[MUD-Dev] A flamewar startingpoint.

[coder at ibm.net]

On 10/11/97 at 08:43 PM, Ola Fosheim Gr=B0stad <olag at ifi.uio.no> said: >A=
dam
Wiggins <nightfall at user2.inficad.com> wrote:
>Glassner:

>>> We are in constant conversation with the game creator, more
>>> than we are with almost any author or screenwriter. Bad
>>> things done to the hero in fact happen to us, personally.
>>
>>Total disagreement here.  The bad thing is happening to *my character*,=
 which
>>I do have a closer attachment to than a character in a film, but not th=
e
>>the extent that Glassner seems to think.

>Are you talking MUD or what?  I think this depends on how much time
>you've spent with your character or maybe how much time you have spent
>with the game.  I think he is right in saying that if the game is
>unfriendly designed, then the game (creator) will be perceived as
>unfriendly to us as players as well.  You can extend this to badly
>designed controls as well, if the game makes us look clumsy, then it is
>making fun of us.

There is a line to be tread:

  The game should be difficult, but it should not be difficult due to the
poor quality of its interface.  To turn this around:  The game and thus
the game designer should seem to be making the game as easy and successfu=
l
for you as they can without actually taking advantage of any knowledge
about the game that you don't have. =20

Thus you keep the sense of challenge without feeling that you're cheating
or "getting away" with something.

>>> Never take over control of the player's character.
>>
>>Again the logic is sound, but as a player I can't agree.  I *like*
>>cut scenes, when done right (again, all the Lucasarts game do them well=
).

>But it wrecks immersion.  Lucasarts, they make movies in a box, right? I
>can't say I feel I am "in" the game, I am more having one hand in there.=
=20
>It's more like watching a movie, skipping the boring parts (if allowed
>to), and saying "I bet that's what's going to happen next".  I find thes=
e
>types of games highly annoying unless I've got a
>cheatmanual somewhere. (Like I'm going to hunt down that missing key,
>lazy designers, go find it yourselves)

To me they are intensely annoying because I always want to do something
else other than what my character does in the cut scene.  I want to pull
levers, investigate strange looking phenomena seen out the viewports etc.=
=20
Screw the pre-cast purpose of the game -- I'm there to fool around.

>>> character's personality, which fatally injures the development
>>> of the character and leads to a psychotic personality and
>>> uninteresting story.
>>
>>I take exception to the last three words of that paragraph.
>>What is it that makes a psychotic personality inherently
>>uninteresting, pray tell?

Cf the anit-hero.

>I think he meant "not convincing", like a badly written novel. A novel i=
s
>usually trying to make the reader feel/understand/reason with the main
>character in some sense, right?  I sure wouldn't enjoy a novel where I
>say to myself "oh well, this character is just plain stupid and boring,
>do me a favour, go jump off a cliff, will ya!". (Unless he does, of
>course ;)

Stephen Donaldson wrote a pair of trilogies entitled as a set, "The
chronicles of Thomas Covenant".  The protagonist is a self-loathing
thoroughly unpleasant morbid, moriose, and manic leper.  He is a
thoroughly dislikable character.  As happens I rather liked the books
(have a set of first print/first editions somewhere).  A number of friend=
s
refused to read beyond the first chapters as the lead character was so
unpleasant and they really "didn't want to spend much time with someone s=
o
detestable."

Horses for courses.  The definition of "interesting" is inherently
subjective and defies discrete analysis.

--=20
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...