[MUD-Dev] Re: DIS: Client-Server vs Peer-to-Peer

[Niklas Elmqvist]

On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, J C Lawrence wrote:
> On Thu, 3 Dec 1998 10:06:17 +0100 (MET) 
> Niklas Elmqvist<d97elm at dtek.chalmers.se> wrote:
> 
> > Right. I think many gamers really would like to take part in a
> > large organization and work for a common cause -- just witness the
> > popularity of team mods such as CTF and Team Fortress for Quake
> > and other first-person shooters. Players don't have to save the
> > world on their own all the time -- it is equally rewarding to save
> > the world TOGETHER with lots of other people. This feeling of
> > shared purpose is desirable and rather hard to come by on the
> > internet, at least currently. 
> 
> You hit a key point here that current MUDs appeal to but don't properly
> satisfy: group cooperation dynamics.  Yes, there are clans, tanks, and
> other sorts of cooperative ventures, but very little support for group
> formation, cooperation, and leadership over extended periods and with
> any sense of permanence or currency over extended periods. 

Lotus Notes (as mentioned below) has (or used to have) a slogan on the
lines of "Working Together". It is no coincidence that groupware is so
hype these days, the worth of a group being greater than the sum of their
parts and all that. 

That said, I humbly move for adding the following to Raph Koster's Laws (I
just saw you Raph, so don't try to hide! :): "In an on-line game, players
don't have to save the world on their own all the time -- it is equally
rewarding to save the world TOGETHER with lots of other people." 

>   Pause a second, and think about what might happen if you really mixed
> the various groupware pagackes, LotusNotes or whatever, with a MUD
> client.  Now throw in the ability for clients to recall everything that
> happened in their view for the last few minutes and to auto-generate a
> .mov/video file from that... 
>
>   Think players would get a little excited?

Verily. For one thing, this would go a long way towards providing some
means of recording "history" in the MUD. This would be increasingly
interesting in a persistant environment -- "now, that old split oak there
came from Faelinolas Lighfoot's battle with the fell beast of the
forest... come along and I'll show you the movie..."

[snip groupware capabilities]

This sounds a lot like the spirit of the bulletin-board/MUD/talker system
Greg (Munt)  was developing -- Ubiquity, I believe it was called. Don't
know if he is still working on it, though. 

> J C Lawrence                              Internet: claw at kanga.nu
> (Contractor)                             Internet: coder at kanga.nu
> ---------(*)                    Internet: claw at under.engr.sgi.com
> ...Honorary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...

-- Niklas Elmqvist (d97elm at dtek.chalmers.se) ----------------------
  "The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to 
   pray to."
		-- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods