[MUD-Dev] Birthday Cake (or Why Large Scale Sometimes Sucks) (long)

[Wes Connell]

On Tue, 6 Jun 2000, Matthew Mihaly wrote:

> Visual analogy coming up here. No kicking me in the shins if it makes no
> sense. Think of the market as a big bowl. The interior surface of the bowl
> is cratered, like the moon. Some craters are very big, some are small.
> There are craters within craters within craters within craters, etc etc.
> The craters represent aggregated interest in X type of game. 
> 
> Now, imagine that each game is a ball of a various size. The more general
> the game, the bigger the ball. Place the balls in the bowl. Any ball that
> is near to the size of the diameter of the bowl will capture a huge
> audience (consider the audience to be the space within a crater...the
> entire market being the bowl, ie one massive crater), but because its
> curvature is so much more gradual than most of the craters, it won't
> penetrate those craters very deeply. It takes small, focussed balls to
> penetrate the craters.

Excellent analogy Matt.

So the goal (for us commercial games) is to have something that will fill
the entire bowl but fill in the tiny craters left untouched by the broad
curvature of the MMORPG ball. 

One word. Jello.

The jello flows in as a liquid, fills the craters and gaps, a becomes a
solid locking in the goodness. In game terms: You release the game, the
players enter the world and begin to fill the gaps, the game will change
physical states and lock in the player goodness.

Basically the moral is that players will naturally fill the craters in the
MMORPGs, its up to the game to support, encourage, and lock in the player
goodness.

Perfect example-

In UO across many shards players toned their skin to appear
greenish. These players would don orc armor and helms and role-play
orcs. IMHO This was a wonderful idea. These 'orcs' even inhabited an
abandoned orc fort and called it their own.

The problem was that these 'orcs' were still bound by the same rules as
the other players. The 'orcs' were attacked by real orcs and suffered
murder counts when players tresspassed onto their property.

I remember when the green lich Jounar was attacking Trinsic. These 'orcs'
appeared and attempted to help Jounar take Trinsic. Journar was controlled
by a seer so Jounar himself did not attack the 'orcs', but the
uncontrolled undead army still considered these 'orcs' as players.

*takes a bite of yummy cake*

Wes!
wconnell at skotos.net




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