Altering the SIS in CRPG

[M. J. Young]

I really should not be starting this thread, because I'm still wading through the stuff I missed when my computer crashed; but in reading Vincent's http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=12247">A short rant about "SIS" I began to take a different tack in my mind.

One of the big arguments regarding the lack of SIS in CRPG is that you can't really negotiate with the AI that runs the game. That may arguably be a limit of current technology; and yet it may arguably be false.

I have argued elsewhere that a CRPG might be regarded an RPG on the basis of the computer as a player with limited ability sharing an imaginary space. Because of the nature of the device, the computer is superb at sharing its current imagined space, but extremely limited in what it is able to add to it. If we accept that the computer and I are "imagining" the same space, because I can see what it imagines and thus imagine the same thing, the problem that remains is the interaction between us.

Let me step back and establish this as a reasonable assertion. If I am playing with you, not a computer, it is part of the process of sharing our imagined space that you describe to me what you perceive to be the reality within it. Our ability to share the space is totally dependent on the abilities we have to communicate with each other, both to express and to understand. If you were to describe a room to me, I would imagine what you described. Were you to draw the room, that would be a more effective means of communicating your vision of the room. In a text-based CRPG, the computer describes the room; in a visual-based one, it draws it. In both cases, it effectively communicates to me the contents of the space as it imagines it along with actions it is imagining within that space, and I effectively communicate to it my actions through its interface to the degree that it is able to understand my actions.

The objection is that I can't tell it that it has the space wrong--that it didn't understand what I intended, has me in the wrong position, or otherwise missed it. I can't fix what it imagines, only what I imagine.

Yet I wondered, what if I could do that? What if when I told it I wanted to do X and it thought I meant Y, I could say, no, that should have been X? If I could undo moves and consequences because in my opinion the other player--the computer--didn't get it?

Then I would be negotiating with the computer regarding the content of the shared imagined space, getting it to change what it imagines to be closer to what I imagine, instead of the other way around.

It then occurs to me that this capability has already been incorporated into many CRPGs; if memory serves, it's been within at least some of them all the way back to the text-based games I played on the C64 back in the early/mid eighties. I've seen my kids do it time and again, and never realized that this is what they were doing.

Most of these games have the capabilities 1) to save your current position and 2) to return to any previously saved position. Thus it has become bog-standard (what does that mean, anyway?) for players of gamist CRPGs to save their positions frequently, particularly just before embarking on sections of the game known to be dangerous, and then to play forward through the section ahead--only to return and attempt it again if they are not satisfied with the outcome. In other terms, if they disagree with the computer-player's statement of the shared imagined space, they negotiate by saying, "back up and let's try that again, so we can get the characters where I think they should be".

That's a more involved process than, "Dude, my guy was on the south side, not the north side, so he's behind the bad guys at this point, and they should be able to see him and attack him from where they are." Yet it is functionally the same: it adjusts the shared imagined space in the computer until it matches that of the player.

Thus "negotiation" is occurring.

I recognize that a computer cannot negotiate with a person in the same way that people negotiate with each other. I don't have a problem with that. I negotiate with my dog at times (promising to let her out in a minute or so if she'll be quiet so I can finish what I'm trying to type), my cats (suggesting that I'm willing the share the bed if they're willing to make room for me), and occasionally with horses (accommodating their fears of unknown people so that they will be comfortable with me). I cannot do this in the same way I do it with people, but it is often still a negotiation process. I see no reason why the ability to tell the computer, "let's back up and try that again from here, to see if I can get it to be the way I intended" is not a valid negotiation process for the formation of a shared imagined space between a computer and a person.

O.K., where are the flaws?

--M. J. Young

[Callan S.]

None by my interpretation, except I think your really negotiating with the creator of the game through a long range method of communication. It's like play by post game, the GM posts then you react to that (or even don't, depending on how you negotiate with it). The video game is just like a really complicated post from a GM. In fact, it's so complicated things like the save and reload if things just go stupid can happen...unlike a 'post', the game is complex enough to allow more negotiation options (even cheat codes come to mind).

I think it is possible to negotiate with the medium itself...here's a wacked analogy, I train a dog to give you a note (with the roleplaying stuff) if you say the right word. But the dogs nervous so you let it smell your hand and talk to it softly and then it gets comfortable and give you the note on command. But really I think that the writer of the note is so much 'louder' in terms of creative input to the roleplay, that you may as well ignore the dog. Likewise, I'd ignore the computer and say I'm negotiating with the game writer.

[M. J. Young]

...I think your really negotiating with the creator of the game through a long range method of communication.....I'd ignore the computer and say I'm negotiating with the game writer.

That's interesting; others have said as much in other threads. Let me challenge it with a few questions.

[*]My son has a hand-held chess game he beats all the time. Obviously, someone has written a program for the device that enables it to process the impact of opponent moves and respond accordingly. Is he playing chess with the game, or with the programmer?[*]If we grant that with current technology our consoles and computers can't think but can only do what they're programmed to do, does that mean that computers will never think, because no matter how much it seems as if they're thinking, they're ultimately only doing what they're programmed to do? Are you inherently saying that it is impossible for a computer ever to be a player in a game because inherently it only does what it is told to do?[*]Does this apply to the hypothetical UIM? The Ultra-Intelligent Machine theory suggests that we will ultimately be able to design a computer as smart as its designer, and that theoretically we should be able to use what we learn from that to design a computer which is smarter than its own designer. Having succeeded in doing this, if we gave that computer the task of designing one smarter than itself, this process would expand geometrically, creating smarter and smarter computers until their thoughts were incomprehensible to us. In this scenario, computers have been programmed by computers which were programmed by computers through several generations before a man is reached. Does this mean that if you were to play a game developed and run by such a UIM, it would really only be a game created by the original designer and communicated to you through the medium of these enhancing computers?[*]If the UIM could be a player in a game, why couldn't the console also be a player in the game, albeit a very stupid one? Why is the game's program not more like the rule books and source books, used by the electronic referee, instead of a message from the programmer--or are the rule books and source books the conduit through which the game author contributes to the shared imaginary space? I've long opposed that view, maintaining that the contents of those books cannot speak themselves into the shared imaginary space, but require the involvement of a player (usually the referee) to submit them. I'm not terribly inclined to say that it's different if the rules and settings are written in computer code than if they're in English. In that case, the referee is a relative imbecile who happens to be able to read computer code and communicate his understanding of the SIS with remarkable clarity.

Of course, this particular point requires a distinction between the device itself and the program it is running; but I'm not sure the distinction is so clear as that, as I've often played games which were invented by the person running them, so that distinction can be pretty blurry in human referees, too.[/list:u]
I'm interested in this. Part of me would like to be proved wrong (so I can continue my snobbish assertion that CRPGs are not "real" role playing games). So, why isn't the computer a player?

--M. J. Young

[Rob Carriere]

M.J.,
The question you raise is only partly answerable; the remainder is more of a philosophical choice on your part.

Any computer[1] that can ever be built is inherently limited in its capabilities, this is the Church-Turing thesis. That is to say, there are problems with well-defined solutions that no computer can solve.

Because of this, some people refuse to see a computer as (potentially) human-equivalent. Thus, a computer cannot be a player because being a player is a human condition and therefore, in this philosophy, by definition not open to a computer.

Others believe that the CT thesis applies to the human mind as well[2] and therefore that it is untenable to distinguish between a human and a sufficiently sophisticated computer. In this philosophy, a computer could be a player because any condition open to a human would by definition also be open to at least some computers.

Still others take the position that is unimportant whether the computer `really' thinks or `merely' presents a convincing simulation of thought. In this philosophy, a computer would be considered a player if you were unable to determine whether whether a program or a human was controlling your computer's output--i.e. a Turing Test for CRPGs.

Where there might be hope that some day we'll have facts that allow us to decide between the first two positions, the third position is one of attitude, not of fact, and thus not open to confirmation or refutation.

All of which leads me to argue that, at the present state of knowledge, if the computer isn't a player, then that is because you have decided that it isn't a player. No more, no less.

In particular, the human-analogon of the position that the dialog between you and the computer is `really' a dialog between you and the game-designer would be that any dialog between you and me is really a dialog between you and all those who formed my mind (parents, teachers, friends, and so on).

SR
--
[1] That's computer in it current meaning. There is no proof that devices of some kind couldn't be built that would be essentially more powerful than a Universal Turing Machine. (Nor is there proof that such devices could be built.)
[2] At this point in the development of neuroscience, there is no hard evidence either way, thus both this position and its opposite can only be taken on faith of some kind.

[simon_hibbs]

When people negotiate, they use a variety of strategies in order to achieve their goals. Most people learn these strategies, but some deduce them or refine them from personal experience.

Similarly computers can be tought strategies, and as your face recognition example shows they can geenrate their own strategies in some circumstances using a variety of mechanisms.

We could argue about the philosophical nature of computer 'intelligence', but the fact is that computers can hold an internal representation of an imagined space, and they can negotiate it's contents with humans. Arguments to disqualify computers from being 'active' participants in a game come down to special, abstruse definitions of the term 'active' that would mean little or nothing to the average game player.


Simon Hibbs

[Christopher Weeks]

I can't find any faults with what you're saying MJ.  I think the computer is a player.

Chris

[Callan S.]

MJ Young,

* He's playing chess with the programmer. The programmer has simply stated his moves in advance and a system of delivering them. His move is basically whatever he codes...after all, if I play chess with someone in real life, I could sit there using an algorithym I worked out, going through it with paper and pen then moving the required pieces with my own hand. Or perhaps I'll use an algorithym that's entirely in my head...in fact, we all do that without any choice.

You might want to argue that playing with someone has to involve playing with the algorythm that they don't have any choice in using...their own mind. While an algorythm they wrote isn't the same as that (it isn't, I agree), and thus doesn't represent playing with them. That'd be interesting to argue...is this what you mean, perhaps?

* No, comps can contribute (and in about 15 to 20 years will probably attain animal or even low human intellect).

Remember my crappy dog example...the dog sort of influenced the creative exchange. But really the guy who wrote the note was much 'louder' creatively. As computers get louder and louder creatively, you'll go from a remote roleplay with just the designer to more something here and now with the computer. It's just like if your were at table top with someone who was a really poor game contributor, and someone else who couldn't be present but sent really good e-mails to cover his PC's actions. Now imagining the poor contributor improving his skills over time...soon he might eclipse the really good e-mails.

* I think I covered this above.

* I think your confusing tool and creative contribution. Rule books are basically tools that are supposed to help with roleplay. It's like a book that explains proper grammer...it's not a message/creative contribution, it's something to aid a message/creative contribution.

CRPG's contain these tools and a creative contribution from the author.

And no jokes about me needing that book of grammer! ;)


To wrap up: I think the computer can be a contributor...currently though their contribution is massively eclipsed by the designers contribution. It wont always be this way, but it's practical to only see the designer as a contributor.

[contracycle]

I'm willing to accept a computer as an extraordinarily dumb player.  But I think this is a meaningless attribution.

I have no problem seeing the computers role as identical to that of a player, but I'm suprised to see MJ advance this point, becuase I see it through my materialism, and hence see human brains and computers as essentially the same device.

But I don't think the Essential nature of computers or brains is important.  Even allowing the identity, playing with a computer is at present still rather like playing with a 4-year old at best; there may be some tasks they can perform but their abuility to grasp what is happening, and what the point of the exercise might be, is limited.  Their ability to make meaningful decisions is also limited.

So yes, you could prop a 4-year old up at the table and put dice in its hand and claim it was playing, but I wouldn't buy it.  

