[MUD-Dev] Trouble Makers or Regular Citizens

[Par Winzell]

Jon Lambert writes:
 > I've always thought that diversity is antithetical to community building.
 > Strong communities form because of commonly held values.  The more 
 > diverse a community is the less commonly held values it has.  The less 
 > commonly held values a community has, the less value individuals place 
 > in being a member of that community.  The less value individuals place 
 > in a community, the less productive that community becomes.
 > 'Productive' being defined as the rate a community produces anything 
 > of value.  As diversity increases and commonly held values decrease a 
 > community will reach a point where the only commonly held value is 
 > diversity.  At that point it ceases to function as a tool of production, 
 > it just exists.

Well, if you define diversity as lack of common values, then your argument
cannot help but be true... it is more interesting to presume the existence
of common needs -- survival, say -- and consider wether or not people with
diverse values can work together. Many MUDs attempt to configure themselves
so as to reward symbiosis between different guilds/skillsets, in combat or
trading or whatnot. Gaining the respect of somebody you admire can be just
as rewarding, or more, even when they seem somewhat alien to you. It could
be argued that if two people respect each other, they -do- share common
values, but that seems to dilute the concept needlessly much.

"Need" in a Mud usually translates to averting immediate danger, which can
produce the kind of adrenaline camaraderie that mellows into friendship...
In fact, I wonder if adrenalin is not the fastest and most useful means of
hooking a player into the inter-respect network, especially for people who
do not come into the game pre-equipped with an urge to fit in.

 > Peer pressure does scale with size, it does not scale with diversity.
 > So the issue is one of managing diversity, not necessarily size.

There is truth to this, yes, regardless of what I just wrote. I suppose we
could haul out examples like Victorian England as examples... but in a Mud
I wonder if size is not still always important. Once a player is so much
in-role that he walks the land and behaves well simply because he's among
his own people, we have nothing to worry about. A small band of thugs with
no other common cause than fellowship and basic group dynamics, however,
is likely to inspire instant conformity in anybody who wants to join. Now,
true, roaming bands of thugs are perhaps not the most ideal outcome of the
discussion here, but still :-)

Par




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