Chain World — Innovative Game Design Sparks Debate 178
A story at Wired charts the course of Chain World, a video game designed by Jason Rohrer to be different from any game that came before it. Quoting:
"It would exist on [a USB flash drive] and nowhere else. According to a set of rules defined by Rohrer, only one person on earth could play the game at a time. The player would modify the game’s environment as they moved through it. Then, after the player died in the game, they would pass the memory stick to the next person, who would play in the digital terrain altered by their predecessor—and on and on for years, decades, generations, epochs. In Rohrer’s mind, his game would share many qualities with religion—a holy ark, a set of commandments, a sense of secrecy and mortality and mystical anticipation. This was the idea, anyway, before things started to get weird."
best buy (Score:5, Informative)
On the morning of February 24, Rohrer took a break from coding and pedaled to the local Best Buy. He paid $19.99 for a 4-gigabyte USB memory stick sheathed in black plastic.
He overpaid.
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Re:best buy (Score:5, Insightful)
He overpaid.
I thought was explained when it said he went to Best Buy.
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On the morning of February 24, Rohrer took a break from coding and pedaled to the local Best Buy. He paid $19.99 for a 4-gigabyte USB memory stick sheathed in black plastic.
He overpaid.
But he got a good deal on the extended warranty.
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i could get four 8gb usb drives for that amount of money!
In unrelated news (Score:2)
On the morning of February 23rd, video game designer Jason Rohrer decided that he really didn't need to take his meds anymore.
Re:best buy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:best buy (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, Monster ones are the best, they have better fidelity, ensuring your 1's are totally 1 to the max, and the 0's are dead flat.
Rules? (Score:2)
Rules are made to be broken. Everybody knows that.
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Yes, whats exactly preventing[1] people to copy the game to, say, other 10 USBs? In fact I think this is the interesting bit of the game: A chain reacion.. houndreds of thousands of different iterations and lives. And in the end just mix EVERYTHING and you have your LOC sized virtual world and mdash turns out to be a Zinga sockpuppet freeloading on crowdsourcing for the new gaming "blockbuster", bonus points for viral ... YAY marketing!
[1] Rules, walled gardens, drm, etc can and will be broken.
Weird indeed (Score:4, Interesting)
People don't like games where they have only one life. They already are playing such a game, for free - why they need to learn some other universe if one mistake just voids all their effort?
One person at a time is stupid. That's not how anyhing in this Universe is happening. We live in the world where everything happens in parallel, where events can be triggered by other players.
Most gamers don't want to play a single sentient being in the whole universe. This game by definition doesn't permit other human players. Too bad.
The religious stuff is fluff that is TL;DR. I only commented on obvious gaming issues. I will gladly leave the religion to priests.
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What about nethack? You gotta love nethack...
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You have infinite lives in nethack. Your character may die, but you just create a new one and use what you learned to do better. The goal is to use that learning to do better every time. In a game that can only ever be played once, there is no such learning. You do some things, and then never speak of or apply them again. What's the point?
Infinite failures, not lives (Score:2)
You have infinite lives in nethack. Your character may die, but you just create a new one and use what you learned to do better.
The really great thing about NetHack is that it lulls you along into thinking you learned something, then kills you even more brutally the next time (and often before you even reach your remains).
Re:Weird indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Rohrer's "games" are about artistic expression, and challenging what it means to be a "game" by design - and he has won several awards for this.
Critiquing the game play of his games makes about as much sense as complaining that Picasso just doesn't know how to draw faces...
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By taking that stand, you're basically saying his "art" is above criticism. Which cannot be true. I could poop on a USB stick and claim that it's a game about religion, but that doesn't mean it's art or pushing the limits of what it means to be a game. It's really just a filthy USB stick.
I can't even tell what this "game" has to do with religion. At it's most basic, Religion is a shared set of beliefs that propagates in some way. This is an ITEM with some rules attached. It has value because it is the
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People don't like games where they have only one life. They already are playing such a game, for free - why they need to learn some other universe if one mistake just voids all their effort?
One person at a time is stupid. That's not how anyhing in this Universe is happening. We live in the world where everything happens in parallel, where events can be triggered by other players.
Make up your mind. Do people want to play something that is like real life or not?
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The point is that you only get one chance, so you need to treasure it.
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It's both, of course. You want to play a game that frees you from the boring reality. For example, you can be a wizard or a knight in various RPGs; you can be a mercenary or a cyborg or some other Savior of Humankind in many FPSes. On the other hand, you don't want to stray too far from the familiar world. For example, you can't play a game where you are an elementary particle, obeying laws of quantum mechanics of some parallel Universe. The playe
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There's a game like that, it's called "War."
