How Altruism Matters in Game Theory

I've been talking a lot about game theory today. Especially as it relates to the political arena. Where, I think, it's a complicated but natural fit. But while I'm at it I thought I'd flag up this interesting little tidbit.

One of the keystones of game theory is that, when you're trying to figure things out, you're trying to deal with homo economicus. The Economic Man, the one who will act in a ration and self-interested manner. The perfect player, in other words, who'll always act in her own interests to win the game and not for some kind of greater, common good.

Naturally, then, if you dive into game theory you might think that logically, then, the only way to play is to be a greedy, selfish bastard. And, of course, that everyone else is as nasty, amoral, and unscrupulous as you when sitting on the other side of the game table. And therefore come to the conclusion that human beings are messy, illogical creatures who've created things like mercy and kindness and civilization out of sheer, dumb luck and not any kind of rational, deliberative process.

It's the reason why, in talking about a game of multiplayer Chicken, I avoided the idea of the Volunteer's Dilemma. Because that's a game where the best and worst move, at the same time is to do nothing. It's a game that logically proves, in so many words, there's no profit in being altruistic.

That's not entirely true, however. Because another keystone of game theory is reducing complex events into simple games. In a single round of a Prisoner's Dilemma or, say, the Pirate's Game, it might well pay to be a complete bastard. But as those games are iterated over multiple rounds, especially if the participants remember the events of previous rounds, then the benefits of attempting to screw someone over fall off drastically.

For example, a researcher named Robert Axelrod organized a Prisoner's Dilemma tournament tournament with a few simple rules and he invited his colleagues to submit game strategies which would be played over and over again. He was looking to see what would happen in so-called Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma games (Also known, by the way, as Peace-War), ones where multiple rounds are played and the memory of the past rounds is carried forward. For which strategies would be the most successful over any number of terms. What he found, which was published in a book called the Evolution of Cooperation was that, over time, those strategies which were altruistic tended to succeed in maximizing their game states while those which were guided by self-interest tended to fail. While what happens when you get two strategies that are designed to benefit the opponent together should be obvious, the rest is somewhat counter-intuitive. Two greedy strategies matched against each other would be cannibalistic, each driving the scores of the other lower. And a greedy strategy and an altruistic one matched against each other would result in the altruistic program – at least the best ones - adapting to and countering the self-interested strategy to the benefit of both. Mr. Axelrod argues, I believe, this as proof that altruistic qualities can arise naturally through evolutionary selection.

Mr. Axelrod, by the way, also found that the statistically best strategy to use is one known as “Tit for Tat” which was submitted by Anatol Rapoport. Which, very simply, begins by deferring to the opponent and then, in subsequent rounds, does whatever they did the last round. It retaliates against aggressive strategies while rewarding co-operative ones. It's, at the same time, nice and tough. It offers a hand up for the opponent but doesn't fold when presented with a threat. It's something so simple even a child could understand. And it's so important because it's a strategy that shows the strength of forgiveness. Because it says, “I will work with you, I will help you, I will help myself, we will help each other, if you trespass I will oppose you as strongly as you oppose me but no more, if you return to good behavior then I will work with you again, I will help you again.” Reach out the iron hand in the velvet glove. It's so sublime, so powerful, a strategy because it co-opts, subverts, and destroys an enemy through benevolence.

Which, again, might seem counter-intuitive. Just like the Volunteer's Dilemma where one player can make a sacrifice to benefit every player. There, the more players you have the less incentive each has to play and the more likely it is that no one will. Because the more people around the table the more you can believe that some other sucker will make the foolish choice to be altruistic. But experimental evidence (Which is far from conclusive and, of which, my brief searching isn't able to find a good example) seems to suggest otherwise. Even rational players can be motivated by something other than pure self-interest. And sometimes, the best move to make, is the one that leaves everyone better off.

How Ripping Of the Bandage Applies to History

The flap in the Senate has me upset. Not so much because it reveals what a travishammockery our governmental kabuki has become. But moreso because it didn't have to play out this way. You see, basically, by threatening a fillibuster, the Republicons have forced a vote of cloture to end debate and move to the up or down vote they were so fond of calling for when they were in power. That takes 60 people to agree to limit things which, you know, is awfully hard to come up with when you've only got a 51 person majority to begin with. But, anyway, the whole fillibuster/cloture thing is a quirk of the Senate. These kind of things don't happen in the House making it easier, for good or for ill, to get things done there. Which is fine as the Senate is supposed to be the most deliberative body and debate is all well and good.

There are all sorts of reasons why the Senate should, at long last, be having that debate about our war policy but, personally, I think if debate were open, there'd be some other parlimentary procedure brought to bear in preventing this, even the smallest of gestures that 3/4s of the country happens to agree with from going on the record. It's not something the conservatives and the warpigs in the White House want to happen. Not because it emboldens our enemies but because it just might embolden theirs. And they can't have that because it's their precious reputations and legacy on the line, then. And they want to be fully prepared for that fight when it comes (Unlike, you know, our troops. A cheap shot, I know. But our troops have lacked the proper body armor for years now. And it's not because we aren't spending enough on this damn war. Supporting them isn't sending them into harm's way with anything but the best. As it makes me incredibly angry when I hear that I'm the one betraying them when I say things like that I think I'll make as many cheap shots as I want against the people responsible.). And it will come.

Not if the Senate has anything to say about it, though. And any attempt to say this is about any particular amendment or lack of debate is just a smokescreen behind these people fighting so hard about something they claim doesn't matter. This isn't about holding honest debate. This is about using those obscure and convoluted parliamentary rules to obstruct the will of the people – to have that very same debate we've been holding at our dinner tables and watercoolers for months now.

But do you know who sets those rules? The Senate. During the last Congress during one fight or another about one horrid decision by Bush or another, there was talk of the “nuclear option”. Because, you know, at the time the Democratic Party was contemplating using those rules to block a Presidential appointment or three. The Republicons, in return, would have responded by rewriting the rules and getting rid of the fillibuster and cloture and all those things that are supposed to protect the minority from a runaway majority in the Senate's rule. They called it the nuclear option because once that happen, it would have been the end of any restriction on outright political, partisan warfare. It never came to pass but, at the time, I heard an interesting idea – that the Democratic senators should go ahead and force the issue, force the nuclear option to be put into play. Not only would it help to reveal the Republicons as the domineering bullies they were in that Congress, but it would also be to the Democrats advantage over the long run. When they eventually regained power. Because the fillibuster is, essentially, an undemocratic mechanism that can be used to block the will of a slim majority even as it can be used to protect that of a small minority. The Republicons weren't afraid to at least threaten abolishing it because they figured their reign would last forever. But history shows they were wrong.

To me, this was a brilliant tactical call. The confirmation battle was one the Democrats were destined to lose. But rather than simply packing up and saving their wanning strength for the next fight, I felt it was time to start drawing some lines in the sand. Fight tooth and nail even in an ugly loss – make the opponent pay dearly. Make them pay again and again. Weaken them. Until, down the line, they became vulnerable enough to lose one. You know, take a stand. Show that what those of us rooting for them believed in was worth fighting for. That kind of battle is the kind to fight even when you're going to lose. It, of course, didn't come to pass and it's arguable whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.

But if that fight had been fought? If the nuclear option had been used? Well, we wouldn't be having this problem today. Even though, I think, in light of the tidal wave of frustration evident in the last election, we'd be at pretty much the same place. It goes to show the value of long range planning – this is, to put it in the crudest and most overused terms (Cheapened, of course, by everyone who'd throw around such a metaphor casually. Me, though, I've never seen a war. Not in person. And I hope never to. So, I don't.), a war. A war between those who want to preserve our culture and our nation on one side and those who'd end it in the name of those same things on the other. And in a war you can lose some battles so long as you don't lose the important ones. Sometimes, it's sacrificing those important things that you don't want to that can lead to greater victory down the road. And we're going to have to think in that longterm if we hope to pull this one out. To, in so many words, take the hit now to spare ourselves the pain in the future.

How Guild Wars is Missing an Opportunity

So, Burning Crusade came out today. What was Guild Wars doing to pre-empt losing a flood of players to that juggernaut of a game? You know they're going to have small team PvP available, right? And ladders and rankings and rewards to drive competition. What's that? Making capturing elites a 3 for 2 deal instead of the normal 3 for 1 over the weekend? Excuse me while I go and get my sparklers.

Look, I know I've said that complaining about the game is something of a sport amongst hardcore Guild Wars players (To which I say, good for them. Why settle? Complain all you want if you're not getting the service you want.). But, really, this is a problem.

I've been speaking with some of my dedicated PvP friends and they all agree, it's frustrating to watch as the game loses more and more players to WoW and, seemingly, does nothing. Like right now with the ladder's k value nerfed into the stone age and the looming tournament system still on the future's horizon there's little incentive to PvP. Sure, people are still doing it but where are the big guilds? The ones that have competed for and won championships? Some of them are gone from the last time I checked, yeah, but a lot of them are still around and not bothering to play at the moment. And, let me tell you, not bothering to play is the first step in not being around any longer.

