[MUD-Dev] The impact of the web on muds

[Chris Gray]

[Marian:]
:		      The infamous green dragon  appeared in this thread
:when  I needed an example  to explain how text can evoke emotions  more
:easily than graphics.	It is easier to say that a dragon is terrifying,
:and be believable,  than it is to show a terrifying dragon.

You've said this before, and I've just let it go by, but not this time.

>From my experience, the complete opposite is true. I have never
experienced much in the way of emotion from reading a book (other than
sympathetic sadness from books like "Lassie"). I can't imagine how a
book could startle me, for example. If you are a very empathic person,
perhaps you relate to the characters in a book much more strongly than
I do. For me, a book is entertainment. A really good book can be so
engrossing that I'll keep reading until my eyes glaze over, but about
the only emotion that comes out of it is satisfaction and contentment.

I've certainly experienced emotions from movies and TV shows, however.
The key here is that the emotions are my emotions, and not those of
the characters in the story.

Books can't startle me, but computer games certainly can. I can clearly
remember two such incidents (so I expect there are more). The first was
in the game "Drakkhen" on my Amiga, the first time I walked into one of
the crosses on the road, and the big demon-dog appeared, howling loudly.
The second, sillily enough, was in my own AmigaMUD, when, having forgotten
I'd added the sounds, and running with speakers cranked up, a wild dog
snarled at me.

So, since I don't appear to ever empathize with characters in a story,
I'm unlikely to do so with a MUD character, so telling me that I see a
terrifying dragon will just annoy me. Showing a dragon swoop down out
of the sky at me, roaring loudly, is much more likely to bring out an
emotional response in me. If it is moving quickly enough, not all that
much detail is needed in the dragon - there won't be time for my eye
to register much other than big, green, teeth and flames.

--
Chris Gray   cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA