Proposal
To design, develop and play a game which explores life in a voluntary society.
Introduction
You can think of this as the off-white paper, a fun term coined (I think) by @stellabelle. It is the prototype that will serve as the basis for a future whitepaper.
Voluntary and free relationships can be hard to practice within statist societies, where many practical avenues of action are tainted by the hand of the state. For many of us it does not make sense to simply "leave" society for a voluntaryist village or micro-nation somewhere, or to form a community of likeminded voluntaryists where we live, attractive as this option might be. Perhaps this is because there are not that many local voluntaryists that we know, or that we are in some way bound to where we are because of family obligations, work commitments or health issues, or perhaps that we are just not that sure about it yet.
Wouldn't it be beneficial to try out some of these ideas in a virtual world to get to know others who are interested in that life, to figure out the unique challenges it would pose, and to decide whether or not we would like to commit to this in the real world? We propose a game world to facilitate this discovery.
We rely on a few assumptions, which I will make explicit:
- Games can be used as discovery and teaching tools.
- Computer games are necessarily imperfect simulators of real world ideas. (see Ludic Fallacy)
- Nevertheless, games can be used to test real world ideas before testing further in the real world.
A team of people is needed to plan, create and to play such a game. This document lays out the basic idea as developed by @personz, and @the-ego-is-you, who is co-signer of this proposal (to be observed in a comment). @rycharde was also consulted and will hopefully be continuing contributor also.
Right off the bat I want to note that it's not only in playing the game that these ideas will be tested and discovered but also in the making of it, for those that get involved and contribute. I see it as potentially another platform through which ideas can be shared and discussed.
The Game
The computer game should model a free society or the conditions for a free society in some way, and be expressive enough for players to be able to interact with each other and the environment in a system which models the relevant aspects of life.
Basics
- Players: Physical players with full ability to move with the world in accordance with their own bodily power and the laws of nature.
- Land: The game must provide land which can be occupied, and built on, etc., as well as it's natural state be modified.
- Objects: The game must provide objects which can be picked up, combined, dismantled, consumed, crafted, etc. A player's personal carrying capabilities should be realistic, i.e. limited space and limited weights. Additionally sufficiently large or heavy objects may block a players movement, e.g. boulders, walls, cliffs.
- Skills: Players must be able to acquire skills. Practically this provides the methods to combine objects, possibly with land, in order to make new objects or disassemble objects into other constituent objects.
- Communication: Players must be capable of some form of digital "speech". Preferably adjustable to short or long distance, public or private expression.
The following proposed minimal set of features are fundamental to the game:
- The game world, as in the real world, as facility for the protection and free transfer of cryptocurrency.
- Player avatars may be born, live and die. There is a cost associated with being born. (see discussion below)
- The game world will exist in continuous time and allow unrestricted access of all players to their player avatars via the internet, dependent on technical connectivity only.
- A provision must be made for automatic "life" when the player is offline, based on their immediate available resources, including self-organized safety. We can perhaps call this sleepwalking mode.
No game engine, style, or technology is proscribed, but at least one is needed. There are a lot of open sources engines to choose from and I've done a little survey of some of the obvious options just as food for thought:
- Isogenic Game Engine, an isometric open source game engine with a lot of support
- Evennia, multiplayer text game engine in style of a MUD
- Isleward, pixel graphics roguelike, already a game but could be forked as is open source
- Barony, first person raycaster type low res, game already also
- Pixel Dungeon, simple rogue like top view low res tile engine game, many mods and forks already for this, good community. For mobile platform.
Screenshots
Isogenic Game Engine
Evennia
Isleward
Barony
Pixel Dungeon
Similarly, the platform is not yet decided. It may work well as a mobile app, as a browser game or as a standalone desktop client. I could even be made for a console which supports indie developers.
Contracts
A provision must be made in the game for
- Contract creation, replication and management
- Multiparty signing These contracts are NOT enforced by the game world natural laws, just like in the real world, the universe does not guarantee contracts. Rather they are respected (or not) by players. The game should just provide the facility for their record. The only exception to this is escrow which is a built in system of the cryptocurrency wallet.
Death and Life
The game will only be able to test ideas and to be of most utility to its users if people can behave in a similar way to real life; that is, to preserve their life, continue their survival and build a living - or to do the opposite if they so choose.
For this reason there is a cost to starting a new life in the game, a cost which is payable from the account generating a new player child to the guardians who they choose, or to the "system" by way of transfer to @null if no guardians are available. Every life born has a speeded up childhood lasting a certain fixed period (yet to be decided), before coming of age as an adult. Every person can die, and must die of old age at a certain age (formula for this also yet to be decided).
We use the term "guardian" to side-step the biological process of procreation. As guardian you are reasonably responsible for the survival of the new child player, but they are not your offspring. Thus only one person is required to bring a child into the game world, not two as in biological birth.
A ticket and lobby system is used for player creation with the following process:
- A ticket is bought by any adult player, for the ticket creation fee amount as a transfer to @null with special memo, which registers their intention to become the guardian of a new child player. There is no limit on the number of tickets an adult player can create and keep actively open, save a very large sane limit (say, 1000). The ticket fee is non-refundable and non-transferable, but can be voided by the guardian buyer if they choose.
- A potential player sees the ticket in the game lobby, selects it and pays the new player fee plus the escrow fee to the arbiter agent, by way of escrow transfer. The new player fee is held in escrow for a number of days (the period has yet to be decided), and a random other player is assigned as arbiter agent.
- If the player did not die of foul play in that time (infanticide, neglect, etc.), the new player fee is delivered to the guardian and the escrow fee is payed to the arbiter agent. If they did die of bad circumstances then the arbiter agent should return the fee to the player account. The arbiter is paid their fee either way.
Successful child rearing statistics are automatically available for all accounts (that is, not just per player instance, but permanently per account) so player guardians who engage in foul play can be identified by potential player children in advance. There is also nothing to stop people sharing information in and out of the game world about trustable guardians by word of mouth.
Random tickets are also generated from time to time depending on demand. They work the same way but the child is "born" fully adult and the payment is payable to @null directly with no escrow. For example the very first players of a new world must do this.
The above system incentivizes players to become guardians in a similar way that we real humans are incentivized to become parents by biological impetus. Since there is a flow of funds from potential children to guardians, the life / death cosmic economy has the following result:
- If you do not have any children, you have paid X to play the game life
- If you have one child you almost break even and this life costs you nothing, except a much smaller fee than you originally paid
- If you have more than one child you can actually earn money by playing the game.
The ticket creation fee is obviously used to force guardians to have some skin in the game, and not simply a loss of opportunity of gaining the new player fee if they act badly. The ticket creation fee is some small percentage of the new player fee, say 5%. The escrow fee should also be small, and is paid whether the transfer is made or revoked, so this works toward making sure the new player has some skin in the game also.
It is possible that the best arrangement is to allow game world server creators to set the fee parameters of the world, and perhaps it should be updatable by consensus of players, to allow for game token market values to be taken into account. This point needs further discussion.
Game Servers
Every game client is to also be a game server. Thus there is no central game server and the structure is decentralized. Everyone playing the game is also running the game.
Anyone can create a new game and have other people join as peers, and any client / server will be able to connect to any other world running as long as there is available connectivity with client / servers running that game. Each newly created game world will have a unique human readable random identifier so that game players can choose the right one. Note however that due to the cost to the first players of a game world (see above Death and Life) it is expensive to start a new game world, incentivizing players to stick to existing game worlds.
There are some other benefits to decentralization. It means that no one person can make the game inaccessible to other players, every user has the ability to continue running the game, even if they delete it locally. No-one can play god and modify the game world in a way that is beyond their player's capabilities because other servers will reject inconsistent game state changes. This will preserve the game state and keep it stable, leading to a high degree of reliability.
Decentralized infrastructure
Centralized game servers have advantages. There is just one server that needs to store the master game data, and one trusted authority for getting this data so we can be sure as a player that we are experiencing the same game world as other players. And since there is just one connection point, a simple login or other centralized credential system is all that's required to gain access to play on the server.
However decentralization has some advantages over centralized game servers, as mentioned above, but the two mentioned features of centralized server design (central game data store, single trusted accreditation source) are problems to be solved by decentralized gaming systems. This proposal does not mandate any particular solution but we are confident that an appropriate solution exists.
It seems likely that a blockchain solution will be best suited, though the pros and cons would need to be weighed up and we should not simply assume that a game that uses blockchain currency should necessarily use a blockchain to store game data and activity (i.e don't just put a blockchain on it!). However there are some options in this space already, such as the soon to be released Chimaera gaming blockchain, or using our own side chain, perhaps a private side chain using Hyperledger or Quorum for example.
This is a point for serious further discussion. As long as the requirements are met it doesn't matter which solution is used.
Development model
The following is the development model which I propose be adopted:
The above graph shows an overview of how the project organization might work. After the initial proposal, which is published to Utopian.io and GitHub, a group of contributors forms and works in 5 general branches, The Five Ds:
- Discussion - contributing long form opinion pieces
- Design - all kinds of structural, artistic and concrete planning
- Documentation - writing well thought out, well formatted docs for devs, users and in fact all stakeholders
- Development - coding, generating art, music, etc.
- Decision Making - gathering discussion points for all to review and implement
This feeds into the bottom part of the graph, which outlines some of the workings of the game itself as proposed at this point. This will definitely change so it only serves as a visual summary of what you can read above in detail.
The rest is to happen now.
Un-management structure
There is no management structure and all members are autonomous. Instead of a hierarchical team structure I suggest that we leverage the ideas of decentralization and the version control concept of "forking". There can be more than one Nth Society project developing at the same time. It is up to the individual community members themselves to decide who they work with and what they call their work. This very document and the people that worked on it are no exception.
I have created a first GitHub repository here which is called the Nth Society. If you want to join us to work on this all you have to do is fork the repository. You can contribute changes back to my repo if you want to use a pull request but you don't have to. In fact if you don't like where the project is going you can keep your own fork to yourself and work with whomever you want on it. If the original project wants to join up with a fork there are ways of doing this too. There would be little point of doing this right now, ideally we would work together, but you're always free to do as you please.
A community will form around whichever repo is the best. It's natural to want to pool work together but I do not presume to own or direct that pool, though you can follow my initial ideas if you want. I'm just starting the idea as a seed, and I want to see how people pick it up. I'm hoping to get to the stage where I'm the one following your ideas!
The work so far is completely open license, using [CC0]. This restricts nothing. Since I am personally opposed to software licensing I will not accept any pull request to my repos that introduces any other license, except in the case of required 3rd party software. However, as with everything, you are free to do as you wish in this regard.
Note also that if / when we incorporate other software (game engines, etc.), even if open source, we will be subject to whatever license comes with it, but just for that part. This is unfortunately unavoidable.
Community Bot supporter
I've created a bot which will support posts to Steem created for the Nth Society project, leveraging Utopian.io. It will attempt to match the up vote of any Utopian.io accepted post with the tag #nth-society, to the amount up voted by other Nth Society contributors and the @utopian-io bot, excluding the poster's vote, 5 days after the post date, and scaled by the SP delegated to the bot.
Requirements for Community Bot recognition:
- The Community Bot will only up vote posts which have been approved by Utopian mods so make sure you follow their guidelines.
- It will only recognize posts with both the #nth-society and #utopian-io tags. Be careful of misspellings.
- It will only recognize posts made by Nth Society contributors (see below for how it to set yourself up as a contributor).
- It will only recognize up votes by the @utopian-io bot and other project contributors not including any vote from the poster.
- It will try to up vote you to the target amount but it is dependent on voting power and delegated SP (see below).
- If you abuse the system you will be blacklisted (see below).
Note: by Utopian rules, contributions must be concrete. So unfortunately this does not cover game planning as such but only "suggestions" which must be detailed technical suggestions. For example if you proposed the protocol for storing the game data, with some research on that, and a path to implementation. Additionally development, graphics, tutorials, bugs, copywriting, docs all fit in with the Utopian system. However I will be lobbying them to update this as for the moment general game design posts cannot be made through Utopian.
The delegated SP to the bot determines what percentage of the target value it will attempt to vote to. This is scaled to the target SP delegation of 100k SP, the scaling formula is
target_value * (actual_SP / 100,000)
The bot currently has 1k SP and will operate at 1% target value.
For example, you post about your contribution to the project, say with some art sketches, you post with both the #nth-society tag and the #utopian-io tag. Three other Nth Society contributors up vote your post and their votes total $3. Then the Utopian mods approve your contribution and their bot up votes to the value of $4. You also up vote your own post to the value of $0.50 and some others up vote to the value of $10. In total the post has $17.50 pending payout. The Nth Society Community Bot will try to up vote you to the value of $3 + $4 = $7 at 1%, so $0.07, and will wait until 5 days after your post was first published. This is to allow other votes to come in and for the Utopian mods to review it, but not so long as to appear sneaky.
Bot accounts are not "official" bots
An Nth Society Bot can be run by anyone. I have developed it as an open source project which anyone can run on any account. I created the account @nth-bot to run my instance of the bot on and I've got a bit of delegation from some friends to put to it. But you can run one too, or delegate to this account, whatever you want.
Any abuse of this system will be taken seriously and abusers blacklisted on my bot database (they won't get up voted). For example, contributions that consistently don't actually contribute anything, or other "farming" type behavior. If it turns out that the bot is widely abused I'll have to change the algorithm or shut it down so please be responsible. This does not affect work on the game as such, it only affects the actions of the bot.
Bot votes are not payment
Please remember that bot votes are made to the best of the ability of the bot, the code and the services required to run it. You are not entitled to these votes, they are gifts as support and not to be viewed as payment. I really want to see this project succeed and I will do everything I can to support it but do not whine if bot votes are interrupted. However you can contact me with any queries or issues you have and I will do my best to address legitimate concerns.
@nth-bot live now
Finally, the bot is final stages of testing, and my bot will be active for any post made from now which satisfies the requirements. Read the next section and become a recognized contributor.
Becoming a contributor
In order to be recognized as a contributor to the Nth Society project you need to fork one of the projects on GitHub (such as the original planning repo here and add your Steem account name to your GitHub profile bio info.
Note that I use Steem and not Steemit. We run this on the Steem platform, not through the company Steemit Inc. or steemit.com. All reference to this blockchain is as Steem.
To prove you are a contributor you will need a GitHub account and to link that account to your Steem account, then fork the Nth Society project from me here or any fork of it.
- Register an account with GitHub. Your GitHub username does not need to be the same as your Steem account name.
- Add your Steem account on your account Github bio using the format steem:username, e.g. steem:personz. See my account for example. There can be other text too.
- Fork the Nth Society project or other fork of that project.
You will then automatically be recognized as a contributor by the bot.
Contributing via Utopian.io
As per the Utopian.io format, I will add a few sample tasks to get us going with things that I think might work. You can answer the literal call to action this way. Or you can simple jump right in and fork a repo, get editing and creating. Don't forget to submit contribution reports to Utopian.io, you don't need to run it by anyone to do this. Please just use the #nth-society tag so we can all be aware of each other.
Communication
It is very important that contributors are aware of each other to build on the work of others, not duplicate effort, move forward with discussion and get inspired. There are
- Work submission to GitHub repository projects
- Work announcements as #nth-society / #utopian-io tagged posts
- Comments, clarifications and challenges on announcements as comments.
- Chat on the original Slack server for the Nth Society
There is a ChainBB forum for the Nth Society at https://chainbb.com/f/nth-society where you can post.
The Slack is not “the” Slack for the project, it’s just the one I created. You can join any time in the next month using this invite link. Note this is a moderated community, trolls will be banned. You can contact me at @personz on steemit.chat if any questions.
Also when the "communities" feature comes to Steem, we'll definitely be using that too.
Token and Potential Token Sale
The proposed suggest is that SMTs are used as a game token. Discussion on this, and the exact details of the token will have to take place when more details as information on SMTs becomes available.
As a template idea I propose the following requirements, regardless of whether SMTs are used:
- Anyone can send, receive and own game coins, regardless of game participation
- The game itself will in no way directly hinder, tax, or charge user game tokens except for the creation of your player account
- Escrow will be provided as a native operation. In other words, your are free to use the tokens as you wish.
Goals and aspiration
It is hoped that this idea becomes a novel way to bootstrap a true voluntary society. The use of "a" not "the" voluntary society is indicative; there are others working towards it and some who have achieved something of this. I believe these projects are compatible.
There are many aspirations, but the main one is the pursuit of a free society. We recognize that this is a never ending process and we do not expect the game to show the way to the perfect society, to utopia. Rather it is a way to explore ideas in a sandbox that are worth exploring, and which may be difficult to explore otherwise.
The goal is to explore and train ourselves in the virtual practice of the ideals of voluntary society with the aim to apply it to actual, solid reality, in so far as this is possible. All the while to have fun doing it!
Last thought on games and gameplay
People love all kinds of games, but roleplaying is unique for allowing the deep and free exploration of ideas. Playing as a version of ourselves in the context of a game is a great way to try out things we wouldn't usually try, to step into another world of opportunity! In the context here I think we can learn a lot from each other by working and playing together. Let's figure it out, what kind of game do you want? How can we create the conditions for freedom? How do you see property, resources, work, time? And of course, how do we protect against violence, fraud and coercion?
Thank you for taking the time to read and understand this. Hit up the comments for any clarifications, thoughts or to point out errors.If you have ideas, don't hesitate to fork the repo or start suggesting already via Utopian.io! Remember, this is just the first version of the document and just the beginning.
This'll be a huge help for the liberty movement. After being knocked around by scams during the Great Altcoin Wild West of 2014, I had to come to terms with the fact that the regulatory State had left me really sheltered. Only until I went through that wringer did I realize how blithe I had been with my money.
Bringing back a liberty-focused society will require learning the tricks of getting along in a free society: habits of prudence that 19th century folks learned on the go. Your game (if fraud and private force are allowed!) will go a long way in showing how sheltered we are, and what habits we now take for granted that we have to unlearn.
Thanks for the proposal.
Yes, it will be open in that sense for people to behave well or ill. Getting along can seem impossible but as you say, there are "tricks". Discovering them in the modern world is a task worth doing. And games, especially the roleplaying variety, can be great tools.
Thanks for your interest 😊
I like Isogenic Game Engine and the pixeldungeon look. I look forward to seeing what comes from this. I may not be code enabled to join the product, but if I can help with quest building, world building, testing or figuring anything out.. let me know! I am an oldschool UOltima Online player and i have plated several other mmorpg. I like the potential of this project. Its already probably my favorite SMT though its just in concept. Also thatsweeneyguy here on steemit is making a sort of RPG game, go give it a look and tell him hi if you like what hes building, maybe he can also help with this!
Hey thanks for the tip, I'm definitely looking around to network with people. I don't know what direction it will take but I'm thinking of it more in the open world traditional roleplaying sense, though that's not to say people in the game can't build quests, i.e. ask people to do things for them. We have provision for contracts for just such a thing.
I like the Isogenic one too, I think it would require a lot of art assets and it's a little out of vogue in style but there's a lasting charm to that style. And it's the art that will really set the tone. The Pixel Dungeon style is also cool, maybe easier to get off the ground but it could even be the case that the back engine is interface agnostic, and can work with even more than one.
Well I look forward to seeing what you and the-ego-is-you come up with for the foundation. I will find a place I can step in and help and I will do that..
One cool thing about pixel dungeon engine is that in theory you could utilize something like JohnnyClearwater's pixel art challenge to help you create a lot of the art going on throughout the world, they come up with awesome stuff for that challenge. It would get random people more heavily involved in the game, open sourcing art through a challenge.. Give them a shoutout in the credits and they will surely want to own the game just to say see, see what I built lol!
Great idea, I'd love to see collaboration with other projects happening. Key to get here is that there is de facto shared ownership of the game. Everything is released openly, open to use, reuse, repurpose, mix and remix. So it will be much more than credits any contributing artist will get from their involvement.
Wow, this is an interesting concept, and here is why I say that. In most conversations with libertarian/anarchist thinking people, it falls apart when it comes to imagining what a voluntary, or even vastly more voluntary world and society might look like. You're proposing a way to model it. I like that. Not being a dev, I'm not much use, but should you need any writers, I'd love to talk with you about what you need. @markrmorrisjr
Right, one person's imagined society differs from the next, and they end up fighting over the details. Well let's test it instead of trying to plan it the minutia. Sure we need the game infrastructure, but I don't want to proscribe how we organize a free society, I don't know how to. Even if I did, that would be my free society, and maybe not yours. So playing it out together and be a way to bridge some of that gap.
Sure, join in the conversation here, feel free to join the Slack. I am as much interested in the ideas at this stage as the technical details.
but, until we have some sort of model to work toward, removing the existing structure would be fool hardy, as revolting as it is, it does provide some safeguards.
How exactly we will start out and what will first emerge, that's not entirely sure. This may take several attempts and the first may prove to be nothing but a valuable lesson in not taking things for granted.
What's important however, is that the simulation is somewhat realistic in that we do not simply recreate the existing world order of politics or that we are not careful enough to implement realistic object properties and avatar abilities.
Ya, no one is smart enough to plan exactly how society will work. That's essentially the heart of why voluntarism is better than central planning. It recognizes that the "right" answers need to emerge and that nobody knows exactly what they are.
So trying to explain how it will work can be a fun imagination experiment, but any one person's answer doesn't mean much.
Great, but, as age will teach you, not having any idea at all of where you're going, is a great way to go nowhere fast. If we're going to do away with the structure we have, some sort of agreement about how that's going to work is necessary, because you won't just be hanging with a bunch of easy goin dude bros. There will be bigger issues to solve.
I didn't say anything about "not having any idea at all". It's perfectly realistic to have good guesses and general ideas. It's unrealistic to think you know exactly what it will look like.
People coordinating is too dynamic for any one person to be able to predict perfectly. Hopefully age has taught you that.
It has, my complaint, in general, is that most anarchic/libertarian thinkers want to pretend like we can just erase the state, then make it up as we go along. That mindset is what I'm referring to.
I guess I can't argue against your anecdotal experience, but to me it seems like it's usually that the statists like to play "gotcha" with trying to explain how exactly everything will work, and eventually the only sane response is that there's no way to know
you're using an application that an anarchist built to help coordinate without central oversight
without the weight of the state, coordinating is really easy.. we probably COULD make it up as we go.. but fact is people are constantly planning and plotting decentralized/peaceful ways to connect (it just doesn't mean there's any way to have an answer to the "gotcha" questions, because it has to happen before you know for sure that that works)
You seem to have a good grasp at what the project entails. We would be happy to have you lurking in the Slack =)
While the platform was built by anarchists, we all arrived inside a structure, with immutable rules in place before we were even invited. So, I think you've proven my point. Within the structure, anything is possible, but the limits are set by an oversight, governing committee, democratically elected to that position, so there's that. That process was also in place before we arrived to live out our digital fantasy.
I'm proud to hereby co-sign the post through this comment.
It has been some time coming. But working on this project and with the people involved thus far in it has all been worth it.
It's more than just any project and much more than a game project I would say. It's also a highly motivating vision of how our world could be so much better for all of us.
Getting to a point where we can all say that "we made it!" might be very hard and could potentially take a lot of time. It is not even at all certain that the project will succeed on its first attempt, or that it has to, or that it ever should. What's most important, is that we try; That through building and playing - we as Neo - can learn, so that we are ready for the next round of the game.
We would be delighted for you to join us as we explore a new frontier, in space. Both cyber and mind.
/Thomas aka @the-ego-is-you
It's been fun so far 😊 I agree with what you're saying here, a project like this depends on people getting interested and taking a role, we can only take the first steps and point in a certain direction.
I really like the concept and in a way it is more like a social experiment (in a game format) and perhaps this is one way to create more complex simulation of how societies in the future can work when governments no longer exist or are decentralized so that people can choose the type of government or society that they want to join. I'd love to contribute ideas and participate so count me in!
Awesome, well that's great, everyone can contribute if they want to, that's the beauty of the idea. I hope that it can at least help to test and provoke thought about it, and we can have fun doing it which is important 😉
-We migrated from Slack to Discord. See recent posts for updates.
This reminds me of Life is Feudal, for the players control everything about the game. Admins only get involved if there's cheating. It is not decentralized though. They run clusters of servers per node, and there are 50 nodes. Each node is connected to the other in game, so there's no zoning from one node to another.
With blockchain transaction speeds as fast as they are these days, I have to wonder if a large scale MMO could be made in a decentralized way now. It may be possible. Syncing up multiple players from all over has been the main road block in the past. A lot of big time players have tried large scale games and failed too.
That's what makes Life is Feudal unique. If they can get it to work, they will be the first truly massive MMO with thousands of people on the same "server." They've been in development for 7 years now though, and they only recently released on Steam. The game has a lot of bugs still, and it is definitely not working as well as promised/planned.
I am curious to see what the future brings regarding MMO decentralized gaming! It will be done, and the implications are huge.
Life is Feudal is very interesting game that I myself have been looking at previous to this project. It could take off in a big way.
Our project does not have a preferred historical time and has, in part due to this, no given objects or objectives that would have to / could not be constructed. We are in that sense, not limited to the same extent that Life is Feudal would have to be, but we also do not have the "medieval" appeal that they can market themselves with.
