Opportunity Cost of Communication

sliderule · 2018-04-20 18:42:57

Reading threads here, many people think that society in-game would be able to communicate rules or take time to, say, enforce some law.

I think that these ideas are missing a key fact:

There is a gigantic opportunity cost to communicating in-game. Players need to stop whatever they're doing to talk, listen, or respond for the most part.

A fledgling society has little time for chatter. A struggling society has none. The idea that people will be able to enact any sort of social order while maintaining food stores is suspect except in the richest establishments.

Communication in this game is too costly to try to enforce anything. Try running a busy carrot farm and being able to spam "BOTTOM ROW SEED" enough for every child and wanderer to hear.

I think any sort of social order will need to be maintained by game systems. Locking the carrot farm up then identifying, teaching, and installing a successor, for instance. The lock would permit that. No amount of in-game communication would.

Just keep this in mind when fantasizing about what the game could be.

Kinrany · 2018-04-20 18:48:43

Communication in this game is too costly to try to enforce anything. Try running a busy carrot farm and being able to spam "BOTTOM ROW SEED" enough for every child and wanderer to hear.

And the people you're trying to talk to are busy too and have to either ignore other people or think about every phrase in case it's relevant. The more people there are on the screen, the more time is wasted on digging through noise.

I think any sort of social order will need to be maintained by game systems.

I disagree with the conclusion though. Communication just needs to be more efficient.

Edit: or is that what you mean? I thought you mean that the game should enforce rules like "BOTTOM ROW SEED" with no player input.

Last edited by Kinrany (2018-04-20 18:53:49)

sliderule · 2018-04-20 19:10:03

In short, as long as communication is mutually exclusive with productivity, the difficulty of survival will preclude sufficient meaningful communication required to enforce a complex social system.

Last edited by sliderule (2018-04-20 19:10:38)

Morti · 2018-04-20 19:32:15

Just be willing to sacrifice your potential megalopolis once in awhile to teach a new player some basics when you meet one.
Otherwise we will not hold onto many new players for long and the time they do spend in game with us will be less productive, if not destructive, to all we are so quietly busy to maintain otherwise.

If you don't take a minute or two of a life once in awhile to show someone how to build a fire, how to make and cook a pie, or how turn iron and wood into a steel tool, you're missing out on one of the greatest rewards you can get from a life lived in this game.

Lily · 2018-04-20 20:08:52

It definitely feels like you are in a rush a lot of the time, but honestly stopping to listen someone benefits you in the long run. Learning water is west saves a ton of time if you were going to run east to look and there is nothing there. Telling everyone in the city not to pick a specific row for seeds, is a pain but could save the life of everyone in town. Explaining how to do something saves people a lot of time too.

It is difficult to teach something new in great detail, but luckily you can give them the broad strokes and they can figure it out themselves, since there is the recipe thing in game. Unless I am an Eve with a high chance of starving, I usually make sure the children know how to farm, catch rabbits, and make pies.

sliderule · 2018-04-20 20:20:54

I'm not talking about teaching players the basics of the game.

I'm talking about the rosy posts about how a society might form and optimistic views of layers of society enacted by the player base.

The transitive nature of the population is going to limit the scope of those things already, but perpetuating any behaviour whatsoever is going to be limited by the communication system to an extreme degree.

sammoh · 2018-04-20 20:52:29

Your immortal soul transcends each lifetime. That being said, there is little opportunity cost in teaching children. Mothers should be teaching always.

Kinrany · 2018-04-20 21:01:12

OP is talking about information like "where do I get water", "where do I put plates for pies", "do we have a leader", "where are the tools", not crafting recipes. Information that one needs to learn every game, not once.

sliderule · 2018-04-20 22:05:21

What I'm saying is that the bandwidth and opportunity cost of communication precludes much beyond "where is water", "what do we eat", "what is my job", etc.

Lily · 2018-04-20 22:39:48

You have penalty of time to talk to the kids. Kids can't really do all that much until they are older. They can kind of help out once they can pick up items but are still not all that useful. You got a good six minutes to talk to them. Preferably you talk to multiple children at once, and or have an elderly person doing the talking who can say a lot and isn't very useful in the last few years either.

Maybe cities need to build a school and have full time teachers. Elderly people retired from working other jobs, and a younger mom who can feed the children. In that case, you are not actually losing out on much work since elders and a mom taking care of children, and then children them self can't really do all that much. If the entire room is at a good temperature range as well, you might actually save food by having them all inside rather than running around and getting hungry and eating more food.

Morti · 2018-04-20 23:04:36

I know you are all getting bent out of shape because your towns are not thriving.

You all care too much about your farms, and not enough about the players.

There is almost no reward for a new player to be stuck in a life farming when what they want is to know how to play the game for themselves, first. Give the players that knowledge and when your consumption exceeds your seed production, the player base will not shy from the wild. They will be comfortable enough away from the carrot farm, the berries and the pies to make it on cacti and other food they can find away from town, while the seed stock is replenished by dedicated farmers.

I've read all the posts on these matters, I've played this game almost every day for the last three weeks, many of you have been my children and learned from me in game, some of you have even taken to naming your children names I've given you and your siblings in the past; the Roman leaders, the planets, star and constellation names, Greek Titans and Gods. I've seen most of your cities, I've never murdered you, I've worked my ass off to try and keep every one of my boys alive while you leave people to die and expect people to be happy with it. You complain about boys when your daughters say nothing as they pick up and put down kids by the fire unnecessarily too often. Leaving your communities full of uneducated daughters who will produce more, uneducated daughters.

You're not educating new players enough. Forget your city, forget trying to leave the Rome or Cairo of the game, the world works because of the billions of people that do not live in big cities. In much the same way the whole player base of this game will rise as one, for every player that understands the game itself, for themselves. Your attempt to create giant towns is only leading to people who know nothing but that to stay alive they must stay close to the farm and eat.

This was the problem before the apocalypse, this was why when I was born in any of your big cities, I ran away, especially if the first thing I saw of your town was you starving boys to death and then you, praising me for finally coming in as a girl. I will not live in such a community. I discourage this behavior where I am born and I encourage you to accept all children, wherever you give birth. This discarding of babies is insulting to the players and it's insulting to our species. Show that you love all your children and are willing to die with them all, knowing that we will all be born, give birth and struggle to survive together and you will foster a more positive and determined to survive player base that you will find can bring you the lasting legacy you want to see each time you come back to the world.

We have to stop perpetuating these terrible ideas; the discarding of children is not acceptable human behavior.

Keep in mind this game has the potential to change in whatever way Jason wants to change it. This practice of neglecting children because you feel they might slow you down as an Eve, or, that they won't pass on your last name, that is the real problem becoming acceptable behavior in this community. If the players make it an acceptable behavior, then Jason will have no incentive to change that. It may be cruel to your dream of a perfect city layout, to let boys live knowing that if they do not add more than they take, that your entire family could die there, but it is far from the only solution and it should not be accepted on morale grounds. You do not need to leave your humanity behind, anywhere, in any game, in any moment of your real life.

If you don't see how this attitude developing in this game, and internet games in general, is bad for us, then I am afraid our civilizations in real life, may be as similarly doomed as those in this game.

Never let someone take what respect you have for humanity away from you.

It's like you're all a bunch of victims of the Stanford Prison Experiment, and you won't realize how much games are fucking with our collective heads until...

We don't have to fall. We could forgive our ancestors and move on, carry on the great deeds without towing these anchors until they snag on something at the bottom of the ocean. We're not bad people, no one ever was.

I forgive all of you that ran away as Eve's when I was born.
I forgive all of you who refused to feed me because I was born male.
I forgive all of you who turned to murder.

I want to see what great machines of civilization we can build together.
I want to find the balance with you, between growth and renewal.

If this game ever has rockets and other planets, I want to bring them to life, with you.
But for now, I want to bring the life we can to these worlds, each server, and find the balance together that includes every player; ever man, woman, daughter and son.

Artarda · 2018-04-20 23:30:53

Morti wrote:

...
We have to stop perpetuating these terrible ideas; the discarding of children is not acceptable human behavior.
Keep in mind this game has the potential to change in whatever way Jason wants to change it. This practice of neglecting children because you feel they might slow you down as an Eve, or, that they won't pass on your last name, that is the real problem becoming acceptable behavior in this community. If the players make it an acceptable behavior, then Jason will have no incentive to change that. It may be cruel to your dream of a perfect city layout, to let boys live knowing that if they do not add more than they take, that your entire family could die there, but it is far from the only solution and it should not be accepted on morale grounds. You do not need to leave your humanity behind, anywhere, in any game, in any moment of your real life.
...

This.

Lately when I spawn in on the populated servers, mothers will let me starve because they are four screens from a thriving village with a cart of branches, or something equally unimportant. I was counting, and before I was born and kept (in the same city that I was born outside of, no less; I saw my past life's mom run with the cart), I had to get reborn ten times until I was born from a babysitter in the city, who was caring for now five babies including me. And it's sad, because I know all the game mechanics involving sustainability, the crafting recipes, and farming propagation techniques by heart.

TL;DR: Letting your in game kids die due to the "inconvenience" they incur leads to a bad experience, and what's the point of playing the game if you're not playing for the sake of the future generations of players? If you want to build something and use it right then, play Minecraft.

Last edited by Artarda (2018-04-20 23:31:56)

sliderule · 2018-04-20 23:46:28

Lily wrote:

Maybe cities need to build a school and have full time teachers. Elderly people retired from working other jobs, and a younger mom who can feed the children.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. How on earth would you coordinate such a thing with the in-game communication system?

sliderule · 2018-04-20 23:50:30

Morti wrote:

I know you are all getting bent out of shape because your towns are not thriving

I have no clue how you reached that conclusion about this thread.

I am exposing an obvious limit to fantasies about advanced societal behaviour existing in this game. It has nothing to do with a certain village thriving.

Please keep the discussion in this thread to the limitations of societal development with limited communication bandwidth and time resource competition.

Kinrany · 2018-04-21 00:01:06

Morti, again, OP's post isn't about new players who don't know how to play, it's about players not knowing the layout and rules of the new town they were just born in.

Besides, lamenting the perceived stupidity of the masses is rarely productive. The whole point of the Stanford prison experiment you mention is that systemic issues should be solved in a systemic way and not blamed on the participants.

Letting your in game kids die due to the "inconvenience" they incur leads to a bad experience, and what's the point of playing the game if you're not playing for the sake of the future generations of players?

You only need one kid to have the next generation.

Last edited by Kinrany (2018-04-21 00:03:27)

Lily · 2018-04-21 00:59:32

sliderule wrote:

Lily wrote:
Maybe cities need to build a school and have full time teachers. Elderly people retired from working other jobs, and a younger mom who can feed the children.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. How on earth would you coordinate such a thing with the in-game communication system?

Well if you get everyone when they are children and talk to them before they are running around doing stuff, then everyone should know about it and will know to take their children to the school. There is an issue if a new family comes, but if you catch them right as they arrive you can explain it.

Kinrany · 2018-04-21 01:01:17

Catch-22, you need to already have a school to make a school.

Lily · 2018-04-21 01:03:45

Well if you have the idea of it, you can make it yourself. It is just a matter of convincing others and getting them to cooperate. If you have a small group, it would be easier to start.

TianJiaLi · 2018-04-21 01:50:15

Morti wrote:

You all care too much about your farms and not enough about the players.

This is such a terrible mindset that is perpetuating the community. I might not be a veteran player but I would like to consider myself experience. Experienced enough to know most every recipe and could build a civilization from the ground up if there was enough time in a life to do so. Yet I can't tell you how many times I have been in arguments with players who insist their way is the only way and will kill you if you don't do it the way they want it done.

For instance, I just got out of a game where I was born in a village and told by my mother they needed pies. Well, unfortunately, there was no rabbit hunter so all I had was carrots. So I began to make carrot pies because they are more filling than just raw carrots. Now since I don't have a lot of materials, not a lot of plates, I make three pies because three pies are better than none. But a 'veteran' player with 'the most hours' in the game berated me for being an idiot and that noobs like me were dooming the game by being 'wasteful'. Sorry but I was too young to run out and get clay to make more plates and we needed food NOW. No my prick of a 'veteran' it's players like you who are ruining the game with your unreasonable attitudes. Your unwillingness to listen to others because you believe you are so great in your expertise and refuse to share. Your attitude drove me away from your village. I took a cart and left and found another village and proceeded to teach the residents there how to dye their clothes. They appreciated it and we had fun working together up until we died happily of old age.

