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

[Maddy]

Marian Griffith wrote....

> I have been thinking about this a bit and came up with the following idea.
> I do not know how well it would work on a larger scale but suppose that a
> player must purchase  (through registration, if not necessarily involving
> money) a limited number of characters. Death is not permanent, as on most
> muds, but to reincarnate a character some bodypart is needed,  and a kind
> of community ritual.  With those conditions a player has an infinite num-
> ber of lifes  and should not need to invoke the additional characters her
> registration entitles her to. If a player ostracises himself from society
> however then death is a potentially permanent, and those players may very
> quickly run out of characters,  forcing them  to contact the staff again.
> And possibly having to explain  how they managed to run out of characters
> so quickly. The staff can then grant a new registration or delay that for
> any amount of time, or downright deny it.  In any case the players have a
> little social control over other players without having to resort to vio-
> lence, simply through denial of service.  If you add into the mix  that a
> character needs food, clothing, shelter to survive then you also have the
> basis of an economy which further strengthens the player society.

So what happens then, if a new player logs on and by that stage all the
regulars have formed a nice well knitted clique.  They could then deny the
newbie the right to enjoy the game, merely by refusing to allow him to
reincarnate.  I've seen this problem happen a lot on talkers, where you'd
expect people to be more socialable.  A new person logs on, the regulars are
deep in discussion and rather than inviting the newbie to join in, they
completely ignore them, which invariable results in the newbie logging off
and finding another talker.

Maddy