget game: residents were reluctant to cut police and fire resources but were willing to look at efficiencies. The mayor’s office has decided to not cut safety patrols, and instead turned to increasing efficiency in pensions and benefits, as well as reduce funding of nonessential efforts that fell to the bottom of the game results, namely city health initiatives and public recreation events.”<br />
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In his book <i>Newsgames</i>, Ian Bogost (co-written with Simon Ferrari and Bobby Schweizer) explains, “Good community games produce meaningful discourse through trial and error rather than through opinion. Such discourse does not amount to the interpretive work that one might perform on a film, book, or play…instead, the discourse of community games involves the movement toward the solution to some specific problem.” <br />
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The goal of a game designed legal system is not to create a perfect legal system. It’s to create a legal system everyone can agree on.<br />
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<a href="http://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/06/gamification-and-law-3.html">You can find Part 3 here.</a>Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-20640313154163045782011-06-09T16:04:00.000-07:002011-09-02T05:39:03.780-07:00Gamification and Law - 1<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5RZyn6ETtBR_28g0GBbNl3788_r4MBThanVuwPWki0Rlj9_EcBB69eFeLrAnR5_qx8FmWMUjJx7vTt249kVoogkt4c4gYAPMqaSstpxWByvhsQFT1Z5QxYP13ltElw0uswNxpqYPXqLXI/s1600/gamification_torn_def.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5616363434893906690" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5RZyn6ETtBR_28g0GBbNl3788_r4MBThanVuwPWki0Rlj9_EcBB69eFeLrAnR5_qx8FmWMUjJx7vTt249kVoogkt4c4gYAPMqaSstpxWByvhsQFT1Z5QxYP13ltElw0uswNxpqYPXqLXI/s400/gamification_torn_def.png" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 149px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
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Gamification is the idea of using game design to solve real world problems. The most tangible application for game design is crowdsourcing. Game designers are adept at testing a rule system, observing the consequences and improving the system in response. They do this by having players try a system out and then changing the rules to produce the intended effect. Fresh ideas like rewards or levels are included in this approach as new way to ensure the system is effective.</div>
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For the purposes of this essay though, we’ll focus on some smaller examples of where one could use crowdsourcing and gamification in the legal system. One of the easiest places to apply this skill would be improving the consistency of judges. To give you an idea of how fickle court rooms can be, a recent study by <a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/04/11/justice-is-served-but-more-so-after-lunch-how-food-breaks-sway-the-decisions-of-judges/" target="_blank">Shai Danziger</a> compiled 1112 parole hearings to check for what effect the time of the day had. Parties were 65% more likely to get parole if the Judge had eaten lunch and taken a break. That’s unfair for someone whose hearing is scheduled right before lunch or at the end of the day.<br />
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To combat this issue some states use sentencing guidelines to make punishments mandatory. A committee creates a formula to calculate the punishment based on long term goals proposed by the government. These formulas are "evidence-based", which means they try to assess a criminal's risk of reoffending as an element in how long to send them to prison. These formulas are based on the statistics of people that have been through the system. An article on <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_7b80ebd6-99d6-5d6a-a330-f6a06e0ab3f7.html" target="_blank">Missouri’s sentencing guidelines</a> claims it has been effective at reducing the number of repeat offenders because it channels them into the best programs for rehabilitation. It also allows a state to implement goals into their prosecution system by taking a stance on being merciful to non-violent criminals and only being harsh on violent ones. The goal is to reduce prison populations, discrimination and insure consistency in the judicial system. The downside to this is that a lot of sentences that come out will seem shockingly low or high despite the nature of the crime. A game designer could improve the efficiency and productivity of this system just with their innate understanding of how to channel players towards various goals.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHOcNphqC14rSxFMc7wOD9KUzeo09aEo3IxdR5hW49ukplU6j0lVai2tdQWRbfA92f4LsTC7dDf3XEEti-zUkoI5QxkEf3XQF1fV6it8tGrFrdzek7cVlJROkcyBJnH82xF0WJ_QvhnGcP/s1600/Safari+EULA.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5616364251958176354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHOcNphqC14rSxFMc7wOD9KUzeo09aEo3IxdR5hW49ukplU6j0lVai2tdQWRbfA92f4LsTC7dDf3XEEti-zUkoI5QxkEf3XQF1fV6it8tGrFrdzek7cVlJROkcyBJnH82xF0WJ_QvhnGcP/s400/Safari+EULA.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 303px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
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Another area that affects all members of society would be digital contracts. These are those voluminous contracts you’re asked to click “I Agree to the Terms” whenever you try to purchase software or services online. The problem is that nobody reads them. This is further exacerbated by some companies using unconscionable terms such as Blockbuster’s, “We reserve the right to change this contract with or without notice to the parties.” <br />
