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The nature of online RPG
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The nature of online RPG
#1(from Talzhemir's Treasure Trove Talzhemir's Treasure Trove, About the Nature of Online Roleplaying
ABOUT THE NATURE OF ONLINE ROLEPLAYING
[REVISED NOV. 1997]
The age of the professional multi-user environment (MUE) is upon us,
and it won't be long before competition makes the seller's market
into a buyer's. Games will compete for player time, but we've
already gained understanding of how to keep players' attention for
decades instead of months or years. The lessons learned in the all-
text games are still very applicable to the newfangled colorful 3D
worlds.
1. WHAT ARE THE PROPORTIONS OF THE DIFFERENT PLAYER TYPES ON TEXT GAMES?
My theory is that there's four general categories of interaction.
From watching text games over the years, and talking to many other wizards,
I've estimated that in a sample of 10 text players, 4 prefer peaceful
non-competitive activities (Socializers), 3 prefer a sort of free-form
Let's Pretend (Persona Players), 2 prefer to be well-defined characters
in an ongoing storyline (Roleplayers), and 1 prefers nonstop fighting
(Combat Players). Players usually think they will enjoy a mixture of
these but they actually spend the lion's share of their time in just
one.
2. WARGAMES ARE BEING JOINED BY OTHER KINDS OF GAMES.
Most online multiplayer all-text games are the class called the
"muds" or "combat muds" or "dikuMUDS." They're like Dungeons and Dragons
with the numbers-crunching handled by the computer. MUEs devoted to
Social, Persona, and Roleplay have gone from a ratio of 1 in 20 around
1996 to 1 in 3 in 1997. (Text games combining combat and the other sorts
of activities are extremely rare.) Because of affordable RAM and a
willingness to write games for Pentiums rather than mainframes, the other
kinds of games are up and coming.
The domination of PC games market by Combat type games could be because
the strongly competitive and aggressive mentality yields financial gains.
That is, the people who like Doom and Quake happen to be the people
buying Pentiums, leading to the false impression that these are what
everyone else wants. Maybe that's why we have so many Wargames.
The Combat players are a minority, but a vigorous one. The Combat
player wants all players to be playing by the same rules, wants to kill
lots of monsters and take their treasure. The Combat player, very simply,
wants to *win*. It's very easy to make a game with rules, where it's very
clear when somebody wins, and maybe THAT'S why we have so many Wargames.
3. WHAT DO SOCIAL PLAYERS DO?
Social play is what I term activities that which tends to
be the players' actions, only performed in a virtual setting. A
Social player who doesn't steal in real life, might find it very
abhorrent to steal in a game.
Social text muds and IRC far outnumber any other kind of "real
time" net hangout. The Social player places far more importance on the
ease of speech, asynchronous communication (internal mud email and
bulletin boards), group communication (chat channels a la CB radio),
and privacy. Solitary activities for when friends are not present
are strangely vital to them-- activities like building custom locations
are more than enjoyable pastimes or forms of self-expression: They
prevent one's circle of associates from growing too large. This helps
to stabilize an ongoing social community.
Social players are "just folks" who talk on IRC about sex, religion,
politics, sex, and so forth. they fill out Web Browser matchmaker site
questionnaires to find dates in their own cities. They send AOL email,
download recipes for tuna casserole. On LambdaMOO, they solve or code
puzzles, vote on administrative issues, or play Scrabble. The way others
hide behind fanciful nicknames and fictitious genders makes them very
uncomfortable; they still feel there's an obligation to be truthful, just
like in the /real/ world.
Many inferior systems can continue to exist because their inferiority
is seldom noticed. Social players go to where they have established
email collections and "buddy lists". They will suffer through a lousy
environment because they don't know better or their friends are all there.
Complexity mathematicians refer to this as an example of a phenomenon they
call "Lock-In".
Lock-In is a very powerful factor-- maybe
one that can be turned to one's own advantage...
Enter--
3.1 THE PERSONAL COMMUNICATORS
Desktop personal communicators such as ICQ, I-Chat, and PowWow make it
possible to send and sort messages in a way that's supplementing and even
surpassing the usefulness of ordinary email. These communicators also send
messages in an /immediate/ mode. They take on the roles of telephones,
pagers, P.A.'s, and more. The formation of one's personal list does create
Lock-In to that specific communications network, but they are also
liberating: Users can migrate their networks of interaction very easily
onto them, and are no longer tied to various ICQ channels, established
favorite muds, and chat systems such as AOL.
