[MUD-Dev] Critiquing Muds

[Marian Griffith]

Game Critique

On his website Raph Koster rightly complains that in the world muds there
is a great lack of critique. There is a certain level of (amateur) review
going on through the Mud Connector and the Game Commando's. These reviews
tell potential players which are possibly interesting games for them.  It
does not tell which are actually quality games. Works of art if you will.
In this post I try to put together a number of aspect or qualities that a
good mud must adress in some form. Because there can be so many different
muds it is impossible to come with a definite check list.  In fact I only
try to start with a list of terms that can be used to describe muds, I am
not thinking of putting together  a scale  along which to judge different
muds, which I think is impossible anyway. I am also not the person to say
anything sensible about the technical aspects of muds, which are often as
important as the softer aspects I am talking about here. Hopefully others
on the list are willing to extend this list I am presenting here. Many of
the terms originate on the Mud-Dev list and form the beginning of a voca-
bulary to describe and compare muds, as is also done on the list.

Any comments are welcome.


The vocabulary list (so far):
- Game Oriented Play, or GOP.
- Role (oriented) Play, or RP
- Acting
- Concensual and Non-concensual
- Bartle's Suites
- Realism
- Completeness
- Artistic quality
- Immersive (game)World and (game)Play
- Player versus Player, or PvP
- Policing
- Marian's Tailor problem
- Open Ended Goals
- Goal variety (Kill the Foozle)
- Elder Games
- In-game communities

There probably are many more, but these must be sufficient to start with.

Game Oriented Play,  Role Playing  and Acting  are all different ways  to
play a game.  While familiar to those who subscribed to the MudDev list I
will briefly explain  what each term means.  There is of course a lengthy
discussion possible  (and in fact there has been)  on what exactly is the
meaning of these terms.  While these types of play do not exclude each o-
ther theoretically it does so in most players. Attracting a large portion
of Role Players tends to drive out the GOP'ers, and vise versa.
Game Oriented Play is where the player triest to beat the game. The player
is not looking for an immersive experience,  or for any kind of experience
at all.  Instead the aim is to achieve some kind of goal that the game has
set. The most common type is the traditional mud where players must try to
achieve the next level.  The means by which that is achieved may vary, but
the players themselves are busy working towards that goal.
Role Playing is where players do just that.  They have a character and are
playing a role in a larger setting or scenario.  Many single player compu-
ter games that are marketed as roleplaying are in fact game oriented play.
The player is not playing any role but is rather trying to defeat the com-
puter game.  The roleplaying aspect comes from the fact that there -is- a
scenario that is being followed by the game. GOP games lack even that.
Acting is the most immersive form of gaming. It is related to Role Playing
but the player is trying to act out a character in a (game) world,  rather
than playing a role in a scenario.  There is no clear distinction  between
these three types of games, though in general  they focus  on one of them.
Many roleplay oriented games vary between the acting and RP, or RP and GOP
and even acting oriented games often have RP bits and pieces in them.

Concensual play means simply that players can agree that something happens
to their characters or can prevent it. The opposite is Non-concensual play
where obviously things happen to the player,  without her having much  (or
any) control over it.  Concensual games are often found in the roleplaying
environments,  but they certainly are not limited to that segment.  A game
where  player versus player combat is prohibited  except for certain areas
is implementing a consensual action in an otherwise Non-concensual game.
Which aspects of a game are concensual and which are non-concensual  has a
significant impact  on the game play,  witness the near identical  Dikumud
derived games where some have unlimited player versus player fighting  and
the others prohibit that,  and yet others relegate that  to specific areas
or player groups.

R.Bartle came with an influential article  about four distinctly different
playing styles. He named these after the suits of a card game. Each player
is primarily  one of the following four types  (not exclusively of course,
many players experiment  or have a gaming style  that does not fit clearly
in just one of these categories):
Explorer, Killer, Socialiser and Achiever.  In his article Bartle explains
that a game needs a healthy mix of these four playing styles to remain in-
teresting in the long run. The only exception is a game like IRC which can
consist entirely of socialisers, but that can hardly be termed a game.

Realism is a phrase  that repeatedly spawns heated debates  in news groups
and mailing lists  that deal with muds.  The common misconception is  that
realism means 'as in reality'.  In the mud community it does not.  Instead
it is  the somewhat nebulous  quality  that the perceived laws of the game
universe are consistent and reasonably predictable.  Having two goblins in
the game,  one of which is found in the training grounds and is a practice
target for new players,  and one who is found in a high level area and can
wipe the floor with all but the most powerful characters is not realistic.
Not because a goblin could not actually be that powerful but because first
in the game a certain expectation is created  about the relative danger of
a goblin which is subsequently ignored,  and second because usually by the
game's laws of nature,  goblins are indeed weak and wimpy characters.
Another example of where the game fails to be realistic  is when the frame
of reference is mixed up.  A game where smurfs, hobbits and Chtulhu wander
side by side can not be considered realistic,  simply because these diffe-
rent creatures  do not belong  in the same universe.  This kind of realism
however is not necessary for all games. In general games aiming for an im-
mersive experience have much higher requirements as far as realism is con-
cerned. If a game is meant to attract 'Acting' players it better be highly
realistic in its visual details  (and mechanical details as much as it has
the later). A GOP game however must be realistic first and foremost in the
underlying achievement mechanism,  as the slightest inconsistency  will be
picked out and mercilessly exploited or if it can not be exploited it will
be complained about.

Completeness is the complement of Realism.  Where Realism is about consist-
ency,  completeness is about the level of detail that is applied throughout
the game. Again this is somewhat nebulous and encompasses more than the ob-
vious meaning. The size of the game world, the level of meaningful details,
things that are named are described or shown, and so on. For game mechanics
a similar leve of completeness  is required.  If the game has fighter, mage
and other classes each  of them must have a similar level of detail applied
to their skills, abilities and gameplay.

Artistic Quality  is the quality of the presentation of the game.  This may
be the details  and richness of the images,  or the quality of the text the
player must read.  Artistic quality can also be found in the game mechanics 
and game world itself. It is a very important quality to initially draw the
players (who tend to be turned off by chunky graphics or text) and to main-
tain immersiveness.  If the game world is presented so appealingly that the
players enjoy wandering through it  and just look at things,  then the game
has a very high  artistic quality.  The same is true for a game  that is so
entertaining that players keep on playing it.

Immersive Gameworld is a quality in a game that may or may not be of impor-
tance to a particular game. In many ways it follows from the previous three
qualities.  Immersive Gameplay is the same for the gamemechanics.  For some
games immersiveness is not as important as for others,  but in all cases it
is an indication of the underlying attractiveness of the game as a whole.

Player vs Player  is something that some players enjoy most of the time and
most players enjoy some of the time. And that some players want to have no-
thing to do with it.  Any game however must take a position on this subject
and abide by it,  simply becase a game is strongly influenced by PvP and it
is impossible to entirely prevent a determined player to harm others. It is
possible  to take measures in the design of a game  to make such activities
less rewarding and less common.  Or instead a game can be designed entirely
around this activity. It also can be made an integral  but not central part
of the game.  Whatever policy is adapted,  it is important to know how well
it implemented and how firmly it is enforced. A game that officially frowns
on PvP activities  but takes no official measures to prevent them from hap-
pening is more poorly implemented  than a game  where it is made clear that
PvP is allowed and likely to happen.

Policing extends on the previous subject.  Any policy that is adopted for a
game must be policed in one way or another,  and As Raph Koster pointed out
there is a huge difference  between the amount of effort this requires  and
the amount of effort  players are willing to invest in it.  This means that
if there are rules  then the game must aid  in enforcing them. The policing
itself  is also part of the rules.  How much of the policing is left to the
players, and what measures can players take to enforce policies?  The state
of most muds today is  that the players are expected to police the game but
are given no more tools to do so than the game offers any player. This does
mean that the criminal (in game policy terms)  is given an equal power as a
police officer,  or in other words, policing is reduced to vigilante level.
The result is  that the players are usually forced to resort to the type of
game play they are required to police against.
Policing requires finding a criminal and capture him, then proving convinc-
ingly that the player is indeed guilty and finally means to punish a player
in some form or another, and preferably the punishment must be meaningfull.
Death and confiscation of possession  are not meaningfull in games  where a
characters is essentially immortal and new possessions are easy to come by.
There also is a large difference  between GOP, RP and Acting oriented games
in terms of possible crimes, policing mechanisms and possible punishments.

Marian's Tailor problem is another PvP related dilemma that many games must
adress in one form or another. Basically the dilemma says that if a game is
supporting both violent and non-violent activities you introduce players in
 the game that have neither the skill  nor the inclination  to defend them-
selves from the violent players. It is unreasonable to expect these players
to do so regardless. Or at least, that is the dilemma that must be adressed.

Open ended goals are what makes players return to a game. If the goal is to
complete a certain quest  then once that is done  the game is finished  and
the player will have to find another game to play. Muds attempt to make the
players return to the game  as long as possible,  and therefor can not rely
on a fixed and clear goals to attract players.  Rather  the game must allow
many ways to complete the game so players can return to try a different ap-
proach.  Also a game where the solution to achieve a goal is not obvious is
likely to remain interesting longer.  However there is a danger to this be-
cause it is also harder for new players to start the game and to understand
what they -can- do in the game.  This later problem is especially prevalent
in Acting oriented games where the game does not provide any actual goal or
activity. New players there often find it extremely difficult to 'get into'
the game. Games should deal with this issue,  but especially the commercial
ones.

Goal variety  is another approach  to make games more lastingly interesting
to players. Where open ended goals stress the point that the player can not
immediately see  how to achieve a certain goals,  goal variety implies many
different things a player could strive for. In the typical mud the game has
a single goal (reach the highest level) that can be achieved in essentially
one single way (kill the monsters).  All other tasks are either utilitarian
or boring (and frequently both). 

Elder games  are a third way  to prolong the interest of players in a game.
They are new games to play  after achieving the initial goal(s).  Sometimes
in the form of  basically the same game  with different abilities of focus,
sometimes by adopting the role of opposition, and sometimes by taking on an
entirely different role  in the game.  Even if the game  does not supply an
elder game they sometimes emerge  when players who have played out the game
but are unwilling to leave find new tasks for themselves.

In-game communities are not really something you can design.  When the game
is large enough they will emerge. However the game can provide mechanism to
encourage and support community building. Any game that aims to grow beyond
a minimal player base  (Raph Koster mentions  averaging 250 players on-line
simultaneously)  will find  developing communities,  and should provide for
that to happen. In general a greater variety of things that can be done and
ways to express identity are enough to get the process started. If a common
enemy is introduced or allowed in the game that also is a strong way to en-
courage community forming.  Shared danger forms the strongest bonds between
people and this is equally true on muds.  Communities are also what keeps a
mud active and lively  and are something that is very important for a game.
The number and health of the in-game communities,  how many of them are so-
cially constructive or destructive  and how well (or poorly)  the game sup-
ports them are important qualities of a mud.

Marian
--
Yes - at last - You. I Choose you. Out of all the world,
out of all the seeking, I have found you, young sister of
my heart! You are mine and I am yours - and never again
will there be loneliness ...

Rolan Choosing Talia,
Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey




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