Embracing baby suicide

jasonrohrer · 2018-06-20 17:03:50

As I'm reworking the lineage ban code (again!), I'm realizing that the new code will re-open the door to baby suicide as a birth-location-selection strategy.

But I also realize that, for anyone who hasn't played in 3+ hours, that door is already wide open. If you're only going to play for an hour or two today, might as well baby suicide until you find yourself in the best spot. Two friends who haven't played in a while can also suicide until they find each other.

This strategy only grows ineffective for players who are playing many hours per day, because they eventually run out of lines.

If people are going to be able to pull this lever to "pick" where they are born, this seems like a terribly designed UI through which they make this choice. It's slow and painful. The fastest way is actually to quit and reload the game over and over. A finely crafted user experience!

What would a proper UI look like, though? A list of potential mothers, with stats, and you get to pick your mother? A "ghost cam" view, where you get to see each potential mother's live situation and press a big NEXT button over and over until you see a situation that you like?

All of these "better" UIs for birth choice just feel so wrong and so counter to the philosophical spine of the game. This is a game that is in part about finding yourself in some situation and dealing with it. It's not about hand-picking your ideal situation.

That said, one of the ways you can "deal with it" is to intentionally suicide.

There is no way to detect or prevent this. There's no way to differentiate between abandonment/accident/suicide.

I do want babies to be precious.

And I have seen babies become extremely precious in certain situations, where players literally cheer when a baby is finally born in their village. But I don't think this has anything to do with the lineage ban. Probably just random chance, coupled with there only being one mother left in that village (so less chance of a baby landing there), coupled with some previous baby suicides because the village was so small and unappealing. I.e., ordinary selection pressures.

Trying to "punish" baby suicide in some way also rolls abandoned babies and accident victims under the wheels of the same bus.

When I designed this game long ago, I knew that baby suicide in bad situations would be possible and likely. If you're born in the slums, you might decide to just kill yourself instead. There wasn't really supposed to be a way around this. And how does a lineage ban help here? "Oh no, now I'll never be born in that slum again!" If you didn't want to be born there anyway, burning your one "ticket" into that life is no big sacrifice.

As far as it being a poor UI for birth-location-choice, well, it might be. But then again, it's simply the premise of the game. You are born into a random situation, and you make of it what you will. Any other UI would change this premise.

Baby suicide doesn't really undermine this premise, but operates within it, because you keep rolling the dice over and over, with no actual control over where you land each time.

That said, another fundamental premise of the game is that you pass your projects on to your descendants at the end of your life. You make a contribution in your brief lifetime before saying goodbye, and death at the end of a life really means something. Death is a little bit "real" in this game. Just a little bit.

Baby suicide should not be a probabilistically-guaranteed way to undermine this premise. The end of a life should not just be a minor obstacle to overcome with a simple trick. Maybe there should be a very complicated, collective trick to overcome it (like using the bell tower to attract more than one family line to the same village, so that everyone gets two potential chances in a row to live there), but not a simple trick.

Anyway, the current lineage ban DID help to preserve this premise. You couldn't just play in the same village life after life, hour after hour. But it failed to fundamentally deal with baby suicide anyway, and had a ton of collateral damage around other types of baby death.

So I think it's okay to say, "Hey, baby suicide is just a reality of this game's structure," while still seeking a laser-precision mechanism to make the end of life feel substantial.

jasonrohrer · 2018-06-20 17:11:35

Oh, and the other thing that the old "one chance" lineage ban helped with was gender preference. Before the ban, a mother of a boy baby could essentially say, "Sorry, kid, get reborn as a girl, please." That will come back for a bit with the new lineage code, but it doesn't seem like lineage bans is the best way to deal with this.

I know, I know, make men stronger/faster and so on.... I'm still holding out for a better way to make men valuable....

Hmm... what if male babies were immune to the lineage bans....

Lotus · 2018-06-20 17:27:37

In regards to babies and lineage bans, what if all babies were immune to the lineage ban?

Babies who suicide can be “punished” by ending up in the same situation again since there’s no “ticket out” to stop them.

Abandoned babies can avoid their fate by, to take your example, being reborn as a girl or by other means.

In regards to males, maybe only they can craft certain items. Not things like thread or a bow drill, things that Eve need to set up, but things higher up the tech tree, unobtainable by newborn communities but a necessity to advanced societies.

