James: Breaking the unwritten rules in online games is basically griefing, right? Might be an interesting way of thinking about it. I definitely believe that the perfect implementation of physics must have been designed by a higher power, but it’s possible that it’s just the anthropic principle that I’m experiencing.

Nice summary of the different types of rules. I have to admit that I sometimes wonder about the laws of physics, maybe it the sci-fi part of me. They are a great comfort to have as they allow us to predict so much behaviour around us. I wonder what’s the rate of these types of laws being disproved? Very slim I would think. Also some of them are just so compact and seeming simple that you could get into a debate that there really must be some sort of “higher power” or a rule that sums it all up. Have a read of this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio).

The “unwritten rules” in games always makes me grin. Imagine playing a game of chess and every time you made a now do something really strange, like burp, or make a stupid face. Would that be against the written rules? I think that when ever you have the human element involved that are so many other possible actions/inputs that then add that there is never a way that you could possible define rule for all situations… always seems to defer to rules that exist outside the defined context of the particular game (fairplay, honesty, etc..) well not rules I suppose but morals really ….