Memes are information that spread through a population via communication rather than through genes, which carry information through biological reproduction.

If you aren't already familiar with the concept, I recommend that you Watch this Sci-Scow video on YouTube if you wish to understand the point of this thread.

I am a regular watcher of Sci-Show. (I also like PBS space-time). I find it to be one of the most interesting and useful channels on YouTube.


Anyway, while watching the above-linked video, there was one section where the speaker talks about our brains having an inherent defense against memes that offer no survival benefits but only entertainment, which leads us to render them "old" or "obsolete", block them out and move on in search of new ideas.

A lightbulb went off in my head. This sounds very much like the process of losing interest in a video game. The idea behind any video game, no matter how sound and entertaining, eventually grows old, loses fun factor. Loses newness and a sense of relevance. Loses ability to hold the player's attention.

If this idea is valid, then we are genetically wired to tire of any given video game and move on from it.


Some game designers purposely try to engage addiction centers in the brain to work around this. Some players, for instance, can be persuaded to spend huge amounts of money on in-app purchases in "pay to win" games, which are designed on principles similar to gambling games, with payouts and rewards engineered to mix with baked-in frustrations that can be overcome by spending more money.

However, even game designers with a more classically honorable intention of providing entertainment and charging a fair price for it may benefit from a greater understanding of Memes (and Meme Theory). The coveted "positive word of mouth" that designers crave to earn from players, where the meme that is the game itself gets recommended around and builds up sales, is itself a form of meme.

"Figuring out what will be fun to play" may be another form of meme theory. Fun mechanics often have things in common, at least within a genre, but they must also evolve over time, because no matter how great a game may be, it will "grow old" eventually and need to be replaced by another idea, even if that mutated idea is largely similar to an earlier design.

If these ideas are mostly true, then we are also genetically wired to prefer sequels over new games. If there is a beloved meme that lasted much longer than average and granted more joy during its life span, we might mourn our inability to garner more fun out of it -- and crave a similar new idea, with enough mutation but also still true enough to the old idea, to relive the fun through a sequel. The mutation aspect becomes both our friend and our enemy, as few sequels will ever manage to recapture the old fun in all the critical ways that made it so enduring. Sometimes they bring an equal or greater new fun, but mostly they just disappoint.


OK, that's it for my musing, at the moment. If you were entertained or intrigued, please contribute to this thread so its own lifespan will increase, rather than becoming one of the majority of new memes that die a quick death in obscurity, because nobody cared about it.            


- Sirian

1.51 RC1 is finally done!

Unfortunately, most of the AI settler patches were incompatible and had to be left out. The AI's check for total military strength of all enemies when declaring wars also had to be left out, but everything else applied properly.
Oh except one more, the ability to pick new research when books are found and Spell of Mastery is being researched, this one works but does require the life+death book patch so it had to be made optional.


You can download the patch from my site as usual :
http://seravy.x10.mx/Wordpress/

The link is on the left side, and you need the file MoM151RCXX.zip, where XX is the highest numbered file.  Direct download link.

You can install it over MoM 1.31, 1.40 or 1.50.  Just unzip all the files into your MoM directory and overwrite everything.

This is a release candidate. Although the individual patches have been tested in Caster of Magic, and I fixed all compatibility problems for applying them, further testing is necessary by playing the actual game. Please report any problems you find here!

Commander Difficulty, Ironman, take two.

Same deal as last time. I will play the turns and report. You can lurk or help me out.

If you want to be a Soldier in the game let me know. I will start with those who asked in the last thread but didn't make the cut.

Unused names (for my own benefit): AdrienIer, Old Harry, Dreylin, Sareln, Krill, sunrise089

Will we make it past 10 missions this time?

After a fun and tight first game I am itching for a re-match.

I have created a new game on http://www.boardgaming-online.com/ with the name RB_game2 and the password "pinkdot". We will try to have a turnpace of roughly 1 turn a day.

I am going to do a spoilered player thread like Rho did for our last game, but I will focus on strategy more than the basics.

