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

[J C Lawrence]

On Sun, 11 Jun 2000 15:44:27 -0400 
Jon A Lambert <jlsysinc at ix.netcom.com> wrote:

> 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.

Specifically, many consider that there is a difference between
making such responsibility-type decisions for an arbitrary unknown
individual, and making the exact same responsbility-type decisions
for a friend, team mate, work mate, or just someone we have some
reason to care about at some level.

> 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.

One of the topics that came up during the dinner last night (see my
report) was that we are spending so much lime looking at the
massively multiplayer and uber-community on one side, and the
semi-niche on the other that we entirely ignore the question of
small friendly groups.  I argue that most social groups that come
into MUDs (ie the group existed before and outside of the MUD) are
going to be on the order of 5 - 20 members with the mean somewhere
between 5 and 10.  If your design operates on that assumption, that
your game is going to be comprised of many many (hundreds?) of such
micro groups, each operating as social distinct entities (perhaps
work mates, school chums, members of a gaming club, coffee klatches,
pub mates, whatever), and that larger more abstract (and arbitrary
and somewhat impersonal due to lack of RL contact) social ties are
going to be less common and less emphasized, you start looking at
areas and markets that we've never even referenced  here.

> 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 that fact is accidental and unplanned for?  MUD-Dev is a MUD.

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

Bingo.

--
J C Lawrence                                 Home: claw at kanga.nu
----------(*)                              Other: coder at kanga.nu
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--


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