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This kind of environment is very similar to the one that led to the home mortgage crisis. Law Professor Lauren E. Willis, in an essay on predatory loaning, explains that one of the problems with deregulation is that every loan company was using their own loan agreement. These were progressively more confusing and resulted in consumers purchasing loans they did not understand and consequently couldn’t afford.<br />
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The solution is to create a standardized form throughout the industry that allows consumers to have a better understanding of what’s going on. Since these transactions are all happening online, it should be possible to apply playtesting to the problem. You could <i>design</i> a digital contract. Things like what portions are examined, for how long and how many people later have problems with the contract are all important for recognizing what the consumer understood. Imposing this concept by law is unattractive for many reasons, ultimately it’s in the best interest of corporations to do this voluntarily for improved stability and customer loyalty.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn9zjVfVrONQ3yE4GmV0StLU9tKXA2sjW8kkLB_3kDFjDMO8u2dy9hPxANFP8iuhaDC4qCgxnkdRfAU3W-viOsNTjEL3pEGpJfYwiCd_tOcXTxz4vJGB6EHPwX1-L9SWy6HRgpSrtuS5Ka/s1600/the+change+acceptance+cycle.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5616365117163384754" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn9zjVfVrONQ3yE4GmV0StLU9tKXA2sjW8kkLB_3kDFjDMO8u2dy9hPxANFP8iuhaDC4qCgxnkdRfAU3W-viOsNTjEL3pEGpJfYwiCd_tOcXTxz4vJGB6EHPwX1-L9SWy6HRgpSrtuS5Ka/s400/the+change+acceptance+cycle.png" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 351px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 373px;" /></a><br />
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The application of crowd sourcing to greater social issues calls for a fundamental shift in how we evaluate ourselves as a society. All claims about the merits of someone’s position would be based on their effects rather than any intrinsic worth. We would no longer rely on the politician or the pundit proclaiming that a law will solve a problem. We, as a society, would have to start asking them to prove it. That will, in turn, require us to begin accepting those results even if they don’t always say what we want them to. If gamification is to have any lasting impact on society, it has to go beyond merely incentives and begin producing tangible results.<br />
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<a href="http://literatigamereviews.blogspot.com/2011/06/gamification-and-law-2.html">Go to Part 2.</a>Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-826783898962653229.post-17726175506576451802011-05-31T18:09:00.000-07:002011-05-31T18:40:46.210-07:00Parchment, Paper, Pixels by Peter Tiersma<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs1wKK_3ppS4hPCojvubvzbCL0HU6BJS_Bufc4dqVg31iEEfryieDL11njB456_bErkKqdZXgnLQcNDZ26aDurdcHjRvx51AOj6Av80_bGUt0sf2bRAFawm5_PwuxcVTEYHQ9XchcKIY_d/s1600/parchment-paper-pixels-law-technologies-communication-peter-m-tiersma-hardcover-cover-art.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs1wKK_3ppS4hPCojvubvzbCL0HU6BJS_Bufc4dqVg31iEEfryieDL11njB456_bErkKqdZXgnLQcNDZ26aDurdcHjRvx51AOj6Av80_bGUt0sf2bRAFawm5_PwuxcVTEYHQ9XchcKIY_d/s400/parchment-paper-pixels-law-technologies-communication-peter-m-tiersma-hardcover-cover-art.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5613058060496853074" /></a>Peter Tiersma’s history book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Parchment-Paper-Pixels-Technologies-Communication/dp/0226803066/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1305158844&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Parchment, Paper, Pixels</a> is about the evolution of the legal profession. He frames this in the narrative of technological innovations for communicating rules via basic paper, the printing press and then computers. For the sake of brevity he focuses on areas of law that intrinsically revolve around paper like wills or contracts, but he broadens the scope by the end when he focuses on laws themselves. In the process he explains the intricacies of why a rule on parchment, printed paper or on a computer works differently.<br /><br />With both written and oral rules the party is mainly focused on discovering the speaker’s meaning, what changes is that someone speaking orally doesn’t have to create nearly as complex of a rule. The speaker can rely on body language, tone and other subtle forms of communication to get across their point. Listeners, in turn, rarely focus on the precise statements of a person and instead focus on the general meaning. Clarification is also not really an issue because you can just ask the person what they meant by something, which allows the speaker to adapt that meaning to something appropriate to the context. For example, if the village elder declares that there will be weeaboo in the ritual hut, they can explain what that means should someone be confused.<br /><br />You don’t have any of that with a written rule. The rule has to exist in a vacuum because someone with no access to the speaker is going to read it. They’re going to focus on what individual words mean and be more capable of recounting specific statements because they’ve got it right in front of them. Generally people remember the specifics of something that was written down way better than they do something said to them. As a consequence a written legal document has to devote a lot more time to explaining what something means so people don’t figure out some goofy way it might help them. It’s not to be obtuse, it’s to make there is only ONE way of interpreting a document. This is Tiersma’s explanation for why lawyers and judges began to begin writing in such a convoluted manner, going back to another history book he wrote called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Legal-Language-Peter-M-Tiersma/dp/0226803031/ref=pd_rhf_shvl_1" target="_blank">Legalese</a>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgId6rQnWHL53keGkPaDcGebXJ6R4Y7h6YK1FrjH_aAWioHO8GeRGDZRzPD3nPVTHXxQQ32v10_9Gt-d-4NOrYzCjvezL6IaEqu33C3gFNNg-u5otTl0omIi7EBmBgDR1NkmxXEIlc2kdv-/s1600/MarriedtotheSea.