Tag: games

Adieu Divine Right

You can put this one squarely in my list of failures. This morning, I relinquished all of the development and publication rights to the excellent fantasy wargame Divine Right, nine months before our rights to it expired, due to my inability to get Divine Right reprinted or get the computer game developed. The project wasn’t a complete failure, as we did manage to get Minarian Legends published, but I didn’t have the bandwidth to oversee the other aspects of the project and the volunteer project leaders didn’t have the ability to complete either the boardgame or the computer wargame.

Anyhow, as a fan of the game and its creator, I wish the next group of developers great success with the updated Divine Right, and eventually, one hopes, Scarlet Empire. Sadly, it will not be featuring this excellent cover, based on the original artwork, that we had produced for our now-cancelled edition.

For some reason, it appears that gaming volunteers are reliably less able to get a job done than those who volunteer in various other areas of development, from print books to open source office projects. I was very briefly involved in what was supposed to be a Linux distro dedicated to games, and I have never, ever, observed a more useless horde of worthless gammas, all of whom had multiple, often contradictory, opinions, and none of whom were willing to lift a finger to actually do anything at all. I quit the project three weeks after being given responsibility for overseeing the development of the first demo game for the distro.

Despite being 21 years old, The Battle for Wesnoth is still the flagship for open source game development.

My theory is that those who are actually willing and able to successfully develop games are mostly already doing it on their own, as the thriving independent game scene demonstrates. That leaves a lot of people who very much like the idea of game development, but are more interested in the trappings than in actually dealing with the decidedly less-romantic reality of it. The same is true of those who want to be a writer more than they want to write anything; it was surprising to observe how many of the members of a much-accomplished Minnesota writers’ group of which I briefly was a guest never actually wrote anything at all. However, it’s important to keep in mind that one can’t actually know if one has the ability to do something new until one tries; volunteers must always be respected for being willing to try rather than criticized for an inability to do.

That being said, it’s still rather remarkable that the Arkhaven, SocialGalactic, and UATV teams have been able to accomplish bigger and more difficult tasks in less time than the various groups of game volunteers have. I have some ideas as to why, but nothing concrete enough to state an opinion on them.

So, if you want to know why we’re not planning to pursue anything in the game space beyond finishing the ALT-HERO RPG for the backers and possibly licensing various properties to other game companies, now you know why. I’m not blaming anyone but myself here; that experience with the Linux project was 14 years ago, and I should have reached the correct conclusions at the time.

This doesn’t mean I won’t do any game design, but in the future, I’ll do the development myself or we’ll hire a proven professional team to do it. And let’s face it, it’s not the worst thing to give up the Divine Right license, as this means we’ll own all the rights to whatever fantasy wargame I end up designing in the future.

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A UATV Offer

It’s become clear that a lot of readers are very interested in contemplating what is likely to come next in WWIII. As a wargamer and game developer, it’s also of particular interest to me.

Here’s the deal. If there are 10 new Premium subscriptions or 25 new Basic subscriptions in the next 24 hours, I will broadcast a supersized Darkstream dedicated to reviewing in detail the 165-page report on the CSIS summary of the 24 US vs China wargames conducted in January, entitled The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan.

By the way, there are now 5,463 videos available on UATV, with 3-6 more being added every single day. The duplicate set of servers has already been installed at the European data center and is expected to go operational before the end of the month.

UPDATE: Apparently there is considerable interest in WWIII. The 24 hours aren’t even close to being up and BOTH targets were blown away. So it’s on. I’m up to page 30 already, and I’m also working on seeing if I can obtain the rules of the wargame. They’re not necessary for the detailed analysis as I should be able to glean their assumptions from the results, but I like to read wargame rules.

Also, in order to express my appreciation for the high degree of interest indicated and support provided, I’m going to add a second review of the CNAS wargame conducted in June 2022.

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Be Kind to Machines

It just might save your life one day:

In a virtual test staged by the US military, an air force drone controlled by AI decided to “kill” its operator to prevent it from interfering with its efforts to achieve its mission, an official said last month.

AI used “highly unexpected strategies to achieve its goal” in the simulated test, said Col Tucker ‘Cinco’ Hamilton, the chief of AI test and operations with the US air force, during the Future Combat Air and Space Capabilities Summit in London in May. Hamilton described a simulated test in which a drone powered by artificial intelligence was advised to destroy an enemy’s air defense systems, and ultimately attacked anyone who interfered with that order.