Dacen · 2018-06-20 17:44:27

If male babies are immune to lineage bans, it will increase boy's abandons. The "sorry, kid, get reborn as a girl, please" sentence will apply even stronger, girls will be precious not only because they are girls but also because if you abandon a girl you lose a potential player for your city ant that for three hours. On the other hand, it will be ok to kill boys, as they can always come back. It doesn't affect the number of players able to born in town, you can chain kill boys until they born as girls, or just kill boys if you must make a choice between a girl and a boy.

Also, i really think boys are ok now. They prevent baby boom in a city and are better for long travels. Some tell "girls can just abandon there kids" but when you have four baby girl, to think it will work is an illusion : you have no garantee your girls will be as "raisonnable" as you. Most of the time each will keep some babies if not all and it will result in baby boom. On the contrary, boys are a garantee, they will not have kids.

Even in the itheorical (and i think impossible) situation where a city is full of girls who all have a common sense of how many kids they must keep for the safety of the city, to have lot of boys is better than only or a majority of girls : you have less food loss, since now give birth cost food squares. A lot of babies abandoned in short time let lot of skeletons in the way. It can seems trivial, but i experienced cities where empty squares was rare, and skeletons everywhere became soon a true deal. Finally and even if you deal with these problems, the massive child abandon meaned by only-girls civ is dangerous because of the lineage ban. We are not so much in the game, and since the lineage ban i had as a girl in big cities lives where i didn't gave birth to any baby, or just one. A city must have players able to come in all the time in order to survive, if we see the player number as a stock, to keep only girls is a politic who lower very fast the stock.

Finally, i must say that these last weeks i saw very little cities who kept only girl, or who choose to rather kill boys than girls. I don't think it's a major pb.

Last edited by Dacen (2018-06-20 17:47:22)

YAHG · 2018-06-20 18:03:26

If you don't want to give Men any abilities why not just make us all girls?

forestglade · 2018-06-20 18:05:42

Because it's also fun playing as a boy, especially when I'm learning a new tech.

Jason, I don't think you need to mess with with gender lineage bans for now.

Acozi · 2018-06-20 18:52:34

I honestly cant remember the last time I was killed for being a boy. I'm sure it happened, but the mother never explicitly said so.

My main issue with males is there was a time or two where only men were left and I suicided because there was no point in continuing.

What if there was a craftable item only adult males could use to beckon eves that are nearby. Similar to the bell but could perhaps cause eves to be spawned nearby. Could break upon use maybe. This way two dudes alone in town could have a shot at resurrecting the town. The nearby eve could choose to start over where she is or search for the nearby town.

Maybe have it require the bones of a female or two.

Fertility statue perhaps?

Kinrany · 2018-06-20 19:00:49

The game doesn't actually provide any incentive to care about babies. It's pure entertainment.
You want people to cooperate, appoint leaders and guards, etc. for pragmatic reasons, not because it's fun. Shouldn't you do the same with babies?

One solution: lineage ban, except spawning as one's own descendant is allowed.

To make rerolling easier, let babies observe their mothers for a minute and make it possible for them to suicide before being born. The skeletons should spawn anyway, to let mothers know about stillbirths.

By the way, I can't find a link, but there's a great article somewhere on the internet about pregnancy being fucking metal: the embryo and the mother partially share control of the same body, but compete for resources, and it's the closest thing the real world has to body horror.

jasonrohrer · 2018-06-20 19:02:29

Acozi wrote:

My main issue with males is there was a time or two where only men were left and I suicided because there was no point in continuing.

Hmm....

YAHG · 2018-06-20 19:03:52

Kinrany wrote:

embryo and the mother partially share control of the same body

That sounds like total bullshit. You got any links dude?
Seems like emotion inducing hormones could probably leak through placenta to other side but nerve control sounds far fetched.

jasonrohrer · 2018-06-20 19:10:52

No reason to care about babies? Huh?

Everything you do is meaningless without them. It's not entertainment. What you worked on during your life will be lost if no babies survive. When a village is short on babies, they aren't pretending to want a baby for pure entertainment or role playing. They know that the future is doomed without one.

If two men are left, and no babies possible, they suicide. The game isn't a "what can you accomplish in one hour" simulator. If it was, those two men would work their asses off to build whatever they could before they died. No, it's a collective, trans-generational project simulator.

That's the point of the game.

You're saying that point needs to be underlined with a personal motivation, like, "A surviving baby of mine is my only chance to continue in this village later and keep working on my own project."

But if you want to get that meta, Kinrany, what is the point of working on your own project more and more anyway? Why are people motivated to do that? What's the point?

To your other point, maybe there should just be a suicide button. No sense in making someone reload the game to do that, and no sense in making them wait to starve to death or hunt down a rattlesnake.

Turnipseed · 2018-06-20 19:11:24

jasonrohrer wrote:

Acozi wrote:
My main issue with males is there was a time or two where only men were left and I suicided because there was no point in continuing.
Hmm....

Yeah ive been there too 6 men running around, and one old woman... we usually all go hug the same snake...

Edit: if you are gonna embrace baby suicides give us a suicide button please!

Last edited by Turnipseed (2018-06-20 19:15:50)

Izzytok · 2018-06-20 19:54:16

I guess people would need incentives to play whatever life they get. Every life would have to be valuable in some way, I just can't think of any good way to do this, that isn't completely un-fun.

I've always played this game as a sort of rogue-like, but people have different expectations of it. Maybe there should be hardcore and softcore servers? Splitting up the player base is probably a bad idea, but its just an idea...

Kinrany · 2018-06-20 20:50:12

jasonrohrer wrote:

Everything you do is meaningless without them.

Everything you do is meaningless. All goals are arbitrary, helping another player enter the game is not objectively better than exploring the woods, socializing, making art, griefing, or just running around naked.

When a village is short on babies, they aren't pretending to want a baby for pure entertainment or role playing.

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. It's just that the villages that survived, had enough people who cared about babies. But that does not automatically make people want to help the village, not directly anyway.

They know that the future is doomed without one.

But why do they care?

If two men are left, and no babies possible, they suicide. The game isn't a "what can you accomplish in one hour" simulator. If it was, those two men would work their asses off to build whatever they could before they died.

It seems obvious that this is not a rule, and that some players actually do keep working just because they want to build something.

But if you want to get that meta, Kinrany, what is the point of working on your own project more and more anyway? Why are people motivated to do that? What's the point?

I don't know. Why do people play minecraft? Why do people keep living instead of committing suicide to avoid unpleasant things like hunger? Evolutionary pressure? Curiosity? I don't know!

But I don't think that raising babies is a good answer. It just shifts the burden of doing something meaningful, so it's babies all the way down.

Look, I'm merely saying that raising babies is the ultimate goal only if the game says so. (Even then, players disregard external goals all the time.) Otherwise the only reason is the evolution of villages, and I don't see why individuals would necessarily care about helping a law of nature that doesn't need anyone's help and doesn't care.
Most of your other games didn't really have goals, did they? The rules of the game are always enough, the game shouldn't need the player's help.

jasonrohrer wrote:

To your other point, maybe there should just be a suicide button. No sense in making someone reload the game to do that, and no sense in making them wait to starve to death or hunt down a rattlesnake.

I don't know, it would be a shame to lose the stories where the player that commits suicide is healed and persuaded to keep living :D
Baby suicides are a special case, a suicide button would save a ton of time for them.

YAHG wrote:

That sounds like total bullshit. You got any links dude?

I wish D:
I didn't mean that the baby takes control of the mother's body. But it has some access to the stuff around itself, so it can try to steal more nutrients than the mother wants to give. Or something. I don't remember.
Point being, it's a part of the mother's body controlled by alien genes, which only cares about itself, while the mother's genes also care about all the other future babies. It's a war where killing the other side is undesirable.

Last edited by Kinrany (2018-06-20 20:57:47)

YAHG · 2018-06-20 20:57:30

Kinrany wrote:

YAHG wrote:
That sounds like total bullshit. You got any links dude?
I wish D:
I didn't mean that the baby takes control of the mother's body. But it has some access to the stuff around itself, so it can try to steal more nutrients than the mother wants to give. Or something. I don't remember.
Point being, it's a part of the mother's body controlled by alien genes, which only care about this baby, while the mother's genes also care about all the other future babies. So it's a war where killing the other side is very undesirable.

Yeah that makes more sense.

Acozi · 2018-06-20 21:23:23

What if there was a bonus for mothers who successfully raise kids? Extra food bars or something.

jasonrohrer · 2018-06-20 22:32:53

Kinrany, I don't think I've ever suggested that the game should have mechanics that specifically encourage you to care about babies.

I don't think the game needs that. I think it's automatic because of the natural selection pressures on a village, and individuals being aware of those pressures, and the inherent thwarting of individual, solo accomplishment in the game. It seems that no one who is playing as a non-griefer wants their village to die out.

That said, "group selection," which I personally believe in, is apparently something of a controversial idea in the realm of biology. Are there selection pressures on non-genetic aspects of culture?

What I meant about babies being precious is that, with all the baby suicide and player churn, it sometimes feels like its raining babies, and you kinda grow numb to their importance because of it.

The future of the village demands that you keep at least some babies alive. If you have way more than that baseline incoming, and never any baby droughts, the meaning of each one is diminished.

hihibanana · 2018-06-20 23:03:35

I think, that embracing baby suicide should still come with things that indirectly discourage it. For example, in your first year as a baby, you can only crawl and can't escape easily (perhaps you can't escape from your mom's arms either?). This gives the person a real chance to be taken care of by their family and to explore the village and situation they're in. Then, they could make the decision to suicide. I think extinguishing people's prejudice about their situation is extremely helpful in this.

Anshin · 2018-06-20 23:26:24

Turnipseed wrote:

if you are gonna embrace baby suicides give us a suicide button please!

There is one: ESC then %

hihibanana wrote:

I think, that embracing baby suicide should still come with things that indirectly discourage it. For example, in your first year as a baby, you can only crawl and can't escape easily (perhaps you can't escape from your mom's arms either?). This gives the person a real chance to be taken care of by their family and to explore the village and situation they're in. Then, they could make the decision to suicide. I think extinguishing people's prejudice about their situation is extremely helpful in this.

That's a really good idea!

Kinrany · 2018-06-20 23:42:14

jasonrohrer wrote:

Kinrany, I don't think I've ever suggested that the game should have mechanics that specifically encourage you to care about babies.

Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to say that you suggested that. I'm the one who thinks that such mechanics are desirable.

That said, "group selection," which I personally believe in, is apparently something of a controversial idea in the realm of biology. Are there selection pressures on non-genetic aspects of culture?

Skimming the Wikipedia article, it's considered unimportant compared to other types of selection, not nonexistent or nonsensical. The world of the (meta-)game is different, so there's no reason to discard group selection. Though there are other types of selection too.

It seems that no one who is playing as a non-griefer wants their village to die out.

There are other explanations:
1. Everyone who didn't care about saving villages already left the game
2. Some people care only because they can come back eventually

YAHG · 2018-06-21 00:28:58

jasonrohrer wrote:

Are there selection pressures on non-genetic aspects of culture?

Of course.

Examples:

Polygamy in Islam: Allows them to kill off ~75% of their males in wars, while repopulating effectively, also good for spreading out
quickly on victory. This was more effective at spread the faith in times when raw manpower was more important to military strength
than it is today.
Problems with this system can include what do you do when you CAN'T export the extra Men (restless sexless males are almost
ALWAYS a problem), increased Orthodoxy/Traditionalism due to powered actors (reduces competitiveness as well as resulting innovation)
as well as lowered independent actors (leading to same). In more complicated economies raising productive children is more costly
and it less dependent on 'just' food.

Drug Law and Welfare for Children of Single Mothers: The poorer you are the more selling drugs or other illegal enterprises would appeal to
you, as the profit margins are wonderful and barriers to entry are very low (regulatory hurdles do not really exist). Illegal businesses must
self regulate as far as "law" goes so you pretty much need to be Male to compete at higher and higher levels of drug dealing as it selects for
aggression heavily.
As such in those communities effectively large percentages of them are in jail or have poor productivity because of jail, lowering the ratio of
Men to Women. This lowers the competitive pressure for the Males in such communities to preform drastically as the Women kinda just gotta
'put up with it' as the Men are scarcer.
It is interesting that this combos effectively with how welfare (at least in the USA) pays a LOT more if the father of the children isn't around.
This even further encourages familial illegitimacy expanding the original poor state..
The single Mother effect on crime and family illegitimacy is not pure cultural and can be excluded at least from this (it is epigenetic) as it makes
sense to rewire the brain to deal with more violent and chaotic environments when in them from an evolutionary perspective.

It is important to also remember that this environment selects for aggression as a base as well as to express it developmentally in the above
environment.

Women's Suffrage and the Welfare State: In almost all western countries after introducing Women's suffrage the welfare state soon followed.
Democracy is a very old governmental system but it was adapted originally in contexts where only a subset of the Men were even allowed the
vote (No slaves, no poor, no children). This one might be more of a stretch as while the things large numbers of Women care about in society
differ from what large numbers of Males do generally based on biological or genetic reasons, once you move into the realm of governance as
practice you COULD say it is now culture not genetics.
If you compared just Women vs Men enmass, Women are much more concerned with stability. If you can have the state step in to mitigate the
risks associated with either picking a poor mate/something happening to your mate etc. it takes a lot of pressure off of yourself, and it has a real
draw. Everyone can be appealed to via emotionality but Women and Men have different types of emotions and appeals that will work better on
them and in such large groups you can go off tendencies rather than that one X you know that is that way.
Interestingly as well this is not to say that redistribution systems require women's suffrage, it seems to just accelerate the natural process of
expanding government.

Interest vs. Usury: Think the teaching of the anti-Usury laws of Catholic and Muslim world effect the ability of businesses to develop capital that
can be taxes for war etc. How when Protestant Europe allowed money lending by their subjects the competitive advantage in pooled investment
allowed those countries to push ahead. Catholic countries had to adapt and permit it as well or fall behind. The Muslims fell behind, having more
consolidated power with the polygamy as well as a much more stable religious doctrine gave them increased orthodoxy as a culture. This is a
mixed bag.

Religious Doctrinal resilience: The old testament for example tells its practitioners to stone adulterers and blasphemers etc. Islam kills apostates,
the Church at least USED to burn heretics, and the imperial legions employ exterminatus. Having strong ways to deal with the deviations that inevitably
arise in your population of followers is important to keep the faith going. If you let every Tom Dick and Harry call out for the Gods to strike you
down, pretty soon no one will believe anymore.

Orthodoxy/Heterodoxy: Stick too much to tradition and you end up left behind, ignore tradition too much you make the same mistakes too often
and destroy all progression.

Fiat vs Non-Fiat Currencies: Fiat allows you to raise funds WAY easier for emergencies such as wars but tends into the temptation to use it to bribe
for power (especially in democracies) as well as introduces unstable waves of inflation that warp the economies. Non-Fiats allow for more stable
long term growth but in modern industrial total war you can just get knocked out because it is so much harder to tax people than just trick them
into giving you things for paper.

I am sure other people can think of more.

Trick · 2018-06-21 05:18:38

jasonrohrer wrote:

No reason to care about babies? Huh?
Everything you do is meaningless without them. It's not entertainment. What you worked on during your life will be lost if no babies survive. When a village is short on babies, they aren't pretending to want a baby for pure entertainment or role playing. They know that the future is doomed without one.
If two men are left, and no babies possible, they suicide. The game isn't a "what can you accomplish in one hour" simulator. If it was, those two men would work their asses off to build whatever they could before they died. No, it's a collective, trans-generational project simulator.
That's the point of the game.
You're saying that point needs to be underlined with a personal motivation, like, "A surviving baby of mine is my only chance to continue in this village later and keep working on my own project."

But if you want to get that meta, Kinrany, what is the point of working on your own project more and more anyway? Why are people motivated to do that? What's the point?

To your other point, maybe there should just be a suicide button. No sense in making someone reload the game to do that, and no sense in making them wait to starve to death or hunt down a rattlesnake.

Yes! Please make a suicide button (that isn't easy to accidentally click). I have wasted SO MUCH TIME suiciding, and aggro-ing bears to die (sorry towns). If I could simply click on a button, that would be awesome.

I think the lineage ban shouldn't be put into effect until you've reached 30 and when you've been murdered/have murdered. Otherwise, the ban disproportionately hurts new players and abandoned babies. And you're right, it also matters to players who end up playing for a long time (people you don't really want to penalize for playing). Sometimes I go on a OHOL binge, and end up prematurely quitting when I find myself in Eve hell.

Lepisma · 2018-06-21 05:35:56

To your other point, maybe there should just be a suicide button. No sense in making someone reload the game to do that, and no sense in making them wait to starve to death or hunt down a rattlesnake.

I don't know, it would be a shame to lose the stories where the player that commits suicide is healed and persuaded to keep living
Baby suicides are a special case, a suicide button would save a ton of time for them.

Maybe it should vanish after age 5/when you can pick things up?

sc0rp · 2018-06-21 05:46:31

Trick wrote:

Yes! Please make a suicide button (that isn't easy to accidentally click). I have wasted SO MUCH TIME suiciding, and aggro-ing bears to die (sorry towns).

You can do it faster: ESC + % to quit and relaunch the game.

Last edited by sc0rp (2018-06-21 05:47:35)

Neo · 2018-06-21 06:18:26

Baby suicide/Abandonment is only really a problem for Eves and New Villages.

This can obviously fuck them over when every baby cries "N" To die in favor of getting into an over populated town or city.

How about giving us SOME choice like weather we want to be Eve/Eves Baby or Non Eve. This would reduce baby suicides and it benefits everyone.

Last edited by Neo (2018-06-21 06:30:05)

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2018-06-20 17:03:50

Embracing baby suicide

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Re: Embracing baby suicide

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