This morning several CONE players chatted at length about the way our scores went up and down, for no apparent reason. The discussion showed us that many people were experiencing the same yo-yo scores, and that it was incomprehensible to all of us. We agreed that the information about scoring available to us in the Tutorial did not adequately address our questions. Related to that, some of us have read all or part of Bryce Lee’s paper, and are increasingly aware that we do not know the whole story with this “game.” We agreed that I would write to Ken Goldberg and ask for his comments. Our correspondence follows.
10/03/08 8:28am Loughman to Goldberg: There was a lot of discussion on the CONE-Welder Chat this morning (7:31-8:21 am) about scoring for the game. Would greatly appreciate your reading it, sharing with appropriate colleagues, and getting back to me with your comments which we could post on the Blog. Thanks.
10/03/08 9:18am Goldberg to Loughman, with copies to CONE Welder team: Please rest assured that we are definitely not playing mind games with CONE-Welder players:
Over the summer, Yan observed his score going down a few times and we worked really hard to track down a potential bug in the system but found it hard to repeat. Scores can go up when one is offline due to others classifying your photos, but they should never decrease unless in the relatively rare situation where a photo gets re-classified.
We apologize for this bug. We’ll take another look at this and try to fix it. We have utmost respect for our players and always strive to maintain fairness.
10/03/08 9:51am Loughman to Goldberg, with copies to CONE Welder team: Thanks for your quick response. Fixing the bug would certainly alleviate SOME of the angst!
But the other thing we need is for someone to post clear and complete *rules of the game*. Bryce Lee’s paper does seem to indicate that Big Brother is involved. How? As I said in the Chat, that’s creepy!
If we’re better informed, we can make more meaningful contributions.
Your further comments appreciated,
I’ve found that my own interest in the “game” aspects of CONE Welder (that is, the parts specifically related to the points scoring) has been less than it was with CONE Sutro Forest. I think that’s probably at least partly due to the novelty wearing off for me. But partly, too, I think that (at least for me) the increased complexity in the scoring system with CONE Welder has made it less fun. It is harder for me to correlate between my own behavior and the points scored, so I fairly quickly became frustrated and just stopped worrying about scoring points.
I realize that that’s somewhat paradoxical, in that the scoring system with CONE Welder incorporates some of the suggestions I’d made during CONE SF for improvements in the scoring. Ultimately, though, I think this points out the inherent difficulty in making a multiplayer game system enjoyable, and sustaining interest in it over time.
I hadn’t heard about Bryce’s paper before this. I’ll definitely read it, and will pass on any further thoughts I have on the subject after doing so. Thanks for mentioning it.