Despite what most Americans believe, war is not a game.
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Imagine an FPS where you start the game first time, walk into an ambush, take a single bullet, and the game is over, with no chance of replay. WTF? Many FPSes require many replays of certain boss battles until you figure out what the winning strategy is (or simply get lucky.) Learning is the key to everything; we learn IRL and we learn in games. Playing this "game" wastes all the learning that you have done in there.
There's a game like that, it's called "War.
And the only way to win it is not to play.
Typical game (Score:5, Funny)
AD 3100. You place the thumb drive in your PC.
You appear in a vast land, completely paved over with dead bodies to a great depth. The stench overcomes you. You are dead. Please transfer this thumb drive to the next player.
Re:Typical game (Score:5, Funny)
AD 3100. You place the thumb drive in your PC.
You appear in a vast land, overlooked by a prominent Lord Juan statue and completely paved over with dead bodies to a great depth. The stench overcomes you. You are dead. Please transfer this thumb drive to the next player.
Oh look, we are playing it now.
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AD 3100. You place the thumb drive in your PC.
You appear in a vast sunlit land, overlooked by a prominent Lord Juan statue wearing sunglasses and completely paved over with dead bodies to a great depth. The stench overcomes you. You are dead. Please transfer this thumb drive to the next player.
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AD 3100. You place the thumb drive in your PC.
You appear in a vast sunlit land, overlooked by a prominent Lord Juan statue wearing sunglasses and completely paved over with dead bodies to a great depth, a single "pine fresh" car deodorizer lies pitifully on the human carpet. The stench overcomes you. You are dead. Please transfer this thumb drive to the next player.
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AD 3100. You place the thumb drive in your PC.
You appear in a vast land, overlooked by a prominent golden Lord Juan statue and completely paved over with dead bodies to a great depth. One of the bodies near you appears to have been sexually molested .You see a lone vulture in the sky. The stench overcomes you. You are dead. Please transfer this thumb drive to the next player.
Oh look, we are playing it now.
Indeed.
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AD 3100. You place the thumb drive in your PC.
You appear in a vast land, overlooked by a prominent golden Lord Juan statue in the goat.se position and completely paved over with dead bodies to a great depth. You see a lone vulture in the sky. The stench overcomes you. You are dead. Please transfer this thumb drive to the next player.
Re:Typical game (Score:5, Funny)
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... a request which Steve Jobs' head in a jar will absolutely refuse...
Good luck with that (Score:4, Interesting)
So, I'll take the USB drive, and put it in my computer, and then I'll
dd if=/dev/sdj of=/dev/sdk
And then there will be two. Oops.
Does Chain World have some of that nasty Internet-based DRM to prevent copying?
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It had better or it'll die a horrible death.
We tried to do something like this at work: one person starts a lego model, the next person is supposed to take it on etc etc. Problem is one person gets busy and forgets and then it dies after 2-3 people for months on end and then everyone loses interest.
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.
.
..oh, I'm sorry, is my cynicism showing?
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It doesn't matter. This would basically represent a schism in the religion. As long as the original USB disk continues to be passed around, it would march onward as the "original" religion with its own narrative, and the copied form would exist as a separate "religion" with its alternate narrative. Much as various sects of Christianity all derived from a singular genesis.
And then the devotees of the original disk would shout, "SPLITTERS!!" at the copy faction.
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It doesn't matter. This would basically represent a schism in the religion. As long as the original USB disk continues to be passed around, it would march onward as the "original" religion with its own narrative, and the copied form would exist as a separate "religion" with its alternate narrative. Much as various sects of Christianity all derived from a singular genesis.
And then the devotees of the original disk would shout, "SPLITTERS!!" at the copy faction.
Bloody People's Front of Judea...
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Be silent, heathen!
Not the first (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, the community around pretty much every sandbox game out there does this already.
Not different (Score:5, Interesting)
So basically he automated what the minecraft community has been doing already and people went full-on moron.
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So basically he automated what the minecraft community has been doing already and people went full-on moron.
Yes, he simulated a religious movement. Quite brilliantly, I think. Just goes to show, only an atheist can start a proper religion.
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And like most ideas for a new religion, it's going to flop in the real world. For every Jesus and Joseph Smith, there are thousands of would-be prophets who end up either ranting alone a street corner, sitting in a mental institution, or burning on a big fucking pile of wood.
