[MUD-Dev] A flamewar startingpoint.

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

Adam 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 the
>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.

In a MUD you can easily reach a situation where something happening to
your character is perceived as happening to us, or even worse if a
roleplayed character really dies.  I would perceive that as loosing
some of my personality freedom and investment of time (which is
convertible to money)...

>I don't think it's so much deception as it is instant death.  Deception is
>okay as long as you don't go overboard (ie, Paul Reiser's character in
>Aliens added immensley to that movie, but if everyone on the space marines
>squad had been deceiving each other, it would have gotten a bit old).

Uh, but deception by a character (whom you might have reasons to not
trust) and the gameworld (which you would expect to be reasonable) is
two different things.

>> In one game I played recently you assemble some pieces in
>> what you think is the right order, and then push a big button
>> to submit your answer. Pushing the button initiates a
>> sequence of visual and audio effects, simulating some big
>> machine "examining" your answer. Eventually it might tell
>> you that some of the clips are in the wrong order, and then
>> you hear some audio encouraging you to keep trying. All of
>> this takes about 15 seconds, but it feels like a half-hour. By
>> the third or fourth time I submitted an answer I was resentful
>> that I was forced to waste my time waiting for this now-boring
>> effect to repeat. There was no way to hurry it up or skip over
>> it. By the tenth time I went through the process I was ready to
>> climb the walls.
>
>Amen.

Well, I actually liked the sound world in Myst.  From an artistic
point of view this one was one of the best ones!  Although I admit
plotting in the sounds could be somewhat tedious it was fun as well,
because you were building "music" and used your pattern recognition
skills.

>> But wait a second, that character is me!
>
>Again, I take exception to all of this because of the basic premise.
>The character is *not* you, Glassner.  It is a character which comes with
>its own abilities, desires, and faults.  It is up to you to direct the
>character most of the time, but it is not you.

For a singleplayergame I would have to agree with Glassner, the
character is me.  There is less motive for roleplaying,
roleplaying/acting for a computer makes me feel like I am wasting
time, more so now than when I was a kid.  When I play Myst, I am me
(it is me in a role, but I has MY personality).  To roleplay for
another humanbeing...  That's fun.

>> 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.  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 these 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)

>> 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?

I think he meant "not convincing", like a badly written novel. A novel
is 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 ;)

Ola.