[MUD-Dev] Levels of immersion

[Jeff Freeman]

At 03:35 PM 12/18/00 -0500, Tess Snider wrote:

> When a player perceives his character's misfortunes as his own, he
> simply can't make objective decisions about his character's fate in
> the context of the greater framing story (and the stories of other
> characters).  He will no longer make decisions because they are good
> for the game, or good for the story, or just because they'll lead to
> some intensely brilliant roleplaying.  He will always be looking out
> for his own best interests and survival (and even, in some cases,
> will even feel that he needs to *win*).  At this point, he's taking
> from the game, and not contributing anything in return.

Maybe it just depends on what your goal is.  I actually prefer for the
players motivations to be "real".  Their character's goals are their
goals, and they do things (for themselves and others) because they
really do want to do those things (vs. merely pretending that they
want to do whatever it is they are doing).  My opinion is that this
makes the world more compelling.  I'm shooting for the persona-level
of immersiveness (and based on the poll below, missing the mark).

I posted Tess Lowe's description of the four player types along with a
poll.  While a few people took issue with the "it's only a game"
statement in the definition of "player", most of them voted for that.

Not a role-player in the lot.

http://pub32.ezboard.com/fnomoronsallowedfrm3.showMessage?topicID=136.topic

Results (total votes = 31): 
Character  0 / 0.0%   
Avatar     2 / 6.5%    
Persona    2 / 6.5%    
Player    27 / 87.1%  

Although, that's only 31 votes, and it is only the players that read
the message board (a *lot* of them don't), and a few people voted that
don't even play on Ackadia.

I should probably do an in-game poll, but I think I'd like to refine
the descriptions of the player-types a bit so that they don't all
sound like such extremists.  Maybe it would be more useful if they
rated themselves in each category on a scale of 1 to 4 (i.e. put the
descriptions in order from "most like me" to "least like me")?  I mean
I know that some of these people roleplay, at least some of the time.
But none of them selected that.

--
  http://home.swbell.net/skeptack/

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