One thing that strikes me here now, is that I would love to test play their game for free, but I obviously can't. However we currently have a lot of money slushing around the "cryptoverse" that can't safely (for various reasons) convert to fiat and this money is just looking for somewhere to finally be put to use. This could continue for many years and it would not be entirely implausible, to see a project such as this take a good sum (even if it's just a tiny slice) of that fund if it was implemented.
Not only that, but ingame we could construct any number of mini games (betting, card games, competitions) crypto exchanges and other business use cases that would allow such money to be spent also in the game itself.
What if this is a game already? :) Have you seen the YT videos about how everything we experience now could be, and most likely is, a simulation?
Mind blown! The thing is ... it doesn't matter if it is.
Agreed! There's still good to do and individual liberty to further.
Yes, we've even touched on this in conversation actually =) "Simulation" or not, the similarities should of course be striking. I should note that, with a somewhat successful implementation the line in my opinion between game world and real world should properly become ever more blurred as time passes.
That reminds me of the 2049 Blade Runner movie. His significant other was a computer program!
Yes, and while I imagine more simple social and business overlap would be the starting point of the transition I imagine, virtual reality is quickly evolving and should certainly be a consideration at some point.
There really are very few limitations given so far, as we are working from very basic principles and no actual code has been produced so far.
We would love to have you and everyone else interested in brainstorming some of these ideas joining our the Slack. We already had a few people joining and there are no special requirements to do so. Anyone can also create their own post with ideas or questions right here on Steem of course, using the nth-society tag or by visiting the Nth Society forum on ChainBB.
Sounds like a great idea to use a game like this to experiment! I don't really play computer games though, so am struggling to imagine how it might look in practice.
I will follow the project with interest and will hopefully understand it better as time goes on. Have any existing games particularly influenced the idea (that I could read up on)? Aside from the crypto element, how might it be similar or different from Second Life for example? I know almost nothing about that except the name ;)
Many games have been on our radar. Several but not all of them have been linked in our Slacks "influences" channel. If you use this invite link, you can check them out there.
Differences would be in the organizational form, where Second Life is run by a company, has many simultaneously existing worlds in the same game and is essentially in that sense a monopolized multi-verse.
Further, in Second Life death is not a reality and even damage only occur in specific zones. The risks are very limited in that sense and for the same reason the opportunities to simulate life.
In our proposed basics of the game/simulation however, death comes at a tangible cost. It may be limited and finite as well, as it is not in fact real life death, but it stings none the less to lose both your valuable property and initial payment. This we think would help create an aversion affect similar (although certainly not equal) to a real loss of ones life, as well as disincentive some of the sabotage that has been seen in previous experiments predating our project.
When I say "our" project from here on, note that I mean not only the signers/co signers of the initial post, but all current and future contributors to the project in whatever form it may take.
I see... I didn't know Second Life wasn't one shared world, and that you couldn't lose your investment by dying. Have you any thoughts about optimal values for the initial payment? I realise it might be a bit early to be considering that, but am interested.
Nothing set in stone so far. It would have to be a sum that hurt to lose for most people, but also one that wasn't too large. Regardless, if not other conditions were constructed, a person with a lot of money could buy their way in.
Thankfully, there already are other conditions in the proposed system and the real losses would in most cases be higher than the initial sum thanks to player initiated "life staking" in game, which would produce both psychological and economic attachments the loss of which would be capable of acting as yet another deterrent for both current and potential players.
Hopefully, if we can design it well, sabotaging the game results in enough both money and opportunity lost that it would seem unattractive for the most part.
A little bit from a lot of sources, but I played a lot of the Day Z mod for Arma 2 a lot and it really give me a feeling for slow paced, realistic survival games. With zombies 😅 You need to keep yourself alive after "waking up" on a beach with almost no supplies and inappropriate clothes for the Russian (or Siberian?) landscape.
Minecraft is also an influence. A simple premise, simple graphics, simple crafting but which has huge possibilities, just like Lego (or how Lego used to be when the blocks were more generic).
Lastly, my influence is imagination based games. I played a lot of these as a child, I think most if not all of us did, and I'm intrigued to this day finding out about how the children around me collaborate on worlds. I was struck by a study I read once that claimed that kids spend roughly the same amount of time setting up and coming up with the rules for a game as actually playing it. I remember many upset debates over what was and wasn't allowed as a child. This is of course an undeveloped version of how we then navigate the world as adults and so I imagine the Nth Society game might be able to serve as a half way between this - doing and talking about serious grown up things, like how to do "society", while doing it using the tools of childhood, namely "play".
It could be really similar to Second Life, with one massive exception - you can't buy land in the Nth Society game. The economy of Second Life is build on the foundation of magic land purchase. It commented on this more in another comment.
is contextually correct, but just to clearify; Land could certainly still be dealt and sold in the game itself. It just won't be prepackaged and sold by a deified software developer, who would in such a case have ben acting as a super natural arbitrator of the game.
That is, as we early contributors have so far imagined this particular open source version of the game being developed. A fork of the project (or the same project if we left or ended up being persuaded by better arguments) would still be free to try any implementation of their own choice. I don't see myself changing on this particular point however.
Nor I. Thanks for the clarification, I'll make sure to remember to make this distinction in discussion.
LOL at this. I remember discovering my son playing AOE II for hours - without ever actually playing the game. He'd create a scenario and have fun destroying it. I don't know if he actually ever played the campaign.
I watched once as he created vast armies and, one by one, just killed each of the heroes. XD
In his defense, he's not some kind of serial killer now =p
Anyway, it is very true that kids are often more intent on creating the rules and scenarios than actually playing a game.
It's pretty interesting right?
I've played and enjoyed DayZ, but the cheaters and lack of development ruined the game.
Games have to have a way to allow conflict and conflict resolution. As in the real world, people will have a very high incentive to be peaceful and cooperative too! That's one reason something like Second Life would never interest me. It's basically a social club.
Ok, thanks for that. I'm unavoidably familiar with Lego and Minecraft :)
I agree a lot of children seem to spend a long time making up and changing the rules of their games. Often I think they do so to promote inclusion and increase participation which makes a lot of games more fun, but they also do it to deliberately exclude others. It's intriguing to realise that our adult politics often isn't much more sophisticated than this.
This is a really insightful comment. It is worth taking note of and could be very useful when constructing the game.
I liked the original concept. I don't think the direction you are taking it is important however. A careful abstraction is needed in my opinion. Something framed in concepts similar to game theory but perhaps re-dichotomized.
Many online games are essentially voluntary associations. Adding tamagotchi or sim elements doesn't add useful information unless the conceptual framework is general enough to be worth building on.
imho
I would be interested to hear more about what this might be. Care to expand?
They are and they aren't. There is one common thread throughout games, even ones which are explicitly voluntaryist, that makes testing any realistic voluntaryism impossible - game world protection of property. They are magic in the truest sense of the word, inexplicable power granted and maintained by the universe. In the real world you cannot guarantee your "rights" to your land, to your vehicle, to your person. In the game I propose you can only do these things by agreement, or force, or not at all.
So while I agree that we don't need another The Sims, making and using virtual worlds as proper exploration tools is worthwhile.
Ok, I'll give it some thought. That's one thing I like about a good post is that it inspires thought. It may take a couple of days and it will likely be rough in form because the topic is deep and complex.
Regarding online games, some friends play Rust, and from what I gather, you don't really own anything you aren't carrying. Minecraft is the same. 2nd life has a bunch of aspects that count as voluntarian and some that are protected. Perhaps your experiment could be inserted into a wide variety of existing games that have a decent amount of 'public domain' resources as a group of players participating in it. The downside would be statistic collection, which would probably have to be done by subjective polling. Playing the 'game' with stake or without stake is likely to have very different results - probably directly counter in some areas. To give people stake, and in lieu of money, perhaps the players could be a voting block or political group in some way to tie more consequence to their in game actions by having a real world effect.
Gaming itself is voluntary and without an element of choice a game is nothing. But without a stake tying us back to reality, there is no substantially purposeful real world overlap and there is little simulation. In that respect, I think we are in agreement.
Giving users stake, means in our case first giving them a game life for the payment that they pay into the escrow. Our basic player creation scheme results in many incentives both in and outside of the game. If coupled with a an open style game world that has enough similarity to taking actions in real life, there would be many reasons to join and remain in game apart from supporting ones SMT/game life speculation by providing a a suitable enviroment for other investors. The reasons would in many ways reflect our reasons for making everyday choices in real ife.
In a future post, I will make sure to explain what might draw a new player into the game, as well as what opportunities might exist for developers and investors.
You may however be onto the same thing as we have discussed in our Slack, which is that having an initial "air drop" of something to organize around, spend time on and somehow benefit/profit from might be helpful to kick the game off with more force. Bitcoin did fine being boosted by pretty much crypto geeks and libertarians, but Bitcoin wasn't a game in the same sense as we are speaking of here. Yet having crypto geeks and libertarians ideologically interested in the project will certainly still help a great deal, and when it comes to an "air drop" of whatever it may be, the problem we are immediately dealing with is what sort of incentives it will create that could keep affecting the game world for a long time. This is true for picking a certain historic era for the game to be played in, as it is for dropping resources or encouraging a particular type of game play early on. I would be happy to discuss this further in our Slack.
This is one of the things we have considered and it would also be interesting to discuss further. Also cooperating with other non-Nth projects, new and old, would be of interest in my opinion. The same risks as mentioned previously above still apply then as it does with "air dropping" resources/mini games into a new game world. All these things we would appreciate your further thoughts on here or if it comes at a later time, maybe in a new post with the Nth-Society tag. Our Slack is open for the same purposes of course.
This is another reason to check out LiF. It is a full looting game, and even your land claims can be challenged and lost. Nothing is protected by the system completely. By completely I mean there are ways to take anything. It just may be expensive. You have to collect a ton of resources for example to put a "siege totem" down next to an enemy base. If they lose the battle, you destroy their base. Again, people have a huge incentive to be peaceful. War has severe consequences for individuals and groups alike.
I guess my pondering the life/death cycle in a game like this contributed to my nightmare last night... so thanks for that ;)
Have you considered inheritance when players die? This would seem important to keep things realistic, but I'm not quite sure how modelling love/loyalty between guardian and child could be done.