They're making computer Internet connections useful in a more "local"
fashion, connecting people at offices in a more efficient fashion. Users of
ICQ in the same city can send a message in the morning, and gather to see
the same movie in the afternoon, even though they are at different workplaces.
Email was passive, required the user to dig into a pile of it. Personal
communicators are /active/ and put the immediate messages at your immediate
attention, with you controlling its priority.
Any game that doesn't leave desktop space for the personal communicator
will be cutting a player off from their personal friends, relatives, and
co-workers. Demanding the full processor and full screen is a bad idea
for the player who turned to multiplayer games because they wanted social
contact.
4. WHAT'S PERSONA PLAY?
Persona play is what I call acting through a character mask, an
artificial personality not unlike a character in a work of fiction. The
Persona Player is living out a fantasy, taking a break from the constraints
of society and reality. Because they are seeking play without restriction,
they tend not to let their /play/ environment restrict them either.
The Persona Player is interested in their own Persona, and the Personas
of others. The setting in which they exist is a convenience, to be ignored
or changed as desired. The events which take place in a scene are not
serious, in that what is done one day may be undone without penalty the next.
Persona Play resembles a cartoon; characters seldom die, and "character
"hooks" are far more central than "character development".
FurryMUCK players are mostly Persona Players: they will perform a scene
in which a character is beheaded, but the character will be there the next
day, without any explanation required. The Persona Player's description
is free to say things that, in the context of the characters, could not be
known. For example, they might write, "Lydia was abandoned by her parents."
or "Lyle is looking for a true-love."
What most people call "roleplaying", I prefer to call Persona Play,
because there is another, somewhat similar activity, that I would rather
refer to as Roleplaying. I would say that Persona Play has always been
going on, as spontaneous let's pretend kind of games on IRC or via email.
The difference between code-supported roleplaying using game mechanics
and character creation rules is vastly different from Persona Play. The
comparison is somewhat like the difference between dribbling and playing a
game of basketball. Persona Play is a prelude to, or component of, what
I would call Roleplaying.
5. WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PERSONA PLAY AND ROLEPLAYING?
I think I could have as easily switched these terms but there
are subtle connotations that divide them reasonably well. Persona
play is limited exclusively to portraying one's own character. It's
very "personal".
I define Roleplaying as having a Continuity, and Rules that prevent
an arbitrary resolution. The Continuity is an ongoing story, in which
that what happened yesterday or last month is still "valid" as the basis
of what happens today.
The Roleplayer's character may be uninspiring, less unique or less
interesting than a Persona player's. Their description will say only
that which is readily apparent to a virtual observer.
Here, the important semantic component of Roleplaying is that
it implies one has a "role", a place, in a larger scheme. The Roleplayer
values their character because of the connections that have formed to
organizations, because of events that have taken place in-character,
and because of longterm achievements.
5.1 ADVANCEMENT AND ROLEPLAYERS
Surprisingly, advancement of a statistical nature means
little to Roleplayers. Combat players enjoy increased statistical
ability, but Roleplayers are more willing to accept a realistic
topping-out. One form of Advancement is awarding points purely on
the basis of how long it has been since the character was created,
in terms of real time. Basing advancement on time logged in sounds
good at first, but leads to wildly disparate levels of character
ability, or to the slighting of players with limited time. Also, it
doesn't lead to a sense of accomplishment.
My favorite form of advancement in a purely Roleplaying game,
is one in which the players may give out monthly commendations to
each character with whom they have interacted. To allay abuse, votes
from multiple characters played by the same player must still only
count as one vote (hard drive verification rather than site ID is
useful here!). For a handful of votes, the player receives a small
award. Each larger point award requires a larger number of votes.
This encourages players to interact with a large number of other
players.
5.2 RANDOMIZED DECISIONS ARE NECESSARY
Several years ago there was a fad in which it was hoped that
diceless tabletop roleplaying games would become popular. These games
had their merits; some led to a more advanced perspectives on character
creation (for example, Amber Diceless RPG, and Laws of the Night LARP).
Sophisticated new social conventions also arose out of these games
(see the Consent rule, http://www.bga.com/~pixel/Fur/chargen7.htm).
The text MUSH games based on the diceless tabletop games began as
very successful, but it took several years of play to discover a flaw
in Diceless: It was impractical to require the presence of a referee
at a conflict. When a player faced a player-character enemy, the out-
come was negotiated, in out-of-character whispers, using simple
statistical comparison of numbers to guide the decision. Players liked
to face the same enemy again and again; this process of negotiating
victories out-of-character, arbitrarily, made the conflict stale, lame.
The gamemaster-less World of Darkness MUSHes, on the other hand,
which feature computer-generated die rolling and detailed rules for
weapon use, injury, and healing, are much more viable today. The
majority of MUSHes are based on Vampire the Masquerade, and this is
as much due to the way the rules are written as to the popularity of
the dark/superpowered/supernatural genre.
Roleplayers like to keep their characters for /years/ and making up
the ending falls flat after the first two or three times. A random
element keeps it fresh, and provides an outside fairness.
5.3 NOT EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE A ROLEPLAYER!
Many people think they will come online to Roleplay, but there's
more to RP than acting. They're more likely to be Persona Players, only
very -loosely- "roleplaying", or Combat Players, there to face foes in a
conflict that gets very real real-life adrenaline pumping, or Socializers,
there to hang out and unwind and relax.
The most serious Roleplayers dislike "spectators". Even if a player
isn't violating the Continuity with an out-of-genre or out-of-character
comment, Roleplayers tend to relate their enjoyment to a mutual support of
the shared virtual universe. It may be useful or even necessary to provide
a clearly labelled area where the in-character is taken more seriously, and
only those who have completed character sheets are permitted. It's
definitely good to have its opposite, a clearly labelled out-of-character
neutral zone, where players can take a break from being "somebody else".
Roleplayers have an /urge/ to do what they do. They'll try to
construct meaningful backgrounds, organizations, world mythos features, in
games whose creators didn't intend it. Roleplayers give their deity a name
when they play Populus. Fortunately, this means that Roleplayers tend to
make things more interesting for everyone else.
Most players can appreciate the efforts of those who are more serious
RPers. The Roleplayers are the ones who come up with the grand schemes,
the major plotlines. When a Socializer, a Combat Player or a Persona
Player dies, they may be back in a half an hour, good as new,
with the same name. But when a Roleplayer "dies" in the game, it's a
dramatic event, a sacrifice of a virtual possession. The fact that the
character's demise is probably permanent is what lends drama to the event.
What the Roleplayer values, perhaps even more than their own character, is
Continuity.
5.4 THE PRECIOUS CONTINUITY
Roleplayers are upholding a common continuity, so they
document and learn about current events. Who's who, and what's where.
Remaining in-persona, negotiating in writing, and maintaining both
real ("out of character", OOC) and fictitious ("in character", IC)
organizations takes quite a bit of human cooperation and effort.
It also requires creativity. To maintain an IC region requires
meticulous, creative people with plenty of time and a cooperative
spirit called "humility".
6. WHAT DOES IT TAKE FOR ROLEPLAYING TO THRIVE?
Roleplaying is the interaction of its components. The first
is the player character, who can have background (being the brother
of another player character, for instance), skills (which is given
a sense of officiality via a character-generation process), and
other features. The second is the setting. Who's in charge? What
activities are permissible? Roleplaying can be pre-negotiated by
players who would rather not take risks; they are going through a
loose script, as if they were putting on a play. More often than
not, though, the action is spontaneous, and its outcome unexpected.
Roleplayers require a system that documents previous events, and
prevents a player from claiming things arbitrarily, in order to
give them a kind of synthetic value. Roleplaying requires a good
system of bookkeeping accessible to players where appropriate.
6.1 SOLID PRIVACY AND COMMUNICATIONS
The "Social" things are email, paging, whispering, chat channels,
message bulletin boards, mailing lists, and so forth. Roleplaying
/requires/ a very good Social system upon which a setting can be built.
Roleplayers in general feel a much keener need for
security of system and player privacy. They tend to equate potential
with the results: if there is a way in which something can be
abused, they assume that the abuse is rampant, and clamor for its
prevention. Roleplay requires more than just a suitable location,
it requires a location that the players emotionally trust. (I won't
go further into issues of security from invasion of privacy,
harassment, etc., as these issues are far more Dr. Cat's domain.)