Not now but last week would have been the point to trumpet the plans for the new tournament, talk about the details of what's going to happen when it's put in place. The vague details from last month are fast becoming too cold to be palatable. Where's the buzz? Where's the excitement about the new features? I've looked and I can't find it, myself. It wouldn't take much. An article here. A comment on a forum there. Make an announcement. Throw the PvPers a bone. Heck, announce that the Snowball Fights or Dragon Arena's going to be a year round thing. Doesn't matter what but I can understand the urge to grab the devs by the shoulders and scream at them to DO SOMETHING!

The golden opportunity to establish Guild Wars as the anti-WoW is rapidly vanishing. Now is the point to lure the weary and frustrated away. Their servers are clogged, their queue's overflowing, and while there are a lot of people re-enegized by the prospect of another climb to the barren lands of WoW's endgame content how many more are disheartened at the prospect of one more whirl on the treadmill? How many are starting to understand that there's going to be plenty more questing and striving to get back to that point where they sit around waiting for a raid to start or polish their epic armor or sit in a queue and wait to get into the battlegrounds or whatever else? How many of them would like a game they can pick up and just get playing? One where you don't level but you sure as hell have things to achieve? A game that's not going to charge them again and again for what they've already paid for? How many of them might like Guild Wars if they gave it a try? Or another try?

And how many Guild Wars players are going to enjoy WoW when they give it a try and decide that, all things being equal, they'd rather be playing in Molten Core with their friends?

Now. Right now. Is the time to do something about that. This is the week the game should be throwing yet another special event – just like Wintersday. A surprise one that no one knew about. Not until they wake up and log in or find it blasting from the forums they're surfing during lunch. Something on the scale of Wintersday, maybe. Open up a new dungeon like Sorrow's Furnace, add a new Hero to unlock, reveal a new format for PvP – provide content for free. Because, you know, Guild Wars does that. And they stream it to you so you don't have to wait in line at the store or when you log in. The game should be strutting its stuff. Showing off just how wonderful and amazing it is. Remind people why they play the game in the first place.

But, no, the game isn't strutting. It's biding its time. Waiting. And while the ANet offices and the test might be abuzz with the upcoming changes, from the outside it looks like they're doing a whole lot of nothing.

Perhaps the ANet team is taking the right approach here and I should give them the benefit of the doubt. Personally, I rather doubt it. There's a very good rule of thumb when dealing with ANet and that's this: they're great at development, mediocre at design, and absolutely terrible at support.

For instance, when I was getting back into the game I had trouble logging in. Contacted technical support, sent off e-mails, tried to look through the guides they had online – still haven't heard back from them. (The client would hang on the “connecting to ANet” message – could have been any number of things. In the end I had to delete my old .dat file because, for some reason, with it I wasn't able to get a connection to the servers. Simple and talking to someone from customer services for about five minutes (Or, you know, maybe three e-mails in total) would probably led to my doing that. But, no, I spent several frustrating hours trying to figure out why my game wasn't working. And very, very nearly gave up and found something else to do. Not everyone's as stubborn as I am, though.) That's, in my experience, a pretty common experience with the game's support staff.

I'm not trying to suggest they're incompetent or anything of the sort. On the contrary, as a tester I had an opportunity to talk or at least watch some of them and I think they're a talented bunch – just like most of the staff at ANet (even though given how these things go a lot of them have probably moved on to other things) – I even know a few people who went on to join them. I just think they're overmatched and underfunded. Kind of like inner city school teachers. And there's just no way they can do what they need to do for the good of the game.

Now, as for development, I'm talking about things like the concepts behind the game. Collectible skills that people can “level” with and mix and match like Magic cards? Brilliant. Streaming content so the game updates in the background? Amazing. A completely instanced game so there's no problems with kill stealing and ninja looting that, oh by the way, is going to drastically lower the costs on bandwidth and servers and whatever else? Wonderful.

It's a house of ideas, in other words, but it's when those ideas are implemented that we're talking about design. Take instancing, for example, which is an extremely powerful tool. It could be used to create separate zones and playstates and branching pathways and any number of things that would enrich and fulfill the experience of playing the game. Instead, we get things like Post/Pre-Searing. Just a great idea ruined by how ineptly it was done. The broad strokes are right but the fine details are lacking, generally speaking. Oh they have some hits and they have some misses but, I mean, look at how the number of skill types has grown over the years. Used to be skills, spells, and attacks. Then it grew to encompass hexes, stances, and enchantments. Now there's forms and echoes and wards and wells and any number of mechanics each with their own little ruleset. And while they add some value, they also pile up over time, making the game increasingly more complex and difficult to learn. Simple, effective design is often harder to come up with but, in the long run, it pays off better. And, to my mind, the designers take the easy route far too often. Without, of course, considering the ramifications.

That the game's survived long enough for some of their mistakes to come back and bite them is a testament to how they get things right just as often. And I don't mean to suggest they're not working as hard as they can to make the best game they can. Because they are and, sometimes, they even make good choices. But they're way too secretive about it even when they do.

I mean, I've been playing the game for a long, long time and I've got a pretty decent memory but even I couldn't tell you exactly how the damage cap on a Guild Lord works. Not without pointing you to some dodgy research or an article buried on the official site. This, to my mind, would be a critical piece of information to anyone planning a GvG battle because it is, after all, one of the rules of the game that everyone's playing under. Imagine if, say, only one team in a basketball game knew that you could ask the ref for a time out. But beyond that I couldn't tell you why the Guild Lord can only take a slight amount of damage which increases as the game goes on. Oh, I could speculate – it's to prevent easy ganks. Which, of course, became very popular thanks to skills like Grenth's Balance which could cost the Guild Lord upwards of 1000 hit points in a single blow. So they put in the “Natural Resistance” amulet to prevent that and other tricks that would end the battle quickly. But they didn't tell anyone about it. Not publicly, anyway. And they sure didn't explain the reasoning behind it.

Which, of course, is a problem because it leads people to believe there is no reason behind their decisions. No rhyme, no rhythm. Just no sense of feedback. So when I hear things like the upcoming weekend's going to be a test of the new way of doing Tombs, I'm glad that there's going to be something soon to potentially interest the playerbase. And when I hear that they're hoping for feedback I'm encouraged. But then I read things like this line in the latest Scribe: “While obviously not all ideas and suggestions can be implemented, the Priests of Balthazar have vowed to consider all opinions when making their ultimate decisions.” I'm not exactly thrilled. I'm sure they're going to consider the opinions – this isn't the first time they've solicited them, of course (And that they need to make a special point of asking people for directions is troubling in and of itself.) in one way or another - but I'm not at all sure that we're going to hear about what they think of them. There's just no transparency there. And if you want people to talk to you the first step is making sure you're willing to talk to them, too.

How Science Fiction Applies to Literature

Step with me into the way back machine, if you would.

During one of my many creative writing classes (The one held by an amazing teacher. Of course, they usually were. Guess I just got lucky because I was usually just filling out some requirements and wasting my time in an interesting way.) the teacher had just one unbreakable rule: no science fiction. Which, well, shocked me when those words first crossed her lips. She had, after all, just gotten finished telling us how we were free to write in whatever genre or style we wanted. That her class was about exploring the art of writing not creating great works of literature. To that end, she wanted us to experiment and try to stretch ourselves. And in the very next breath she'd closed the door on a whole avenue of exploration.

Well, if I'd been a bit more bold at the time I might have said something. I'd like to think that in a similar circumstance today that I would. But, you know, at the time I usually kept my thoughts to myself especially when I was in class. Not just because I was shy – although that's always a factor, I'm sure – but because as you might have noticed I can ramble on when the spirit moves me. And, well, I had too much respect for my teachers and my fellow students to take up four or five minutes of their time just to get my unimportant thoughts out. Ah, youth – because if I'd been thinking important thoughts I might have realized that I should work on expressing myself more easily rather than pulling back into my shell. That's, obviously, something I'm working on. You just probably can't tell because I can type so fast. Anyway, at the time I kept my mouth shut and brooded on the matter while she continued with her introduction.

See, although I don't tend to write a lot of it, I love science fiction. Always have. I am, after all, a huuuuuuge geek. Again, you might not have picked up on that but, trust me, it's there. And if you presented me with a pile of every book ever written and said I could only have the books of one genre in particular, well, sci-fi's my choice. I'd want it all from H.G. Wells to Gibson and beyond. And it's the beyond that would be the real reason. Other genres are locked into themselves, circling around the same conventions and formulas with only the flickering illusions of change. The classics have been written and everyone's trying to rewrite them. But science fiction isn't about the past, it's about the future. And because at its core it's looking ahead, science fiction's never trapped in a rut for very long. Sci-fi is always moving forward and pushing the boundaries. It's really avante garde. Not the insipid prose that gets passed off for great modern literature – overly concerned with formalism and the craft of writing rather than using those tools to actually do anything. That stuff's boring. Not sci-fi. Science fiction's, it's... It's, well, look: on my hardcover copy of Accelerando (By Charles Stross, check out my review here for a link. And definitely check out the link because it points to a freely available copy of the book on the web.) there's a quote. “The new brand of science fiction, like all the best SF before it, is not just about predicting the future or pushing an agenda or even plain old enteratining techno-fun. It is all that, but it's also about expanding the boundaries of the possible, building far-out worlds and then populating them with the characters who bring the big ideas down to Earth.” ~Popular Science

And while that sentiment was printed well after I was sitting in this class it's one I would readily have agreed with at the time. See, I'd tried my hand at writing science fiction or at the very least science fictiony things and come to the conclusion that it was hard. Really, really hard. To do well, anyway. And, at that point, I didn't see any reason to do things if they couldn't be done well. Writing about the world around me, that was easy, everyone reading it would have common experiences to draw on (I've since come to learn that this was a completely wrong way of looking at things but, well, again I was young). But were I to create some fantastical and far-flung future world then I'd have to figure out how to explain to anyone reading just what the differences were. Then figure out how to use those differences to highlight something about the modern world. Then, of course, still try and tell a good story with it. That would be a lot of work for a ten page short story – but science fiction writers did it all the time.

They could tell a story about a place beyond the stars and make it so it still resonated with me. Characters that could walk down the street and bump into me unnoticed put into situations that beggared the imagination. I'd read science fiction and wept or I'd read it and smile. I'd read it and respond the same way I did to any of the so-called classics that had been pushed under my nose. At its best it held up a mirror to the world and it did so without getting too preachy about it. The science fiction writers I liked were good. What I'm getting at is that I respected them. And I respected the genre.

Sitting there these thoughts raced through my mind getting firmer and fiercer as they fought over for dominance in my mindscape. No, I had to speak up, had to correct this teacher, had to fall on my sword, if need be, because there was no way that a room of people that smart could hear her say something like that and nod along. They– at least a few of them – were the reason I was in that class, after all. We'd taken an earlier writing class together and had become friends and they, being English majors, wanted to take another one. I wasn't exactly an English major myself but, well, they seemed to like what I'd done and I did need another class for the credits. So, when they signed up for that class with that teacher, I wasn't far behind. They were smart and interesting and that creative writing class had been a lot of fun because of them. But, well, they were English majors and I'm sure you konw how those people get. But I wasn't about to let them just agree with anything the teacher said. No way. Not while I was sitting there. You know, sulking. So, I started piecing together the magnificently phrased response that would put that poor, misguided teacher in her place and spare the rest of the class from her drivel. The words died on the blackboard in my head, though because it was at that point that the part of me that had been listening to the ongoing lecture piped up.

As it turned out all my angst was misplaced. The teacher went on to explain that what she wanted to avoid were stories about robots clanking around the place. Their bolts rattling, their thoughts cold and mechanic. They weren't, after all, human. And we were there, in her class, to tell stories to one another. The stories that we all wanted to hear were the ones that had something to say about, well, us. Humans. The human condition. The way we think and feel and act and everything else that singers try to put into songs, painters try to put on canvas, and writers try to put into words. And in her opinion and in her experience stories about rocket ships and talking robots were anything but. She'd been teaching for years and years at that point and while she had nothing against the genre it was just hard to pull off. And the odds were against anyone writing a science fiction story well.

My English major friends, veterans of many a writing course already knew that, of course. But me, as someone who was only there by, more or less accident, was a bit clueless. Probably why that class was so fun, now that I think of it.

How Strunk and White #13 Applies to Guild Wars

The other day I mentioned in passing that although skill icons were beautiful art they were, in fact, rather poorly designed because they don't tell you what a skill does at a glance.

Let's look again at the icon of a skill I pointed out – the moan-inducing Avatar of Melandru (Sorry, still haven't found a highres version):

It's one of my favorites, at the moment - even though I just happened to pick it out at random. I could go on and on about the graphical beauty of the design there. How the use of placement forces the cooler elements into sharp relief while causing everything to glow with an inner light – an excellent use of the Dervish colors of bright orange and dark blue. And how the lines within the composition draw the eye past the beckoning, almost accusatory gaze of the figure in the foreground and towards the obscured, washed out figure in the background – almost seeming to shimmer away into nothingness yet still framed by the brilliant orange outline around it. In other words, pretty. It doesn't however, tell me what's going to happen when I use the skill. Not if I haven't seen it used before. If I have then I know the figure in the background looks like what my character will when I assume that different form – that's the Avatar of Melandru I'll become. I don't recognize the character dominating the left-most portion of the canvas, so to speak, but I'm going to guess it's some NPC that's a Dervish and would be recognizably so to someone more familiar with the lore or the concept art than I am (Which, you know, I pay attention to it but I don't go crazy about it or anything. Could possibly be a picture of the goddess Melandru but it doesn't look quite like the one's I've seen. Nor does it really look like any of the "name" Dervish NPCs. Judging from the other pictures I'd go with a representation of the goddess. Either way, same point really.). So, the image depicted is a rather subtle allusion to a Dervish transitioning into a godly incarnation. Doesn't tell me anything about being immune to Conditions or gaining extra health, though (Although there are clues to that, read on and see if you can't figure out what they are.), though. So although it's a very well done icon, I think it's getting too clever for its own good.

This is, I think, an example of what I like to call the "achievement effect". Basically, when you get a bunch of artistic designers together what they'll do is continually try and top each other. When one of them comes up with something brilliant that becomes the standard everyone else aspires to and they won't consider their own artwork an achievement until they pass that point. That becomes the new benchmark and so on. The quality of the product being churned out improves, certainly, but unfortunately artistic concerns aren't always design ones. And what makes something work as a piece of art don't necessarily mean it's going to fit into the larger work that is the modern video game production. There needs to be someone there to keep the creative types in check and on task. That's, I'd think, the game's producer or lead designer but, what, really do they know about visual design? Probably not a whole lot. But, then, what do the graphic designers who produce the art assets know about how people are actually going to play the game? Again, probably not a whole lot. Because a modern game, especially an MMO (Even an MMO-lite like Guild Wars that's basically a multiplayer CRPG like Diablo or Baldur's Gate.) is a very complex product with so many moving parts that no one person can hope to understand it all. So, unless care's taken you get stovepiping where the different parts that go into making a game turn out work that's meeting their own requirements but when assembled together doesn't quite meet the goal of having a game people will want to play.

Not that Guild Wars isn't a game I want to play or anything, I'm just theorizing. But what I'd think should happen in a game like Guild Wars where you have an ever-growing list of skills and special effects that now stands at over 1000 and will only grow with each expansion (By my count, there'll be 400 new skills, nearly a third of which will be elite skills, come the the next expansion - 75 for two new classes plus 25 for everyone before that. 450 for chapter 4. 500 for chapter 5. And so on. We'll be at 3k in no time that way.). That's 1000 things that players will need to recognize and respond to. So, it seems to me that a major goal of the design of everything about them would be easy recognition.

That's not quite so easy to do when you have 1000 different items, of course, because that means each one has to be distinctive enough to stand out from the pack. But each skill has a different icon and skills in the same line have similar casting effects and all the rest. So, at some level, the designers understand the importance of having players know what they're using and what's being used against them. I just don't think it goes far enough, for the most part.

Take, for counter-example, how Assassin skill names work. That was one of the nicer elements of the previous expansion, I thought. But, basically, there are certain words that, if they appear in the name of an Assassin's skill, you can figure out what that skill does. If it says "Black" it's dealing with hexes. "Golden" means enchanted. "Lotus" means you'll gain energy. So, knowing there was a "Golden Lotus Strike" last time around that would give you energy if you hit a target while enchanted it's easy for me to figure out that "Black Lotus Strike" will do something similar but only if the target is hexed.

Simple, efficient, and it communicates the purpose and mechanics of the skills in an elegant way. Might not provide the exact damage and duration or anything but the gist of things is there at a glance. You can go through the Assassin list and pick out a lot of these words and, from them, determine what the skills are doing (Except, don't bother because someone's already done it for you.).

Similar things happen with Warrior skills, especially the attacks. If you've got a "Chop" you know you're dealing with an axe skill. "Bash" and you've got a hammer. "Slash" and you're talking about a sword. If it says "Strike" you can't be certain what kind of weapon but you at least know it's a melee attack. Anything that says "Shot" and you know you're dealing with a bow attack and that's a different profession.

Contrast that with how the Monk skill list uses "Mend" or "Mending". It's either a way of providing regeneration or it takes care of conditions. It gets muddled, in other words, and lacks a distinctive, consistent meaning. So, coming back to the game when I see "Mending Touch" I have no idea what that skill does until I can actually look at the description. But if there'd been a little more discipline on the part of whoever decides the skill names that wouldn't be a problem.

My point would be that sometimes it's better to get a little clunky for the good of the game. Simpler, easier to read skill icons and names might not be very rewarding for the people who dream up such things and work hard to make them. But they'd provide a lot more benefit to the players and people who use them. Because they won't just look nice they'll work. And that efficiency has an elegance all its own.

How Trademark Applies to User Names

Okay, this went over well on the NaNo boards so I’m going to post it here – cleaned up a little bit – for posterity because those boards get wiped every year when the November rush happens.
Like anyone who’s been on the internets for as long as I have, I’ve encountered no end of argument and discussion about intellectual property. Copyright issues, trademarks, patents, IP, you name it and it seems like someone around here will pop out of the woodwork claiming to be an expert about it. And knowing every last detail about the subject. So listen to what they’re saying because they’re right. Well, I’m no expert in intellectual property law. Or even the law in general. I know a bit about how it works – maybe more than some maybe less than others – but I know that because I’ve been exposed to all the talk about it over the years. And being someone who’s involved in creative things where issues of intellectual property can be particularly important I’ve done some looking into the subject. I’m no expert, in other words, but I’ve been studying this stuff in one way or another for years. And, well, if I’ve learned anything it’s that the whole thing is very subjective and open to interpretation – a lawyer friend once told me the law is whatever you can get a judge to say it is. And even that’s open to appeal. So it’s complicated and I wouldn’t exactly take what I’m saying as the gospel truth but maybe sharing what I know will help you or others to find your own version of the truth.

Anyhow, someone on the boards asked, essentially, if their username was okay because it was based off of the name of spell from a video game (The name’s been changed to protect the uninvolved). And they wondered if that name was copyrighted. Well, the simplest answer is no, you can’t copyright a name.

The more precise answer takes a little while longer because you can trademark one. So, here’s what I wrote back:

Not-so-long answer (ie expect some hasty generalizations): There's a distinction to be drawn between copyright and trademarks. You can't copyright a name but you can make a name your trademark. So any legal protections that Capcom might have against you putting your filthy paws all over their intellectual property - which is, I assume, what you're really worried about - stem from trademark law and not copyright. So it's there that you have to worry.
However, copyright and trademarks aren't the same thing and they don't have the same protection. One key difference is that copyright laws are inherent - you make a piece of work and you automatically have that protection with no effort on your part (exercising it, however, is a different matter). While trademark laws typically require that the mark be both established and, in some cases, registered before it kicks in. That's where you might get into trouble because the result is that companies are required to defend their trademarks - even when they'd rather not - or risk losing them. That's why you might get a cease and desist letter or some such from the Square Enix team and one that, no doubt, will be filled with legal fire and brimstone torts.

I wouldn't worry too much, though, because in most trademark laws (which are pretty much standardized throughout the industrialized world at this point) there's protection for the general public. As long as you're not using that trademarked name in the same way as Capcom you'll be fine. You'd only have a problem, then, if you were to publish a video game with a character or an item named after yourself. (which, there is an argument to be made that your name is just a way of saying a certain kind of "magic" which is far too commonplace to be trademarked by any one company at this point. Still, it definitely features in Capcom games and it would depend just how vigorously they'd want to defend that unique branding of their magic system of which the inspiration for you name is one small part. I wouldn't want to go into court and try and argue against them, let's put it that way.) but using it elsewhere is fine. And perfectly legal (Basically, as long as you're not trying to confuse people that you actually represent Capcom or anything. And you're not infringing on the areas their trademark already covers).

Publishing and trying to sell a book with a character of that name might be a gray issue but that's only if Capcom is doing likewise and trying to extend their trademarked images beyond the video game realm - in which case the law says they have to threaten to sue you, basically, or else they lose the ability to trademark that name in literature (And that might put other spell names in jeopardy as well).

As an example, that's the root of the argument between Apple and Apple that's been going on for years. One's the recording company that holds the rights to the Beetles catalog (or a lot of it, anyway) and the other's the computer company - which is big now but was at one point a lot smaller and less important that the company that could publish new Beetle records. Both held the trademark for "Apple" in their respective fields. Which was fine (sorta) until Apple computers decided to start selling music. That's why, by the way, that Beetles songs haven't been available through iTunes (Until recently - I think they came to some kind of a deal lately. I don't use the service myself or even listen to the Beetles so what do I know?).

Without knowing more about how you're planning to use the name, I really couldn't say. But, for the most part, game companies tend to be pretty lenient in allowing their fans and the wider general public use of such things and I wouldn't give it that much thought.

How Kindergarten Applies to Creative People

Alright, this might be because I’ve read a lot of comics books. Or it might be because I’m numbered among the first generation that really took the plunge into the digital age and got exposed to things like forums and chatrooms and play by post roleplaying early enough. Or it might be just because I’m a crazy freak out of touch with reality. If I had to guess, I’d pick the last one – never let me down so far. But I’m always a bit surprised that shared world literature isn’t more popular than it is.

That link’s a little misleading because I don’t necessarily mean a series of stories in a shared setting by a number of authors – the way the EU Star Wars fiction works. But I mean any sort of common setting populated by different characters used for any series of books even those by a single author. The only requirement, though, is that each book in the series be at once self-contained and somehow part of the greater whole. Each part of the overall series can lead to any other part and, somehow, does so that a reader can start at any one part of the cycle and still have a satisfying experience. It’s decentralized, in so many words, from the rigid structure of each novel being a sequel to the previous one. And in this modern, hectic world, it would seem to me to be a smart way to develop a book series and cultivate its following – don’t require that a huge investment in order for each individual experience to pay off.

Maybe that’s because my first introduction to the idea was through Discworld. Great series, by the way, all by the same author and all dealing with the same crazy world but each book can be read completely in isolation from the others. But reading them with the other thirty odd books that have been written about the place reveals new depths and connections as you move through different viewpoints and themes. Pratchett’s a better writer than he gets credit for, I think, and far more clever. Anyone who gives the world L-space has to be doing something right, at least.

But Prachett’s not the only author doing this or the only way of going about it. I already mentioned Star War’s Expanded Universe where a controlling authority allows others into their sandbox but there’s also things like Wicked that use work that’s fallen into the public domain as a springboard. And there’s even people trying to create these things from scratch rather than from any existing intellectual properties like the Ring of Fire novels. And, well, me as I’m following the Discworld model with my Clans of the Highborn novels – which is what got me thinking of this in the first place.

But, I guess I feel as communication technology improves and the costs of distribution and dissemination get lower and lower that we’ll see more of that sort of thing. The ease and speed at which people can write is just going to improve (Not saying anything about the skill, mind). And an easy way of getting into writing would be what today we call fanfiction – just take someone else’s plots or characters or setting or whatever else you don’t have the time or talent – yet – to create and play around with them. Take others stories and tell them in your own way. Maybe even tell a few of your own one day. This isn’t anything new, after all, it’s how in times past that cultures and peoples developed what we call mythologies today. Fantastic stories that still speak to us today because even though they’re about gods and monsters and all the rest they’re still, at heart, about people. And they were made, somehow, better for not having any one author. They were told and retold and told again over the years to meet new audiences and different challenges. We could do the same today – and I’d argue, we are – but we’d just have to get authors to give up their insecurities and work together. They’d have to learn how to share.

How Education Applies to Game Design: Brute Force and an Educational MMO

Over at Psychochild's blog (Which is great, when posts are actually made, so go check it out) there was this post about solving the “brute force” problem. Which obviously interests me or I wouldn't be about to waste my usual torrent of words on the subject. But, basically, the idea is that players have become used to using brute force to solve any obstacles in games. Not just in video games but also in pen and paper gaming as the originator of the idea over at the Tales of the Rampant Coyote points out.

Players have to kill every last critter, open every last chest, and break down every last door in an attempt to suck every last bit of experience – in more ways than one – out of any given level or area or map or whatsoever the sandbox might be shaped like. And, well, the way they generally go about it is as simply and directly as they possibly can – hack and slash and burn, if you will. But, well, this leaves most games with no sense of mystery, no sense of awe and wonder at the magnificent unexplored and unattainable. It's definitely a design flaw in the modern MMO which encourages this kind of playstyle, if nothing else, to its detriment (I think. I mean, what do I know, I'm not a game designer just someone who likes to play good games.). And they create a vicious feedback cycle where brute force solutions lead to players getting better at brute force problems.