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 272px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgId6rQnWHL53keGkPaDcGebXJ6R4Y7h6YK1FrjH_aAWioHO8GeRGDZRzPD3nPVTHXxQQ32v10_9Gt-d-4NOrYzCjvezL6IaEqu33C3gFNNg-u5otTl0omIi7EBmBgDR1NkmxXEIlc2kdv-/s400/MarriedtotheSea.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5613058629907617282" /></a><br /><br />A big chunk of the book then focuses on the law governing contracts and wills. Contracts are a legal concept that existed long before writing so the paper contract is not always totally binding. This is for the practical reason that, as with an oral rule system, you can just ask the person what they meant in the contract. Conversely a will is slightly more tricky because the person you need to ask for clarification is usually dead. Thus the rules governing wills and paper came very early in history and are very strict. Today you need two witnesses to sign off on any changes to the will or even have it be binding in the first place. This is a big problem in law because a lot of people still think they can print something off at Kinko’s and leave it at that. Courts are required by law to chuck that will and distribute your estate based on a formula when that happens. Whether or not the will is legit, the issue is that if you allow those kinds of wills in then people will be able to sneak in fake ones.<br /><br />Tiersma uses games to make the distinction between a written record of the rules and rules that people actually obey. The example is a kickball game where everyone orally consents to the rules. That’s generally going to represent what the group thinks and has agreed upon. If someone were to come along, observe the game and write down the rules they would not actually be the rules because it’s still an oral system. That is, the players don’t recognize the authority of the text. Once enough players get together that they feel the need to start writing crap down you then shift into where the paper rules govern. The groups all agree to follow what the paper says which then causes all those mechanical shifts as noted above.<br /><br />Tiersma reinforces this point by comparing this process to our relationship with Christianity. A person interpreting the Bible who thinks it was beamed straight from God onto a book is going to limit their interpretation to what the book specifically has written down. A person who thinks it was created by a group of Romans a couple of centuries ago and has been heavily edited by various groups since then will take a broader approach. The person who believes the Bible is the word of God does not believe that the book is a representation of the law, they believe that it IS the law.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIlPUXR5OD9cGH0bv9ykCMFqaunR6NXt8CNXY8KlNLbtLzjU5ZvdrTHPZ3oPwDqPcwZUZNGon3O1jRobKNeiRICzPFzsC9BFT8bZZ9ISNBiyKD2j9eJQ1gqQ913lvVxESOZwYavS1gQQMf/s1600/type-of-communication.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 350px; height: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIlPUXR5OD9cGH0bv9ykCMFqaunR6NXt8CNXY8KlNLbtLzjU5ZvdrTHPZ3oPwDqPcwZUZNGon3O1jRobKNeiRICzPFzsC9BFT8bZZ9ISNBiyKD2j9eJQ1gqQ913lvVxESOZwYavS1gQQMf/s400/type-of-communication.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5613059108692383442" /></a><br /><br />Appreciating why any of this matters in the big picture comes from recognizing that our culture, despite a brief flash of letter writing for a few centuries, is mostly oral. It doesn’t matter that I’m writing something down, what matters is where the authority is coming from. With e-mail, TV, Skype and all the other trappings of the internet we’re back to the same principles of an oral rule system: you just ask the person for clarification and focus on what they meant instead of what they said. People don’t write things that have to be self-explanatory, they just write as if they were talking. This is why cherry-picking quotes from forum conversations has always seemed a tad tacky to me. Forums are generally oral systems and it's imposing a written text technique that results in everyone talking like a stick was shoved up their ass.<br /><br />There’s a lot of history that comes into play here about how rules were published and communicated, but the ultimate gist of it is that the American legal system is oriented around a text-centric approach. The volume of cases and rules are so massive that lawyers are now forced to search for specific phrases or words without any regard for the actual case. Law briefs and rulings tend to have short quotes and snippets from other rulings to justify their arguments without any regard to the larger context because there’s so much information involved. The problem is that ONLY lawyers, judges or particularly obnoxious academics communicate in this manner, the rest of society still operates on an oral method of communication. Which leads to fun things like people telling me I’m being an ass or not understanding what I’m saying when I talk about law. But I’ll admit Tiersma helped me get a better awareness of when and how to bridge that gulf with people.<br /><br />At this point the law is going to remain in its textual state for the near future because there isn’t really any other way to communicate the complex concepts necessary with a graphic or video. Tiersma concludes with that you can have a legal system without writing, you cannot have one without language. In a vain attempt at dragging this back into being relevant to games I imagine the same is true: you don’t really have to communicate a rule system in any one particular fashion. But there does need to be a method of communication going on.Kirk Battlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.com2