Koster Literally Sets Himself On Fire

Well this explains the record temps and rolling blackouts in California.

Are you bringing marshmallows to the bonfire?

I would resubscribe to SWG if they bestowed players with a Raph Koster character model and let us throw him down the Death Star’s core, one pattern I could grok and still find fun after the first thousand throws.

\’e2\’80\’9dI was not involved directly with SWG from about four months after launch.\’e2\’80\’9d

- That’s OK since I only blame you for everything before that anyway.

As far as the NGE is concerned, I had zero problem with it. The game was *bad* in its current state anyway. Yes i’m sure the people that played it would disagree but come on, it was NOT a fun game. Most of the time the whole problem with that “players sandbox” thing is that none of them bring their toys to the sand.

Moving ahead, please let someone take the Star Wars license and make their own MMO out of it. Please. There’s so much that could be done with it. Then again.. maybe there isn’t.

PS. F Jar Jar.

Koster *literally* set himself on fire?

Is he OK? How bad were the burns? Did he need to go to the hospital? Is he on suicide watch? Poor guy. I wonder what drove him to set himself on fire? Did he do it with gasoline or what?

People have been using “literally” to mean “very”, not “actually”, for decades now. You will find that “really” is frequently used the same way. If I say I’m feeling cold, that’s probably literally true. If I say I’m feeling REALLY cold, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t literally true if I didn’t say “really”; it means I’m “very” cold. The same goes with using “literally”; I could say I set myself on fire, which would mean I probably did so figuratively, and I could say I REALLY set myself on fire, which means I did so in a “very” figuratively way.

So yes, words in language often transcend their surface meaning. Get over it. We drive on the parkway and park on the driveway. We have roller skating and ice skating, but then we have skateboarding instead of rollerboarding, and rollerblading instead of bladeskating.

Star Wars was a bad license for a MMO.

The fact that Star Wars had a rich enough story universe to explain esoteric activities such as moisture farming does not erase the fact that it was originally just a space opera with a farm boy, a princess and a pirate, and one of them comes to learn that he has the power to manipulate the universe through his depth of FEELING (a strange mix of masculine and feminine drives, at that,) a power that only a few people in the universe have, and everyone else wants.

Most licenses are bad for MMOs, period. But NGE was even dumber than a MMO sequel, which we all know are dumb, with the added arrogance that it was somehow the right thing to do and that any customers (and employee developers) that bail will be recovered … sometime.

FIRE BAD.

Steven Wright notwithstanding, the driveway/parkway thing is simple: A driveway is where you drive from the public road to your house. Back in the days when only the rich had carriages (or later cars) the houses in question were set back quite a bit from the road, and you drove your carriage up the driveway, not across the lawn. As cars became more and more available to people without vast estates, driveways got shorter and people filled their garages with worthless junk while parking their expensive cars out in the driveway. It’s still not meant for that; we just do it. A parkway, on the other hand, was originally a wide road with nice landscaping — the sense of “park” in question is that of a planted open space, not an unmoving vehicle. The term “parkway” eventually was applied to any road that some developer or politician wanted to make sound nice, park-like or not, but there are still many that show some trace of that origin, such as the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut (one of my favorite roads anywhere)

The term skateboarding derives naturally from the origin of the activity. Ice skating came first. When wheeled skates were invented, the two types of skates were distinguised by “ice” and “roller”. The kids who invented the skateboard did far more roller skating than ice skating, so to them “skates” had wheels, and when they attached the wheeled component to a board and rode around on it, it became a “skateboard”.

Unless you want to get sued by the Rollerblade company, you’d better not talk about “rollerblading” in print. As they remind writers (via ads in writers’ magazines, etc.) you are supposed to describe such an activity as “roller skating on inline roller skates”. Yep, that’s what they’re really called: “inline roller skates”, sometimes shortened to “inline skates”. “Rollerblades” is a trademark, and the company that owns it is extremely aggressive about protecting it from genericization.

“Literally” does not mean “figuratively” (its exact opposite) or “strongly” (we have plenty of words for that). It has a very definite meaning, and that meaning is “upholding the exact meaning of a word.” In the case of this particular issue, I was expecting a post about some freak accident probably involving high-proof alcohol. That’s what the word means, and that’s what anyone deserving of their high school diploma understands it to mean. If we allow sloppiness to change that meaning, then what word will we have left when we need that meaning?

Certainly, there are ignorant people who have been misusing the word for some time now. There are ignorant people who misuse just about every word. But how do we want to define our language? Do we want to go with the dictionary definitions, a shared set of meanings, so that everyone understands what we’re all talking about? Or do we want to accept any misused word as newly correct, and thereby lose all meaning whatsoever?

