[MUD-Dev] Our player's keepers? (long)

[Jon A. Lambert]

> Matthew Mihaly wrote:
> On Sat, 10 Jun 2000, Brian Green wrote:
> > Matthew Mihaly wrote:
> > > I'm concerned with providing my users with an experience they want.
> > > If what they want is bad for them, that's their issue, not mine. I'm
> > > not daddy, and you know what, I don't know what's best for their
> > > lives.
> > 
> > We must realize that the issue runs deeper than the problems of
> > individuals; it is a problem that affects others in the social
> > environment and a problem that will affect the industry through bad
> > press and negative perceptions.
> 
> I really don't care if industry gets bad press and a negative perception.
> Text muds have never exactly been thought of well by the press to begin
> with, and since the industry mainly consists of the graphical games, I
> don't give a damn. No offence to those list-members working for Sony and
> EA, but I do not care what happens to Sony or EA. 

Mmm.  For another interesting viewpoint, read Brian's post replacing 
all occurances of 'industry' with 'hobby', 'professional' with 'amateur'.
Obviously that subverts the intentions, context and content of his post.  
Yet I don't doubt many readers on the list might chaffe at the notion that 
they aren't really "serious" contributers and participants in creating 
online communities. 

Some of us wouldn't (couldn't?) even consider working in the game industry 
because we get compensated far better working in other industries.  And to 
tell the truth the only way I, personally, would consider it is in the form 
of an owner/operator like yourself.

Some of us view the genre as an extension of hobbies like FTF group roleplay 
and LARP, not as a business.  And some of us are professional coders who look 
at multi-user servers as interesting hobbies to test, express and explore 
interesting concepts that we normally can't in our work.  Hmm... professional 
programmers who code as a hobby too.  Maybe we enjoy our field more! ;-)

Perhaps some of us view _some_ of our players in the light that yes, we 
are our player's keepers simply because we have the luxury of knowing quite 
a bit more about them personally and have struck up casual friendships 
with some of them.  

For example, there is a mud which is still active today with around 
40-60 players and had about 5 or 6 administrators.  One of the players
was a mother of three school age girls who played during the day in
between doing her business of taking care of her household and dropping
off and picking up her children from school.  One day, one of her 
children was sick; sick enough I guess not to go out in the weather with
her mother to pick up the other two girls, but not quite sick enough or
old enough to not get into potential trouble or difficulty at home.  
The mother created a character for the girl and logged her in.  I and a 
few other wizards actually "baby sat" the girl for an hour by occupying 
her attention through chatting with her about school and showing her 
some of the more amusing areas and creatures on the mud. 

Now one could certainly argue the wisdom and gall of the mother in 
presuming to use a mud to provide temporary sitting services for a
child.  I most certainly would argue strongly against it.  However, 
more important and revealing aspect was the social response of a troop 
of wizards and a playerbase who understood they had an 8 year old in 
their midst for whatever reason.  Often a small or medium size group of 
mudders can display a cohesive culture and common level of civility that 
far exceeds anything that could be reasonably expected from massively 
large mud community.

So the answer to the question Brian posed, "Are we our player's keepers?" 
is yes and no.  Sometimes we enjoy having certain players around enough 
to become acutely aware of their absence or presence and the reasons 
behind them.  

Consider the Mud-dev Meta-list.  Don't even attempt to tell me your 
meetings and dinners are solely for the purposes of professional 
networking.  There's a strong possibility one of you might be tempted 
to pass the baby pictures around, form close friendships, take a special 
interest in locating a job for someone, maybe drive someone home who has
had one too many Killian Reds, etc.  All sorts of possibilities and
potential that might cause you to act as your brother's keeper. ;-)

And there's nothing at all wrong with that.  That is a necessary
feature of this thing called "community".

--
--* Jon A. Lambert - TychoMUD        Email:jlsysinc at ix.netcom.com *--
--* Mud Server Developer's Page <http://tychomud.home.netcom.com> *--
--* If I had known it was harmless, I would have killed it myself.*--




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