EndNet - A Prisoner's Dilemma
This game is from the old Ludum Dare platform. You can try viewing the original page on Web Archive
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This is a game designed to make everyone a villain, at least anyone who wants to win. It centers around the concept of the prisoner's dilemma where players, who have to interact to have a chance at winning, can also choose to backstab each other. In standard prisoner's dilemma fashion, if both play nice, both get out pretty OK. If both play mean, both lose. And if only one chooses to be mean, they make out really well.
This game is 100% multi-player with real humans and it is implemented as a server that can be connected to via telnet. There are tons of free telnet clients on the web including PuTTY and MushCLIENT. If you want to play, and you should, connect at
Address: endnet.publishingnothing.com
Port: 2025
Below are copies of the three important help document pages that explain the story, game play overview, and how contracts work. Check them out if you are not yet sold.
Also, a session doesn't take forever (so you can't just win by playing longer than anyone else). Once your character makes its first contract, it has one real world hour to make as much money as possible. Don't want to play for an hour? Don't worry, try it out anyways.
My biggest fear is that there will not be enough players to really get this going so if you think this is interesting, please pass on the word so we can the evil villain empires rolling!
--[Help - Story]------
Money. Its all about the damn money. To make everything "fair" it was decided
in the year 2025 to make it so everyone had access to the trade markets. The
problem? You only get one shot. For one hour.
Everyone is given a preset amount of cash and once you start trading, you have
one hour to make as much money as you can. Whats going on behind the trades?
It doesn't matter any more. Its just a system.
Once the hour is up, you'll still be able to connect to the system but you can
no longer trade. No longer make more money. You failed? Whelp, your boned.
Don't fail.
--[Help - Game]------
The point of the game is to make money on contracts with a prisoner's dilemma
twist. Either or both of the players involved in a contract can choose to
backstab the other with the "evil" versions of the offer and accept commands.
If neither uses the evil version, both players profit. If both are evil, both
loose everything invested as well as the contract slot for its duration. And
if only one is evil, then they take all of the money for themselves. Whether
or not you got screwed is not known until the contract is complete.
Since you only have one hour to make as much money as you can, picking who you
make deals with and if you screw them over is paramount. To facilitate this
players can chat globally (say) and privately (tell) and can see info about
players (about).
To aid in this, a reputation system is in place. Each player starts with 10
reputation. When a contract completes, both players involved can rate the
contract interaction in the range of -3 to +3. This is applied to the other
player and is reflected on their public reputation where higher is better.
--[Help - Contracts]------
Contracts are how you make money. To create a contract, one player makes an
offer to another with the contract details. The other player can choose to
accept or reject the contract. Once accepted the contract lasts the specified
duration. Any one player can only have a maximum of 5 open contracts at a
time. The "offer" and "accept" have evil versions called "eviloffer" and
"evilaccept", the effects of which are described in "help game".
The parameters of the offer commands are:
- offer <investment1> <player> <investment2> <duration>
investment1 - The investment of the offering player
player - The player you are making the offer to
investment2 - How much the other player is supposed to invest
duration - How long the contract lasts in minutes if accepted, max of 5
Profit multipliers increase with duration. At 1 minute, each player makes
back their investment plus the average of both investments and at 5 minutes
each makes back their investment plus 16x the average of their investments!
This game is 100% multi-player with real humans and it is implemented as a server that can be connected to via telnet. There are tons of free telnet clients on the web including PuTTY and MushCLIENT. If you want to play, and you should, connect at
Address: endnet.publishingnothing.com
Port: 2025
Below are copies of the three important help document pages that explain the story, game play overview, and how contracts work. Check them out if you are not yet sold.
Also, a session doesn't take forever (so you can't just win by playing longer than anyone else). Once your character makes its first contract, it has one real world hour to make as much money as possible. Don't want to play for an hour? Don't worry, try it out anyways.
My biggest fear is that there will not be enough players to really get this going so if you think this is interesting, please pass on the word so we can the evil villain empires rolling!
--[Help - Story]------
Money. Its all about the damn money. To make everything "fair" it was decided
in the year 2025 to make it so everyone had access to the trade markets. The
problem? You only get one shot. For one hour.
Everyone is given a preset amount of cash and once you start trading, you have
one hour to make as much money as you can. Whats going on behind the trades?
It doesn't matter any more. Its just a system.
Once the hour is up, you'll still be able to connect to the system but you can
no longer trade. No longer make more money. You failed? Whelp, your boned.
Don't fail.
--[Help - Game]------
The point of the game is to make money on contracts with a prisoner's dilemma
twist. Either or both of the players involved in a contract can choose to
backstab the other with the "evil" versions of the offer and accept commands.
If neither uses the evil version, both players profit. If both are evil, both
loose everything invested as well as the contract slot for its duration. And
if only one is evil, then they take all of the money for themselves. Whether
or not you got screwed is not known until the contract is complete.
Since you only have one hour to make as much money as you can, picking who you
make deals with and if you screw them over is paramount. To facilitate this
players can chat globally (say) and privately (tell) and can see info about
players (about).
To aid in this, a reputation system is in place. Each player starts with 10
reputation. When a contract completes, both players involved can rate the
contract interaction in the range of -3 to +3. This is applied to the other
player and is reflected on their public reputation where higher is better.
--[Help - Contracts]------
Contracts are how you make money. To create a contract, one player makes an
offer to another with the contract details. The other player can choose to
accept or reject the contract. Once accepted the contract lasts the specified
duration. Any one player can only have a maximum of 5 open contracts at a
time. The "offer" and "accept" have evil versions called "eviloffer" and
"evilaccept", the effects of which are described in "help game".
The parameters of the offer commands are:
- offer <investment1> <player> <investment2> <duration>
investment1 - The investment of the offering player
player - The player you are making the offer to
investment2 - How much the other player is supposed to invest
duration - How long the contract lasts in minutes if accepted, max of 5
Profit multipliers increase with duration. At 1 minute, each player makes
back their investment plus the average of both investments and at 5 minutes
each makes back their investment plus 16x the average of their investments!