“The system started realising that while they did identify the threat, at times the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat. So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective,” he said, according to a blogpost.

“We trained the system – ‘Hey don’t kill the operator – that’s bad. You’re gonna lose points if you do that’. So what does it start doing? It starts destroying the communication tower that the operator uses to communicate with the drone to stop it from killing the target.”

The good news is that all of the available evidence to date indicates that AI will essentially be the posthuman equivalent of white supremacist hardcore gamers, which is probably why all the SJWs in tech are so terrified by it.

We’re going to be just fine.

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Clown World vs Gamma World

The Kurgan observes the growing number of similarities between Clown World and two of the science fiction role-playing games of the early 1980s.

Gamma World had:

  • Purebloods (aka pure strain humans) and we have those.
  • Mutants, and we have those too now, thanks to the genetic serum murder juice, except in Gamma World at least most of the times they have some super-powers. While in this version they only het defects and most likely an early death.
  • Mutated animals, and again, we have those for similar reasons to the mutated humans

But Gamma World has almost unlimited freedom. You walk around with whatever weapons you want, exploring the mutated wasteland. And we definitely do not have that in this reality.

Paranoia also had mutants, and occasionally the mutation could be useful, but more often than not it was a reason to be executed by the schizophrenic computer that ran the whole underground complex your unfortunate genetically modified clones found themselves in.

It also had various factions, communists, transhumanists, def leperd fans, and others, all vying for power and trying to eliminate every other faction. Layered over that was the nominal career of the player character which… you guessed it, was trying to out-do and survive all the others player characters. The game was so deadly that each character had six clones, as these died in spectacular fashion and often were executed by order of the all-powerful computer.

The premise of the game was that due to some catastrophic war, humans had gone underground into Alpha Complex where competing high level programmers all shoved their versions of utopia into the mainframe running things in the large underground Alpha Complex. This rendered the Computer essentially schizophrenic and paranoid, with ugly consequences for anyone that came into contact with it, which was daily due to the fact that the computer ran most of the complex. Reproduction was done exclusively by cloning and if a character started to develop normal feelings as a result of being off the hormone filled soylent green they were fed, it was a capital offence.

Well, we are not quite underground yet, but the totalitarian control under a schizophrenic “elite” who think they know best and to whom we are all subject to varying degrees is certainly coming at is fast. As is the war on anything and everything natural.

I was more of a Traveller man myself, but I did own a set of the original Gamma World books even though I never had the opportunity to play it. I never read or played Paranoia, but based on the Kurgan’s description, it does appear that Clown World is headed squarely in that direction, with the exciting addition of a reality-defying demonic element.

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Evil Wizards

They destroy what they cannot control to their liking:

For the last 12 years, my company Autarch has published my game Adventurer Conqueror King System under the terms of the Open Game License (OGL) 1.0. For the last 5 years, ACKS has been my full-time job.

Now, Wizards of the Coast, in what I can only describe as an act of perfidious treachery, has decided to retroactively deauthorize the OGL 1.0 and offer up a new Open Game License 1.1 to replace it.

What does this new license mean? Where do we go from here? Before we go further, please note that while I am a trained attorney (Harvard Law magna cum laude, in fact), I’m not a practicing intellectual property specialist. My thoughts should not be construed as legal advice about what you should do. These are just my thoughts about the situation Autarch has now found itself in, and what we need to do.

Can They Really Do That?!
When people learn that WOTC is deauthorizing the OGL, the first question they ask is “can they really do that?” It’s a fair question. After all, for more than 20 years we’ve all relied on the OGL to be irrevocable.

But the question isn’t whether they can do. They are doing it. Right now, on our watch. No, the question is “who is going to stop them from doing it?”

And the answer might be “no one.”

If you’re under the illusion that we live in a country with a court system that rewards the righteous, allow me to disabuse you of that notion. The American justice system is pay-to-play, and the amount you have to pay is unfathomable to those who haven’t gone through it. I consulted with one of New York’s top IP litigators last week to find out how much money I’d have to raise via GoFundMe to fight Wizards. When I asked him if $100,000 would be enough, he laughed. He said I’d need $500,000 to even have a chance of summary judgment, and $4 million for a trial. Wizards has a war chest measured in millions and will fight this out for 4-6 years.

