[MUD-Dev] Life

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <3.0.32.19970602230955.008f68ac at mail.tenetwork.com>, on 06/03/97 
   at 08:22 AM, Jeff Kesselman <jeffk at tenetwork.com> said:

>At 10:16 PM 6/2/97 PST8PDT, you wrote:
>>A counter:  How did MIST, MUD1, SX MUD, MUD2 (British Knights?),
>>Shades et manage to do so well (and still do so well comparitively)
>>with free PK?

>How do you define "so well" ??

Active player bases with long term players, wide range of game
features enjoyed disperately by the player base )ie different poitns
of enjoyment by different players (see Bartles MUD review as posted
here and player categoristion in JOMR as also posted here), popularly
referred to as "good games" (a minor stat), and many long term players
(many over 5 years).

The games offered enduring value to their players.

>None of these are products that anyone outside of a fairly small and
>closely focused community have heard of.  

Agreed.  Everything survives or fails within its framework.  

However, none of the above games had or have exclusionary memberships,
and several of them engaged in broad marketing campaigns attempting to
appeal to any computer user with anything from a Sinclair ZX80 on up. 
They were very literally open to all comers with *nobody* banned.  The
entire concept of banning a player just didn't exist.  

>I'ld be intrested in your
>namign a commerical MUD on a reasonably large service (GEnie, AOL,
>and such) thats HASN'T had to deal with destructive players.

An overly trite question given that I don't have access to the records
of multiple commercial services who also offered such games.  

Possibly someone here played British Knights on C$?  MUD2 from which
BK is directly descended was a free PK game.

>Not knowing these products though, i woudl guess that oen of the
>following three thinsg is true (and eprhapse mreo tehn 1):

>(1) They are games that are first and foremost PvP environments. 

Nope.  That certainly doesn't apply to (SX)MUD1/2, and very clearly
doesn't apply to Shades.  PK was implicit in all the games, but was a
minor part of playing the game, as well as being comparitively
infrequent.

>(2) Its a very small community with a very clearly defined set of
>standards who can exclude those who wont follow. (Or be selecetd
>against "at the gate").

Nope.  If you had a modem (for the original MIST, MUD1/2, and Shades),
you could play.  No restrictions.  No limits.  No gate to cross.  For
BK C$ membership is/was obviously required.  For Shades currently just
the ability to telnet is required -- no other limits, and no ban
lists.

>(3) Community standards are already to be so obnoxious that nooen can
>be MROE obnoxious (don't laugh, TEN's Duke Arenas seem thsi way,
>whcih seems appropriate for that particualr community.)

A subjective standard impossible to judge impartially.  I can write
best here on SX MUD and Shades.  

Neither I think had any real concept of a social community and
implicit standards for that community.  (eg newbie killing was not
seen as a "Bad Thing").  The base agreement was that the game was a
toy, and you made of it what you would.  Agreement on what to make of
it was a matter of happenstance.

Both had active player communities.  Both engendered several RL clubs
for their players.  Shades now (and did back then too via BBS'es)
supported a moderatly active mailing list with regular RL meets (and
beer drinking fests) and players.  Character behaviour was widely
varied with few constants.  Active lasting friendships friendships
have formed between players.

>>Conversely I don't wish to have the game involved with a any form of
>>social engineering, or even an implicit social contract.  If the
>>players wish to do that sort of thing, they may.  I don't see that as
>>the game's purvey in the slightest degree.  

>Ojh, quite the contrary.  As soona s you've called it a "game",
>you've implied a social contract.  A "game" is soemthing with rules.
>As sson as you dfeine rules yo uare asking people to accpept them. As
>soon as they accept them a social contract is in force.

Nope.

I define the behaviour of the world within the game at a gross
physical level.  This is very much on the level of, "if you let go of
something it will drop", "if you push something it will move", "if you
shoot a body wiuth a big gun, it will die." etc.  These are direct,
simplistic rules as to physical behaviours.  I do not define IN THE
GAME what is and is not acceptable as social or anti-social behaviour
by the players.  This is implict becuase I don't define a society or a
social structure.  What I define is a physical environment into which
players are dropped.  

If they wish to determine that certain things are "unwelcome" and/or
"crimes", then that is their choice.  Neither I nor the game will have
anything to do with that (tho I (not the game) may try and discourage
it).  If they wish to define various guild forms, social strata,
status structures etc, they are perfectly capable of doing that.  The
game will neither explicitly support it or oppose it as the game
itself has neither knowledge of it or any interest.

Yes, you could attempt to define that a social structure is defined
with implicit violence because the world definition allows players to
kill each other and other things defined as "alive", but that is a
specious point.  It is equivalent to stating that current society
implicitly defines the existance of international banking cartels
because the society defines itself as having a distinct currency.

>The problems come abotu when that contract is not clear, so the
>players cannot agree amongst themselves  as to exactly what the rules
>are.

Read Bartle's document on Wizardhood.  While many take it as a joke,
take it from me that the content is both factual and correct in theme. 
I'll attempt to post it here later.

Summated: For anyone but the Imps, there are no rules beyond those
physical rules encoded into the game.  Do with it what you will,
survive how you may best.  You may wish to establish rules, or even
adhere to your own rules.  Up to you.  The game does't care.  For the
Imps: the players are your toys.

>>Actually, I suspect I'd react pretty violently to any attempt to bind
>>such a social framework to one of my games. I have no problem with the
>>players doing that on their own.  I have a real problem with building
>>that sort of structure into the game.

>And yet you desribed to me all the thinsg you "want" players to be
>doing <deleted> so you HAVE defined a contract, or at elast a
>contract your hopign they will follow, havent you?

Nope.

I have a set of ill-formed hopes which I hope to foster by creating a
game which encourages their realisation without explicitly mandating
them or expressing them in any codified form within the game.  Mostly
I am attempting to do this may making it valuable, within the game
world and internally consistant with the game world, to do those
things which realise those hopes.

>The definition I used btw came from one of oru main PK organizers,
>not me. He saw it was "war". And the goal of "war" ois to decrease
>the otherside's effectiveness in waging war until they must give up.

Clauswitz:  (paraphrased from foggy memory)

  War is the process of bringing about a more ammenable frame of mind
on the part of the enemy.

>>I prefer the positive as a concious choice.  I play PK and 
>>combat games to win, to demonstrate and excerise my mastery (or
>>incompetance) of an area.  It is a challenge of the basic sort, and a
>>comparitive measure of effectiveness.  

>How do you define win?  

Winning is the accomplishment of actions within the game which I
define as both difficult and desired.

>Winning == game oriented play, btw which is
>fine. It is in no way roleplay, but there is nothing wrong with that
>if thats your goal.  

Quite.  I'm not and have not pretended to be a role player.

>Diablo is very popular.

I'll take that on faith.  I'm not fond of such twitch games.

>>...I was interested in beating the game on my
>>rules, not their's.

>Ild love to hear a more detailed definition of thsi comment.  To me,
>at first glance, this looks like the mentality hackers have...  but
>Im probably misunderstanding you.

No, its probably a pretty acurate statment of a hacker mentality if
using the original definition of a hacker as versus a cracker, phreak,
pirate etc.

I don't have a lot of interest in approaching a game to adapt my game
concepts to their internal ideals.  I prefer to approach the game as a
new system which is to be examined in its own right, and then used
from there with whatever idea I happen to come up with to fit it.  The
idea is to examine the game as a system, and from there define a set
of goals that appeal to you using that system, not to extract the
pre-defined goals from the system and then charge willy-nilly after
them.

An example from the arcade game world may best exemplify here:

  I used to play the arcade game "Tron".  It was a fairly simple game
where you player stood on one of a number of floating disks in a room,
jumped among them, and threw frisbees at a similar character at the
other end of the room, who was also doing the same stuff.  The idea
was to hit the other chap with your frisbees such that he fell off his
platform and thus "died".  Similarly he was thowing frisbees at you,
attempting to knock you off your platform.

  As you progressed from level to level the number and placement of
disks in the room varied, your opponent would start throwing more and
more frisbees simultaneously, as well as throwing various other forms
of nasty frisbees.  Essentially the pace of the game increased while
adding minor environment complexity.

  I quickly decided that the game was both boring and trivial.  So I
redefined the game.  Instead of working to knock the opponent off his
platform I made the game the challenge of consistently hitting his
frisbees with my frisbees which made them both self-destruct with a
great CLACK! and also earned good points.  As such I'd stay on level 1
for as long as I possibly could, destroying everything he threw at me,
attmpting to avoid killing him for as long as possible.  "Losing" was
defined in this new game as getting killed, or knocking him off his
platform sooner than absolutely necessary.

  A nice side effect was that for a single quarter (US) or 20p (UK) I
could play for over 2 hours while being quite thoroughly entertained. 
I never did make it to a very high level in the game, or even get some
atrociously high score.  I'd changed the goal.

>>Remove the game and the game system entirely from the
>>social engineering.  Let the players build their own structures should
>>they wish to.  Don't enforce it.  Don't attempt to structure it. 
>>They'll do a much better job than you could.  Best case: try and to
>>channel and guide it.

>Um.. by alll Ive obeserved and experienced this is just plain WRONG
>for the masses.  The masses have little socail skills and virtual no
>coping skills.

I don't expect wonders.

> The best they can manage on their own, in a totally open
>envrionment, is the kidn of soiciety you see in south central LA-- 
>gangs banded together to defend and fight grudges they have no idea
>how to handle in any copnstructive fashion.

Certainly.  That would be quite acceptable.  However I also expect to eventually uncover social movers and instigators who go out and try and create something a little deeper.  As Tom Leher sang, "That's not my depeartment!"

>Unless your game defines the societal environment, don't expect there
>to be one.  

Quite simply for my concentration on the server as a server developer I consider the societal environment to be unimportant if not totally unrelated.  Its not something I consider that the game has either any right or proper duty to be meddling with.  The game is there to provide a structure and a set of value returns that the players can then do with what they will.  If they chose to construct complex internally detailed societies, then so be it.  If they chose not to, then fair dinkum.  

That's not my interest and not my purview.  I rest confident that they will do *something* in that area, and don't really care that much what.  If they come up with something I don't like, well, shrug, I'll probably just go off and try and create something in the same framework I do like.

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...