Stepping back to the essential argument, however, it is my feeling that games are quite involved functions and living beings, and while a computer may well duplicate brain functions it still does not reproduce and cannot be said to be alive.  Computers are not evolved "beings", and do not have a fight/flight reflex, and have no history of predation.  Whether even a fully aware computer would find such games entertaining is open to doubt, I suspect.

[simon_hibbs]

But I don't think the Essential nature of computers or brains is important.  Even allowing the identity, playing with a computer is at present still rather like playing with a 4-year old at best; there may be some tasks they can perform but their abuility to grasp what is happening, and what the point of the exercise might be, is limited.  Their ability to make meaningful decisions is also limited.

This is true, of course. When I started roleplaying I ran published adventures, and then created my own dungeons. While I was blown away by the experience of roleplaying and running games, I was frustrated because other than simply create dungeons and run hack-n-slash games I realy had no idea whatever how to lay the groundwaork for a story based game, or break free of the 10' corridoors. I ran a few published scenarios and learned a bit mroe about setting the scene and giving my adventures some social context, but still the narrative environment was rudimentary at best.

It's easy to forget in 2004 just how far our hobby has come over the last quarter decade since I started playing RPGs. I spent years wondering how to run meaningful 'wilderness adventures', which is as far as I could think when it came to out-of-dungeon gaming. When I first saw a city campaign pack - Thieves World - it blew me away. Even so it was very primitive by modern standards, consisting mostly of random encounter tables and more tables for randomly populating sections of the city.

Nowadays I her people moan about how opressive metaplot is. back in those days I was crying out for any kind of plot, meta or otherwise. A metaplot that I could use as a narative framework for building a linked series of adventures would have been revolutionary, to me as a teenage roleplayer back in the early 80s.

I was a fully concious, inteligent (ahem) roleplayer but with a woeful lack of experience. Inteligence doesn't make you a great scenario author or referee, you also need bucket loads of experience and even after all these years I still reckon I'm on a fairly steep part of the learning curve. This is still a young hobby with a long way to go to maturity.


Simon Hibbs

[M. J. Young]

I want to thank everyone for their input so far. Gareth, I understand what you mean about the materialism that seems to infiltrate the view. Let me suggest (as long as you've raised it) that I have no trouble with the notion that a creative God created a being in His own image as a creative being, and that that creative being in turn created something in his own image which might also prove to be creative.

I also agree that there's something to the whole thing that smacks of playing a role playing game with a four-year-old as a referee, and I wouldn't do it. But then, I gave up on CRPGs twenty years ago and never went back, so apparently I don't care to play with four-year-old referees. As an aside, though, my youngest grew up around some very intense gaming--he was often sitting in his high chair next to me while E. R. Jones or I ran D&D or Multiverser. Most kids babble; he babbled constantly, and even after he could speak he would be heard going on and on with some story he was weaving about people, sometimes telling us about the story, sometimes just talking to himself. We had no idea what he was doing until one day, when he was about three, some kid sitting near him in a public waiting area asked what he was saying. His answer, word for word: "It's a game. Wanna play? Got any dice?" From very young, my kids all ran games for each other, and played in each other's games, and never seemed to have trouble with that. So maybe a four-year-old's understanding of the world limits what he can contribute to the shared imagined space; but in the case of a CRPG we can say that this particular four-year-old is extremely good at communicating what he envisions, and is a wizard at working out event resolution if he understands what you're trying to do.

In any case, you do accept that the computer/console makes sense as a player, which means we do have a shared imagined space between player and computer, and CRPGs fit the definitions of RPGs in common use around here despite the differences.

Which brings me to Callan. Thank you for defending your position, Callan; the ointment needs a fly, or we can't figure out what's wrong with it. I like your thoughts.

* He's playing chess with the programmer. The programmer has simply stated his moves in advance and a system of delivering them. His move is basically whatever he codes...after all, if I play chess with someone in real life, I could sit there using an algorithym I worked out, going through it with paper and pen then moving the required pieces with my own hand. Or perhaps I'll use an algorithym that's entirely in my head...in fact, we all do that without any choice.

