Universalis, Entropy and the Fall of the Uniwiki

[Trevis Martin]

After a fourth and fifth try, our attempts at playing Universalis by Wiki have come to an anticlimactic end.

I think Mike's original idea, way back when we started thinking about play by post on a wiki for Universalis, was a subtly different game.  He was interested (as I remember) in a game with many participants where the world building was the focus.  Others who played were interested in a more traditional scene centered game.  The first two Universalis Wiki tries were killed by wiki spam so, being interested, I offered to host the game on my wiki, because the engine I use is relatively secure and because I was convinced that some things could be done to accommodate Universalis play, including the automatic tracking of coins.

The Universalis Arena 3 was born as an attempt to play Sim Universalis.  The interface was a bit clunky requiring multiple entries for the tracking to work.  This game started as a Jules Vernian "Hollow Earth" game instead of the multi universe "shard" games that had been played earlier.

Because of the nature of the medium it was generally ruled before play that there were no strict turns.  Multiple scenes going at once were possible and people could post where they wished when they wished.  We hoped that by attaining a critical mass of posters the game would be perpetually moving.

As these games do, this game dwindled into nothing. When the game came to an absolute standstill we did a little postmortem on it.

Not wanting to be licked I refined the interface for the following game.  I'm pretty sure that I ironed out the usability problems outlined in the last thread I linked.  Everyone said the interface was pretty easy to use and understand.   So we began Universalis Arena 4.  We got quite a few people who signed up, which made me excited that this would work. 

In an attempt to solve what we saw as a problem with diffuseness in scenes we came up with some rules to commit players to play scenes through.  This game also failed though we could no longer blame the interface for the issue.  People simply stopped posting.  People were not invested with what was happening in the game.  The setting stuff we had started wasn't cranking anyone up very much so we scrapped it and started again.

Due to This clever post by Mike Holmes we realized the importance of everyone getting invested.  In discussion on the boards of my site we decided to reconcile ourselves to the idea that we would only be 5 or 6 players and to no longer expect any growth because it would be too hard for people to be invested in the game from the beginning.I even posted two tenets one demanding that every player has a story element tenet which they are jazzed about and committed to seeing realized in play, and a second asking for a voluntary commitment to make two spending scene posts a week.

Well, so now this final Uniwiki has failed.  It was whittled down to just three of us.  Scott Martin, Chris Weeks and myself.  We didn't have the drive to keep it going on our own.  This, combined with the failing of the online Sorcerer PBP, Razing Arizona, that I was in, and the failing of the playtest of my exclusively PBP game, Revisionist History.  I feel a little soured on the whole asynchronous gaming thing.

We started off well enough, in the new Uniwiki, but things soon slowed to a crawl.  It seems the idea of Universalis by post is fatally flawed somehow.  This is my idea as to why.

Universalis, as a game, builds up a great deal of entropy.  The game itself is perpetually expanding and fuzzy.  Unless set inside the individual or in some kind of tenet, there are no walls or limits to bounce off of.  Many role playing games have a set setting or situation or character that provide that creative contraint for players to bounce off of and gain energy from.  Universalis does not have any of those things and so the system is always loosing energy.  It is a game with a lot of points of contact, and which requires a lot of energy to keep going.  In a live setting, when everyone has their minds charged up (like haveing just seen a cool movie) and an enclosed and focused social situation, these problems can be overcome.

But, add this kind of system to play by post gaming which is, by its nature, much less focused (or requires hyper focused and committed people) and has no immediate social reinforcement.  Add to that no turn order requirement and the energy loss ramps up that much more. It is, played in the way we attempted, Unsustainable.

I'd like to hear from all those who have participated in the various Universalis by post games as well as anyone else that has any comments on this issue.

All this said, my wiki is still available for anyone who wishes to play by post any kind of game.  Just contact me and let me know.

best

Trevis

[ScottM]

Great wrap up Trevis.  I agree that the interface is simplified to the point where it clearly isn't the responsible party. I know it took a lot of work on your part. Thank you.

I agree that it's unsustainable, though I don't know why.  I think these two points you mentioned: the lack of focus and the lack of social reinforcement, combine to pull things apart. 

Most PbeMs I played have fallen to entropy-- but usually the GM can keep things going a bit longer, especially by reclaiming players who are drifting.  Kind of a hall monitor position; making sure that absences are quickly cut out or encouraged to rejoin the game.  Without a hall monitor, drifting players might get one or two weak reminders before they drift completely away.  There's also less a feeling that you've dissapointed someone specific... there's less guilt to make you post through a rough or boring spot.

Those are my observations and guesses so far.
Scott

[Valamir]

I think the culprit is not solely asynchronous gaming, but rather the juxtaposition of asynchronous gaming with players who have very high standards for considering a game enjoyable and worth their time and those standards are challenging to meet with asynchronous communication.

Consider the importance that recognizing the non verbal cues of your fellow players has in the Big Model.  That's where enjoyment gets recognized, that's where synergies get going.  People get jazzed off of seeing other people get jazzed.  Its hard for eagerness and excitement to come through in asynch communication.  This is also proven to be a big hurdle for distance education practitioners to overcome.  Student participation in asynch classes tend to be much more torpid than in live classes, or even sych classes.

For gamers whose reason for participation doesn't boil down to getting jazzed by other people being jazzed asynch gaming should (and has) worked fine.  But for those for whom that's a priority...especially for narrativist play where its pretty much a requirement...asynch falls flat in a big way.

[Mike Holmes]

Yep.

The only thing that I wonder about this, is whether or not Universalis is any worse for asynch play than any other game. And it might be, in fact, for the reasons that Trevis lays out, though lots of other games fall apart in asynch play. Most, I'd say. So it's hard to say for sure.

But certainly the feeling that I had to start that in fact Universalis would be good for this sort of thing isn't in any way particularly true. At least not for the sort of play that ended up occuring.

As I've said elsewhere (and Trevis indicates above) I am still interested in what I'm now calling WorldWiki which is a very different set of rules than Universalis meant to inform people that play is less about trying to create storylines, and more just about worldbuilding. That said, though I think the rules that I'd posted for WorldWiki might work, I'm currently working on a design that I think will be much better for this. Still in it's infancy, however.

Mike

[nijineko]

thank you for your insights into why PBeM format games seem to fall apart. i have had a few online attempts at gaming with some friends, much more structured games that what you seem to be talking about, but even then, it fell apart into almost nothing. now it is down to just myself and one other. between the two of us, we continue, and even enjoy it. but, i must admit i miss all the others too. in our case, scheduling seemed to be the clincher. eventually people didn't want to take the time needed to come up with something, and were distracted by other life things in their schedule.

[Mike Holmes]

Hi Ninjineko, welcome to the Forge. What's your real name?

It's not "life things" and "schedule." These are the excuses people use, yes, but they are excuses. I mean, the players all decided to play in the first place, right? So they didn't have "life things" and "schedule" then? Those things suddenly appeared?

Players might even feel like those things did appear suddenly. But the fact is that we all either make time for a game, or we don't. What's really going on is that the player is comparing the urge to post at each moment to the urge to...do "life things." Or watch TV. Whatever it is. And they're deciding not to post. This is true of all gaming, but especially with Asynch gaming. Because you really don't have an excuse with Asynch gaming. You're telling me that you can't come up with 10 minutes to post a couple of times a week somewhere in your schedule? As compared with attending a 4 hour session? Timewise, the shortness and flexibility of asynch are optimal. So they never, ever fall apart for "scheduling reasons" or the like. This is just what people put forth.

No, they fall apart because they're not very social. Basically RPGs aren't often played solo, and having more players actually means more solo players, in terms of asynch play in many cases. So no surprise individuals fall out. How often do players drop out of a face to face RPG in the middle of a session? I've never seen that happen. Because the social pressure of being face to face, committed to being present with others to do this activity in question, is amazingly powerful.

Now, does that mean that all asynch play is doomed? Well, I've had PBEMs go for a long time. I've got one going right now that's been going for nearly a year and is over 1000 posts. I have another that's been going on at an amazingly slow pace for over two years now (like some months having only one post or so), but refuses to die. There is a level of committment that you can achieve if you spend some time in the game being social. That is, not just posting to the game, but either making social posts, or actually being FTF with the players from time to time (even if you don't play when you're FTF).

So asynch is merely very problematic. Not automatically doomed. Play tends to crawl along at such a slow pace that it's just not often enough to keep your attention without that social reinforcement.

Mike

[nilsderondeau]

Universalis, as a game, builds up a great deal of entropy.  The game itself is perpetually expanding and fuzzy.  Unless set inside the individual or in some kind of tenet, there are no walls or limits to bounce off of.  Many role playing games have a set setting or situation or character that provide that creative contraint for players to bounce off of and gain energy from.  Universalis does not have any of those things and so the system is always loosing energy.  It is a game with a lot of points of contact, and which requires a lot of energy to keep going.  In a live setting, when everyone has their minds charged up (like haveing just seen a cool movie) and an enclosed and focused social situation, these problems can be overcome.

Hi Trevis,

Had been watching the progress of the latest UniWiki and must say that I continually thought to myself "they're losing unity".  I could sit down and write a very long, literary post about aesthetics which would bore everyone, myself included.  Instead I should just say that the play reminded me of a piece of fiction written by an imaginative student who has lost sight of why his story needs to be told.  His strong suit is his imagination and so he invents another damn thing to keep his own interest up and hopes to do the same for his audience.  Now I know all that goes for fiction writing doesn't go for gaming--vis. Mike Holmes's comments on social interaction--but there is something about engaging narrative form that begets momentum.  I'm not criticising your play: part of the appeal of Uni is making up "another damn thing" and it is wonderful that this instinct is accomodated.  But for asynchronous play, I really think there has to be a fairly well-shaped narrative or an agreement about form.  This can happen accidentally, but I think this is rare.

Anyway, very interesting!

Cheers,
N.

[Mike Holmes]

I agree - investment is lessened as the focus wanders. Assuming people are looking for a coherent narrative. This is why what I've always wanted wouldn't have a creative agenda to shoot for a coherent narrative at all, and instead be about worldbuilding. Not sure that'd work any better, but I can garuntee that I'm more interested in it personally. In that case discursion is the point of play.

Mike

[Trevis Martin]

Hi Nils,

Yeah, trying to get back up from the previous failure didn't help much either.  The experience has made me do a lot of thinking about the power of creative constraints.  This is something I've thought a lot about in the context of art.  I see games like Lexicon that seem to succeed  because the constraints are very strong and the time is short.  When playing Uniwiki I admit that I sometimes felt the yawn of the chasm of time on the edges of my conciousness.  Thinking about that, and continually pouring energy into that chasm,  is part of what de-energized me.  I've been wondering what would happen if you did something like a set number of scenes for the whole story, say 12 or 15.  One scene per week, period.  You'd know the game wasn't infinite, 15 weeks is about a semester.  In fact I thought about all sorts of limits.  LIke say only 3 or 4 main characters, unity of place, etc.  All those things that are sometimes thought about in fiction writing.

I don't know that I could persuade anyone to give it another go though.  :)

best

Trevis

It makes me want to figure out a formula for time constraint in Revisionist History too.

[Mike Holmes]

Frankly I haven't seen any evidence that Lexicon actually works any better, either. Which is bad news for me, because it's largely the sort of worldbuilding exercise that I advocate.

Here's a theory that's really unlikely to be right. How about the problem with UniWiki is that it's open but wants story, and with Lexicon that it's closed, but wants to contain more? That would make both of us right.

Sounds like wishful thinking and pandering to parallelism, however. :-)

Mike

[nilsderondeau]

When playing Uniwiki I admit that I sometimes felt the yawn of the chasm of time on the edges of my conciousness.  Thinking about that, and continually pouring energy into that chasm,  is part of what de-energized me. 

Ohmigod!  You just described the past fifteen dispairing years of my writing life!  It's tough, ain't it, the frission between new invention and actually putting it into operation.

I've been wondering what would happen if you did something like a set number of scenes for the whole story, say 12 or 15.  One scene per week, period.  You'd know the game wasn't infinite, 15 weeks is about a semester.  In fact I thought about all sorts of limits.  LIke say only 3 or 4 main characters, unity of place, etc.  All those things that are sometimes thought about in fiction writing.

And now you're saying exactly what I just logged in to say.  I was going to be so smart about it, suggesting that players adopt some sort of formulaic constratint in the tenet phase.  Somewhere there is a list of dramatic/fictive structures that could serve as guidance.  As I've posted before, I think Uni needs these kinds of constraints to work online.  Yeah, it could be as simple as choosing a set number of scenes or deciding on a series of objects one of which that must appear in each scene--you all were on the way in the last Uniwiki game with the Quote tenent.  I loved that!