Yes, languages change. They have to. But there is a big difference between a change which comes about because a word is needed for a new concept, or a new shade of an old meaning, and an existing word is pressed into service for that, and what we’re seeing here, which is pure, simple, utter sloppiness.

Take the word “cool”, for example. It’s one of my favorite words in its slang sense. (oddly enough, I rarely use it in its conventional sense) My dictionary defines that sense as “excellent”, but that doesn’t quite cover what someone means when they say something is “cool”. There’s a more complex connotation behind the simple denotation of “excellent”. It has overtones of clever, interesting, and personally appealing. A well-designed office building isn’t “cool”; a well-designed sportscar is “cool”. That connotation makes “cool” a unique word — and even then, you’ll find that sense still listed as slang in the dictionary. It’s still off-limits for anything but the most informal of writing.

Creating a meaning where one is needed is part of normal language shift. It’s a good thing. It enriches the language. You can express a concept now, namely “coolness” in the slang sense, that you couldn’t express exactly before that meaning became widespread.

Combining the meanings of words out of sheer sloppiness, on the other hand, impoverishes the language. We already have words that mean exactly what Lum misused “literally” to mean. They work fine. And we need “literally” to literally mean “literally”. If it loses that meaning, and becomes just another word for “very”, the language has lost something.

Look at the abuse of “comprise”. For some reason, people have decided it is a more formal (or just better-looking) synonym for “compose” or “consist” or “constitute”. So you see abominations such as “is comprised of” (should be “is composed of” or “consists of” or, in fact, “comprises”). Does that add anything to the language? No, because we already have “consist” and “compose”. Instead, it takes something away from the language, because we now have no precise word meaning “comprise”; “encompass” and “embrace” are as close as we get, but they don’t have quite the same shade of meaning.

English is one of the richest, if not the richest language, in the world. One of the problems of translating literary works from English to most other languages is that there are so many words in English for just about any given concept, each with a subtly different shade of meaning. That is not something we should be throwing away. Never throw away good tools! And that is certainly not something we should be allowing knuckle-dragging near-illiterates who are barely aware of the existence of the written word to take away from us.

English also happens to be an inconsistent hodge-podge of half-a-dozen other languages, gradually ground together over the course of centuries as if by an enormous, metaphorical food processor.

I used to get annoyed when people used “enormity” incorrectly. It’s still annoying, but it’s not worth the effort to care. You can’t stop it, and the only people who actually act hurt by this are bibliophiles; even poets and novelists don’t seem to be bothered.

“Star Wars was a bad license for a MMO.”

Star Wars could have (would have!) been a great MMO!

The suits at Lucasfilm are probably looking at the 6+ million WOW sub figures and thinking, “whats up with that?” Why did WOW catch fire and SW:G underperform so anemically in comparison? One could argue that the Star Wars brand name recognition is just as big in the Far East as that of Warcrafts (even more so outside of the gaming crowd, I’m in Malaysia btw).

In retrospect, IMHO – SOE designed the wrong type of game. Or rather, it (SOE) designed the right game for a small NICHE market. Casual and very easy fast and entertainment is “IN” now. I find it very interesting that after 7 years, the US MMOG industry has removed their “hardcore” blinkers and actually cater to casual players.

You whiners are just wrong. Consider this phrase:

“He literally set himself on fire IN THE METAPHORICAL SENSE.”

Now, is that sentence nonsense? Not at all. It’s using literally as a modifier to illustrate the extent to which the metaphorical sense applies. If you object to using literally in that way, do you also object to people who use “really” in that way?

“You were on fire tonight (in the metaphorical sense).”
“Awww, shut up.”
“No, you were REALLY on fire tonight.”

Does that mean that you were literally on fire? No. Everyone understands this is simply a way of emphasizing the truthfullness and applicability of the phrase, even if that phrase might be metaphorical. You’ll often see on the Internet people talking about their “real life” as distinct from their “virtual life”. But honestly even the stuff we do virutally is still “real”; it just depends on your perspective. The meaning of “real” changes depending on context; we accept that, so there should be no surprise when words like “really” and “literally”, closely related concepts, similarly change depending on context.

Complaining about an old word “pressed into service” to mean something new is just dumb. How many words are there in English for “bathroom”? Heck, many bathrooms don’t even have a bath. Do you go chiding people who use euphamisms like “restroom”, “john”, “toilet, “water closet”, and so on?

So stop being such pedants or your epitaph is going to read, “He was literally an asshole.”

“You\’e2\’80\’99re literally an asshole for having a problem with literal assholes.”

Sentient beings are like assholes. They’re everywhere and they shit all over the place.

“How many words are there in English for ‘bathroom’?”

Jacks

Loo

Can

Crapper

Savior

Cold Marm

Porcelain God

Blanche

Water Closet

I forget the rest…carry on

I DID take blame for the original design being too ambitious to complete.

But you didn’t take blame for the original design being flawed:

I don’t think there were all that many fundamental problems with the overall design itself

Not too far from Gordon Walton saying that TSO failed just because they didn’t have enough time.

Heh, we’ll ever see admissions of responsibility? And then actually bearing them instead of fleeing as soon as possible when the sky looks grim?

Do we need to literally show people the dictionary deifinition of ‘literally’? :p

So here we have a thread that is half a series of courses in English and half a conversation about SWG.

Very interesting combination.

If you know so much about the details of English, surely you’ve encountered hyperbole before? People aren’t using literally to mean “almost but not quite”. They are using literally to mean literally, but in the context of a hyperobolic metaphor.

Just to set the pedants at ease: so far as I know Raph Koster is not actually on fire. The title was a joke, in reference to the “Koster’s on FIRE!!1!” title of the Escapist piece, and my personal belief that if anything would set Raph literally aflame, it would be commenting in public on the NGE.

Occasionally I make jokes on this blog. I know, it’s a stretch.

If you use a screwdriver as a prybar, chisel or doorstop you shouldn’t be allowed to own a screwdriver.

And now for something completely different: courtesy of digg.com

Now I feel bad for having Raph explain his comments.

Next time I\\’ll just ask about the english used in the title.

I thought it was a good interview. Did you english commenters even bother to read it?

Last but not least, I thank Raph for taking my comments as they were intended.

“It\’e2\’80\’99s silly to crucify a developer that is actually trying to put some thought into design.”

But predictable and perhaps inevitable nonetheless. First we put people on pedastals, then we take ‘em down.

It may be silly to crucify a developer that is trying to put some thought into design, but it is NOT silly to crucify a developer who confuses his mandate — that of a game developer — with that of a world builder.

If there is one quote in the Escapist piece that makes me want to literally set Raph on fire, it’s the one about interdependence. Way to make a GAME that I play to ENTERTAIN MYSELF more like the real world I’m trying to avoid!

I have it on good authority that Raph Koster is flame retardant.

Hellfire got it right–one of SWG’s fundamental problems was the timeframe. Setting it between Episodes 4 and 5 was way too restrictive. Putting it just five years after the end of Episode 6 would have cost you Vader, Jabba, and the Emperor but would have helped in some other fundamental ways, such as leaving some explanation for lots of player Jedis. They also could have set as the fiction that the rebels had “won” the Galactic Civil War but that the remnants of the empire were still formiddable and thus had an excuse to just balance the two sides rather than the much more difficult task of making it *seem* like the Empire was dominant but really keeping it even for game balance purposes.

Perhaps most importantly though is the timeframe flies in the face of what seems like what is important to Raph–the players have a sandbox they can’t change. You have a game about a war that nobody can win nor can they even significantly change the balance of power. Even DAOC had more for its factions to fight over than the Rebels and Imperials did. SWG was basically “go build something but don’t change anything”.

That’s not to diminish other screwed up stuff in SWG, like crafting and combat. But the fact that Raph stayed on for one of his babies, player cities, just goes to show why he was such a poor fit for the project. Who the hell wants to be given the chance to enter the world of Star Wars and says to themselves: “you know, what I’d really like to do is go build a town–get involved with the bureaucracy and all that”. Player cities didn’t belong anywhere near the top of the priority list but that’s what we got. Raph and friends were making a game (or a world or whatever) but it wasn’t a Star Wars game and, creatively, didn’t draw from the license at all.

If it had, there probably would have been a way to get around other than walking at launch. (Because walking was a big part of Star Wars, just like watching dancers was a big part of the healing process.)

I think people are just moving away from “this is my idea of a simulation of a
life of an obscure corellian bureucrat” to concentrate on a simpler “lets just blow up stuff and kill large mammalian creatures for the next hour or two.” MMOGs follow their own trends and fads. You can’t just recycle stuff and hope it works the second time round.

To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Devs do stuff that they know best. Raph just brought in his pet UO concepts and wrapped SW:G around them. Next up is Vanguard, Brad’s idea of hardcore EQ1 without the casual whiners.

Vehicles nothing more than speeding up travel? That’s not how they are in the BF series of games, where they play great and varied roles in combat. Vehicles could make combat a lot more interesting, they make crafting more interesting, they make for something else to loot and build and upgrade in the same way we upgrade our character’s equipment and/or skills. Vehicles allow for something resembling a war in the Star Wars universe instead of a bunch of infantry shooting at each other. And for travel purposes they could be a means of increasing RP-ing if groups could gather into one player’s transport and all ride together to wherever they were going.

Seen as nothing more than speedy transport, I suppose player cities are more important. But that always seemed silly to me.

And vehicles may have come first but I seem to think mounts were first, then cities, then single-slot vehicles. Could be wrong about that, though.