Perhaps it's a chain reaction. So many players abandoned their children early on because they didn't know how to survive. This created an environment where the only thing that mattered was survival of self and hopefully whatever children you managed to raise after ensuring that you didn't die. Survival of the fittest might work for animals but when building a civilization that mindset tears it down. No wonder so many villages fail. No one wants to play in a village like that. I have seen so many children get scolded by an adult or grandparent only to suicide in order to spawn in a friendlier village. I've been that child that runs as often as I've been the grandparent yelling to leave the carrots alone cuz no one will listen or because some troll thinks it's funny or because some know it all believes they will just magically find seeds for eternity.

As much as I love this game there are so many issues with players themselves. Angry adults letting children live or die based on gender or sometimes even knowledge. Angry children running away and dying thus stagnating a village into death. Angry trolls that do everything they can to ruin a village through starvation and child stealing. And as much as role play is fun, grandpa threatening to kill the children is not going to foster friendliness either. I mean it's fun in jest but I've seen too many follow through for those threats to be taken lightly.

What can be done? A collective effort to stop being dirtbags to each other and actually play the game as if you were raising a family. Realistically would you have a baby and leave it to starve? If you would you need psychiatric help first and foremost.

As far as game implementation... maybe a system where Eves cannot drop their babies until they are able to walk? That would limit the number of babies with a longer cooldown time right off the bat. I know since day one I've wanted the ability to carry the kids around on my back in a backpack. It would make starting off so much easier. People made backpacks out of reeds.

But now I am rambling. Something in the air needs to change or else the game will stagnate before everyone abandons it all together in favor of something that is a solo experience like Rise of Ages when it finally releases.

sliderule · 2018-04-21 02:18:48

TianJiaLi wrote:

Morti wrote:
You all care too much about your farms and not enough about the players.
This is such a terrible mindset that is perpetuating the community.

Do you have anything to say about the opportunity cost of communication in the game and how it limits the scope of societal structure?

fatalwolf · 2018-04-21 06:49:11

Well we were able to establish the F if hungry rule in the past. Shouldnt be that hard for a parent to teach their kid the most important rules, like top row is seeds and dont empty ponds. I find that the babysitter job is what is ruining the pass down of rules. Its almost impossible and risky for a babysitter to take a group of kids around to learn the layout. This is why most kids know nothing and cause more harm then good.

Kinrany · 2018-04-21 11:26:09

The most important rules aren't the problem, you don't need to teach those every time. The less important but more numerous pieces of information that are never the same are what you lose with a poor communication system, and their aggregate value is much higher.

Last edited by Kinrany (2018-04-21 11:26:41)

paxpython · 2018-04-21 17:08:49

sliderule wrote:

Lily wrote:
Maybe cities need to build a school and have full time teachers. Elderly people retired from working other jobs, and a younger mom who can feed the children.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. How on earth would you coordinate such a thing with the in-game communication system?

I had an idea about this.

The idea was to have babies in an enclosed space, inside, that led to an enclosed space outside (I'm describing a real school).

The babies would stay inside with 2 moms taking care of the babies, and eachother (turns getting baskets of food) and giving basic rules.

When you grow a little more and are able to pick up stuff, you are sent outside (to the enclosure) where you had to make your clothes, for example.

When you got to teen you can leave, have clothes you made, know the rules and where stuff is.

It would help to teach and control population and you don't need much communication to make work. Only some repetition.

Like my mom said to me, and me to my babies and they to theirs - "Only pick fruiting milkweed"

If enough people start to be born in this spaces it becomes institutionalized, like everything that works.

Although this is just for the most advanced cities that have granaries and tool sheds.

Last edited by paxpython (2018-04-21 17:18:42)

akoopatroop · 2018-04-21 17:13:41

It will be awesome if we can get stable enough to have schools. I would love to see it.

I'm pretty sure I just caused my sis's death (and then mine) because I took the time to say "we can do it" when Mom died. It would have been so cool, though. Eve and Anne Tudor, I'm sorry I failed you. I tried.

akoopatroop · 2018-04-21 17:57:18

Okay I really really wish the opportunity cost of communication wasn't so high.

I would like to let babies choose more often (like 'almost no chance, just starting, say if you want to try' or 'you have a helpful sibling but we're roughing it'), but while I take time to tell them what's up hunger goes down.

Maybe talking could slow hunger? That's exploitable of course, but if part of the game building communities and civilization, we might need some breathing space around talking.

Prefer in-game to having to go on discord and coordinate.

Last edited by akoopatroop (2018-04-21 17:57:43)

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#1 2018-04-20 18:42:57

Opportunity Cost of Communication

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Re: Opportunity Cost of Communication

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