EVE General Discussion

This is a response to Shau Huang on another thread that our conversation split off from. here is a link to Shau's opening post https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=3046035#post3046035

Shau,

In his book “The Eternal Golden Braid” Doug Hofstadter makes the argument that thought and experience come from interaction with artificial systems. He compares the works of Kurt Godel, J.S.Bach, and M.C.Escher, and points out that they are in fact artificial systems of reasoning that create emotive reactions.

Games are enclosed by a border between the RW and the artificial, this is referred to as “The Magic Circle” This border is created by the game pieces, the phsical location at which the game is taking place, the act of the players gathering and beginning the game, etc. It can be very well defined and developed, thereby leading to what some may call “Immersion”. In many cases there can be an emotional response to the game, this is referred to as “bleed”. Games with well developed magic circles have more bleed than others.

The circle is buffered by creating strongly regulated interfaces for the players. In this way emotional bleed can be controlled. The “X” or ‘O” in a tic tac toe game is a very rigid interface that players have little trouble disassociating with, hence there is little bleed from a game of Tic Tac Toe. A character within an MMO is a very versatile game piece that can create/allow more emotional bleed.

If a person goes to the market to buy some fruit they are enacting a sort of ritual that they have likely gone through before; they prepare themselves and travel to the market, meet with the vendor and discuss pricing, package their goods and return home. This process is very similar to the way that magic circles are created in games.

Lets suppose this person gets home and instead and finds that the grocer sent home an order that is different from what the person expected. Many people will have an emotional reaction to this, they will blame the grocer and be angry etc. From a survival standpoint it may be just as efficient to go back and explain to the grocer his error, he will most likely refund the money and pack the correct order. The emotional response is not necessary or in many cases even desirable to resolving the error.

So why do we experience it? I wonder if the pattern of creating the magic circle and interacting with it is itself the origin of emotional response. Rather than the idea that the game mimics reality and so elicits some extrinsic response mechanism.

In this model the emotional reaction to what we want or need can be the same. Practical application of this knowledge can be seen in all marketing, from the sidewalk fruit vendor to multinational corporations.

Marketing involves creating a magic circle, and allowing people to interact with the circle using a very weak interface, in this case themselves. This strong magic circle combined with a weakly buffered interface creates the opportunity for strong emotional bleed. The goal of marketing and sales is of course to make this a positive emotion. However in the case of customer dissatisfaction there can be a very strong negative reaction.

It is true, as you say, that remembering ones own choices are an emancipatory act. However I think that it is not absolutely effective in eliminating the emotional response. It is armor against bleed through, perhaps the fact that it strengthens the game interface and so our ability to disassociate with the game world is how that works.

You personally seem to have little to no emotional reaction to the game. Perhaps that is because in “Laying it all out” you have effectively limited the ability of the magic circle to function as such. For myself I consciously “invoke” the magic circle and use a strong interface to interact with the game in order to limit bleed. This does not eliminate it entirely as that is one of the things that I am here to experience.

Do you feel emotion outside of the game? In those instances is there a system or procedure that could be creating a magic circle in the real world?

Gadmooks! I am not familiar with the model and will look into it. Prior to that I wonder if we could speak across models knowing that we are doing that?

First in response to your questions about my game play. Are you kidding!?! I am on a roller coaster. Similarly in life. If I say however that I am not my emotions, it can be hard to understand this does not mean I am dissociated. Quite the reverse. I am also not my thoughts, despite the villainous Cartesian model we have come to unquestionably accept. The nature of conditional reality is that it is always changing and radically impermanent. Stupendously, amazingly, horrifically in the midst of all that, and at some level a constant awareness of that we can love, laugh, cry, feel, think, etc. The apparent collision of love and impermanance is the one that really messes us up the most, it seems to me.

