Players out of time - code of conduct

[Meeplelowda]

You seem to be making everything revolve around you again. Why would I assume that your unusual case of not wanting several instances of the same game would apply to other people who disagree with me?

So all preferences you don't agree with are unusual? If not, please state more clearly why it's "unusual."

I also said in this thread that I don't want more than one instance of the same game. I don't have to justify that preference to you or anyone else, and I'm willing to live with the consequences of that preference, such as being excluded from round robin tournaments.

[nik592]

Yep, including myself (who is saying it now), that's at least 4 people on this thread alone who've said they don't like running multiple versions of the same game. I don't think it's as unusual as you think.

I mean, life is full of things that ask for our attention at intermittent, sometimes unpredictable intervals. How are games different? If you are following a show, does it bother you that you have to wait one week between each episode, meaning you'll have to keep yourself busy with other things in the meantime? Even if it can make you impatient to wait for certain things, I don't understand how just throwing away something you were interested in can be seen as a better alternative.

Well, what happens with a show is generally episodes are released on a schedule. When that schedule is violated, people get annoyed. Some people might check back a time or two and see if it's just a bit late or something. Others check out altogether. Back in the days before streaming, this kind of schedule mismanagement was blamed on some shows getting cancelled because people stopped watching. I don't think I've heard of a streaming service missing dates they promised to release something, so it may not apply anymore.

Key point is, when the network violated the implicit contract with the viewer to release shows on a schedule, some viewers gave up the show. When a player violates their implicit contract with other players to play turns according to a schedule, some players choose to end the game.

I'm aware that not everyone may care about those things, but since I can't personally ask every player of every game in question, I have to take the approach that it's possible they care, and weigh this possible harm against the harm that this user receives when they are prevented from kicking out someone. And I think there's no comparison. Having games ended on you before their completion can literally destroy people. I won't take the risk of defending that even if it's just a potentiality.

As has been pointed out before, having to stay in a game that is running significantly slower than a player signed up for, can be soul-destroying for others, especially if their personal preferences are such that they'd only like to run one table of a particular game at a time. There's a potentiality for you too - but I'm aware that you believe that this potentiality isn't anywhere near as significant as the soul-destroying-ness of a game ending early (and state said belief as an absolute fact, rather than just being how you feel about the different potentialities).

I'm curious though - so a player has signed up to a 4 turns/day game, but plays at a rate more aligned with 1 turn/day. You would argue that people should stay and let the game complete.

Let's say they play at a rate aligned more with 1 turn/4 days. Should they still wait?

What if it's more like 1 turn/10 days? Or 1 turn/40 days?

At what point do you decide that maybe a game just isn't happening? Or you're supposed to wait til the person out of time has gone their 40 days over without playing a move and the table automatically ends?

As has been pointed out many times, people have choices. People can choose to play multiple tables of the same game (or not). People can choose to concede (or not). When people join a table, they're joining with a specific clock. If they don't want to abide by that clock, other people have the choice to end the game. I personally give a fair amount of grace before I end a game, and I also get annoyed at players who boot within minutes of someone going over time. Sometimes I red thumb those players - not because I think they're terrible people who ruined my game, but because their play style (no patience with people over time) doesn't suit mine. But they're still entitled to use the site how they want.

This happens IRL too - I've ended games because one player at the table has run out of time and had to leave. It's disappointing, but it is what it is. BGA is a bit different, because you don't usually get TB play in real life, but there would still be limits. If I have a housemate who runs on a different schedule for me, and we setup a game somewhere with the intention of playing turns when each of us pass through the house, and my housemate ignores the game for 3-4 days, I'd probably assume they didn't want to play, and pack it up. I might ask them, but if they didn't answer me, I'd still pack it up.

[tbhp]

You seem to be making everything revolve around you again. Why would I assume that your unusual case of not wanting several instances of the same game would apply to other people who disagree with me?

So all preferences you don't agree with are unusual? If not, please state more clearly why it's "unusual."

I also said in this thread that I don't want more than one instance of the same game. I don't have to justify that preference to you or anyone else, and I'm willing to live with the consequences of that preference, such as being excluded from round robin tournaments.

Well, I gave in a subsequent post some evidence to back up that it does seem to be unusual, although it is true that even without that evidence, I would make the same assumption.

So when someone else talks about how they want to be able to start a new game, I'm not going to go straight to assuming the motivation must be similar to what you and the other person said, because to me that's not a very natural assumption to make. I was just wondering what they could possibly mean when they said that (and we still don't know what they meant, since they haven't replied to that specific post).

[Cile]

I was just wondering what they could possibly mean when they said that (and we still don't know what they meant, since they haven't replied to that specific post).

Nothing is preventing your from having multiple games going on. I don't understand the logic of "this is taking too long so it's better to just abandon what I started". It reminds me of people in real life who never know what they want and whose interests are fleeting.