Your counter to your own argument is very good; but I chose chess very specifically in this case, because there are a couple different ways in which computers are programmed to play, and these aren't really methods that their programmers use, in the main.

One method that doesn't work well in chess generally is the learning curve method. Essentially, the computer remembers every game it ever played, and remembers not to make the same mistake twice. That's really just like playing a person, except that people can't be as thorough in remembering their wrong moves as the computer can be. This isn't often used, because it's difficult to set a level and it doesn't really pose a challenge to the kinds of players who are interested in playing chess against a computer until many games have been played--but it suggests that it is the computer's decision, and not the game designer's decision, that is involved in each step of play. (This method was used in early computer learning experiments with Tic Tac Toe back in the fifties and sixties (I saw it at the New York World's Fair in '64 or '65), and was the means by which Whopper was supposedly programmed in WarGames.)

Another method is for the computer to project all the possible board positions several moves in advance. Thus it recognizes that if it moves Pawn to Bishop Six at this point, there are three ways it could lose in ten moves, fifteen ways it could lose in twenty--and it compares this to all the other possible moves on the board, to as many levels deep as it is capable of examining. Thus you can't surprise it, because it always sees what's possible which threatens its position. No human can play this way. There are more permutations in three moves in chess than you can really consider in detail. Thus the computer is not playing the way the designer would play, but by an entirely different method that the designer created which uses the computer's intellectual strengths, not those of the designer.

If I understand correctly, the latest generation of top computer programs (the ones that seriously challenged a grand master) use a complex position analysis program that tries to evaluate whether its board position is strengthened or weakened by any particular move. It is capable of making sacrifices to draw an opponent into a worse position because of this. The computer is starting to emulate the way a chess player thinks about chess; but it is doing so in ways far superior to the abilities of its programmer. The programmer has in essence taught it how to play, but given it the ability to make its own decisions within that understanding.

I don't think that in any of these cases it can be said that the programmer told the computer how to respond to player moves--certainly not in the sense we mean when we're talking about the current state of CRPGs. Such a computer chess program would require that the database contain every possible board position with a programmed move to make in each case, and that's more than my desktop could hold, I'm pretty sure.

Where information or the algorithm originated doesn't seem important, in my assessment; it's who is applying it that matters. As Simon illustrated, I, too, started with D&D, running something right out of a book and following the mechanics slavishly. I did learn over time that a lot of play was going to require having me make decisions about things without the support of the rules. I probably could have responded to some of those things with comments like, "the rules don't say that you can dance, so you can't". I didn't. On the other hand, I don't remember anyone ever wanting to dance, so in that case it may be an example of something the rules didn't need to cover in my case. Over time I learned to fill in more blanks. At the same time, there were games coming out (Rolemaster, GURPS) which themselves attempted to fill in more blanks. There's a difference between play in which the designer's contribution provides more information and play in which the player running it makes more stuff up himself, but that's not a distinction which is definitive of whether it's role playing. When I started playing D&D, I didn't know what crenelated meant, and couldn't tell you the difference between a gate and a portcullis, or how a screw differed from a ram or a ballista from a catapult. I learned quite a bit about medieval stuff from the books. The designer's information informed my games far more in the early days; my own contribution started as repeating what the book said, then expanded to combining those elements in new ways, then to creating my own elements. It wasn't "not roleplaying" when my part came entirely out of the book, I think.

Remember my crappy dog example...the dog sort of influenced the creative exchange. But really the guy who wrote the note was much 'louder' creatively. As computers get louder and louder creatively, you'll go from a remote roleplay with just the designer to more something here and now with the computer. It's just like if your were at table top with someone who was a really poor game contributor, and someone else who couldn't be present but sent really good e-mails to cover his PC's actions. Now imagining the poor contributor improving his skills over time...soon he might eclipse the really good e-mails.