Rohrer's religion is going to end up sitting in a desk drawer somewhere, in possession of some random programmer who's "going to get around to it someday." Or maybe it will be erased by said random programmer's teenage son, who needs a
Didn't someone... (Score:2)
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Until, one day, life imitated art. (Score:2)
First person to die in possession of the memory stick without telling anyone what it is ends the game.
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Or the first person who, having received the memory stick, runs it over with a steam roller while filming it all for YouTube, ends the game in exchange for 4 minutes of fame.
Pretentious twits (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pretentious twits (Score:5, Funny)
From reading the article it seems like everyone involved with this is a pretentious twit.
Incredibly so. The only way it would be more pretentious is if it ran from a USB monocle.
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Sir, genius!
Yeah, it's as if a bunch of fucking hipsters found an old coin-op and began marvelling at the idea of leaving messages for future generations in the form of high scores attached to mysterious three-letter pseudonyms.
Re:Pretentious twits (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pretentious twits (Score:4, Funny)
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That's what happens when you become a god.
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From reading the article it seems like everyone involved with this is a pretentious twit.
From reading the article
Talk about being a pretentious twit!
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don't hate the players hate the game
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Obi, anyone? (Score:3)
Anyone else remember "Obi" or "Obii" from perhaps the Seventies? The idea was something like a note in a bottle, with an expectation of return. This sounds like a game-ified version of the Obi. Since IIRC the Obi was about the shape and size of an egg, the form factors aren't all that incompatible.
I don't really see the draw here. If nothing else, ONLY ONE person gets to see your awesome high score at a time (the current player). Since a huge part of gaming is to best others' scores and have "everyone" know you're the champ, how smug are you gonna feel knowing that only one person at a time is ever gonna know what a l33t g4m3r you are?
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Yes, that's the critter.
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I lived on the West Coast, so I guess that's why I had access to them. It would have been my parents buying it, not me. Apparently it flopped because they discovered that the "kindness of strangers" is a myth? People were probably tossing them in the garbage. Can you imagine the reaction of a New Yorker to one of those?
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I didn't play Deus Ex for a high score.
I didn't play Bioshock for a high score.
I didn't play Half-Life for a high score.
I didn't play The Legend of Zelda for a high score.
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Well I guess you must be pretty durn special. Yer momma be proud, I bet.
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The original vision, according to the article, isn't that players realize any particular singular accomplishment. The idea is that over many players, the world becomes changed in ways that are meant to intrigue the next player. For example, I could start building a pyramid but die after just setting up the base, then the next player will see it and go "Oh cool, someone put a lot of effort into making this thing" and they might finish the pyramid or build something else on top of it, or just ignore it comple
Hack on floppy (Score:4, Interesting)
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In the early '90s I used to play hot potato with a floppy loaded with just Nethack or Hack. We passed it around on a character death so we can build up that death list and laugh at each other.
OMG!!! I knew /. was news for nerds, but this is beyond the pale and venturing into territory that would make Steve Urkel appear macho.
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Isn't it glorious?
Meaningless gibberish isn't meaningful (Score:3)
I remember Passages. You start on the left side of the screen, move towards the right, then die. You get double the score if you choose to have a partner, but your score is irrelevant. That had a glimmer of meaning -- a brief comment on mortality. It had the weight of a typical New Yorker cartoon.
Chain World, from the article, is simply stupid. Religious mysticism is stupidity and confusion. Deliberately cultivating mysticism is deliberately cultivating stupidity and confusion. The entire set-up is intended to subtract meaning, not add it. It's entirely appropriate, though it isn't pointed out, that they use a flash drive for Chain World. Flash drives wear out.
The whole thing sounds like Rohrer forgot about the competition until the day before, then spent an hour throwing together a Minecraft mod, and spent the drive there trying to think up a speech.
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This isn't at all like the rumours game. People started doing entirely new things on their own when they came into contact with the game; they didn't slightly modify the message over generations.
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Isn't this the guy who made that game where you play ball with someone, and doing so gives you the ability to "reach for the stars" but you eventually realize you have to abandon your buddy in order to get a high score? I think he basically stumbled into making an interesting game once, and has now convinced himself that he's more talented than he is. A lot of artists have that problem. See: George Lucas.
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I bet you believe Elvis is dead too.
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Nonsense, it has all the depth of dorm-room philosophy. It's that brilliant idea that you come up with at a party while you're stoned, leaning on your friend telling him how you've just come up with something that's "Going to change the fucking WORLD, man!" It's that plan that just sounds GREAT when it's presented by that charismatic marketing guy in the meeting. It's that profound idea that's the hit of the coffee shop when you tell your drum circle buddies about it. It's the dream that keeps you up at nig
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I'm not talking about religion, per se; I'm talking about mysticism.
