[MUD-Dev] Re: Affordances and social method (Was: Re: Wire d Magazine...)

[Dan Shiovitz]

On Thu, 9 Jul 1998, cat wrote:
> Till Eulenspiegel wrote:
> > From: Marian Griffith <gryphon at iaehv.nl>
> > >The strange thing then is that so few people, on this list only Dr.Cat
> > >that I know of, attempt to create a safer game environment, at the ex-
> > >pense of some freedom of the players. Or am I being overly pessimistic
> > >now?
> > >
> > 
> > Dr. Cat does the extreme.
> 
> I think this perspective may be fairly typical of the people on mud-dev.  
> It's
> why I feel like a kangaroo at the annual emu and ostrich convention.  
[..]
> How many of the almost six billion humans on this planet play games where
> they make believe that they're striking Bubba with a sharp object in 
> order to
> get some coins, or some equivalent?  I think far more of them are playing
> games like Trivial Pursuit, Bridge, Monopoly, Awari, Mah Johngg, Poker, or
> Windows Solitaire.  Many more adults still buy into the notion that 
> "games"
> and/or "play" are things kids do, adults work and then maybe relax with 
> some
> leisure activity like a book, a movie, or chatting with friends over a 
> beer at the
> pub.

YM "television". HTH. :)

> People are interested in socializing and communicating.  And they 
> generally
> prefer a reasonable safe environment for it, free of any risks of being 
> attacked
> or even of having to watch others being attacked around them.

[Dr. Cat points out that IRC/AOL-style chat is much more mainstream
than muds, and solutions like "well, just kill people that offend you"
are ridiculous on on-line chat.]

Well, yeah. But you're still wrong. IRC and AOL chat are *not*
muds. Muds are virtual worlds (he says, starting a flame war). They
have objects in them. They have an environment in which these objects
exist. There is some sense of physical presence & locality, even
though they're simulated. IRC doesn't have any of those things, and
AFAIK AOL doesn't either. Therefore, it's not necessarily reasonable
to apply situations from one to the other, any more than it would be
to say "books and MUDs are both entertainment, so if someone on a MUD
annoys you, read the next page instead."

Once you get into virtual worlds, "killing" becomes more and more a
reasonable thing. It depends what kind of virtual world we're talking
about, of course. But once I'm able to create objects and those
objects interact with people, killing suddenly becomes a possibility.

>    Dr. Cat / Dragon's Eye Productions     ||       Free alpha test:
--
Dan Shiovitz || dbs at cs.wisc.edu || http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~dbs 
"...Incensed by some crack he had made about modern enlightened
thought, modern enlightened thought being practically a personal buddy
of hers, Florence gave him the swift heave-ho and--much against my
will, but she seemed to wish it--became betrothed to me." - PGW, J.a.t.F.S.