I don't know that I could persuade anyone to give it another go though.  :)

Well you could count on my participation.  One word, however, since we seem to be doing a postmortem on the wiki--I really have trouble with the format, with having to enter the right codes, etc.  I think you're far better off playing this in threaded fashion in a forum, using something like Yahoo groups databases to track coins, facts, objects, etc.  Could be I'm just hopeless, but since reading the wiki represented some static in my enjoyment of following the game, I thought I would mention it.

[greyorm]

Trevis,

I can't say I'm surprised. That had been my exact experience with PBP games for many years, and one of the main reasons I stay the hell away from them these days. It is also one of the reasons I demand, as a rule, that anyone joining one of my on-line RPG groups make a specific commitment to the game, to be there every week, and that if they do not feel they can make that commitment, to pass on the invitation.

In 15-years of FTF gaming, I only ever had one player we booted from a group because they decided not to show regularly (and obviously had other things they wanted to do with their time), but there's something about the Internet that makes people blow off their game time for other things, to an extent that wouldn't be tolerated in FTF groups. There's a come-and-go, whenever-I-feel like-it, noncomittal nature to internet behavior in general, and it can be seriously detrimental to RPG play.

I'd heard about all the Uniwiki games, Raising Arizona, etc. and made the conscious choice not to participate, despite my interest, because I simply did not feel like investing the time and energy into something I knew would never come to any sort of resolution.

And I think that is often the trick with these things: working towards a resolution. Rather than an open-ended, let's-see-where-this-takes-us, this-is-going-to-go-forever sort of situation, put a time-limit and/or a clear end-game/goal on it.

The most successful PBP I ever played was actually a board game, and the only reason it crashed is due to the guy running it placing play on hold "for a bit" and then moving to Japan for three years, though I think there were some ulterior reasons for him not completing the game.

//Tangent //
He had mentioned to me in discussing play that the game was not playing out the way he had envisioned it. I believe the frustration mounted for him as the game continued to move further and further away from his vision of what it was supposed to be like during various turns.

I'm not talking about the way it was working mechanically, but progressively. Basically, the guy running the game was looking to use it to develop a history of his game world, but he had some ideas of how that history should happen before play began. Simply, his own expectations of where play was going to/should have gone sabotaged his ability to allow the game to happen and destroyed his own enjoyment of it.

Years of Illusionist play and GMing were trounced by simple board game rules that did not obey the necessary fudging to pseudo-organically "produce" the desired events -- the illusion of an organic history that exactly matched his vision, thus validating that history in some manner, was shattered. Instead, things happened as they happen in a game: in an unknown manner, without a script, and without foreknowledge of the resulting events.
//End Tangent//

We ended one turn shy of end-game (which honestly still aggravtes the hell out of me). That was the last time I ever participated in a PBP.

Now, many, many years ago I also played in PBM games that lasted forever: both Duelmasters and Hyborian War. I don't know how the guys at RSI manage it, or what their player turn-over rate is. I only stopped playing because I ran out of disposable income to devote to it, and plan to jump right back in to one or both

I think, perhaps, the reasons for the success of these games as long-term enterprises are twofold: with Duelmasters, there is very much a "drop-in, drop-out" mentality. It doesn't matter if a particular player and their team suddenly disappear, because you can still keep playing without interruption AND anyone can join in, or back in, at any time. Even if every other player disappears, the lone individual left can continue to play against the teams RSI (the company) itself runs, and there is no difference between them and your team.

Second, with Hyborian War, the world doesn't stop moving because someone drops out of the game. Their country continues to be run by the individuals at RSI, basically put on automatic, but such a thing is transparent to the other players: for the most part you do not know if another player is a computer/company nation or another player. There is also an end-game component: the game ends after a particular number of turns have passed and a winner is declared based on well-known criteria.

(There is also a commitment-through-monetary-investment aspect to RSI games that affects player retention rates, but I think we can ignore that here, though it is a viable method to produce incentive, and one my high-school FTF group actually adopted at one point.)

[Trevis Martin]

HI Mike,

Frankly I haven't seen any evidence that Lexicon actually works any better, either. Which is bad news for me, because it's largely the sort of worldbuilding exercise that I advocate.