I was thinking that perhaps the genetic stakes could be emulated by the guardian acquiring a financial stake in the child life at birth (perhaps a gene token), and this stake would be perpetuated through at least a couple of generations. I understand this might go against philosphical materialism (which I don't subscribe to), but maybe in this way a dead player can continue to acquire some reward after their death. I think without something like this, we'd be missing an important biological incentive structure, and the outcome of a flawed model could be false lessons.
In fact, if when a new life was started, the guardian and parent acquired reciprocal (though maybe not symmetrical) stakes, then perhaps even sibling loyalty could be modelled. On the other hand, the kind of complexity this introduces could make the realisation of an actual game less likely.
I had to LOL 😂 That's why I call it "the life / death cosmic economy", complete with Lovecraftian cosmic horror 😜
We considered clan building and other things like this. It's an interesting topic, but up to the point developed in the proposal I concluded (@the-ego-is-you can speak for himself) that it would be perhaps counter productive to encourage clan building, as things work a little different than in real life and someone could easily use sock puppet accounts and collusion with friends take advantage of the system.
Just to be clear, there are no parents, only guardians. To quote from the proposal:
The Gene Token idea is interesting. You don't however lay out the rationale for such a feature. i.e., why should a dead player continue to acquire reward (based on the success of their guarded children, and presumably their guarded children, and so on) after their death? And what does this model?
I think you're correct to be concerned on legitimacy of the modelling though. What I first proposed does not model families exactly. Perhaps this is a problem. What I proposed is closer to A Brave New World, children are "made", but instead of being raised in nurseries, as in Huxley's world, they are raised in speeded up time by a single guardian.
I would like to hear more on your thoughts on why this might be inadequate.
I think you'll probably disagree on this point, but my personal preference would be to have the game require some greater degree of authentication to prevent sock puppets. In all honesty, I can't really imagine any realistic game or great crypto system working (in the long-term) without high transparency, and agree with this by Dan Larimer.
I guess in my thoughts, I'm modelling the game player as a kind of hybrid of a human and a gene (idea), rather than a pure human, and maybe my personal aversion to Huxley's world is what subconsciously seeded the contribution.
I don't disagree at all, so perhaps we need to discuss the thoughts in more detail. While I disagree with the argument in Dan's post, he is talking about complete transparency all the way to the physical self. "greater degree of authentication" does not have to go that far.
In fact I am working on ideas which have the side effect of greater authentication on Steem but the system is so designed against this and in favor of alt account that's it's proved extremely difficult.
This doesn't mean we need to inherit these problems though. I implore you to join the Nth Society Slack and brainstorm with us on it. I'm totally open to any alterations, this proposal is an explicit call for it!
Ok, I think I see what you're getting at. I'll join, and try and make a little time for it. :)
I was hoping more people started making games for the blockchain - I will resteem this for you!
Thank you!
My initial reaction is 'God I love Steemit!'
I am deeply impressed by the vision you and @the-ego-is-you have chased and shared here.
I have just managed to read through this post, finally (hadda get up at 3am to make the time) and really look forward to seeing how things evolve. I doubt I can be of much use, but as I am able, I certainly will seek to be.
As with all great ideas, there is potential in this one to change the world. Even all worlds.
For that, I thank you.
I'm sure you have some good ideas to share. Happy to see you joined the Slack ! =)
Thank you for this message, it made my day 😁
The project is what people put into it, so I'm hoping for more contributions soon. I'll continue to contribute myself, and support and reward people who get involved.
Thanks!
This sounds great @personz
I am going to have to go through it again to see how I can add any value but it is an excellent project.
Gentle reminder 😉
receipt issued.
Thank you @tarazkp, looking forward to any further thoughts 😋
I really like your vision on this. A wonderful
chance for anyone to experience anything. My first coin was decentraland (mana) I really like the idea, I am still looking at the differences that you have dreamed up. It does remind me of Neo in the Matrix. Anyhow the best of luck I will be watching and pondering the future of The Nth Society.
Thank you 😊 I'm definitely watching Decentraland too with great interest.
games with a crypto element are sure to rocket :)
I think the text based game is so much more open to possibilities in a way, but for larger scale adoption likely a gui will be neccessary.
True, text is limit in one main sense - food for the eyes. While it can be more imaginatively stimulating it's a very rare game that comes out these days that is solely text based. Still I have a huge soft spot for them, having grown up on several.
I have serious trouble imagining a text based game "working" in the sense of successfully simulating objects, but also as you say gaining wide traction. Still, it's an interesting thing to consider. =)
yes, it's probably just a fantasy of former, simpler times, when text games were all we had, and they were fun :)
Leisure Suit Larry changed the world back in the '80s.
Hahaha, leisure suit Larry, huh? Had no idea he was such the innovator
First text game I knew about for computers.
Hmm, pretty sure it wasn't text anymore when I played, but very crude graphics
I'm feeling kind of ADD and haven't read it all yet.. but amazing.
I'll play for sure.
This sounds very good
hello, I just read everything, the concept seems incredible, I hope I can contribute my grain of sand to the project, since I started steem I always imagined a sims game with a lot of multigames included.
That's great! You can join the fun right now in our Slack server ! =)
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Thanks buddy