This actually is a good argument. Certainly if my niece sat down to a game of, say, Bridge (to choose a strategy card game) and my mother (who is good at Bridge) stood over her shoulder telling her what to play, I would be annoyed and would think that if my mother wanted to play she should sit down and play, and not tell my niece what to do. I think, though, that if before we started to play my mother spent a week teaching my niece to play bridge, that wouldn't be the same argument.

I'm going to say in the case of the dog, the dog doesn't matter because he's only the telephone line. In the case of the remote player, we may have cooperation going on or we may actually be playing the remote player, not the guy working the e-mail. However, in both of those cases, it is tacitly assumed that the dog and the e-mail guy are relaying current game position to the remote player and bringing back their response. In the CRPG situation, the programmer has told the computer how to play and is relying on it to play correctly--the programmer never knows how we respond, but depends on the computer to make decisions the way it was taught. This is the same difference as exists between my mother standing over my niece's shoulder telling her what to play and them spending a week going over card strategy. I'm playing with or against the entity that makes the decisions, even if the decisions it is making are based on instruction or information given it by someone else, if that other person is not privy to our interaction.

* I think your confusing tool and creative contribution. Rule books are basically tools that are supposed to help with roleplay. It's like a book that explains proper grammer...it's not a message/creative contribution, it's something to aid a message/creative contribution.

CRPG's contain these tools and a creative contribution from the author.

I guess I'm not seeing the difference between a Final Fantasy CD and a DMG, PH, MM, Greyhawk Setting book, and Keep on the Borderlands module. In the latter case everything necessary for play is contributed by the game designer and presented in-game through the referee. In the former, it's all presented through the console. In the latter case, the referee may be able to add something to the materials--but he might believe that's inappropriate, and so not do it. He might be able to adjudicate an action declared by one of the players that's not covered by the rules--but he might simply reply that you can't do that. Give a novice referee those books and no experience or training outside those books, and he'll run what he reads (I did). Give the Playstation2 that CD and it will run what it reads. I learned; the PS2 isn't capable of learning. That doesn't mean either of us weren't participating in a role playing game when we ran our first; it only means that I'm smarter than it is (even if it is better at communicating what it's imagining). No offense to anyone, but I'm smarter than a lot of people who run games, and that doesn't mean that they're not running role playing games even if it could be shown (which it can't) that I run them better and more creatively.

I think that in a CRPG you do have a shared imagined space, as long as you accept that the computer is sharing it.

I'm pretty close to convinced here; but I'm interested in any additional arguments.

--M. J. Young

[Callan S.]

Your counter to your own argument is very good; but I chose chess very specifically in this case, because there are a couple different ways in which computers are programmed to play, and these aren't really methods that their programmers use, in the main.

It doesn't matter if its the method the programmer would use. What matters is that he chose to apply this method. That's why I used the 'working it out with pen and paper' example. If I'm playing with you in real life and I start using pen and paper to work out moves or such and then moving the pieces with my hand (never mind how it looks silly), your still playing with me. Despite whatever method I choose to play via, it's that I chose it, that matters.

Really, pushing a pawn forward two squares isn't some deep expression of another persons presence at the game. The algorythm they apply, which decides the move, is. That's nothing to do with individual moves.

For me, that covers many of the points but if not for both of us, I guess it's a divergence point.

I think, though, that if before we started to play my mother spent a week teaching my niece to play bridge, that wouldn't be the same argument.

However, your niece is hardly going to play exactly the way she's was taught, while if she's being instructed from behind she will do pretty much everything she's told. By addition or even by error, your niece will add more than your absent mother has, to the experience. It's a matter of who's louder, contribution wise.

If your niece didn't have the creative edge, memory failings, etc of a human, it would feel more like your playing with your mother.

I'm going to say in the case of the dog, the dog doesn't matter because he's only the telephone line. In the case of the remote player, we may have cooperation going on or we may actually be playing the remote player, not the guy working the e-mail. However, in both of those cases, it is tacitly assumed that the dog and the e-mail guy are relaying current game position to the remote player and bringing back their response.

