Possibilities for converting useless fun into utility in Online Gaming

I dunno, LW already seems like it's massively multiplayer enough. Plus its incentive system already tends to lead to spending more time on it, not less. The combat system still needs work, too, as a good position on a controversial topic wins you more karma than an insightful comment on a less-inflammatory topic.

;-)

QuakeLive is my drug of choice.

This probably belongs in a meta thread: I've also been concerned that the design of Lesswrong itself encourages poor use of time. It's set up with goals similar to other content sites: Lots of high quality comments, a semi-regular turnover of the front page, and even more on the 'new' page. easy tracking of long complicated threads.

All this is perfect if you're reddit and you want tons of ad views of content your users spend hours creating. This is less perfect if you want to maximize the productivity of your users.

There's been a lot of research on productive gaming. See http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143&ei=Kpu0SJaLDJTy-wH55ICiDQ#

The most efficient form of productive gaming is simply picking up time that people would likely spend procrastinating anyways. The best analogy is to distributed computing systems. The relevant computing system with extra clock cycles in this case happens to be the human brain.

I don't however see how one would integrate that with an MMO or how this would be substantially useful to interact with in an MMO setting. I don't see how creating this sort of incentive system is at all helpful. If you want to get rationalists or SIAIfolk to do something it isn't efficient to first lure them to an MMO and then lure them from there into doing work.

I don't think an incentives system for game activity is a good idea. For most online games, more in-game activity helps gain in-game utility. A gaming clan is intended to help its members all gain in-game utility, and incentives for game inactivity would be counterproductive towards those ends. Furthermore, forming a SGG or LWGG would probably draw many of us towards whatever game it is implemented in while likely only resulting in a slight decrease in activity for those already there (maybe an increase for those games where managing a clan takes a lot of work).

However, the idea of forming gaming clans as a way to get publicity for LW or SIAI could be a good one in games with a large social aspect. Still, I would not recommend incentives for inactivity, because increased interaction with other players would increase the effectiveness of a gaming publicity drive. Also, I think a Less Wrong clan would be much more effective than a Singularitarian clan, because most people would probably at first write of "Singularitarian" as some nutcase cult belief, and have no interest, but there are many people who desire to become less wrong and could be helped out a lot by this site, and many of them would learn about SIAI from LW after we hook them in.

Another possibility to use gaming productively is to try to start up a LW- or SIAI-backed MMO and use it to generate revenue. It seems unlikely that this would be practical, but I'm not sure of that, so I figure throwing that idea out there can't hurt.

Abstract?

And since I'm posting this here, an intention of course is to invite commentary on the rationality of all of the above thinking.

I don't think it's very rational. I mean, sure, you deserve some credit for noting that people shouldn't do X, that some will do it anyway, and then trying to work out a second-best solution that exploits the fact that people do X.

But if you were really trying to solve the general problem "What are some good ways to divert gaming energy to rationalist energy?" then you should have focused much more on the poker example, or on AlexMennen's advertising idea, or on brainstorming for other ideas. Instead, you spend a lot of effort thinking about (and encouraging others to think about) the sub-problem of how to make a Less Wrong or SIAI clan in an MMO with the right incentives, even though you seem to acknowledge that this subproblem is much more difficult than the problem it's meant to help solve.

Without meaning to offend you or to accuse you of having had 'bad' motives on purpose, I invite you to consider the possibility that you have optimized for the solution to a different problem: "How do I justify my interest in MMOs so that I feel less badly about playing them?"

Actually, I was just watching a TED talk by a woman who was saying that gamer's were probably the future's greatest resource, we just need to find a way to harness what it is gamers are so good at [which she explains during the talk].

Reminds me of this game.

I would rather see effort towards a LWGG than a SGG, because the LWGG, being associated with LW, is more likely to succeed at creating/preserving the specific benefit you describe.

(My gaming time-sink is Team Fortress 2, which is not MMO, though it does have some related features such as giving persistent rewards for accumulating play time.)

Are there existing examples of thriving MMO guilds that have an extra-game primary focus? As far as I understand it, currently with all else being equal, a guild focusing solely on monomaniacal gameplay will outcompete a guild focusing on extra-game activities in in-game power, visibility and prestige, since most current MMO environments are mechanically and culturally fixated on laborious in-game achievement. This may be different in MMOs that reward skill or creativity rather than just grind capacity. Something like Second Life that supports user-created content looks like it would reward an extra-game focus much better than more game-like MMOs. But Second Life also has small mindshare compared to more game-like MMOs.

Agree that MMOs are likely to be a growing social phenomenon and its worth looking into what could be done with the mindshare they get.