Because, let's face it, for all the thought and attention that goes into making MMOs and playing MMOs and figuring out optimal moves and favorable conditions to play, these games are incredibly brainless. They can be reduced to mathematical models and stripped of any sense of individuality and personal creativity (I know, because, well, I've done it or at least tried to take a good stab at it, so to speak. Anything for an edge and, after all, I don't trust machines to calculate DPS for me – at least not the ones in-game.) that, for me anyway, make games worth playing. I mean sure I like to win but what I really like about games is playing them. And what I don't like to feel like when I'm playing games is that I'm just another bag of meat banging away on a keyboard. Most MMOs are monkey work.

A phrase which, if you'll forgive me for the digression, comes from a story about a friend of mine. You see, when we were at university I had this one friend who was quite a character in his own right. We roomed together for a time and the guy was, well, almost as insane as I am (Which is, you know, saying something.) which is probably why we got along so well. Anyhow, this friend had a job at one of the many libraries around campus. Universities are dotted with them usually and there's plenty of jobs for those students who, like we were, are looking for a little bit of extra cash. These are generally make-work jobs, really, the most unskilled of unskilled labor but they're jobs that need doing and they put a bit of cash in the pockets of people willing to help out the university so it's a winning situation all around. Libraries, as it turns out, are actually pretty cool places to be in college. Forget the boring accumulated wisdom of the ages lining the shelves. I know we did. There's plenty of nooks and crannies and out-of-the-way places for people to slip into. And, well, not to put to fine a point on it but out of their clothes. Throw in plenty of seating and areas for people to lounge around in while they try and read and, well, people show up in droves. Great places to go to study, to hang out, and to date.

The place my friend worked at was the largest and most popular library on campus. It was called the Stacks and I could fill a book or two with the stories of just what I heard was found amongst the shelves of that place – late at night or in quiet places where no one thought anyone was watching. And that's what my friend's job was – to walk up and down the library's shelves and put back any book that had been checked out and returned. They call it reshelving and, as you'd imagine, it's a constant task in a library of any size. And more than a bit monotonous – the opportunities for people watching notwithstanding. Me, I didn't work there, but I did hang out at the Stacks quite a bit. And, of course, my friend and I found every excuse to chill out together whether there was supposed to be working or not. Now, my friend wasn't the only person who worked in the Stacks and there was a cast of other workers who carted books up and down the floors and back to their proper places. One of them came to be a friend of mine in his own right. He was a philosophy major and if you've ever met any you know they're a rare and strange breed. Guy was a kook, in so many words, and we whiled away many an hour talking about nothing in particular and everything in general. Debates raged about topics I can't quite remember and positions were staked that I can't quite bring myself to care about at this point. I'm sure it sounds pretty serious because I'm in a contemplative mood at the moment and that makes me come off all stuffy. Trust me, when I'm having fun I'm just as serious about having a good time. Really, we were just clowning around. Trying to top each other with one crazy idea or outrageous joke after another. The halls of the Stacks would ring with our laughter. And we got more than one sharp glare from people who were overly concerned with the wrong kind of studies (You know the type. Care more about their GPA than their BAC. With their noses firmly buried in their books they miss the real classrooms all around them. Of course, try telling that to your professors and see where it gets you.). Good times, I'm saying.

So, while going about their duty of putting books back in place the reshelvers were also supposed to make sure the shelves were looking their best. For whatever reason the librarians had gotten it into their heads that all the books should be neatly arranged on the shelves and not just strewn all over the place. So, if one of the filthy students who'd get their hands all over the precious books were to, say, put a book back on the shelves and push it all the way to the back, the employees were supposed to come along and pull the books out so their spines aligned with the front edge of the shelves. That way the books looked nice and uniformly lined up no matter what size they were. This is, as I said, tedious and routine work that doesn't take a lot of imagination to perform (Which is good because it left my friends' imaginations free to wander.) so one day the philosophy major turns to me and my friend and say, “You know, they could train monkeys to do this job.” My friend and I nodded sagely. The mechanical nature of the job being prime material for our diversions. But the budding philosopher went on, “All they'd have to do is place M&Ms behind all the books like so. The monkeys would come along and shelve the books right to get at the M&Ms” (Which doesn't make sense at all to me now that I think about it but I'm going to blame that on my poor memory because at the time whatever he said was feasible.) “That would work, for a time, until one day a monkey realizes they could get the candy like this.” And with one sweep of his hand, he shoved an entire row of books off the shelves and onto the floor. My friend and I errupted in gales of laughter at the look on the face of a passerby as much as at our other friend. We quickly started hooting and ooking monkey noises at each other and somehow or other the phrase “monkey work” entered our vocabularies. And to this day I use it to describe any activity that's done repetitively and mechanically for a small reward – and one where you don't have to do it the way you've been taught. Because sooner or later when you have someone doing monkey work they're going to wise up and start taking the books off the shelves.

Well, Psychochild asked his readers and commentors to sweep the books off the shelves and come up with a possible solution. As phrased the challenge was “Consider, what can we do to get people not to brute force games?” Now, as I said, I'm no game designer and this is a problem that I can't really solve. I'm not sure anyone can – not at this point – because players have become so acclimated to a climate where the path of least resistance is to just bull through any problems. And since it's a feeling of accomplishment that leads players to play these sorts of games if one game doesn't reward them for such activities another one will and anyone who tries to get too far away from the “level clearing” zeitgeist will get corrected right out of the marketplace of ideas. Anyway, if the smart people who comment on that blog can't crack the problem then it's not like I'm going to. What I can do, though, is wonder about what a game that doesn't reward brute force solutions would look like. I play games, after all, so the way I relate to these sorts of challenges is to imagine what kind of game I'd be playing if the “problem” was solved. Then I can work backwards and figure out where the design branched off and managed to find a solution I never would by simply trying to think my way through it. Not that it's my first impulse when something isn't working is to give it a good, solid whack or anything but, hey, sometimes it works. And sometimes the bassackwards approach works, too.

Here, not so much (As I said this, I think, is one of those intractable problems.) as my thought-experiment of a game is incredibly nebulous. It's going to have to be very different from the average MMO or, really, any of the sort of RPG those games are based on (I mean, there are RPGs that revolve around puzzles and the like but, then, I'd think that eliminating any sort of brute force solution there is pointless because you'd just be narrowing the ways people have of figuring out the potential solution. And, well, I hate it when designers tell me how to play their games. I'd much rather figure it out on my own.). Because it would almost have to completely eliminate the mechanic of earning XP from combat. Or getting better at killing things by killing things, in other words. And that strips the genre to its very core. And it's there that I was stumped because I couldn't figure out just how you'd make a game like that and make it fun enough to play. Which, after all, to me would be the point of the exercise. Eliminating the brute force solution is easy enough – you just have to throw out a lot of deeply held conventions - but actually solving the problem means doing that and coming up with a game people want to play when you're done (What is it about these designers and hardcore mode anyway?). And without better players I just couldn't see a way of doing that.

So, anyway, I was at a loss and I resigned myself to not being up to the challenge, shelved the idea, and moved on with my life. And, then, when I was playing Bookworm Adventures an idea struck me. This, by the way, is how I know Bookworm Adventures is a good game – it makes me think. This is also how I know ()Auto Assault is a bad game, for me anyway, it stops me from thinking. I feel like a hamster on a wheel when I'm playing Auto Assault. Even though I'm doing the same leveling and grinding for items I'm doing in Bookworm Adventures. It's just done seamlessly in Bookworm Adventures so I don't notice it and that frees my conscious mind up to dwell on other things. Because the game's so simple and I don't notice the hinges on the doorframes, so to speak, I'm much more able to just play it and enjoy myself. But in Auto Assault I'm concentrating too much on the mechanics of what I'm doing rather than the actual end result.

Still, I'm not here to talk about Auto Assault again, so while I was running through Bookworm Adventures again it hit me: If I want better players then the thing to do is to teach players to be better. Build it into the very game's structure that they shouldn't be looking for the easy solution but any number of them. After all, in Bookworm Adventures which is basically a Scrabble RPG, you could brute force your way past enemies by spelling small words over and over again. But when I play that game I'm not trying to get past the enemy, I'm trying to build the biggest and best word I can – which, incidentally, will get me past my current monster faster.

I've made my own game up within the rules of the existing game and it actually helps me to play the game better – and the game actually rewards me for playing that way. Now I'm not certain that this is a common occurrence among Bookworm Adventure players but I imagine that among a certain subset that it attracts it would be. That is, figuring out a way to use all of your 16 letter tiles and, once you can manage that, use them in new and interesting ways. I mean, anyone can spell “mast”, say, but when I bust out with “internationalism”? That's a special feeling. And it's looking past that obvious answer to a bigger and better one that's half the fun for me. The flashy effects and fancy sounds just reinforce that sense of achievement I feel when I can put together words that not everyone can. And the best part is that playing the game will be teaching players – if they want to play that way. After long enough they'll have a better vocabulary and the wider lexicon that lets me pull off insane letter combos the way better players of fighting games can throw down a combination of moves or simply sit back and throw.

So, I realized that my imaginary game (Which is different than ClotH, by the way. That's really just a platform for some fierce PvP action and it hews pretty close to the traditional MMO. So it's pretty much all about brute force solutions.) would have to be a learning experience. I'm still not entirely sure how you make a game with that goal outsell World of Warcraft or even come close. But, imagine, if you will, an Educational MMO. The same way that Bookworm Adventures is an Educational RPG.

It might be a bit basic, it might be a bit simple on the face of it, but such a game would be built to be basic and simple. Because it couldn't take it for granted that it was dealing with sophisticated players (And, well enough done, sophisticated players would play anyways. It's not like I have any pressing need to learn how to spell or anything – 90 wpm with an impressively low error rate last time I checked, thank you very much, to the point where I even turn off the auto-correcting features on my word processors because they just slow me down and make me conscious of my errors rather than just keeping in the groove of typing – but I still play Bookworm Adventures. And the game's still the most fun I've played in months. Just far from the most complex or expensive.) it would have to build from the ground up. And because it would be a game devoted to teaching, then it would be a game where it builds in encouragement for players to try new things and experiment. Create their own games that go beyond the basic answers to their problems. And although - since it's going to have to be marketed to nervous parents – it probably won't contain much killing of anything that doesn't mean it's going to eliminate brute force solutions. Players will still try to bull their way through roadblocks. But rather than changing the importance of the brute force option by decreasing the rewards one gains from it the game would be creating a situation where all solutions are valid. Sometimes brute force would be best, sometimes not, and the overall effect would be to give players multiple options at every turn with a neutral value attached to any one solution. The game wouldn't care, in so many words, how exactly the problems were solved, just that lessons were being taught through the solving of those problems. And by building on and reinforcing those lessons, players would be rewarded for playing along.

Now, how exactly you go about that is beyond me. But I've seen the kind of game you get when you do – in my head, at least – and, you know, I kinda like it. I don't exactly have children at the moment but, as someone who plays games and feels I've benefited from the experience you can rest assured that I've encouraged any small beings around me into playing themselves. I know I'm not the only one – several parents I'm aware of let their children play these MMOs – and as people like me who've been raised on video games in general and RPGs in specific get older and the genre itself matures, I'll bet we see some attempts at games like that sooner or later. If we're lucky we might get some good ones. And the lessons they teach just might be ones that can be used in other games. Games that just might solve the brute force problem that I can't.

How Game Theory Applies to Politics

Today I’d like to talk a bit about a subject I’m completely unqualified about. No, not almost anything ever, I’m talking about politics. You see, it’s something that’s been on my mind lately. And I know I’m not the only one – just go to any blog like Daily Kos or Powerline or pick up a newspaper. Plenty of people who are far smarter than me spend a lot of time and energy thinking, talking, and even acting on this sort of thing. Me, about the only time I do anything about politics is when I go to the ballot box. Which, I’ll sorrowfully admit is a time or two less than the opportunities I’ve been given. Politics just turns me off, really. I can’t stand the ugliness and pettiness that goes on, especially in the American system. And, well, to anyone reading this in some way or some when that doesn’t know that’s the country I’m from and, well, I happen to think it’s a very nice one. I know that’s not exactly the most popular of stances – in my country at this time or out – but, well, it’s mine and that I get to have it is just why I like this place so very much. Really, to me anyway, the whole point of our country and the institutions that support it is to let each and everyone have their own ideas and opinions[1]. And me, well, I like to play games. All sorts of games. I can be known as a gamer[2]. And, well, I have. Video games, board games, word games, I like to play them all. But I like to play fair and shake hands when it’s all over because I only play games with my friends or people I’d like to be my friends. The people who don’t I don’t have much to do with, really, and certainly nothing resembling fun.

But, you know, I’ve heard people refer to politics as the “great game”[3] so maybe it’s time I started learning how it is this particular game is played because, after the last elections certainly, I’ve learned that it’s a game that affects pretty much all of us. The table might be rigged but even the house can’t beat a royal flush. So to speak. But anyways, I’m sorry to get off track. I tend to do that a bit every now and then. It’s just my way and it’s why I’m usually a little afraid to speak my mind because there’s usually no one around by the time I’m done. I’d much rather listen, really, because then I hear things I never even knew before.

Like, for example, something I first heard about while playing one game or another. From one smarter person than me or another – there are lots of them, after all, who think things I never have before and if I listen to them sometimes they’ll share those thoughts. And that’s game theory[4].

It’s a fascinating and complex subject – I’m not alone in thinking that so I guess it’s true. And one with a bit more math than is good for me, anyway, as it tries to find mathematical proof for what moves are best in various games. Those mathematicians are wild cats, man, they like to win games without even playing them. And win them so well no one ever has to play them again. Take Tic-Tac-Toe, for example, a game I’m sure most people from where I’m from have played if only in childhood (And, no, I’m not talking about the devastating center+opposite corner gambit. Killed ‘em with that one on the playground.) . But did you know that if you’re playing it and you and your opponent make the best moves possible at any given point in the game that there’s no way the game ends in anything less than a tie? I mean, yeah, anyone who’s seen War Games knows that but so does anyone who’s studied game theory. Because it’s all about figuring outcomes and probabilities and pathways and a bunch of other stuff that you can only write in strange symbols and squiggly lines that only other mathematicians know the meaning of.

But, as simply as I can put it anyway, game theory says that in any given system the best option is to seek whatever gives you the most advantages. And that you should do everything but break the rules to win. The what good players do in any sort of game, after all, and if game theory’s about anything it’s about winning games.

Now, this is an interesting topic because it takes a rigorous scientific approach to things – the cold hard logic of understanding what works and throwing out what doesn’t – and applies it to an area where you wouldn’t think logic and math would play much of a role: people playing games with each other. That’s a realm of emotion and passion and things you can’t really parse down and fit onto a calculator or a blackboard, in my experience anyway. So maybe it might not capture the reason people play (more on that later) but it does seem to be frighteningly accurate in capturing how they’re played. I know I stopped playing tic-tac-toe because it just wasn’t much fun to wind up in a sister-kissing tie all the time. And, well, considering the odds is what people who play games do all the time. Game theory would say we’re managing our risks while finding the highest percentage play, by the way. But it means a lot of things can be considered in a new light. It means for example in a game if you can attack every 2 seconds for 50 damage or once every second for 30 you should grab the faster swing because it’s not a 20 point drop in damage – it’s a 20% raise over a long enough period of time (say…2 seconds). Or that football coaches should be punting much less often. Or that when considering a sword with a +3 enchantment or a cold steel property (Yes, munchkins you can only have the one) there’s a significant choice that depends on what kind of encounters you’re expecting. People even use game theory to make money.

I have this sneaking suspicion that were I to mention game theory to a politician or one of those people who work for them (Not that I’ve ever taken (Coulier the chance, mind) they’ll know what I’m talking about. Probably better than I do, in fact. These are the people who call it the “great game” after all. So it makes sense that they’d treat it as a game and try their best to, well, win. Elections are where they find the most use for it, I’ll bet (And as someone who loves to play games I do like a good bet. I’m not much of a gambler – low tolerance for risk - so the ones I like to make are the ones I know I’ll win.) but it can be of use in so many more areas. Anyhow, since I’ve never spoken with anyone more political than what you’ll find around my dinner table I’ll have to leave that as an open question.

But, well, let me – if you will – make use of an example here. And that’s Karl Rove or the larger electoral strategy (And, I’d like to say it’s the strategy by which he and his ilk governs but I really can’t seem to find any evidence of that at all. And, well, I do so hate to make blatantly inflamatory claims that might somehow damage someone. Not without proof, anyway.) he employs that’s become known as Rovism[6]. Because Mr. Rove isn’t the only architect or even the greatest master of such plays, only the public face of them. I’d avoid him if I could, believe me, if only out of respect for someone who works so hard on the public good[7]. But, well, the whole Rovian scene is perhaps best summed up in the “51% strategy”.

And it’s from that I know that Mr. Rove and his ilk like to play games. Because that’s exactly the kind of thing that number crunching, stat obsessed gamers like myself (It’s true, it’s true. I have to embrace my inner slide rule if I’m to get any better, you know.) do when put into a given situation: They twist and pull at the rules and observe the results until they can figure out a way pile advantage after advantage out of the game’s rules. Fairly or not, really. Intended by the designers or not. Just as long as they can win. And the 51% strategy is all about winning, of course, because it recognizes that in the rules we here in America (and very few places elsewhere) operate under the important thing is not necessarily to get everyone or most people to agree with you. But to get roughly half of them plus one. That’s all you need to win elections, after all. And you can’t do anything if you don’t win elections. So maybe you get a few more than 50%+1. It’s the crisis point in the system so if you’re making the best play you want to give yourself a margin of error to manage your risks – you’re not playing alone, after all, and even if the opponent is a moron they can still get lucky from time to time. Simply put, the 51% strategy recognizes that. You can’t win every battle, every game, every time but you can win enough to put yourself in the best position to win each and every time. Great strat. As long as no one pulls a Jenkins[8] then we should be able to pwn a raid or twelve with it.