This is not how you ask someone "What do you mean"?

Next time might I suggest "What do you mean by that?" instead of the declarative statement "Nothing is preventing you."

[tbhp]

Well, what happens with a show is generally episodes are released on a schedule. When that schedule is violated, people get annoyed. Some people might check back a time or two and see if it's just a bit late or something. Others check out altogether. Back in the days before streaming, this kind of schedule mismanagement was blamed on some shows getting cancelled because people stopped watching. I don't think I've heard of a streaming service missing dates they promised to release something, so it may not apply anymore.

Key point is, when the network violated the implicit contract with the viewer to release shows on a schedule, some viewers gave up the show. When a player violates their implicit contract with other players to play turns according to a schedule, some players choose to end the game.

Like I said in the quoted post, that's a perspective I don't understand, people whose interests are so fleeting. I don't think things not going according to schedule is a good justification to abandon something. If that's what it takes for you to lose interest, then it appears like you never were that invested in the first place.

I wonder if the problem is not getting worse, with the age of the internet and of decreasing attention spans.

The problem here is that this is about more than just not being loyal to a show. When you start a game with someone, you are dealing with an actual person and there is an implicit agreement to play that game to the end. Yes, there is also an agreement to play at a certain speed, but if you jump straight to giving up on the game for that reason, I think the way you are treating that person becomes even worse than the way they are treating you by playing slowly. In my opinion the offenses don't belong in the same category. Especially since going out of time is generally not intentional, whereas kicking someone out is always intentional. In my moral framework, I have more sympathy for the people who do bad things accidentally, than for those who do them on purpose.

As has been pointed out before, having to stay in a game that is running significantly slower than a player signed up for, can be soul-destroying for others, especially if their personal preferences are such that they'd only like to run one table of a particular game at a time. There's a potentiality for you too - but I'm aware that you believe that this potentiality isn't anywhere near as significant as the soul-destroying-ness of a game ending early (and state said belief as an absolute fact, rather than just being how you feel about the different potentialities).

I think your case can be a justification to kick out someone in a 2 player game. After all, the other person broke a contract themselves, and not being able to play another game admittedly must suck.

Now, if we are talking about multiplayer games, and the game is competitive, and you know that you kicking out someone would lead to an unfair ranking of the other players, thus leading to the elimination of one or more players who did nothing wrong, I don't see how that can be justified. In those sorts of situations we just have to accept that our personal circumstances come second to the consideration of competitive fairness.

We do that all the time in real life, when we realize that something is more important than our own wishes and wants. I don't know why some people can't do it with board games. Maybe they take them less seriously than real life sports competitions or something. Or maybe they would treat real life sports competitions the same. I don't know, but in any case it's not respectful to those who do care about those things.

Like you say, morality is all about trying to accurately gauge the relative harms that are being caused, in order to determine a best course of action (although different moral frameworks may weigh things differently). In order to do that we need communication. If people like me don't speak up about the harms of ending games prematurely, then the people for who it's not an issue won't realize the harm that can be caused by it, and so we won't be able to reach a collective agreement that most accurately takes those harms into account.

I'm curious though - so a player has signed up to a 4 turns/day game, but plays at a rate more aligned with 1 turn/day. You would argue that people should stay and let the game complete.

Let's say they play at a rate aligned more with 1 turn/4 days. Should they still wait?

What if it's more like 1 turn/10 days? Or 1 turn/40 days?

At what point do you decide that maybe a game just isn't happening? Or you're supposed to wait til the person out of time has gone their 40 days over without playing a move and the table automatically ends?

Maybe. The only convincing argument I've seen so far is people who like you won't start another game until the current one is finished. In any other scenario, I don't see why they can't just leave the game running. The site is specifically designed so that dozens of games can run at the same time. It's specifically made so that this sort of thing isn't an issue. So I don't know why people would choose to make it become an issue for them.

As has been pointed out many times, people have choices. People can choose to play multiple tables of the same game (or not). People can choose to concede (or not). When people join a table, they're joining with a specific clock. If they don't want to abide by that clock, other people have the choice to end the game.

Like I said before, I think it is primordial that this choice exists. If it wasn't possible to kick out people, the system wouldn't work. People would feel too free to not play, or only play when they feel like it, which would be disastrous notably for tournament games. The hanging threat of being kicked out is what pushes people to play and, paradoxically enough, is what ensures that the vast majority of competitive games end fairly and in a completed state. The site prides itself for that, as you can read in the FAQ.

With that said, while all of this is true, we also don't want to encourage people to kick out players just because they can. Because when you kick out someone, you are terminating a game before its natural conclusion, which is exactly what we don't want. Exceptions can be made, like in your case and if the game isn't that important, but it's important that people really think things through before they make a decision. Like asking themselves if their reasons for doing it really outweigh the considerations of integrity and fairness that we expect on this site.

[teallite]

This is why BGA needs a setting at table creation to "automatically remove players who are out of time". It shouldn't be up to the users to enforce the rules, and it's absurd to blame those who are following the rules everyone agreed to at table creation for not wanting to continue playing with someone who isn't following them.

You don't enforce any rules by kicking players out of time, because there are no such rules. I'd quoted the FAQ in another similar thread:

"If the player seems to be away, we advise you to wait a few minutes: this player may be experiencing some network problems or have left temporarily. If the player does not come back, and their clock has become negative, then you may kick this player out of the game."

That's all, that's it. You may kick, you may not kick. The official stance of BGA on running out of time is that they don't have a stance. Players decide. And since players think differently about that matter, we'll have many many more thread to come about this issue.

[tbhp]

This is why BGA needs a setting at table creation to "automatically remove players who are out of time". It shouldn't be up to the users to enforce the rules, and it's absurd to blame those who are following the rules everyone agreed to at table creation for not wanting to continue playing with someone who isn't following them.

You don't enforce any rules by kicking players out of time, because there are no such rules. I'd quoted the FAQ in another similar thread:

"If the player seems to be away, we advise you to wait a few minutes: this player may be experiencing some network problems or have left temporarily. If the player does not come back, and their clock has become negative, then you may kick this player out of the game."

That's all, that's it. You may kick, you may not kick. The official stance of BGA on running out of time is that they don't have a stance. Players decide. And since players think differently about that matter, we'll have many many more thread to come about this issue.

That's a good point. The site never says that you should kick out. The possibility of it is what matters.

I don't know if there is any precedent to this system, in real life competitions or other virtual competitive scenes, but it is very smart of them. If out of time players were automatically expelled, the system wouldn't work. And if players were immune from being expelled, the system wouldn't work either.

Making expulsion a mere possibility is the perfect solution that ensures that, for the most part, things run smoothly on the website. Like a sort of Schrodinger's cat situation, it is a very elegant system.

[tbhp]

I was just wondering what they could possibly mean when they said that (and we still don't know what they meant, since they haven't replied to that specific post).

Nothing is preventing your from having multiple games going on. I don't understand the logic of "this is taking too long so it's better to just abandon what I started". It reminds me of people in real life who never know what they want and whose interests are fleeting.

This is not how you ask someone "What do you mean"?

Next time might I suggest "What do you mean by that?" instead of the declarative statement "Nothing is preventing you."

You are thinking too literally about it. I was using the phrase the way it's supposed to be used. We tell people "you have no reason to" precisely because we want to know what might be their reason.

Obviously, the use of the phrase is also supposed to reflect that the speaker is somewhat baffled by what the other person is saying. It's a way to strongly state that what they are saying makes no sense to you, while simultaneously pushing them to explain themselves to you.

[Meeplelowda]

that's a perspective I don't understand, people whose interests are so fleeting.

This is something you do a lot, and it borders on condescending. You don't understand something, so you characterize it pejoratively. Saying "people whose interests are so fleeting" is tantamount to saying "people who have a short attention span like a child."

I'm glad nik raised the analogy to episodic media, because I was thinking of it in a similar fashion. Some people play games and think of them as a series of individual choices made in a certain game state. Some of these people are comfortable with--or maybe even love--playing sometimes dozens of instances of the same game at the same time because it gives them many, many opportunities to make those choices and they don't care if they are made in the same instance of the game. For me, the flow of the game is a narrative, and I no more want that story to be told in drips and drabs over perhaps months than I want to read a novel at a rate of one sentence every two days. When I sign up expecting a story to be told in 5 weeks--as it would if everyone played according to the time settings--and there is someone who is playing at a pace at which it would take 3 months, I have a right to be annoyed by that, and I frankly couldn't care less whether or not you understand that perspective.

[Cile]

This is why BGA needs a setting at table creation to "automatically remove players who are out of time". It shouldn't be up to the users to enforce the rules, and it's absurd to blame those who are following the rules everyone agreed to at table creation for not wanting to continue playing with someone who isn't following them.

You don't enforce any rules by kicking players out of time, because there are no such rules. I'd quoted the FAQ in another similar thread:

"If the player seems to be away, we advise you to wait a few minutes: this player may be experiencing some network problems or have left temporarily. If the player does not come back, and their clock has become negative, then you may kick this player out of the game."

That's all, that's it. You may kick, you may not kick. The official stance of BGA on running out of time is that they don't have a stance. Players decide. And since players think differently about that matter, we'll have many many more thread to come about this issue.

There is a karma penalty to being kicked from a game. Strange to have a karma penalty for behaviour they think is acceptable.