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

[Adam Wiggins]

On Thu, 9 Jul 1998, Dan Shiovitz wrote:
> [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.

Although true, I think the conneciton here is a bit less obvious.  It is
not, "A virtual world must involve violence and death."  It *is* that if
you make a virtual world which contains beings which are modeled to be
as close to humans as possible, and you include interactions with a world
similar to ours (gravity, etc) then the further you take it the more
ridiculous it looks not including any way for a character to get hurt.

Ie, you introduce alitutde (so you can go mountain climbing).  The obvious
step is to introduce falling - if one jumps off a tall peak, one falls.
And the next step after that is to inflict some damage on falling bodies
when they hit whatever lies below.

Congradulations!  You've just introduced PvP combat.  (I take you mountain
climbing, then push, convince, or trick you into walking off a cliff.)

One possibility that seems much ignored is getting away from human-like
beings in an Earth-like world.  I think someone mentioned the idea of
ToonMUD before; although I believe there have been at least one MUSH to
use these theme, the absence of game mechanics makes it only a theme.
What was proposed was a mud where you have a complete set of game
mechanics, but the mechanics are based on cartoons.  Thus dropping an
anvil on someone's head results in them stumbling around for a few minutes
with stars spinning around them.  You could do some great stuff with world
mechanisms that would please the explorer types, while at the same time
keeping the game world completely "safe".  Now your bully/jerk players end
up just looking ridiculous (ie, the Coyote from the Roadrunner Cartoons).

Of course, this would probably be completely unsatisfying to the
achievers.  I would say that typically this sort of play is rewarding only
if the advancement achieved in-game has a chance of being lost, through
death or more subtle means.  And if it's possible to take something of
value away from other players, then bullies become a problem again.

Adam