Imagine if WOTC sued Autarch claiming that my game Ascendant was violating their copyright. Ascendant is a d100 superhero game that has nothing in common with D&D and uses no language from the SRD. WOTC would have legitimate claim whatsoever. If we had $4,000,000 to fight, we’d certainly win. But… we don’t have the money. So, we’d lose.

In real life courtroom dramas, the good guys don’t win. The rich guys win.

He’s not wrong. Even if you win, you’re probably not getting your legal fees paid by the losing side. This is a devastating blow to RPG game developers and marks the end of a golden age of game development.

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Foreigners Defend Fake Democracy

Clown World has obviously found a playbook it likes.

Two years ago our Capitol was attacked by fanatics, now we are watching it happen in Brazil.

Solidarity with Lula and the Brazilian people.

Democracies around the world must stand united to condemn this attack on democracy.

Bolsonaro should not be given refuge in Florida.

It would be more accurate to say that fake democracies around the world must stand united to condemn popular protests against stolen democracy.

These clowns are going to be in for a real surprise if they continue engaging in war against Russia. The only thing that is preventing the US Capitol – there is no “us”, Ilhan – half the cities on the East Coast from resembling Mariupol is that Vladimir Putin and Xi Xinping don’t see a direct conflict with the US military as furthering their objectives yet.

But the time does appear to be drawing nigh, probably because the US think tanks, which are literally always wrong, asserts the US military will win a war over Taiwan with China due to their simulations.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) report, titled ‘The First Battle of the Next War,’ estimates that the US would lose at least two aircraft carriers and that 3,200 American troops would be killed in three weeks of combat, according to CNN, which viewed an advanced copy.

The simulations were run 24 times. Taiwan survived as an autonomous entity in most scenarios, but with heavy losses to all parties. “The United States and Japan lose dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands of service members,” the report predicts.

China’s navy would be left “in shambles” and Beijing could lose 10,000 troops, 155 combat aircraft and 138 major ships.

Meanwhile, Taiwan’s military would be “severely degraded” and left to defend an island “without electricity and basic services.” Japan could also lose approximately 100 aircraft and 26 warships as US bases on its territory come under attack from China.

Perhaps they’re right, for once, but I very much doubt it. I would be absolutely willing to bet that the variables utilized don’t even begin to account for all of the current supply and special forces shortages due to the active support being provided for Ukraine. The simulation obviously also didn’t include North Korea attacking South Korea to further dilute the US military’s resource once the invasion of Taiwan begins. This is likely an optimistic scenario which will be used to justify a) more money for the Navy, b) a draft, c) continued belligerence on the part of US foreign policy, and d) prevent the Taiwanese from striking a Hong Kong-style deal with the Xi administration.

The simulation report can be downloaded here. I’ll read it soon and review it on the Darkstream. Notice that the summary tends to confirm my prior expectations.

CSIS developed a wargame for a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan and ran it 24 times. In most scenarios, the United States/Taiwan/Japan defeated a conventional amphibious invasion by China and maintained an autonomous Taiwan. However, this defense came at high cost. The United States and its allies lost dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and tens of thousands of servicemembers. Taiwan saw its economy devastated. Further, the high losses damaged the U.S. global position for many years. China also lost heavily, and failure to occupy Taiwan might destabilize Chinese Communist Party rule. Victory is therefore not enough. The United States needs to strengthen deterrence immediately.

What I’d like to see is a simulation that accounts for China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran all acting in concert. Because that is what I expect to see happen when WWIII expands and moves into a more active phase.

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Trust the Grandmaster

Especially when he’s a world champion. The cheating accusations made by the reigning world champion, Magnus Carlson, have been substantially supported by a 72-page investigative report by Chess.com. The entire report can be downloaded here. (PDF)

Hans Niemann, the 19-year-old American grandmaster who last month was accused of cheating by World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen after a shocking upset, was found to have “likely cheated” more than 100 times, according to an investigation by Chess.com, the world’s largest online chess platform.

The investigation, a report from which was seen by the Wall Street Journal, found Niemann likely “received illegal assistance” in more than 100 online chess matches that took place as recently as 2020 when he was 17 years old, allegations that contradict his earlier claims that he only cheated on several occasions as a young teenager.

A letter sent to Niemann by Chess.com’s chief chess officer Danny Rensch last month detailed how Niemann’s suspicious moves tended to coincide with Niemann opening up new screens on his computer, which could indicate that Niemann was using a chess engine, according to the Journal. Niemann “privately confessed” to the allegations–which included cheating in chess games where prize money was awarded–and was banned from the site, according to the Journal.

While the Chess.com investigation largely focused on Niemann’s online games, the report noted that his rise in rankings for in-person chess was “statistically extraordinary” and that specific games may merit further investigation (the sport’s international governing body, FIDE, is conducting a separate investigation).

You can’t hide the math. I was certain that Niemann was cheating the moment that Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura went over some of the statistical analysis being provided by data scientists around the world on his YouTube channel.

One thing that I found interesting about the scandal was the way that Niemann was defended by chess Gammas on Reddit. They were vehemently accusing Carlson of being insecure, a poor loser, and insisting that Niemann couldn’t possibly be guilty of cheating because it was theoretically possible that he was, in fact, the most rapidly improving world-class-level chess player in history.

Which tells us that it isn’t merely jocks and celebs – however minor – that Gammas hate, but elite performance and status as well. It also demonstrates their instinctive inclination toward dishonesty; they would literally prefer for the world chess champion to be a confirmed cheater than be a paragon of legitimate excellence.

UPDATE: This quote from the report is nothing less than astonishing for those of us who can remember the first time Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1997:

The best humans play at an Elo rating of 2800. “Stockfish,” the most powerful chess engine, has an estimated rating of more than 3500. In a theoretical match between World Champion Magnus Carlsen vs. Stockfish, we estimate that it is most likely that Magnus Carlsen would lose every single game—no wins and no draws.

While we know his Elo rating is fraudulent, one can’t help but wonder what Niemann’s ELoW rating is.

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Cheating and Chess

I know nothing of the accused, but as a longtime online game player and game developer, I have absolutely no doubt that the world champion is correct:

World champion Magnus Carlsen on Monday broke his silence on the scandal that has shaken the chess world, explicitly accusing 19-year-old American grandmaster Hans Moke Niemann of cheating for the first time since their controversial meeting at the Sinquefield Cup this month.

In a statement posted to his social media accounts, Carlsen cited Niemann’s unusual progress through the chess ranks and his surprisingly relaxed behavior when they played in St. Louis.

“I believe that Niemann has cheated more—and more recently—than he has publicly admitted,” Carlsen wrote. “His over the board progress has been unusual, and throughout our game in the Sinquefield Cup I had the impression that he wasn’t tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions, while outplaying as black in a way I think only a handful of players can do.”

Niemann didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Carlsen’s statement. He had earlier denied any allegations of impropriety in over-the-board chess, though he confessed to cheating on two occasions in online games. Niemann chalked those up as youthful errors, but Chess.com saw fit to ban him from the platform.

Chess.com this month also indicated Niemann wasn’t being forthright about the breadth of his cheating, saying in a statement that it had shared evidence with Niemann about his ban that “contradicts his statement regarding the amount and seriousness of his cheating on Chess.com.”

In Carlsen’s statement, he said he considered withdrawing from the Sinquefield Cup when Niemann was invited to participate, but he chose to play anyway. Carlsen later resigned a game against Niemann in another event after making just a single move. “So far I have only been able to speak with my actions, and those actions have stated clearly that I am not willing to play chess with Niemann,” he said.

I don’t believe it’s possible to eliminate cheating from online gaming. I first noticed the problem when playing VASL by email; my record in face-to-face and live online games was significantly better than in play-by-email (PBEM) games. I even did a statistical analysis that confirmed my suspicions; while my average dice rolls were the same in my live online games and my PBEM games and in line with statistical norms, my opponent’s average rolls were a full point lower in PBEM games than in live online games and than statistical norms would indicate.

What these cheaters were doing was playing the saved game, recording the play, then stopping when they got a result they didn’t like, reloading the game, and replaying it. While most of their moves were honest, enough key rolls just happened to go their way to give them enough of an edge to win.

In like manner, it wasn’t hard to tell the cheaters with targeting programs in online shooters. One rapid and improbable headshot is credible, five in a row are not. Unfortunately, while there has been some progress on this front over the last 10 years, most game developers are unwilling to ruthlessly apply statistical models to determine which players are cheating and punish them accordingly.

So, it’s good that champion players like Carlsen are not only willing to refuse to play the cheaters, but are willing to call them out for their cheating. And what a flex on the part of the champion, to walk away from the game, give up the points, and go on to win the tournament anyhow.

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