What the Assassin's Guild Taught Me About Distributed Computing
Author(s)
Beal, Jacob
DownloadMIT-CSAIL-TR-2006-038.pdf (164.6Kb)
Additional downloads
Other Contributors
Mathematics and Computation
Advisor
Gerald Sussman
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Distributed computing and live-action roleplaying share many of thesame fundamental problems, as live-action roleplaying games commonly include simulations carried out by their players.Games run by the MIT Assassin's Guild are particularly illustrative ofdistributed computing issues due to their large scope and highcomplexity.I discuss three distributed computing issues addressed by Assassin'sGuild game design---information hiding, error correction, andliveness/consistency tradeoffs---and the relevance of the solutionsused by game writers to current problems in distributed computing.
Date issued
2006-05-27Other identifiers
MIT-CSAIL-TR-2006-038
Series/Report no.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory