[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions

[Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: S. Patrick Gallaty [mailto:choke at sirius.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 30, 1998 6:15 PM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Koster, Raph <rkoster at origin.ea.com>
> To: 'mud-dev at kanga.nu' <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
> Date: Wednesday, September 30, 1998 3:52 PM
> Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions 
> [ ]
> 
> UO had many very dedicated fans who administered IRC channels,
> ran websites, recruited playerbases (by actively going to other 
> multiplayer games and telling people about UO) etc.
> 
> Origin has never understood the impact that the fan base had on the
> proliferation of the UO fever, and perhaps never will.

On the contrary, I'd say that the fan base, and not marketing, is what
led to the press coverage. Certainly there was virtually no marketing as
such to the fan base either...

> >I think, though, that what caught the initial fan base's 
> attention was a
> >combination of the name, and the approach to the design: basically, a
> >simulationist world. People thought the idea of living in a virtual
> 
> That's a distortion of the game-maker, I believe.
> We always like to think that people (gamers and players) 
> appreciate our 
> works based on their merits, and based on our efforts - but 
> in truth they 
> do not.  They appreciate 'our work' only in a tertiary sense 
> - insofar as they
> perceive their experiences through the distortion of fitting 
> it to their
> existential template.
> So no, I will wager 5 bucks that the average player doesn't 
> give a rat's anus
> if a monster spawns or a monster is born from a monster mommy and
> monster daddy so long as there are monsters to fight.

Correct; however, we're discussing the initial fan base and hype at this
point, and that was driven basically by the fan base reading the initial
FAQ. That's why I attribute it to the vision of the game they had from
that description of it. Yes, the vision they had didn't match the vision
the designers had necessarily, but I'd still contend that it was that
basically "complete virtual Ultima world" thing that caught the
imagination--particularly since that was the bulk of the FAQ. :) Anyway,
sort of off-topic and not really of interest to the list as a whole, I
suspect.

> The basic failure of simulations is that the player will 
> generally interact
> with only the superficial.  So you have 100% effort going 
> into only the 15% 
> that the player sees.  That's not a great payoff unless you 
> are culling some
> experimental data from the great experiment.
> What benefit is massive simulation if we can shorthand all 
> that with clever
> emulation?  The player can't see the man behind the curtains in either
> case.

I quite agree with this point; it's why much of the sim stuff was
removed from UO over time, and also why I've been bringing up the
pitfalls of the simulationist approach in this thread. :)

-Raph