This was insisted by another poster. There has already been an exchange of information and then both parties have contributed their effort, both influenced by the other. But it seems important that they then each take that contribution and repeat the cycle again and again, otherwise it's not roleplay.

It happening multiple times is nice, but nice doesn't make it a requirement. Weve had the exchange happen ones...people insist it must happen over and over. Insisting but no support...perhaps because it looks different if its done over and over? I dunno.

I think that in a CRPG you do have a shared imagined space, as long as you accept that the computer is sharing it.

I think your sharing it with the author of the game. It's just that you've only ever had one exchange of creative input (though the exchange can take hours and hours of play). But that doesn't mean you haven't exchanged with him at all and only multiple exchanges count. How many? Two? Ten? Ten thousand? Who sets the line.

I'm short on time so must dash...

[Christopher Weeks]

I think that in a CRPG you do have a shared imagined space, as long as you accept that the computer is sharing it.

I think your sharing it with the author of the game. It's just that you've only ever had one exchange of creative input (though the exchange can take hours and hours of play). But that doesn't mean you haven't exchanged with him at all...

I'm pretty sure that you're not using some jargonistic version of "exchange" and that means that there is a reciprocal trade taking place.  And that's specifically why I agree with MJ.  You can be easily shown to have a two-way interaction with the computerized GM and you can easily be shown to have no two-way interaction with the GM's teacher (er...programmer).  So any actual exchange that's taking place is with the game.

Further, I'm not sure, but it reads like you're missing the point about the author being the computer's teacher.  If I teach you to GM and you go run a game for MJ and his sons, are they playing with you?  Or only with me because I "programmed" you?

Chris

[Callan S.]

Your mixing up the idea of teaching and programming and getting yourself into a spot.

If you teach me to GM, what I eventually express will have elements of the teaching you expressed to me, mixed with my output.

However, if you kidnap me and brainwash me to GM in a particular way, that will help to thoroughly supress any creative input I might have added. If you don't see creative input from me but do see me acting out what you brainwashed me into doing, who's are you exchanging creative material with? Me?

Currently we don't teach computers. We program them, because their already like someone who is brainwashed...they'll do exactly as their told. If their doing exactly as their told, your not exactly recieving a creative exchange with them, are you?

As for 'using some jargonistic version' if you want to dismiss it that way, cool. I'm not trying to bend the words till I can trick you, though. I'm trying to cut down to the essential elements, which much like a single stem cell doesn't look like a man, might not look like roleplay at a casual glance. And what it does look like might just seem to be jargonistic so the technique is dismissed and I can't go any further.

[Christopher Weeks]

As for 'using some jargonistic version' if you want to dismiss it that way, cool.

Well, I was merely verifying that we were on the same page and giving you a 'heads up' that I was using the dictionary definition, in case you were not.  It seems that you think I'm doing something obstructive.  I hope this clears that up.

The point was that there is no exchange with the author/programmer but there is with the GM/computer.

Your mixing up the idea of teaching and programming and getting yourself into a spot.

If you teach me to GM, what I eventually express will have elements of the teaching you expressed to me, mixed with my output.

However, if you kidnap me and brainwash me to GM in a particular way...

No, I'm not actually mixing them up.  In at least one of MJ's Chess examples, the programmer was programming the computer to learn to play.  Once the computer has done some of that learning, I think it clearly is playing the game.

Currently we don't teach computers. We program them, because their already like someone who is brainwashed...they'll do exactly as their told. If their doing exactly as their told, your not exactly recieving a creative exchange with them, are you?

Can you explain (hypothesize?) what a human does that you are willing to attribute as creativity that a computer does not?

If you're gaming with your brainwashed GM (for example) but you don't know she was brainwashed and "programmed" for a certain style of running, do you, as a player, think that you're playing with her or her handlers?  And then, what's the difference between that "brainwashed" GM and any of the random GMs that have trained themselves to GM D&D a certain way to the point that they won't consider another style as being meaningful or valid?  Are they also brainwashed?  If so, who are you playing with and if not, how can you ever know?  And further, how can you justify the dichotomy that you're drawing between the brainwashed and the creative?