6.2 CHARACTER PROFILES
State-of-the-art Roleplaying gives the player a way to record
details about their character. Some are private; some are
accessible by all other players. The act of creating a character is
valuable in that it exposes the player to what activities are
performed in the world, what other races or social strata exist.
In playing in a science fiction universe, for instance, a player
might look at the choices and discover that "cyborgs" and a "bionics"
skill exist.
Graphical Furcadia's character generation (beyond the choosing
of one's gender, species, and colors) is optional. It will
be necessary to complete this "advanced" character generation before
being allowed into a few areas of the game. I estimate it takes a
player 10 minutes to do the simple character, but from 25 to 45 to
finish the advanced portion. This investment of time is what
strongly discourages players from being able to disrupt IC play.
(click here for a peek at the design document for this. :)
6.3 GAMEMASTERS? NOT REALLY, JUST HOSTS/STAFF
Traditional tabletop games had referees, called GameMasters
(GMS). Over the past few years, this has proven to be unnecessary
in the all-text games. In a professionally produced persistent game,
the rules may be even better, leading to fewer ambiguities. There
does seem to be a need for moderators of posted text, and staff for
resolving disputes, however.
6.4 SOLID RULES, AVAILABLE -ONLINE-
Roleplaying benefits strongly from a system of
making both the rules and the source material immediately available,
not through a World Wide Web document or FTP'd manual, but through
immediate online commands. It's interesting that White Wolf
and FASA allow their Vampires and Battletech rules to be utilized,
which has strongly enhanced the popularity of their paper game
products. For some licenses, the text muds are economically
symbiotic-- they are free advertising of a sort that encourages the
purchase of further products. Some online players enjoy purchasing
and owning compendiums of the rules, or books of source material
(such as the history and important personages of a political
organization), bound and illustrated.
Some players will play a game 15 hours a day, 7 days a
week. The hunger for new events, locations, and characters never
ends. The system that permits and facilitates amateurs to create,
as well as paid staff, will therefore have a huge advantage over
the ones that don't. Longtime players become a resource, as they
become very enjoyable repositories of game information themselves.
6.5 CONFLICT RESOLUTION
This point is crucial to the overall level of Roleplayer
satisfaction. There ought to be a way to pit your virtual avatar's
abilities against that of another, should both participants desire.
The game of Let's Pretend fails when two finger-aiming youngsters
cannot decide who should fall down.
Conflict resolution can be nonviolent. A Roleplayer may wish
to play through attempting to tame a monster. They may wish to
compare their singing prowess with that of others in attempting to
win a laurel from the Queen of Hearts. If the conclusion is seen
as arbitrary, the Roleplayer will be less satisfied with it.
In all-text muds, there have been three types of conflict
resolution: arbitrary negotiation via "whispered" pages, coded
fast-time (as in dikuMUDs or NetHack), and slow-time conflicts.
Social players often prefer the arbitrary resolutions, as it's a
minimum of effort. Combat players definitely prefer fast-time.
Roleplayers, however, prefer slow-time, which resembles traditional
tabletop/pencil&dice RPGs.
6.6 NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS
A virtual "robot" is not going to past the Turing test, but
sometimes there are tasks best suited to NPCs. An example of a
non-violent NPC on Furcadia is "Gargathon", who can tell players
about the in-character mythology. He's much more interesting to
deal with than typing in `News Primes', because he's interactive.
His script was first created in the text environment, using MUSH,
then a version of him was created using Zmud's trigger detection
and response system for the graphical Furcadia game.
Bartenders and shopkeepers are also better done as NPCs. A
player might enjoy the task but will not be available as much as
we might like them to be. The vast majority of players don't log
in to a game to simulate working.
In a game with combat, NPCs can be "flunkies", pets, riding
animals, and opponents. Like the fictitious Westworld's androids,
they are the drudges and the whipping boys. Roleplayers
especially enjoy getting together to go up against some
monstrously powerful single creature, with statistics that it
would be grossly unfair to give any player character.
