John Cooper (at KEI) wrote:
> 
> Thanks, Kory; not much time to write right now, but I wanted you to know
> that you really made my day!

Good!  And for my part, I've found one more person who will listen to my
rambling.  So everyone wins! ;)

> Too much work, not enough play, has dulled
> my senses.

Yeah, I know how that goes - I'm just now getting a free minute (at
11:53PM, Wednesday night) to reply.  Work sucks. :)
 
> Arcana approaches that kind of game that I am most interested in
> designing: the miniature world, evolving and growing, with players
> deciding what their individual goals should be.

In the realm of computer games (at least, computer adventure games,
RPGs, interactive fiction, etc.), the idea of creating a game with
genuinely open-ended goals is kind of a Holy Grail; a lot of people
(including myself) have talked and pondered about it for years, but no
one's really done it yet.  I'm trying to think of games that come close;
I suppose Maxis' sim games (Sim City, etc.) might be considered a step
in the right direction, since the player often has an unusual amount of
control over what the "goal" of the game should be.  In fact, I think
the game is (or can be) played in a mode in which there are no explicit
"goals" at all (i.e. no point at which the computer says "that's it -
you've accomplished the goal and won!").  Interestingly, however, in
practice I haven't ended up liking these games much at all!  I don't
think it's because of the "goallessness", though; I think it's because I
never felt the "atomic units" in these games lead to very interesting
behavior.  No matter how I set up my buildings and roads and everything,
the city is still just a city; it's not going to result in any emergent
behavior that's as interesting and surprising (in the context of the
SimCity world) as, say, a glider gun is in the context of Conway's Life
world.  The emergent behavior I see in SimCity is stuff like traffic
patterns and population statistics, which I don't find very interesting
or surprising.  (In fairness, I haven't played the game much at all;
maybe I've missed some cool stuff.)

When interactive fiction/adventure games/RPGs attempt to provide
"freedom of goals", it usually amounts to multiple paths, or multiple
characters to choose from, or something along those lines.  This can be
cool, but it doesn't really fit the bill (for me).  Choice between 3 (or
even 20) pre-planned paths will never really feel like freedom to me. 
That's why I always come back around to the "emergent behavior" ideas,
where lots of little units are interacting to create higher level
behavior, etc.  This is the kind of system that can surprise it's own
creator; in fact, I can sum up The Game Designer's Quest For the Holy
Grail in a statement: "I want to create a game that will continually
surprise *me* (the creator)".  I'll bet every game designer has their
own favorite "how my game surprised me" story. :)

At the risk of veering off into mysticism (why do I feel the need to
preface so many of my comments this way?  That worries me. :), I'll also
bet that there's something vaguely religious behind this common
fascination with emergent behavior, "creation without a Creator", being
surprised by one's own creation, etc.  Not religious in the worshipful
sense, but religious in the... er, "desire to be a god" sense, I guess. 
(Hey, we all got a right to have a religion, and "Desire-To-Be-God-ism"
happens to be mine, so back off, ok buddy?  ;)   What is it that's so
cool about the thought of creating a little world that seems to have a
life of it's own, and that behaves in ways that you didn't plan or
foresee?  I think the motivations here (at least for myself) run deep.

(Maybe this is what having children is all about?  Or... <groan> ...
maybe it's the other way around - maybe this interest in creating worlds
is really all about having children.  That is, maybe the fascination
with creating things that have a "life of their own" is just the
procreation instinct in disguise.  Sigh.  Leave it to me to de-sublimate
everything I get my hands on :)

> Arcana isn’t quite that
> kind of game, but there are some times when I can pretend it is. When I
> first started playing (after weeks of testing and tweaking) I was
> playing it to win. Later I played it for fun and to test out tactics.
> Now, I mainly play it to watch the overall plot - sorta like stirring a
> bowl of  primordial soup. I have noticed other players taking similar
> attitudes; some play to just be mischievous, others play the diplomat,
> or the separatist, etc. (Of course, many still play to win.) I’ve also
> noticed that some players become attached to certain cards, desiring to
> occupy those cards at any cost during a game. Mine is the Moon. The
> psychological quirks of other players is fun to observe.

Arcana may not be "the" game (probably nothing ever will be :), but I
think it contains some essential aspects.  The emergent behavior aspect
is certainly there (though not in quite the same fashion as Conway's
Life.  That's probably a good thing - cellular automata seem pretty
rigid and abstract compared to Arcana).

The different motivations that arise during play are fascinating.  I've
(alas!) only played two games of Arcana so far, but my motivations and
sub-goals were completely different in these two games.  In one game, I
got on some powerful cards, and hacked away the surrounding territories,
creating a safe little island for myself.  In the other game, I spent
most of my time trying to get control of a couple of cards that I
wanted.  I lost that game badly, because I spent so much time on those
cards, but I didn't care; I wanted those cards, man.  :)  It's
interesting; something about the whole structure of the game seems to
encourage this kind of renegade action - "screw *winning*, I want the
*moon*" - and yet, if you were to make the game *explicitly* goalless
(by removing the winning conditions, scoring, etc.), it wouldn't be
nearly as fun!  I'm not even close to understanding why this is, but it
seems important, somehow.

(This reminds me of something else - I'm sorry man, I'm just dumb with
exhaustion right now, and I can't stop writing, it's just all starting
to flowtogether in this weird stream of consciousness thing - this
message is turning long, so I'll wrap this up soon - anyway, it reminds
me of a game we used to play which we called "Dictionary" (there's a
commercial board-game version of it called Balderdash, or something like
that), where one person reads out some obscure word that nobody knows,
everyone makes up a definition, then you read them all back (along with
the real one), and everyone tries to guess which one is the right one. 
You get points for guessing the right one, as well as points for every
time someone guesses your fake one.  This game is the most fun when at
least half of the people aren't playing to win at all - they're just
making up the wittiest/stupiest definitions they can.  Yet somehow it
wouldn't be nearly as fun if the winning conditions weren't there - "hey
everyone, let's sit around and read words out of a dictionary, and make
up funny definitions for them!  Yeah!"  There's some insight here
somewhere.  I'm sure of it.  :)

> I’ve been fascinated with cellular automata for decades

Same here, as I'm sure you've deduced by now.

> I hope to
> finish a few more “mini-world” games when I get the time (they’ve been
> cooking for a while in my head).

Man, I'd love to hear about anything you come up with.  Keep me posted.

> You brought up some underlying philosophical points which are quite
> intriguing, and though I’ve been thinking along similar lines, I just
> couldn’t find the right words to define those thoughts. Thanks again. Do
> you mind if I quote your e-mail on my website?

I'd like that!  Just think - I'd be famous!  ;)

Sorry, this is longer than I meant it to be.  Hope you don't mind.

Sleep. Work. Sigh.

--
Kory Heath
kheath@1connect.com