Sign-up is open until we get 4 players or Wednesday.

>no LES
>integrated second stage
>Hydrolox engines with srbs on a manned LEO vehicle
>waste of payload weight on wing shape
>payloads have to be carried inside the reentry vehicle
>fragile AND exposed heat shield 
>those refurbishment delays and costs
>was chosen instead of continuing the saturn program 

2/10 would not fly.

(password is bandraw)

So i'm thinking of getting a gaming console for christmas but apart from one i found in the local market when i was very litle, i've never had one so i have no ideea what to get.  I don't even know what games i want to play.(not fifa at any rate) 

I'd like to play "the last guardian" when it comes out but i'd rather not get a console just for the one decent game. 
Can you guys share your opinions on the matter?

Thanks!

First of all, all of this is specifically about LAIRS (and equivalent, so keeps, dungeons, temples etc) and does not include towers (hardcoded to always have 6, cannot be changed) nor nodes (also hardcoded, to 30).

I believe it's bad for the game that the amount of lairs on the map does not scale based on land size.

-It looks silly, when there are 6-8 lairs on a tiny 10 tile island
-If the restriction not to put capitals next to these is there, it causes map generation to fail too often on tiny lands
-But if the restriction is removed the AI might start in a "blocked" position, surrounded entirely by sea and lairs which means aside from flying units and ships, nothing can ever leave their capital - to attack lairs or board ships, the units need to be able to move to an adjacent tile first, the AI cannot directly do these from their capital and I can't change that.
-It causes way more "fragmented" continents, that are cut into two or more parts separated by the lairs on tiny lands as well, and those have all sorts of negative effects on the AI.

-It is bad for game balance. Since other resources are much more limited, and enemy wizard threat is much lower on tiny land meaning more time for it, clearing lairs becomes much more relevant in comparison to any other strategy, and hero strategies dominate these maps. Node power settings can influence this further, if high then clearing nodes will be the primary source of power as well making adventuring even more relevant, and if set low, the general lack of power and research sources due to fewer cities result in heroes dominating the game even more, as "big" spells will come later or not at all.

The current setting is 32 strong lairs and 25 weak lairs in all maps. This is the maximal amount possible (array size limits) and I would like to keep this on huge maps.
The question is, how much and which type do we want to scale down on smaller land size?
For example we could do 3 fewer strong and 2 fewer weak lairs per landmass below huge. Or we can do 5 fewer strong and no change in weak. Or we can do fewer weak and same strong, etc.

Hey guys, with many of the great old MoM forums out there disappearing or slowing down I've recently created a Master of Magic facebook group for fans to come and discuss all things MoM related like spiritual sequels (like Age of Wonders, Fallen Enchantress, Endless Legend etc),  and support MoM related fan projects like (like the various MoM Patches, MoM-Implode's Multiplayer Edition HD, Leylines etc) eg posting important news , fan art and demo announcements etc.
 
It's very sad visiting the various old MoM forums and seeing so much activity in the past yet so little now (seems like Realms Beyond is the only good one left!). It sucks that social media has crushed all the good old forums out there but it is what it is and a social media page could bring in fans of all the long lost communities back together again. Plus if more forums go down again at least the facebook page would live on keeping the MoM community alive and attracting new members and new support for the fan projects.
 
I'm a member of some great retro gaming and tv show discussion groups where topics are posted almost daily leading to massive conversations about things that are 20+years old now lol! It's about time Master of Magic had a place in social media for fans to discuss all things MoM related too! So in the end I decided to make my own as over the years I've created groups for other ageing classics like Starflight, Freelancer, and Sid Meier's Colonization which have been going quite well and have grown into nice little communities.
 
Hope to see you there!  

Master of Magic Facebook Community Page:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/MasterOfMagicGame/




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As it was 10 years ago:

(August 17th, 2006, 07:04)Sirian Wrote: This is the thread for asking questions about *Adventure 1*, or posting jokes or replies to others, or notices that your game or report is complete, etc. The Signup Thread is only for signing up. Got it? Excellent. You may proceed.

- Sirian