6.6 ECONOMY
It's more of a Combat player's thing to want to collect a
slain monster's equipment and treasure, and sell it. The persistent
game has to treat players roughly the same, whether they play for
ten minutes or ten years. Because Roleplayers may want to start
out as `rich', it's sometimes best to omit the "micro" economy. That
is, selling individual items. To keep the interest of players for
whom it's a fantasy to acquire, invest, buy, and sell, however, some
kind of "macro" economy might be good idea. I haven't seen it done
successfully yet, and I have seen numerous flops in text muds.
GohsMUSH included a merchanting subgame, run over real months,
a bit like a stock market simulation. The trouble was that some
Roleplayers wanted to be moguls, but didn't want to master all the
new commands of a TradeWars style game. The worst pitfall of it all
was the increasing-returns phenomenon, i.e., Them What Has Gets. As
in real life, possession of money led to *more* money. And that
wasn't `fun' for those with less, of course.
6.7 WHAT OTHER INGREDIENTS ARE NICE?
Coded mini-games proved popular on the text muds, but were
limited by the fragility of the servers upon which they were written.
I've seen Chess, Checkers, Backgammon, Scrabble, Poker, Solitaire,
and much much more. A system that grants its players the ability to
-create- their own mini-games would be formidable, indeed!
One of my favorite mini-games was the Tauntaun races on a
Star Wars MUSE. Players could purchase Tauntauns and collect a cut
of winnings. Players could gamble game money, and watch races
together. Best of all for Roleplayers, they could enroll as jockeys,
and there was reinforcement for their In Character claims. The race
game was continuity-aware in that it did not employ the name of a
player character jockey if that player was logged in at the time.
Code that supports player organization is very useful. Furcadia
MUSH encourages player organizations via its `finger' command, which
brings up what is public information. Players also use this
function for WWW home page addresses, and to express their play
preferences (for instance, `PG-13 Rated Plots Only Please!').
7. SO, WHAT'S THE PAYOFF FOR SUPPORTING ROLEPLAYING?
Lots of the things I've written about were unnecessary in Combat
or Social environments, but very good for Roleplaying. They all take
time to implement, debug, etc. I think that RP elements are valuable
because they spark the imaginations of Roleplayers.
The players who fit this minority category are also the most
helpful players and creative. No robot I make will be half as
interesting as the most dull real-person logged in to the game;
you might say I'm renting people to each other, gift-wrapped in fur.
If I can give them a coherent background and tools for interacting
to continue advancing their storylines, they'll be more than just the
costumed characters at an amusement park. They become the living,
breathing cast, and when there are developments in their stories,
they have something to talk about with others, who may not be much
into Roleplaying, themselves, but enjoy just being in the setting.
If a Roleplayer has built up a "history" in the world, it
will encourage them to keep coming back. They will be full of
anticipation- `what will happen to me next?!'
Another benefit may be that good mechanics make the pleasures of
Persona and Roleplaying more accessible and satisfying to /some/ Social
or Combat players. So far, I haven't seen much "conversion" though.
8. A NOTE ON FEMALES... FEMALES... FEMALES? FEMALES. YES, FEMALES!
First, a disclaimer: I'm going to generalize, here, and I'm
aware of the hazards in doing so. I know there's exceptions to the
following generalizations, but I have noticed the following tendencies,
and I think they're very strong.
In general, women and girls don't /want/ complexity at the
Warcraft/MagicTheGathering level, they just put up with it if
absolutely necessary. They would prefer a more elegant consistent
interface, and a smaller set of commands like Links. They wish that
games weren't structured with a conclusion where one person loses while
another wins, such as chess. They want it to go on forever, like a soap
opera. They would prefer indirect competition between organizations to
direct competition between individuals or even teams. They may be
logging in from work or a home with small children; they don't think they
can afford an exhausting drain on their attention like Quake.
They hunger for social interaction. The female market share in this
group is growing fast. They've come to outnumber male players two to
one on most text MUEs except for the ones with coded combat! Expect to
see girls and women going nuts for roleplaying MUEs.
9. SATISFACTION AND SURPRISES
Perhaps the biggest pleasure of watching "Furcadia" is that I
get to see people running with what Felorin and I created. Being a
Furre is like participating in a "shared universe" of fiction such
as Lynn Abbey and Robert Aspirin's Thieves World. The Roleplayers
fill in the huge gaps with their own creations, applying detail
exactly where it's needed, at the immediate player level, without
dooming all players to having to read lengthy world-info manuals.
I remember the chuckle I got when I saw a player-created map
with a fluffy chick bird next to a big black cauldron in his kitchen.
I had intended them purely as pet kiwis when I drew the art, but then I
realized that the Baron intended to -eat- them. The visual image was
very evocative of a picnic. I realized that Baron's map was
interesting because it had come from the mind of a Roleplayer.
To make a game that sparks the Roleplayers requires more than
programmers and designers, it requires writers with traditional
experience and artists with creative vision.
10. STEP ASIDE.
Last but not least, it's the job of the MUE to provide a common
mood. What players see and hear strongly influences their behavior;
if you want players to be polite, then provide a beautiful and gracious
habitat. A bleak and desolate environment leads to real-world feelings
of the cold and grim. Provide the options, label and localize them,
and let the players themselves choose what they prefer.
The hunger for new things will always be there. If you give the
players the ability to add to your game, and reward them for contributing
in a way that makes enjoyment for other players, you won't be saddled
with a juggernaut of a game with players eternally hungry for novelty
that you can't afford to provide.
Any mechanism that requires censorship, editting, monitoring,
etc., usually isn't worth human effort. Mplayer has a rule that explicit
materials are not to be passed via their game system. If they were
to then permit players to upload personalized unique portrait .GIF's,
they might feel obligated to have someone authorize/approve them. In
this case, the system has tied itself to a managerial task that could
easily grow too big to handle, or, on the other hand, not be worth
the human effort it requires. Sometimes a "baby" of player freedom is
better thrown out with the "bathwater" of player abuse.
The less the staff must step in and "forbid" or "preach", the
better. The best MUE is the one that runs itself, and whose staff
steps aside to let their guests enjoy themselves.
A FEW WORDS ON ADULT CONTENT...
A large portion of Social interaction is devoted to the
infamous "TS", which stands for "TinySex", a takeoff on the phrase
"TinyPlot", a storyline taking place on a `TinyMUD' server. How
this will be impacted by the presence of graphics is tough to predict,
but it can be generalized that if there are rules on acceptable
language in public and privacy is limited, its occurrence is reduced.
Sex, alternative sexualities, fetishes, or the playing
out of criminal acts can be supported by virtual simulations of props
and coded "permissions". An example of a virtual prop for fetishists
is the "shackles" and "gags" object from LambdaMOO. Shackles prevent
the player from departing their location; gags turn their speech into
muffled versions using a phonetic converter. ("This is great!" comes
out as "Mmif iv grmf!") An example of coded "permissions" is that
these objects default to unusable upon another player unless that
player has actively typed in the commands to set their character
object's "bondage OK" flags, and, in doing so, also learned the
"safeword", a command to override the objects' virtual effects.
*** Village Voice's 1993 article on the Mr.Bungle Affair. ***
Go to The Furcadia Home Page
BACK
APOLOGIA
As a "rational skeptic", a supporter of Scientific Method and
related logic constructs, I have to admit that I'm not a social
scientist. I wish that I were! I ask my reader to take what I've
said with several tablespoons of salt, and I readily admit that on
every last point, I could be utterly wrong. Or grossly inaccurate. Or
moderately inaccurate. Or slightly off. There are many many times
when I wished I had the resources to at *least* do a formal poll
to verify my many conclusions. My arguments for my points aren't
comprehensive, nor do they work to achieve a determination of
"necessary" or "sufficient" causalities.
In my defense, I can say that I've been the "wizard" of a number
of all-text muds since 1993, and have interviewed most of my
"dinosaur" text-game wizard friends. Whether my logic is right or
wrong, the things I've presented here are at least useful as very
tried-and-true rules of thumb, folk-wisdom, as it were. These are
"things that worked", taken from a tradition of over a decade of
play. I get annoyed when I see this body of experience completely
ignored by those who design multiplayer games. There's as much to
be learned from analyzing "Isle of Kesmai" as "Habitat".
Having been the one who coined the abbreviations "IC" and "OOC"
for use on RPG muds, and invented the Qcodes for Furcadia, I can say
that the text games still have much room for improvement, though they
tend to see themselves as finished or even perfected.
After a few years, there will be multiplayer games with graphics,
played for pay, with userships who can be polled. The 20/20 hindsight
will be invaluable.
--'Manda a.k.a. Talzhemir