I'm an atheist, but I've studied religious texts and met religious thinkers, and encountered many that I found intelligent, insightful, and wise; it seemed to me that much of what they refer to as religion or spirituality were alternate ways of describing material reality. Importantly, they were trying to understand the world around them.
Mysticism is not about understanding the world. It's a matter of fetishizing a lack of understanding. An
Malware vector (Score:2)
Come now. How many types of malware spread by USB stick, again?
Will be dead after about 100 generations or so (Score:3)
No backup. Data that is not backed up could as well not exist. This is not innovative, it is just incompetent.
Now that's a waiting line!!! (Score:2)
Congratulations, you are player 6,534,862,514.
You can expect to receive the thumb-drive for play some time shortly before this universes energy death. What, no PCs? Huh, no human race? The earth is a cinder and the sun is cold dead lump? Bummer dude.
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Sounds like Rohrer got a lot of people thinking about their place in the universe.
Oh dear. (Score:2)
Jason Rohrer is known as much for his eccentric lifestyle as for the brilliant, unusual games he designs.
Doesn't seem so bad.
He lives mostly off the grid in the desert town of Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Admirable and practical.
He doesn’t own a car
No big deal, better for his health and the environment.
or believe in vaccination.
Ding ding ding ding ding, we have ourselves a Grade-A dumbass!
I mean sure, vaccination has only pretty much wiped out smallpox, polio, and a few other diseases, but the scary stuff in the needle is made in a factory and designed by scientists! Surely Mother Earth will provide for us!
I honestly hope his children never get really, truly ill, because he'll have a very hard lesson to learn.. I have the feeling he'
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Well, I'm not an expert in the field, but some people argue that those diseases were wiped out by enhanced sanitary conditions, and that they declined sharply before vaccines came into common use.
The point is that you should be careful to dismiss people as idiots before you know what information they base their decisions on - and after too.
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Smallpox transmits [wikipedia.org] like a flu, through inhalation of the airborne virus.
Polio transmits [wikipedia.org] through fecal-oral or oral-oral mechanisms.
If "enhanced sanitary conditions" were the reason for these to be erased (from the entire world in the case of smallpox, let's not forget that) then AIDS would be a minor problem nowadays with its harder infection mechanism (contact with body fluids of an infected person) and diseases like malaria would have been eradicated as well (especially with the efforts involved in kill
First Rule of Game Design (Score:2)
Players will play the game the way they want to, not the way you intended them to.
That's just plain elementary to all game design (or even anything interactive... remember that awful dungeonmaster who freaked out when you didn't play his campaign "the way you were supposed to"?).
It honestly makes me a bit sad that he took a definitive open-ended sandbox game, and turned it into a bogged down experience where you are arbitrarily expected to do only what the dev (or should I say modder) wants.
Additionally, th
how long before it's lost or broken in shiping? (Score:2)
how long before it's lost, stolen or broken in shipping?
Sounds odd... (Score:2)
In Rohrer’s mind, his game would share many qualities with religion—a holy ark, a set of commandments, a sense of secrecy and mortality and mystical anticipation.
I don't care what he's been smoking, but I want the same!
Then, after the player died in the game, they would pass the memory stick to the next person, who would play in the digital terrain altered by their predecessor...
That already exists for many games, it's called "Pass It On", but is done on a larger scale, true.
...and on and on for years, decades, generations, epochs.
Except...if you have a different OS...or if somebody breaks the API/compatibility...or somebody breaks the USB-Stick...
All in all, cool idea.
Porn Pool (Score:2)
I'm starting a pool to guess how many uses before the game is erased and replaced with porn. Put me down for 3.
Heh, the last sentence is great. (Score:2)
This was the idea, anyway, before things started to get weird.
You mean more than what it's now?
Anyone else have a powerful urge (Score:2)
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uhh, when the in-game character dies
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The idea that if you gave me a program now it would still be working in 30-50 years when I am likely to die is pretty silly.
I was written in COBOL. It will outlast the pyramids.
Written in stone (Score:2)
I was written in COBOL. It will outlast the pyramids.
I doubt it - they were written in stone.
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"The idea that if you gave me a program now it would still be working in 30-50 years when I am likely to die is pretty silly"
Counterexample: I can still play "Adventure".
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As several people point out below, you pass it on when your game character dies, not the player IRL. And, I know, I shouldn't be feeding trolls, but this was a classic.
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Chain World, Rohrer explained, was a mod, a customized version of Minecraft and a set of scripts that govern how it’s played.