[MUD-Dev] Trouble Makers or Regular Citizens

[J C Lawrence]

On Mon, 10 Apr 2000 02:16:58 -0700 
Zak Jarvis <zak at voidmonster.com> wrote:

> Very often, MUDs (and I use that in the broadest, most general
> sense) play host to vicarious entertainment. There is a
> fundamental crisis of structure, cohesion and social harmony
> because the environment is *virtual*. 

Im GoP games (I'm not as clear on how this applies to non-GoP games)
there is an inherent sense of allegiance and affinity among players
due to the simple fact that all players (other than the game
designers et al) are injected from the outside world into the game
world and are thus all aliens holding their alieness and desire to
survive/succeed in this strange world in common.  It is easy to
create a sense of shared assault by the players on the game/world

  "We are gathered together here to see if we can figure out how the
  heck this world works. So let's go kick some Orcish butt and see!"

Teams, clans, guilds, etc can all tbe viewed as meta-forms of the
basic cooperative wish to figure out survival within the game world.

> My sense is that trying ever harder to impose order is going to
> push the designer more and more towards the role of despot. 

Herding cats.

Dictatorial force NEVER works in any useful fashion unless it aligns
with the basic needs and wants of the ordered, and even then it
works badly and often unpredictably.  Try forcing a cat to eat now
and not ten minutes from now (or to wash behind its ears).  Try
forcing a kid to go to sleep (you can force them to lie down, sure,
but sleep is a different matter).  Phyrric victories.  You might win
the battles, but you will lose the wars (and quite a bit of skin in
the case of the cat).

Carrots on the ends of sticks work much better, especially if they
never notice the stick.

> A better approach is to recognize, augment and direct the natural
> processes that happen in virtual environments.

Leadership.  It doesn't have to be obvious.  It doesn't have to be
overt.  It doesn't even have to be explicit.  You can finagle behind
or in front of the scenes; agitate, foment, and curry all the
changes you want, but none of it is going to happen until somebody
else agrees and NOBODY ever agreed with you because you told them
they HAD to agree with you, not even your kid sister/brother.

Homilies of catching more flies with sugar than vinegar.

You can't usefully order somebody to be your friend.  But you can
create that friendship and then use that friendship to help create
other different things.  This doesn't have to be a conniving
manipulative thing.  It can be a thing of simple friendhsip and the
assistance one gives one friends (as a game designer you don't want
your players occupying the position of "enemy").

--
J C Lawrence                              Internet: claw at kanga.nu
----------(*)                            Internet: coder at kanga.nu
...Honorary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...


_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
http://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev