Towards an Autonomous World: Autonomy and Automation

Author: Neilson

Compiler: KaiKai & GINK, AW Research

You need to be a world maximalist, to automate your autonomy. Development emerges, creates emergencies, NPCs, AI. You need to laugh at people who have a “I almost get it” perspective. You’ll need to build a big campfire, and each player is a piece of hot coal.

On the autonomous altar, the crystal sword stabbed at the victim, and then—stopped. The trembling dagger hovered at a fraction of the surface. Then, the picture goes black. You wake up, you’re in bed, and you’ve been working on a game for twenty years. The launch will be tomorrow. There were no stone temples, daggers, or victims there. The altar of autonomy is in a dream, in a dream of automation.

Autonomy and automation.

"Playing games means volunteering to overcome unnecessary obstacles. 」

– Bernard Sutz, Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia

But

Children realize early on that play is an opportunity for pure enjoyment, and that play can involve considerable stress.

– Bruno Bettelheim, The Atlantic, March 1987

And then

"As a prefix, auto- not only denotes ‘self’, as an individual and independent, but also describes instructions, decisions, and motivations from within in a rational and powerful way. 」

– Stephanie Sherman, The Age of Domination

Fortnite and Roblox are two game stacks that are automating their players (by letting players create games in the game). In a way, this is a good thing, as the game has always been a tool to turn its players into automata. But what kind of automation? A negative definition comes to mind, a picture that portrays the player as monotonous factory workers who work endlessly in their own world, constantly receiving drips. Unfortunately, we admit that this is to some extent true. However, the positive definition sees the player as someone who gives away some autonomy and exchanges it into the rules, an interesting kind of automation. And, rather than feeling limited by the rules, players are free to move and achieve autonomy that was previously unattainable.

There is a productive tension between autonomy and automation, in which there is no good or bad, and no one is more desirable than the other. Players are always delegating, exchanging, postponing, discovering and rediscovering their autonomy, which is done in automation. Considering that through marketing, a game may entice potential players to commit to doing whatever they want in the gaming world to the best of their ability. And, their choices will have consequences. The paradox is that they can only move freely within the limits that the designers have designed for them. This is certainly not the tyranny of the game, but the beauty of the game.

So

To agree to the rules of the game is to agree to be an interesting automaton, in other words, to be guided into your own new experience, into your own new experience of autonomy. Players accept the paradox that they are free to do anything in the game, but only if they follow the rules of the game. High-level players may be described as machine-like, but the best players are unique. They may have their own special movements or styles, discovering new elements of their autonomy through automation. The game is a mechanic for self-discovery through self-mastery.

Automation & Autonomy

Autonomy is an inseparable part of the self, but it is also an internal rule that the self creates and follows. Automation is the productivity that occurs when internal rules are deferred to external rules. Your game will be released within an hour, and you’re waiting for players. For twenty years, you’ve been working on a technology that allows your players to do a lot of things, but also not certain things. Soon, by automating themselves, they will be able to explore themselves. A crystal dagger stabs into your chest. You breathe a sigh of relief.

Part II

"If ideological theorists in contemporary society really exist, we can imagine them wearing childish teen hats, happily landing on their Animal Crossing accounts, and heading to board meetings. —Federico Campania, A Room with a Door

Redefining video games as a virtuous exchange of automation and autonomy goes a long way for the following reasons. First of all, the cultural experience that video games bring goes beyond “voluntarily overcoming unnecessary obstacles”, so we need a broader definition of video games. But the next routine is to try to elevate video games to real-life status, but it’s always hard to be satisfied. This is mainly because we know neither what is “real” nor what “life” is. To illustrate this point in the opposite direction, it can be argued that markets, politics, love, and freedom are all games – and in fact it is through the language of games that people come up with this idea. We are beginning to see the world through the lens of games, which is why we can’t collapse so-called real life into games, games are a medium about how to look at life.

"I reject the concept of football as a war. War is war. We don’t need a substitute because we already have the real thing. —Don Delilo, “The Termination”

Automation and autonomy allow us to discuss the experience of playing the game, or rather, feeling that we are the one being played. There are days in life when we are NPCs, and on other days, we are the protagonists. In the game world, billions of players are gathered in huge virtual geometries. Impressively virtual and spatial, while also having a vast temporal dimension of evolving narratives and content. The game left its mark on our calendar, and things got confusing. After millions of years of playing the game, the crowd asked in unison, “I’ve spent so much time here, don’t I have any control?” Players swapped their autonomy when they entered, but now they want to come back, are they asking to leave the game? No, they want a new game.

Autonomous World

The new game is Autonomous World, the concept to which this article responds. It is an innovative media project in which the conditions of existence and extension can be encoded. Essentially, it’s a computing project designed to redirect automated players into their world. This is by asking the designer to accept a permissionless and composable world, allowing the player to put down the controller and become a designer. Cut off the head of the snake so that ten heads grow in its place. If playing a Roller Coaster Tycoon game is automating yourself as an amusement park planner, then an autonomous Roller Coaster Tycoon is an automation that simulates an amusement park planner. Push the flywheel.

"Civilization progresses by expanding the number of operations we can perform without consideration. —Alfred North Whitehead

Back to Fortnite and Roblox. Players are becoming designers, creating new rules of the game, automating new players, creating new autonomy – this is the process of positive feedback. Does this kind of player-designer perpetual motion machine exist? Yes, with a large-scale on-site operations team that constantly injects novelty into the world. But how do designers make themselves irrelevant in autonomous worlds? There are games where players can still play their designed characters in-game, like Roller Coaster Tycoon and Fortnite are a bit like that. That’s okay. However, when players are fully able to change the rules of the game, they are no longer in the game. That’s okay too. To truly turn the player into a designer is to revolutionize the game.

"Making a game combines everything that is difficult to build bridges with everything that is difficult to create an opera. The game is basically an opera made out of bridges. —Frank Lantz, The Beauty of Games

Video games are the starting point, not the destination, of an autonomous world. Imagine a successful new medium, and it succeeds in video games. What characteristics might it have? A protocol for creating rules and narratives. Different narrative and world creation tools, swapping ordered plots to get level wikis. Use natural language for character and environment creation. A device or piece of hardware that, like a GPU, but is used to accelerate some kind of interface that is different from graphics. Author seeds embedded in the media itself, maximized sharing and expansion, or secret. Generate a positive and interactive experience with participant autonomy and automation. A media that is constantly delegated between NPC states and player states. A medium that encompasses how we play with the world and how the world plays with us.

Neilson is a designer who is currently working on a new game at engine_study.

Thanks to Nicole and Vera for their help with this article. This article originated from a lot of discussion within the Autonomous World community, with special thanks to ARB, GVN, Lermchair, 0xHank, and Small Brain Games for their support.