From Infinite Jest: "The true opponent, the enfolding boundary, is the player himself. Always and only the self out there, on court, to be met, fought, brought to the table to hammer out terms. The competing boy on the net's other side: he is not the foe: he is more the partner in the dance. He is the what is the word *excuse* or *occasion* for meeting the self. As you are his occasion. Tennis's beauty's infinite roots are self-competitive. You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution. Disappear inside the game: break through limits: transcend: improve: win. Which is why tennis is an essentially tragic enterprise, to improve and grow as a serious junior, with ambitions. You seek to vanquish and transcend the limited self whose limits make the game possible in the first place. It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again."
This is a great observation! I've been enjoying thinking about this, it brings into focus a subtle but very interesting property of certain games. The first other example I thought of is Crusader Kings, where the other (game-controlled) characters all operate on the exact same rules as the player, to the point where you can save your game and switch over control to any other character and the game seamlessly takes over who you were just playing. The same thing would be possible in Network Wars for the same reasons.
I agree there's more going on here than semantics. But it makes me suspicious, if the definition of game, player, AI and so on is dependent on local knowledge and perception. What if I *think* the opponents are humans, but secretly they're not? Or, what if I only *think* I'm developing a strategy? It seems existentially precarious.
My thought is maybe a hierarchy can clarify things. At the base level (game₀) is the system of rules that define and mediate all the game's internal actions, state-tracking, all the nouns and a lot of the verbs. Then up a level is game₁ the ruleset that defines one or more actors interfacing with the rules one level down in game₀. That is, how players/opponents interact with the core system are fundamentally meta-rules, if you think about it. Then happily, definitionally it doesn't matter whether the actors are sentient and intelligent players, or bots that happen to be running on the same machine running game₀.
What's fun about this is that game₁ could be more complicated than merely managing players- like in many traditional roguelikes, where all creatures, the player character included, are constrained by the same base level rules, which is similar to the case here. And of course we can nest games beyond two layers, like if you and I compete to see who can win a game of Network Wars in fewer turns, we're playing a game₂ together, that interfaces with game₁, which governs the opponents who use all the capture rules and graph nodes defined in game₀.
See, much more clear! Oh wait though.. but each of our game₁s is a different game₁.. so maybe we need another subscript in there..? Or, they aren't different? Okay you know what, maybe nevermind.
But I do think there is something to the idea of thinking about some games, even internally, as sorts of nested games-of-games in this way!
Yes! I haven't played NP, but am familiar with Subterfuge, which I take to be a very similar game on mobile. And Subterfuge is my go-to example of the challenge of politics in multiplayer games.
I know people love it, but for me there is something deeply problematic about a game where, for many hours, you make complicated tactical calculations, only to have the final outcome determined entirely by politics. What are all the complicated calculations doing? What's the point of all the effort you put into them? It always struck me as a bit like pretend, like we are pretending to play one type of game, with a lot of complex mechanical calculations in it, when, in reality, the game is something else - who locked in the biggest stable collusion?
I know this is a simplification of reality, but I can't shake the feeling that it is a deep design problem in these kinds of games. FWIW, I think the solution is short rounds, like in Galcon. https://www.galcon.com/
From Infinite Jest: "The true opponent, the enfolding boundary, is the player himself. Always and only the self out there, on court, to be met, fought, brought to the table to hammer out terms. The competing boy on the net's other side: he is not the foe: he is more the partner in the dance. He is the what is the word *excuse* or *occasion* for meeting the self. As you are his occasion. Tennis's beauty's infinite roots are self-competitive. You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution. Disappear inside the game: break through limits: transcend: improve: win. Which is why tennis is an essentially tragic enterprise, to improve and grow as a serious junior, with ambitions. You seek to vanquish and transcend the limited self whose limits make the game possible in the first place. It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again."
This is a great observation! I've been enjoying thinking about this, it brings into focus a subtle but very interesting property of certain games. The first other example I thought of is Crusader Kings, where the other (game-controlled) characters all operate on the exact same rules as the player, to the point where you can save your game and switch over control to any other character and the game seamlessly takes over who you were just playing. The same thing would be possible in Network Wars for the same reasons.
I agree there's more going on here than semantics. But it makes me suspicious, if the definition of game, player, AI and so on is dependent on local knowledge and perception. What if I *think* the opponents are humans, but secretly they're not? Or, what if I only *think* I'm developing a strategy? It seems existentially precarious.
My thought is maybe a hierarchy can clarify things. At the base level (game₀) is the system of rules that define and mediate all the game's internal actions, state-tracking, all the nouns and a lot of the verbs. Then up a level is game₁ the ruleset that defines one or more actors interfacing with the rules one level down in game₀. That is, how players/opponents interact with the core system are fundamentally meta-rules, if you think about it. Then happily, definitionally it doesn't matter whether the actors are sentient and intelligent players, or bots that happen to be running on the same machine running game₀.
What's fun about this is that game₁ could be more complicated than merely managing players- like in many traditional roguelikes, where all creatures, the player character included, are constrained by the same base level rules, which is similar to the case here. And of course we can nest games beyond two layers, like if you and I compete to see who can win a game of Network Wars in fewer turns, we're playing a game₂ together, that interfaces with game₁, which governs the opponents who use all the capture rules and graph nodes defined in game₀.
See, much more clear! Oh wait though.. but each of our game₁s is a different game₁.. so maybe we need another subscript in there..? Or, they aren't different? Okay you know what, maybe nevermind.
But I do think there is something to the idea of thinking about some games, even internally, as sorts of nested games-of-games in this way!
> It seems existentially precarious.
Most definitely!
Exactly! Luke Muscat outlines a lot of problems in this GDC talk about a paper prototype with similar mechanics - https://youtu.be/t9WMNuyjm4w
A multiplayer Network Wars is Neptune's Pride - https://np.ironhelmet.com/
Yes! I haven't played NP, but am familiar with Subterfuge, which I take to be a very similar game on mobile. And Subterfuge is my go-to example of the challenge of politics in multiplayer games.
I know people love it, but for me there is something deeply problematic about a game where, for many hours, you make complicated tactical calculations, only to have the final outcome determined entirely by politics. What are all the complicated calculations doing? What's the point of all the effort you put into them? It always struck me as a bit like pretend, like we are pretending to play one type of game, with a lot of complex mechanical calculations in it, when, in reality, the game is something else - who locked in the biggest stable collusion?
I know this is a simplification of reality, but I can't shake the feeling that it is a deep design problem in these kinds of games. FWIW, I think the solution is short rounds, like in Galcon. https://www.galcon.com/
As in many game theoretical situations, _iteration_ is the path up and out! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma