[MUD-Dev] Re: MUD-Dev digest, Vol 1 #121 - 2 msgs

[Dr. Cat]

> Commercial games must provide a much higher standard of entertainment  to
> be successfull than free games,  unless they accept a high degree of ero-
> sion in their player base.  Professional GM's and crews  may become a way
> to draw and bind players to a game.
> 
> There is a time-honoured example already.  The theatre troupe touring the
> country  performing a play in different theatres.

I don't know...  While a touring theatre troupe is a viable concept in 
general, there was some time in history when it became viable.  If I were
to travel back in time thousands of years, to a day when all of mankind
had so far founded only 3 or 4 villages, and some people asked me for
advice on starting the world's first traveling theatre troupe...  I would 
tell them "Wait until the world hasn't just invented cities quite so 
recently."

Today there's only a tiny handful of commercial muds, and compared to 
what we'll see in the future, their memberships are tiny and their
capabilities crude and primitive.  Most of the interesting sorts of
things like touring troupes that will be viable in the future are not
viable yet.

Of course, a troupe who's goal is not to make money so much as to develop 
and learn about a cool new possibility, they could attempt such things 
years early just to "guide the way".  Still, I prefer to mess with new 
innovations when they're more like 2-3 years away from viability tops,
and/or the potential to implement them very well exists *today* and it's
just going to take time for them to catch on.

To each their own, though.  I wouldn't want to have participated in the 
early, crude experiments in 3D VR, for instance, which seem a bit 
embarassing compared to today's efforts.  But somebody needed to do that 
stuff.  (Mind, I wouldn't want to participate in today's 3D VR stuff either,
which still has a long ways to go, but that's another whole discussion.)

*-------------------------------------------**-----------------------------* 
   Dr. Cat / Dragon's Eye Productions       ||       Free alpha test:
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  Furcadia - a new graphic mud for PCs!     ||  Let your imagination soar!
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