[MUD-Dev] Stranger in a Strange Land (was Usability and interface and who the hell is supposed to be playing, anyway? (Was: PK Again))

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <342ff403.21476062 at relay.mnsinc.com>, on 09/25/97 
   at 08:44 PM, caliban at darklock.com (Caliban Tiresias Darklock) said:

>On Thu, 25 Sep 1997 08:17:06 PST8PDT, clawrenc at cup.hp.com wrote:

>>Is lack of a social context for new players a Bad Thing?  There are
>>ways to work around much of the initial barrier to entry to the
>>non-social world problem (cf Avalon's guides), however that doesn't
>>address the problems of entering the social world, or the question of
>>social context.

>There's also the consideration of other social contexts. 

True.  The question then becomes the extent to which those other
contexts can be imported into the current game, and if this is
desirable.

>Some of the
>people I used to MUSH with on DarkWeb (now defunct) were friends I
>had met at gaming conventions, and many of the players there turned
>out to have other characters elsewhere; I went from DarkWeb to Cajun
>Nights and found myself with an instant social context in the sense
>that I as a player knew and could contact a large number of people
>there. These people could, from their previous association with me,
>introduce me as a character to others, providing another accelerated
>social context. 

I see this as dependant on several points which can't be assumed:

  1) You were able to (nearly) instantly recognise that another
character was an other player as vs an NPC.  

  2) You were able to find and recognise them due to a global
namespace.

  3) You were able to immediately communicate to those other players.

  4) They were able to find and recognise you are from a prior social
context thru the same ability to immediately recognise, locate and
communicate.

I've worked very hard in-game to remove #1.  #2 and #3 I've almost
totally removed due to the lack of a global namespace (you can't talk
to someone until you meet them, you can't tell where they are in the
game world until you meet them at which point they are of course where
you are.  I've also castrated the TELL and PAGE commands as you assign
names to bodies, and if that other fellow dropes the body taht you
assigned a name to, then your name assignment will end up pointing to
a different human player.  #4 is pretty thoroughly nixed as the
reverse vector on the above.

>If,
>for example, someone here was describing their new server and it
>sounded really cool, I might log on there. Chances are I'd name my
>character 'Caliban', which would provide some instant recognition,

Yup, and without a global namespace that name assignment would be
private to you.  It wouldn't appear in any WHO lists, other characters
seeing your character would merely see a trite anonymous description,
etc.  

Now, were a dialog as follows to occur, that's a different matter:

  > n
  You are in a room.
  A nondescript humanoid lounges nearby.
  > l at humanoid
  He's pretty nondescript.
  > say Hi!
  The humanoid says, "Hello!"
  > say New here?
  The humanoid says, "Yeah, just logged on."
  > say "Ahh.  What's your name?
  The humanoid says, "Caliban."
  > name humanoid caliban
  > l
  You are in a room.
  Caliban is here.
  > say You the same Caliban from MUD-Dev?
  Caliban says, "Yeah..."

The problem of course is running into another character for long
enough, and for that other character to engage in enough conversation
for recognition to occur.

>Unfortunately, people who have the experience of being in some social
>context or other on first login (university students are rather large
>offenders in this arena) often assume that others have the same
>social context. Sort of like the way people with T-1 lines out of
>their houses tend to do web sites that take an outrageous amount of
>time to DL over a modem, and people with really big screens will do
>interfaces that don't fit on most other people's monitors. Natural
>human narcissism, which I could probably write several more pages
>on...

I probably shouldn't mention that I just got a 21" monitor for free
then eh?  Went and bought an HP 710 workstation and 21" monitor for
$500, and got an Apollo 400 workstation thrown in for free.  Sold the
710 seven hours later for $500 and kept the monitor and 400...

--
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...