This relates to the question you pose and the 'golden circle' model you offer. I feel we could consider the graphics artistic and even relate to them as art. We could imagine some art involved in any aspect of the production of the 'game'. For me, I feel the art in something like EVE is more like sand painting and arises from the lived interaction with the game, in all its aspects, most importantly perhaps what might be considered social interaction between players, in all its forms. I think this may be consistent with what you are suggesting.

I think of things in a way that I feel maps to the model you have offered, but I cannot tell. I will say how I translate your model such that it makes sense for me, if I can. I have read the various 'authors', but not that book.

I translate interface to structure. The golden circle is for me context or container. It may or may not be isomorphic with identity. It informs the possible quality and domain of formal emergence, in the best cases without prescribing specificity of form. In this way it is also the domain in which meaning is discovered, generated, ect. Remove the 'constraint' of the golden circle and strucutres associated with any particular expression of that and meaning dissipates. The emotional experience associated with that specific context is no longer available in the same way.

In this for me I distinguish between rules and structure. As a metaphor, imagine a room. It has one door. In most cases you will enter and leave the room by that door. You can do so freely. This is a way of understanding structural determinism. You are not forced by the structure, but your behavior is influenced by it. There is a kind of structural coupling involved based on an ongoing re-presentation of phenomena. If you get that wrong you walk into a wall. If there is a fire you might use the window, etc.

Now let's fill the room with people. Let's make it a classroom. There is a lecture taking place. For some people it is interesting in and of itself. It has intrinsic value to them in some way. In the experience of a completely unconstrained setting they would chose to be there. They might even create the necessary models, containers and structure for this to happen. Let's say for some other people, in the same structural conditions the lecture just sucks. Why are they still here? Presumably the door still works! This indicates the presence of rules. These rules can masquerade as structure. Are they instrinsic or extrinsic? How are they experienced? A common state conditioning rules, such that they occur as extrinsic is fear. Usually this is associated with some assertion of and attachment to something else as 'necessary' in some way. Greed, desire and such can be understood in this context. If I leave I will get a bad grade. Why do I care? Because I believe my grade in this class is directly related to how much money I will make when I am thirty. I have some sense of a contract someplace, with my parents maybe, the violation of which is presumed to have negative consequences, etc., etc., etc. it can be quite complex. Traditionally, you really press into all this and you encounter the relationship to suffering, impermanence and death.

In my view, the best games bring us into direct contact with all of this. EVE is particularly good at it, hence we see the constant presence of all the stages of death and dying... You know... Denial, shock, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance and even transcendence or transformation. Why is EVE good at this? It has a good amount of structure, but very few rules. We thus come into contact with the rule set we are carrying around in our heads, hearts, bodies. Normally we imagine that this rule set is simply the truth. Most participation in EVE seems at some point to cause the player to question that.

So imagine that in EVE you have people who are participating in something they understand at some level as aesthetic. This includes, but is not limited to 'fun'. They are playing in relationship to something they experience as intrinsically generated, though the immediacy of that may vary when they are having to participate in secondary and tertiary activities that they feel enable that.

Equally imagine that you have people who are operating on extrinsic values, as they understand them. Often these occur for them not as chosen, but as self existing, absolute and immutable.

Of course it is not as black and white as this and it is sometimes one way for us and sometimes another.

The robust structure of EVE, combined with the relatively limited presence of prescriptive rules allows both sorts of populations to thrive. Now, put these two sorts of population in close proximity to one another, in a sort of interdependent relationship! The art arises (and goes out of existence) in the moments of that interaction. Emergent.

There might be more to say about the relationship between identity and the 'golden circle' and the nature of existential crisis in all this, but I will stop for now.

Well, according to some quite influential people in the world of modern art....

Shau, I heve read through your post quickly. I have RL to attend to and some things that I want to verify before I reply. Prolly within the next 12 hours.

In the mean time this is a friend of mine on Youtube who has a great series about these concepts and how they relate to gaming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAr85xoS6Zc

Also, welocme 666, and ISD Ezwal.

