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

[adam at treyarch.com]

On Fri, 9 Jun 2000, John Buehler wrote:
> Ola Fosheim Gr=F8stad
> >> What exactly constitutes a multiplayer game?
> >
> > Stuff that makes intense interaction and strengthening of relations
> > between two people possible.
>=20
> I'm sure we've all seen the classic PvP arguments rage back and forth
> over this player saying how much conflict and competition adds to a
> world and that it is a huge motivating factor in society, and that
> player saying how little fun there is in having their pursuits being
> foiled by other players, and the first player calling them a pansy for
> wanting everything their way.  Back and forth, back and forth.  It all
> boils down to what we enjoy, and to my mind there are two basic play
> styles that I've seen (on a different axis from the Explorer, etc,
> quartet) - those of competition and cooperation.

Which always seems quite silly to me.  All forms of human entertainment,
and socialization, include BOTH competition and cooperation.

Without cooperation, you turn into a mindless mass of nerve endings, launch=
ing
an attack at anything that moves. (Quake)

Without competition, you become complacent and slug-like, with no drive to
improve yourself or in fact, do much of anything. (IRC)

Can you imagine a story (be it novel, movie, or soap opera) without a healt=
hy
dose of both?  I don't believe it's any different for multi-human games,
whether it be a mud or a simple game of bridge.

The thing that people kick back at are the extremes.  When "competition"
comes to mean "using my BFG9000 to paint the wall with your insides" and
when "cooperation" translates to "hanging around giving each other big hugs=
" -
that's the stuff that people get both bored of and disgusted with.

Cooperation can be anything from making deals (buy/sell/barter), sharing
information (social, or to solve in-game puzzles), to the more traditional
combining of strengths (to defeat an enemy, move a heavy object, or cast a
complex spell).

Competition is simply trying to be good at what you do - and to define "goo=
d",
you need a yardstick.  That yardstick is provided by other playets.  Even
the tailor and the shoemaker want to know that they are good at their jobs,
and what better way to determine that fact than by comparing to the competi=
ng
business down the street?

This stuff is at a much higher level than restricting players from issuing
an "attack bubba" command.

Adam





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