So to speak, anyway. There’s a lot of that I can see when I take a good long look at politics what with my background and all. Everyone has this strategy or that plan or this scheme or some sort of slogan – it’s all marketing after all. I mean, the Democratic Party has their own response to the 51% plan in the 50 state plan, if I’m understanding it right. And, I mean, I might not be because it’s another large and complicated idea that will take me some time to really understand. Like game theory which I happen to think I’m at least passably familiar with having studied and, well, lived it for so long. But if I understand it right – and again, this is so mindblowing I might not – the idea is to actually have people in every race in every state. Which, wow, that idea’s so simple it has to be way too complicated for me to really understand. Because according to game theory if you’re having trouble with one particular battle, say, then a good way of limiting your risks is to simply have more of them. You won’t win them all, of course, but each battle gives you an opportunity to gain some fleeting advantage you can use to your benefit in other battles later on down the line. At that same place or elsewhere.

Anyhow, where was I? Ah, yes, getting to the point (I can hear your sighs of relief and the only reason you can’t hear mine is because it’s so loud it’s become background noise) I’m sure I had a point here somewhere. I did when I started this, after all. Now, back to Rovian politics of which the 51% strategy is only one symptom. Er, symbol. Don’t know how I got those confuse there, must be tired with all this unaccustomed speaking of my mind. It’s only one facet, after all, of a larger design. And one which, I feel, is best summed up in the phrase that you’ll be very unlikely to hear pass through Mr. Rove’s lips. He’s a gamer, after all, and gamers (Well, most gamers, anyway) don’t give away a winning strategy. If he’s ever uttered these words he’s no doubt had a moment of internal panic that this deadly weapon of political warfare might fall into someone else’s hands and they might be the wrong person’s hands and so he tried to pass it off as a joke or otherwise minimalize its importance. I tend to listen to people, though, so I know that sometimes the most important thing to listen to is what people aren’t saying – what they’re going very far out of their way to avoid saying, in fact. If I’m playing a game and I don’t want to give it away that’s what I’ll be doing, anyways – misdirection, subterfuge, and false information to keep my opponent from outguessing if not outplaying me. So, after some not-so-careful attention paid to the working of the world over the past few years I’d sum up the Rovian approach to politics in the following phrase: “Turn your opponent’s strength into weaknesses.”

Whatever it is they’re good at or proud of that’s where you attack the hardest. Break that strength up, atomize it, reduce it to its component parts and blast apart their lines of defenses once their center collapses. Such a frontal attack can be a costly, costly thing (in a lot of ways) and it might not always work (nothing does). But when it works, it works well, especially if you’re been stacking up a lot of advantages – resources – to throw at any problem. It’s yet more proof, to me, that I wouldn’t want to be sitting at a poker table with any Rovian because it again shows that they don’t just know the game they think about the game and where its weak points are. It really just pulls the rug out from the other guy and changes the rules of the game on them.

Oh, not the written rules. You can get into a lot of trouble if you break those even if in politics the people playing are the ones who get to write them. I’m talking about the metagame, the game outside the game, where the rules aren’t written down. Because not only is the game being played under a set of rules, so too are the people playing it. Those rules are just a lot more flexible and far less understood because people are hard to fit into the mathematical equations of game theory. You’ll have to look elsewhere and to less empirical means to figure out what’s going on there – all of which is more than a little beyond me at the moment. But, well, I understand a little bit about the metagame and how to play it. Because, basically, it’s about doing what your opponent least wants you to do. And what they least want you to do is what gives you the best chance to win. That’s why Rovians attack strength not because their opponent doesn’t want them to but because they’re not expecting them to attack where they think their defenses are strongest. They’ve been trained to spend their time and effort shoring up their weaknesses, somehow, so they trust their strengths will look after themselves. The value of an aggressive play like Rovian politics likes, so to speak, is that it’s unexpected and unpredictable. It causes the opponent to fall back on the ropes and get on the defensive where they can be battered down again and again.

But, well, the thing about the metagame is that – in a healthy system - there’s always a way of beating another “metastrategy”, if you will. And as someone who likes to play games I can’t help but look at the Rovian way of doing things and trying to see not just how it is to play that way (and play it, of course, better) but how to play a way that will beat it. I’m not a fan of running the Red Queen’s race, after all, but of jumping up (or down, it’s all the same when you go far enough) a yomi level to trump whatever my opponent’s about to throw[9]. Now, Mr. Rove and his ilk are much better and experienced players than I so I have absolutely no idea what a strategy that would consistently trounce them or whatever leaner, stripped down, and meaner version of their plans they can come up with. But what I’m trying to say is that I know where it starts. Do the last thing that Rovian politics would want or expect you to do. Turn your weaknesses into strengths.

As for just how to go about doing so, well, I might have an idea or two but I’ll have to think on them for a bit. And, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find the best time to think is when I’m listening to other’s have their say.


[1] – And then to have some way of protecting those ideas even as it gets everyone to go along with what most of the people think. We call it “democracy”, by the way.

[2] - Gamers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but our high scores! And what we stand to gain is higher still.

[3] – The people I like called it the “grand experiment” a metaphor I like much better.

[4] – If you don’t mind doing a little legwork of your own there’s GameTheory.net which is an online resource for teachers and students of the game. There’s plenty there if you want to learn more for yourself. I know I’ve made use of them a bit so consider them duly recommended.

[5] - I might have something to say about this topic later on but others have made the case and far better than I – with, like, numbers and stuff - so I won’t bother for now.

[6] – We’ll stay well away from Rovism, thank you very much. That’s embodied by “reality is what you say it is.” Which has a grain of truth in it, to be sure, but any school of thought which even remotely takes Orwellian word games as a guide to follow and not a clarion call warning is one I’ll steer clear of if at all possible. Nothing, not even power, is a means to itself but instead only a method for causation. No, like sanity reality is found in consensus. Reality is what *we say it is. Anything less is the rationalizations of the paid liar. So let’s just put paid to that, shall we?

[7] – Not saying exactly what he’s doing to it, mind. Just that he’s working on it somehow. And that in and of itself is laudable, for me. But, then, I like to play all kind of games.

[8] – G-No, it’s too obvious a joke, I can’t bring myself to do it.

[9] - It’s not the scrubs I worry about beating, I can do that even at a disadvantage. It’s not even people I’m equal with, I think I like my chances there. But it’s the people who are better than me. I want a decisive advantage before I even step on the field.

How Selective Biases Apply to Political People

I’m sure it comes as no surprise to any of my frequent readers (Hi! The five of you doing alright? Freshen your coffee or anything? No? Okay, I’ll get back to it, then, talk amongst yourselves!) that I am a flaming liberal. Lower case “L” liberal. So far to the left of center that things start getting more a little wacky. I mean, no, really, get me talking about politics and my eyes start spinning in counter rotation, rainbow colored smoke starts pouring out of my ears, and I start spitting fire out of my mouth. I’m more than a little out of the mainstream of political discourse, is what I’m trying to say. But, well, separating this author from this text (I like to call it a “blog”) is a bit tricky so it’s bound to crop up every now and then. Especially when I talk politics. I’m sorry, I’ll try and keep the spittle on my side of the screen.

And I’m sure it comes as no surprise to anyone that it was the only recently completed federal elections in the United States that have, in part, bolstered my confidence. To the point where I’ve started this blog, and posts my thoughts here and elsewhere again, I’ve become engaged again because the world just seems a little brighter. A little warmer. A little more sane. Because, let me tell you, when you think the progressive wing of the Democratic Party doesn’t go anywhere near far enough then, yeah, the past six years (Or twelve, really, if you want to count from the start of the Republican “rebellion”) have been just a touch insane. Now at this point I could launch into a rant about just what’s happened to this country or what I’d do to fix it or why aren’t other people listening to me, but, well, that’s just not me, I guess. Not right now, anyway. Because while I’d like to think our elections were a watershed moment, the moment when the great ship of state grinds slowly along its axis and turns away from the rocky shores ahead, I’m just not sure. Could just be the enthusiasm talking – and it’s not wanning at the moment, no, if anything it’s only growing stronger, better, faster as my voice finds me again – and I really can’t say for sure. I’ve been huddled in the corner cowering under my blanket, so to speak, wishing for the scary bad nightmares to go away for so long that even the merest hint of light feels like the dawn of a whole new era. It’s morning in America, again, for me at least. And I’ve rubbed my eyes open to greet the dawn (And I know, for a fact, that I’m not the only one.).