Finally, you're clearly ignoring the example of systems that are programmed to evolve new algorithms.  MJ's Chess system is a clear and extant example.  There are lots of alife examples that aren't games.  But I think they're possible now, and just around the corner.

Chris

[Inner Circle Inc]

Forgive me if these points have already been brought up elsewhere, I've not had time to read all of the threads in this subject all the way through yet.  It would seem to me that the computer isn't so much a stupid player; so much as it's an incredibly uninspired and lazy GM.  To quote one of my first GM's, Role-playing is organized chaos, hold the organization and double the chaos.  There are mechanics in any game; this could potentially be seen as the programming of a CRPG.  . . It's the basic rule set that all players agree to abide by, and it's the reason that a great sword deals more damage than a dagger.  In both systems, it acts sort of like the laws of physics, they are unbreakable and are constant . . . but what happens when you bend them?  

In an RPG that allows a live GM, I can do things that the system doesn't have rulings for.  What happens if I use Unseen Servant to pick up girls at the tavern?  What happens when I throw a torch onto kegs of alcohol?  How much damage does a chandelier do, and what do I have to roll in order to hit the rope holding it to the ceiling?  All of these are things that have either been done in RPG's that I've been part of or have been GMing, and all required a snap ruling to a novel situation, though if I attempted any of those in a CRPG, the computer coding simply wouldn't allow me to do it . . . in essence, its like having an extremely strict, extremely unwavering GM, and I think that you hit it right on the dot when you mentioned that its all about being able to bargain and make compromise.  

Most, if not all of you here have likely role-played for several years, and I've a feeling that veterans of the tabletop RPG's have similar stories to tell.  That seems to me to be the largest single factor keeping CRPG's from becoming expected, though what's at fault really?  Unwavering programming is part of the problem, the fact that we can't get computers that are able to evolve as the game progresses, or at least are unable to evolve beyond what the pre-programmed allowances for change are.  While this can be modified to an extent through game mods, patches, expansion packs, cheat codes and the like, they are still limited to what is known ahead of time, and what can be anticipated for.  

In the Larp that I ran for 2 years, we called it Joel's Law, that no matter how well planed your adventure was, no matter how many contingencies you had plans for, the characters would always find something that they wanted to do or would try to do, that you have not planed for.  The two ways to deal with Joel's law has been to either

a)   Make it impossible to do ("you find a stone wall that you can't get past."  "I try to climb it"  "you can't")

b)   Make it possible, but extremely difficult to discourage it. ("Monsters, keep resurrecting")

c)   Allow it, adapting your campaign to the deviation, but with consequences ("alright, since you traveled back in time and killed Draconis as he was a child. . . very well, however since you did it, Vadie was never killed and in your timeline, he's conquered the province")

d)   Allow it, adapting your campaign to the deviation, rewarding the characters for creative thinking ("alright, you've jumped on the back of the Bone Machine, Corey, get on Wayne's back. . .")

The first two are the easiest to do, simply not allowing the actions to be a viable option.  As this requires the least amount of options and thus is the easiest to code, it's the one most CRPG's utilize.  The third and fourth options require creativity on the behalf of the GM, something which is doable if your GM is there in front of you, however in a CRPG, since every possible option is simply impossible to code in, and the program is unable to be creative by itself, it is simply not possible with current technology, and that in and of itself, limits the SIS to what the computer program is capable of.

Simply my observations on the matter, while I see where you are coming from and can see some similarities between the consol being an inept player and you the advisor, the program would limit far more that mouse and keyboard alone would, after all, I've been typing this into my word processor, yet I doubt heartily that it understands what I'm writing, much less being able to form any matter of retort.  It makes more sense to me to see you as the player, limited by an uncreative and simplistic GM, the program.

Simply an observation

Paul of Inner Circle