It's a product. The terms art, genius & epic are used far too often and too lightly these days. We will soon be looking for new superlatives to replace these words if we don't stop using them so frequently. Do them right.

Everything handmade is called art, whatever is different must be genius, results of a century of mass production. This is done while these words are meant to characterize something truly exceptional.

Jokes may well be art. Which is kind of scary when you consider who the bricks and doughnut jelly may have been making fun of.

Shao,

If I understand your reasoning correctly “rules” are defined by potential or imagined consequence. Structure is something that is perceived or understood in the present.
In this way structure can define who we are, while rules can only influence what we do. Eve is a good illustration of this.

As you point out Eve is rules light, those that do exist are mostly defined by our interaction with other players in the game. There are potential consequences to bumping a freighter owned by a member of Concentrated Evil or Whores in Space, and a very different set of potential consequences for bumping an orca owned by a character in an NPC corp.

In the RW as in Eve the strongest person or entity tends to illicit the most horrible imaginings of consequence.

The thing that separates Eve from RL is that in Eve evasion is much more likely. In RL if you commit an act of violence on many people you will most likely be caught. But in Eve the victims of violence may threaten consequences, but they have to catch you first. And so it is a good place to begin questioning all rules.

In Kabalistic thought the supreme being is one of rules and law, it and all those with it, exist in a state of perpetual love and bliss. However its physical manifestation underwent great suffering while here on Earth. Perhaps this means that suffering comes from structure, in the case above the structure of Earth. And that relief from this suffering comes from adherence to the rule of law.

The Kabalists have charted an answer to your collision of love and impermanence and suffering! And the funniest thing is that it doesn’t need to be proven in order to function. Assimilation into the rule of law is enough to overcome the suffering caused by structure. Well at least according to the Kabalists.

Perhaps it can be more rightly said that supplication to the rule of law can mitigate the suffering caused by structure. In any case this may or may not be correct, but what it absolutely tells us is that the relationship between suffering, and law, and structure is a question that has been with us for some time.

I use modified versions of systems thinking. In some cases this involves a kind of hierarchy that can be understood and used synthetically or analytically. As such it functions as a dialectic. The 'systems thinking iceberg' is a simplistic example. Lots of examples through googling that.

The hierarchy can be understood as:
Event- what is 'visible'
Pattern- aggregation over time
Structure- causal to patterns
Mental Model or Paradigm- conditioning all the above
Container- some people include this, some don't

This is combined with a bunch of other things such that it is not merely a mechanistic formal procedure, since these are both inappropriate and ineffective in human systems, such as games. The relationships and causalities are not limited to linearity.

There is also some simple change theory sometimes included about this hierarchy as a hierarchy of interventions that can be applied to games and is particularly relevant to meta gaming. Here is a paper on it. http://www.sustainer.org/pubs/Leverage_Points.pdf

Rules are generated, and you can see where they sit in the model from this paper.

This is all often used analytically, neglecting the dialectical possibility that arises from using it synthetically. It is also important to include an integrating frame of some sort that is neither analytic nor synthetic and transcends the dialectic itself, if you are designing. There are a whole bunch of other assumptions I use, to create the design space, build capacity and implement. I can lay those out if you are interested.

Building and implementing particular examples proximal to some 'presenting problem' or 'problem set' can be done relatively quickly. Building capacity in a community or organization such that the whole thing becomes emergent takes 3-5 years of consistent work, at least, and cannot be done prescriptively if you expect it work. Many things are involved.

EVE has been going ten years. There has been a great deal of capacity organically built in this player base. I cannot assess the condition of CCP in this regard, given my lack experience with them and information about them. Things could be done to increase this capacity (e.g. for emergence, resilience, etc.) but I don't think such interventions would likely be worth it regarding the player base, from the point of view of CCP as a business and it seems to be happening organically anyway, without any specifically organized attempt. As to the value of building their own capacity in this regard, I cannot say whether that would be valuable or not.

art is apreceation by other people.

that's like saying it's just a job. it isn't.


art i meant.