I don’t want to get too carried away with things, though, not because I’m certain they’ll turn out wrong but because I’m not sure if I’m right. It’s all down to a little thing statisticians and poll takers call selective biases. There’s a list of them as long as my arm and what they all do is warn those people trying to sample mood and opinion about getting too trusting of the numbers. What the people being asked think about things can slant – bias – those figures and lead to a wrong conclusion (What happens when the people asking the questions think strangely about things is a whole separate issue. One I’d like to call “incompetence”). That’s what statisticians do, after all, take a small group of people and jump to assumptions about a much larger group. But if that small groups assumptions aren’t taken into account, well, then they can waste a lot of time tracking down ghosts in the machine, so to speak.

And, well, I know I’m from a very liberal family in a very liberal area in a very liberal state – on average. My friends and I don’t talk politics much because we all get uncomfortable when our views don’t exactly match up so I really can’t say where their politics lie – I’m shocked when people I consider to be reasonable and rational can disagree with me about things as simple as, you know, war being a bad thing. But, see, that’s just what I’m talking about. My background, my history, my experience leads me to believe that my own particular brand of “liberal” isn’t all that odd or special. It’s the default. It might not be what everyone believes but it’s not that far out of the mainstream as to be unusual, either. That’s one of my favorite selective biases, statisticians call it the projective bias. Because what I’m doing when I think that because I’m liberal then all good and right thinking people should be the same (or at least able to be talked into it). I’m projecting my own ideas onto other people and taking it for granted they agree with me.

I am, hopefully, sane and rational and thoughtful and I expect other people to be the same. To make their decisions and choices from a deliberate process. I like to call that being “sane”. And I, of course, do the same. I don’t do most of the things I do or make the choices I make or act the way I act just because. No, I have reasons. And, if other people could understand those reasons, well, they’d agree with me. The only people who can’t I’d like to call “insane” – people who just won’t listen to reason and act like I don’t want them to. I mean, I’m not saying everyone has to be exactly like me, far from it, just that things are better – for everyone if not any one person - when we’re all getting along. So, when people disrespectfully disagree with me, on a certain level, I think either they’re insane. Or I am. And that last one’s an uncomfortable feeling. Especially when it’s not just one person but a lot of people. Like, say, the entire conservative movement. Because I’m pretty sure that if I could just sit them down and talk to them I could explain things and we’d all be happy and everyone would get a pony to ride around town on, I’m sure. But I’m almost as sure that they couldn’t care less what I have to say. Which is, I think, unfortunate but it’s also uncomfortably like what I think about crazy people. I’m happy to help them and pat them on the head and lead them to their padded rooms and all, but after a certain point I’m a bit sick of listening to their drivel. You know, when they break down and get all insane on me. Crazy fuckers.

The crazy don’t think they’re insane, though, no. Take it from me I’ve had…oh, let’s say some experience in the area, they think they’re perfectly sane and rational. And it’s everyone else that’s wrong somehow. So, being, you know, sane myself after enough repetition of the message that I’m somehow wrong, I can’t help but think, on some level, that, yeah, I’m a little bit insane verging on being completely crazy. I know I’ve certainly felt like that watching the world the past few years. As the message that I’m wrong, in some way, has been repeated. On the news. In speeches. In newspapers. During elections.

Oh, now, it’s not aimed solely at me, no, but I’d like to think it’s been pretty apparent to anyone that considers themselves, you know, liberal (I know, I know, some of us think that’s a dirty word. Don’t worry, I’m almost done.). Outside of that small group I try to surround myself with – my friends and family – the world’s been a pretty harsh place for someone with my views. Crazy as they are. I mean, all the politicians and columns and shows keep telling me that, don’t they? And every time I step back inside my circle and think that, yeah, things are going to change, well, they don’t. It’s that old projective bias again. Telling me that I’m normal when I’m not in the mainstream at all. My circle’s pretty small, after all, and the world’s a big place. I can’t help but listen to it when it speaks to me.

So exposed to the constant drumbeat echoing across the lands for the past, oh, six years or so that liberals loses elections, that liberals have no ideas, that liberals blame America, that they, that we, that I support terrorists and betray any and everything that this great country stands for and how dare I even try to have my say in things because I am soft and weak. Nothing but a sheep. Nothing at all. Nothing. Well, it kind of gets to one after a while. I’ve done some thinking, as is my wont, now that my eyes are open and I think I’ve finally figured out just how to call bullshit on just about all of that, it’s just going to take me some time, I’m guessing, and I’m going to do it in my own special way.

But, well, the other day for whatever rhyme or reason I stumbled across someone who’d already figured that out, over at Number 9. You see, I’ve been listening to the wrong sort of people, I think, and putting emphasis where I shouldn’t. If I hadn’t, of course, I wouldn’t be where I am right now – which, truth be told, I’m starting to like - but, then, I might have had a much easier couple of years. You see, I’ve been cowering in the dark. But, as the saying goes “better to light a candle than curse the darkness”. It’s people like Mr. Benari – and, no, he’s not the only one – who’ve been keeping those slim fires of hope burning. The best way, I think, with a little fun and games. But someone who just stayed in that particular circle, only listening to and only reading those sites and watching those shows and listening to those radios that were telling everyone that things were okay by mocking those in power would risk their own loss of perspective, wouldn’t they? Trapped in an echo chamber of their own making, limiting their experiences to just those things they liked, they’d have been pulling the blanket over their heads just as much as I had. To them the world would have been full of people who were making fun, making light, and motivating themselves to carry themselves to the ballot box, so to speak, and correct things. I’m going out on a limb here and going to say, fortunately, they were right.

But, trust me, as someone who’s done a little looking into the sausage factory we call electoral politics and climbed behind the numbers and tried to peer outside, there were almost as many people who felt another way. The margin between the Democratic Party taking control of the Congress and the Republican Party holding onto it was a lot smaller than it looks, in retrospect. Razor thin. And the blade of history could well have cut another way. And that good feeling I’ve had for, well, weeks would never have been. Because instead of being in the majority with all the sane people, I would have been on the outside with all the crazies wondering just what I wasn’t seeing again.

How the Sunk Cost Fallacy Applies to Leftovers

Working on a parable (Hey, I’m starting a cult here, I’m going to have to get around to writing a bible sooner or later…) to better illustrate the concept of sunk costs. Also, have to avoid writing my novel somehow these days. But, well, here’s a metaphor I’ve considered and rejected for inclusion:

There’s a great little Mediterranean place near where I live. That ever gossipy they says that you can always tell the best Chinese restaurants because of all the Chinese people who go there. Well, this place is often chock full of our Arabian brothers and sisters. They do real authentic Mediterranean food is what I’m getting at here. Including the deliciously dangerous kibbie. That’s raw ground meat like steak tartar in case you aren’t aware. It’s mixed with fragrant herbs and mouthy cracked wheat and tangy onions and, if you’ll excuse me, my mouth waters just thinking about it. They also do a bunch of “vegetarian” kibbies including a tomato based one that I can only describe as tabbouleh with tomatos. It’s like the sharp crisp of a wonderfully refreshing salad on a warm summer day. And the thing is huuuuuge. Good value. For about $6 - or the cost of a couple of fast food burgers - you get a plate full of the stuff. Big enough for a group of, say, five to share as an appetizer or for one person to make a meal of with plenty of leftovers. It’s great, I think, and I’m not even that partial to tomatos. With a lot of pita bread (And, man, you should taste the pita bread they make fresh at this place) it’s easily enough for, say, four good sized meals for me. I can dine at this place once and wind up eating for a week. That’s nice when you’re, you know, on a budget like I am.

Now, I’m the type that hates to throw out leftovers. Even when I’m past the point of being interested in ever eating them. I always find an excuse. “Oh, well, maybe I’ll have some room for this tomorrow.” Or, “Yeah, I don’t want this but if I throw it away now it’s just going to rot until I take the trash out, so I’ll just leave it hear until garbage day.” Or any of a dozen other excuses to save myself from wasting whatever’s left of my hard earned $6. I might never touch it again, and it’s certainly no longer bringing me any enjoyment, but I just can’t bring myself to throw it away. So, any time I order the amazing tomato kibbie – which, I’ll admit isn’t often, I’m more partial to the lentil variety (It’s like dahl) – I wind up with a bunch of chopped up tomatos, grains, and spices sitting at the back of my fridge. Until whenever I clean it out and get rid of all the things starting to get a bit moldy (Which, of course, is extremely, punctually, often. I don’t let things sit and get all kinds of fascinatingly beautiful spore colonies in my fridge for, oh, months. Not at all.). I just end up creating a bigger mess for myself but, well, waste not want not is what I’ve always been told.

The day I found out about sunk costs I walked over to my refrigerator, took the half-eaten box of tomato kibbie I’d just bought the other day in my hands, dumped it in the trash, and I haven’t looked back since.