At least I've actually seen Lexicons completed.  The same can't be said for asynch Universalis games.  So far, anyway.

Nils,

One word, however, since we seem to be doing a postmortem on the wiki--I really have trouble with the format, with having to enter the right codes, etc.  I think you're far better off playing this in threaded fashion in a forum, using something like Yahoo groups databases to track coins, facts, objects, etc.  Could be I'm just hopeless, but since reading the wiki represented some static in my enjoyment of following the game, I thought I would mention it.

That's interesting.  I thought I had the format pretty well worked out.  I mean,  you don't really have to enter much.  Two drop downs (and those only when you form a new scene or component) and then use the quick entry form and put your coin numbers in the boxes.  One of the reasons I like the wiki format is how everything can be linked together and such.  But I don't know maybe it is still too complicated.  Did you try adding an edit to anything to see how it worked?  Or creating a new fact page?  I'd love it if you could get more specific on this.  Anyone else who has input on this score, I'm interested in hearing from you too.

Hi Raven,

I think, perhaps, the reasons for the success of these games as long-term enterprises are twofold: with Duelmasters, there is very much a "drop-in, drop-out" mentality. It doesn't matter if a particular player and their team suddenly disappear, because you can still keep playing without interruption AND anyone can join in, or back in, at any time. Even if every other player disappears, the lone individual left can continue to play against the teams RSI (the company) itself runs, and there is no difference between them and your team.

This is kind of what we were hoping for with a 'critical mass' of players.  It turns out in our experience that once people drop the phenomenon of the "game moving on" seems to destroy their investment and keeps them from coming back in.  Generally when someone goes, they go for good.  And we have no equivalent "core' like the RSI staff to keep things going.

(There is also a commitment-through-monetary-investment aspect to RSI games that affects player retention rates, but I think we can ignore that here, though it is a viable method to produce incentive, and one my high-school FTF group actually adopted at one point.)

Ah!  My new get rich quick scheme! :)

best

Trevis

[Christopher Weeks]

I don't know that I could persuade anyone to give it another go though.  :)

I know I'm a sucker.  If we assemble five or more players who we all think are driven to participate, I'm in.

[greyorm]

It turns out in our experience that once people drop the phenomenon of the "game moving on" seems to destroy their investment and keeps them from coming back in.  Generally when someone goes, they go for good.  And we have no equivalent "core' like the RSI staff to keep things going.

Duelmasters is a bit different in this regard, in that there is no learning curve to get in on the action. I don't know how much you know about DM, if anything, but the short of it is that it is a tactical gladiatorial combat management game. You play the manager and tell your warriors when and how to fight, try to match them up against opponents, develop friendships/rivalries, etc.

So you don't need to know anything about what has happened before in the game in order to start playing right then. However, I have a feeling there is a huge time investment in Uni on the wiki in order to drop into an established game, or (if there isn't) the perception of one that is not mitigated by an "Everything you need to know to play" one-page.

As for a core staff you need (for Uni) yourself and one other person. That's all. You don't need five or more core staffers. Just enough people to keep the game going, those dedicated to such a goal, with the interest to keep it up. You seem to have that, so find someone else.

Thus far, it seems like you guys develop all this stuff, and then you quit. Well...ok. Why, though? That seems like a waste of time: "Well, that didn't work out, so let's do it again and start over from scratch!"

Honestly, I can kind of see why you aren't getting anyone excited about it: this is definitionally dysfunctional play! "It still isn't doing what we want, darnit! I'm not happy with the results! Let's do it again!" This IS all those broken gaming groups who prompted Ron to write about them in his essays.

And if tthat isn't true, if you aren't experiencing dysfunction, then why all the public angst about these things not reaching some arbitrary, self-sustaining critical threshold? If you are happy, then don't say "We quit." Say, "We finished."

Whatever you produced, that's your 'product' -- even if it doesn't quite reach the exact and precise goals and ideas you had for the climatic finish or whatever. It's an "In Media Res" situation or setting now freely available to anyone who wants to use it as such. Copy-n-paste all the developed material and drop it into a big text file or other document.

Ah!  My new get rich quick scheme! :)

I get 10% consultation fee as my cut from all profits! (heheh)