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

[Dave Rickey]

    I started to reply to this, and realized halfway through I was trying to
bullshit my way past it.  This is my second try, maybe I can get a little
more real on this one.

-----Original Message-----
From: J C Lawrence <claw at kanga.nu>
To: mud-dev at kanga.nu <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Date: Tuesday, June 06, 2000 3:41 PM
Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Birthday Cake (or Why Large Scale Sometimes Sucks)
(long)


>On Tue, 6 Jun 2000 11:06:09 -0400
>Dave Rickey <daver at mythicgames.com> wrote:
>
>>     If you think EQ and AC are "dumbed down", I think you're in
>> for disappointment.  My expectation is that for the true
>> mass-market they are far too hardcore.  Everybody wants to reach
>> out to that "Casual Gamer", the millions of people who currently
>> play Online Backgammon for free, and somehow rope them into a
>> pay-for-play.  If they succeed, it will be with a game so
>> simplified you'll long for the "Golden Age" of UO and EQ.
>
>There are some dichotomies that aren't being confronted here.  We
>talk glowingly of community involvement, of social structures and
>involvement, of our games being, at the social level, truly "real"
>for the players involved.  We talk of the methods and techniques
>that can be used to transparently move purely GoP players to more
>socially-oriented activities and then how to ensnare them in the
>endlessly complex and enmeshing immersion of the resulting social
>fabrics.  And then we talk about ways to decrease bandwidth
>consumption by reducing the time players spend in our worlds, to get
>players to not play so much, for players to be less involved in our
>worlds (and conveniently escape some of the responsibility for
>abused of our games), and in general, to cheapskate on the
>immediately prior goals.  And finally, we suddenly realise that
>we've only ever touched a fraction of one percent of the available
>playerbase out there, and that the real untapped masses are the
>indolent, occassional, casual players who can be safely trusted to
>just not give a damn, and who outnumber every other single player
>classification and demographic by multiple orders of magnitude.

    You're damned straight I'm not confronting these dichotomies, they scare
the hell out of me.  I'm not sure I *want* to have a hand in reshaping
society, even though I recognize that it is happening.  I've got this
approach-retreat thing going here, I keep pushing myself towards the "social
engineering" side of these games, then backing away emotionally when I
realize what's actually involved.

    If I'm responsible that Timmy can't yank himself away from the computer
long enough to go to work, what else do I have to take the blame for?  His
messy divorce and the kids that will grow up in a broken home?  What if
Timmy loses everything in a game I help make and/or run, and commits suicide
over it (it's coming, mark my words)?  What if a game balance tweak I make
wipes out Timmy's eBay-based business and takes away his livelihood?  That's
the kind of power *governments* wield in the real world, except governments
would turn green with envy at the power we hold over the virtual worlds
(Congress would have a hard time repealing the Law of Gravity).

    Thing is, I *do* see these games becoming, eventually, as pervasive as
television.  And you're completely correct, anything that is a significant
part of that many people's lives can't help but have social impact well
outside of the context of the virtual.  Hell, it reaches that point and
trying to draw a dividing line between "real" society and virtual will be a
serious case of hair-splitting.  That's theoretical (and some would say
completely overblown), but even the *possibility* is sobering.

>Many of us have some appreciation for cultures other than our own.
>We realise that some other people might actually (not) eat meat,
>believe in different gods and religious strictures, be atheists, and
>just have different social expectations, values, and mannerisms than
>we do.  We haven't reached that point for VR.

    Well, just IMHO, a good designer for an MMOG *has* to be eclecticly
empathetic.  In single-player games, it's enough to make the games you
always wanted to play yourself.  In MMOG's, you need to be able to make
games that people who play in completely different ways will enjoy
simulataneously.  This is true regardless if the genre is RPG, RTS, or FPS,
or if the setting is fantasy or sci-fi. You have to empathize with gaming
styles and viewpoints you don't find sympathetic, or you can't fit them into
your game (or reliably exclude them).  Does that last line make any sense?
>
>We have a job of education to do.  To educate that great unwashed
>out there that the virtual reality and societies and people of our
>games are not necessarily any less real than the ones we live in and
>pay our mortgages with.  To do that it is going to have to become
>pervasive, and for the basic, simple, endlessly offensive meme of
>"VR is actually made of real people" is going to have to spread to
>the point where it becomes an instantly assumable.
>

    I think we're going to have to accept that the "other people" will never
be *real* to a large minority of the public.  There will always be more
sociopathic behaviour in online environments than in the material.
>
>How's *them* apples?


    Not too pleasant....

--Dave Rickey




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