Makes dreams come true

To attempt a problem that may be impossible. The American dream... concerned only with success.

How to make mistakes? If you understand it, then you're not allowed to do it... this is what I'm afraid of. As some people are lucky, or unlucky, enough to have just a single experience to draw from, to think of replicating anything that drew its results directly from its pessimistic circumstances is daunting. At the same time, there are things that can be done.

As such, I have compiled several methods to help facilitate such an event in the MMO environment, when all outside and uncontrollable conditions have been met. It may still be impossible, given the nature of this type of world and the way it lets you avoid saying anything at all about yourself -- spurious assumptions on the part of the human mind being all too common...

But we can try. It might just be a matter of finding the right boundary to reality.

The first point, in here as in all things, is freedom to make decisions without being restricted by environment. Not by goals. Not by progress, which may otherwise alter goals or acceptable paths of action. Not even, in this post-'golden age' world, by faction or other primary alignment. In a social game, with social goals, it obviously becomes much more difficult to retain freedom of choice, but there's nothing to suggest that with the right set of rules it can't be done. Shaping community perceptions of value is just something that most people who work in the games industry aren't very good at, as most games predictably involve violent resolution of opposition or conflict, or 'win' heuristics independent of other real-world values, and as such don't have to deal with complex social implications. This is something that can only be done with an MMO, as it is the only game category that can sustainably design for Community. But enough pompous statements =p

One example of this progress metric is leveling, traditionally rewarded primarily with increased effectiveness in MMOs; in order for this to really work well, there should not be large obstacles to fun and challenging gameplay when diverse levels are working together. In some of the current crop of MMOs this is true, in others not so much.

Another obstacle is communication. If you did, for whatever reason, decided to value someone, how easily can you continue a friendship? If you can't talk to them due to the 'roleplaying' part of the gameworld and any relationship you have won't last beyond the next real-life obligation or in-game goal, you may be happy but the game has failed. So in the spirit of 'making mistakes', a token referencing a means of address... d*mn, I'm sure it had a special name. Rainbows End. The book, you know. They were called something. I don't know if it would help to make them unique or not, in the sense of being able to cancel one. In some cases it wouldn't matter, but in others it would allow them to be used for things that couldn't be done in other circumstances. Usage would be low, but similar to 'single-use email addresses' and business cards this might have its analogies in the real world already.



I wonder, if you can invent things to make yourself happy, can you invent things to make yourself unhappy too... how often does this happen?

How often do we remember it?



Other things.
Torrent vs DDL, content type; proliferation & motive. Whether it can be adopted depends on the value of learning investment and future benefit; tracker info, social considerations too. A 'download page' like that of d-addicts works well. Could identify similar movies using ~properties of it... (future topic)


An 'evil' race. National character includes culture and history, such as conquest or other past goals and actions. A superficial, non-realistic 'taint' can also be used in a game world. However moral consistency is imperitive for it to have any kind of value. This depends on perspective, but enhances conflict. The true nature of a race is by its perception by others, leading to prejudice. Depth of culture, internal politics; value of idealism aka cannot show petty motives in entertainment forms... people must learn on their own what true evil is. This paragraph is pretty bad but I am done with it.