illuminating science

Although I don’t play online games myself, I actually find them really interesting. First, there’s the social aspects - you can be whoever (or whatever!) you want, and no-one can truly tell for sure whether you’re a 12 year old boy or a 78 year old granny. There have been stories of couples meeting in virtual worlds, falling in love and ultimately getting married. Although I can’t find the article now, Wired suggested an interesting theory that virtual worlds might be better for dating. In real life, we always see someone’s appearance, then make small talk, etc. Only later do we get to meet the “real” person - and if they fail the first tests, then romance is pretty much off the cards. But in online worlds, you (potentially) meet in the opposite way - you go on quests together where your true character shines through, perhaps converse in the virtual pub back in the virtual town, and finally you might meet in real life.

Then there’s “emergent phenomena” - situations or events that the original designers might not have anticipated, but which keen players discover and use nonetheless. (I’m really interested in emergent phenomena in general, i.e., the evolution of complex behaviour or effects out of simple rules or changes. I’ve been working on a program that simulates little creatures and lets them breed and evolve, and by random chance they’ve been able to develop quite complex food gathering strategies. It’s fun to play with, but needs more work before I put it on the web.)

As far as virtual worlds go, simple examples include firing a rocket at your own feet as you jump in Quake - even though this does damage to you, it also propels you upwards at a dramatic rate, enabling you to reach convenient ledges, or surprise your enemies. It’s pretty unlikely that this was an intended use of your rocket launcher! Another example is the game Halo, where people have managed to do incredible stunts that probably weren’t intended.

More complex examples, however, involve the actual social or economic aspects of the game. This article (search for “Asheron” and read on) has some interesting examples of a simple effect (e.g., the discovery of safe “perching” spots where archers could attack without being hit) resulted in big changes (e.g., archers became very desirable, powerful “cartels” of archers formed, and persisted even after the admins stepped in to remove the “perching” spots). There’s the sale of virtual items on Ebay (a +200 suit of armour, an enchanted mace, etc), and exchange rates between the U.S. dollar and in game gold.

And then, most recently and most interestingly, there was a plague in the online game World of Warcraft. The designers introduced a new dungeon in which the God of Blood, Hakkar, waits to kill the questers. Although powerful, he was not invulnerable, and in his dying gasps he explodes coating the attackers in “poison blood”. Designed to do large damage every 2 seconds, the infection was, it seems, meant to be localised within the dungeon. However, some players discovered that by infecting their pet (a “non-player character” or NPC) with the plague, they could bring it out of the dungeon and back to the town. The result? A plague of epic proportions that wiped out hundreds of weaker players and even some stronger ones. Bodies littered the streets and attempts by the designers to control the plague failed; there was even attempts quarantine infected players, but people escaped and spread the disease further through the ability to teleport. Players started attacking enemy Kingdoms with the plague rather than conventional weapons, once prosperous cities became ghost towns except for a few powerful characters who could survive the disease.

Finally, a cure spell was created and distributed en masse to the population. It just makes me wonder - how far removed is a scenario like this from real life? Was it an act of terrorism, bringing the disease back to town, or did the players just not realise what they were doing? Did the spread of the disease reflect models we have for the real world? It would be fascinating to look at the infection rate and distribution and compare it to simulations (can you have simulations of a simulation?!)

All in all, it makes for very interesting gaming and perhaps very interesting science as well.