[MUD-Dev] Holidays

[Lovecraft]

I agree with Jeff Freeman's conclusion: artfully use IC and OOC holidays and
combinations thereof; I agree with Matt Mihaly only where he promoted IC
culture-culturing.[1]  The rest of this post is supporting detail.



... *pausing* ...

    A discussion on holidays needs to consider at least one other factor,
which is a marketing factor:

    Path-dependency [*]
    M. Players play more on OOC holidays than other days, ceteris paribus.
[**]
    m. Events are better hosted when there are a lot of players online.
    C. Events are better hosted on OOC holidays.

[*] Path-dependency example:
(http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Pathdependency.htm )
[**] Ceteris paribus: All things being equal.  If the world does nothing
different, more players are in the world.  This corresponds mostly to
work/non-work days: when players have more leisure time.

... *continuing* ...



Jeff Freeman wrote:
> I think the objective of nurturing a culture that respect in-game holidays
> is going to be made particularly difficult if your average player sticks
> around for less than a year.

Creative IC design solves this:
    1. Speed up IC-time.  For example, the world I operate is exactly earth
calendar * 8.  Effectively an annual holiday every 1.5 months.
    2. Use cycles more frequent than a solar year.  Lunar holidays, weekly
holidays, daily holidays.
    Examples:  The full moon/new moon.  Most churches have a holy-day of the
week.  The Ancient Egyptian rite of Sun worship[2] has a celebration 4 times
per day.
    3. May other list members pose creative solutions?  I feel there are
many more solutions.



Jeff Freeman wrote:
> Two arguments that seem to be pretty well opposed.

I see no useful dichotomy.  I don't see IC vs OOC strategies.  I see:
    a. no holiday.
    d. a clashing combination of IC/OOC holiday.
    b. an OOC-only holiday.
    c. an IC-only holiday.
    e. an artful combination of IC/OOC event.

Resources are drastically limited, so I use all that works.
    - I do host purely IC-holidays, too.  Players observe those, too.
    - I don't break IC for the purpose of an OOC event.  I weave the
cultural essence[3] of the holiday, not the "Jolly fat man, red hat, and
presents for everyone" into the fabric.


Imagine, in very simple math/pseudo code, for concept illustration:

    event_value[NONE] = 0
    event_value[OOC] = 2
    event_value[IC] = 3

    event_profit = (entertainment gained) - (resources drained)
    /* Profit may be negative */

    case option in:
        a) event_value = event_value[NONE]
        b) event_value = event_value[OOC] / event_value[IC]
        c) event_value = event_value[OOC]
        d) event_value = event_value[IC]
        e) event_value = event_value[OOC] * event_value[IC]
    case_end

    event_profit = event_value  * event_profit



Conclusion: Artfully use, IC-only holidays, OOC-only holidays, and IC/OOC
holidays.
    If an online world's goal is maximum entertainment value and the world's
professional entertainers (e.g. staff admins, programmers, artists, etc.)
possess very limited resources, the world wins more entertainment per unit
resource spent by incorporating the common culture that preceded the online
world by some millennia.

Dave Kennerly



[1] The assertion that a developer didn't try hard enough means that a
developer (in this case, probably from a producer's financial reality)
values other goals more.
    An imaginary scenario: Every unit spent on IC holiday promotion has an
opportunity loss of two non-IC-players for every one IC-player it adds when
the world's subscription base exceeds 10,000.
    In this imaginary scenario, if a developer hosts IC-events for
overwhelmingly non-IC-players: the developer wasted its resources.
Scalability has a dark side.

[2] "Liber Resh"
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~eclectic/o/thelema/libers/l-200.html

[3] Yuletide (and the Cross) precedes Christian Christmas by over a
millennium.  Samhain precedes our modern "Halloween" by similar length of
time.  And so on.




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