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

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

J C Lawrence wrote:
> What was the last truly multi-player game you played? 

If you add "fun", it probably was "Worms". Before that... maybe
"Lemmings" in two-player mode.

> What was it
> about that game such that being multi-player wasn't just integral to
> the system, but that the system itself was unable to exist, let
> alone function without it being multi-player?

It was dead boring without being multi-player. Simply because the crux
wasn't the game itself, but laughing with a friend. The game provides
opportunities for laughing at the the silly situations you _create_ with
your friend.

> What exactly constitutes a multiplayer game?

Stuff that makes intense interaction and strengthening of relations
between two people possible.

To me playing chess with a friend is fun, playing it over the net with
some anonymous stranger is really not what I want.  Maybe the best chess
players do not play with another human, but with a system. That's not
multi-player, is it?

> this very simply: Games consist of goals, barriers, and freedoms.

If you go by how games are being used, then I disagree. A (recreational)
game is something separate from reality that responds to our actions.
Preferably something that enable us to distort reality and yell "screw
reality", or eventually "screw this game" and then we go back to
reality. (This is where MUDs fail to be a game, it messes up the
distinction, we don't play with people we knew or are aware of from
reality)

There's got to be a reason why many games contain kings and queens.
(chess, cards, etc)

My overall favourite multi-user games is that one where one person draw
a head, then fold the paper, then another person draw the torso and so
on. Then in the end you get to see this weird character. Very
interactive, very fair, everybody wins, every time.

> But what about multi-player games?  There's more to it than just
> throwing in a couple extra inputs, of defining the goal as
> insolvable/unapproachable by single individuals.  What is the
> quality that defines a game as being multi-player?

That you play with other people's minds, as opposed to mechanics?

--
Ola  -  http://www.notam.uio.no/~olagr/





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