[MUD-Dev] Report: MUD-Dev dinner of 10 June 2000

[John Buehler]

Brian Green
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2000 11:26 PM

>I think some of the current problems in the game industry as a whole is
>because we're ignoring the gaming end of things.  Some of the most fun
>games in recent times tend to be very game-like; Heroes of Might & Magic
>3, which is sitting right here on my desk, is a perfect example.
>
>So, to relate this to MUDs. :)  I think that we've suffered from a bit
>of this, too.  I remember the raging debates on some of the Usenet MUD
>groups about "realism", about how you should hide the stats from players
>and how room systems are passé.  Yet, we're still struggling with basic
>issues unique to our medium, such as the recent thread on "what is a
>multiplayer game" here on MUD-Dev (IE, exploring the community end of of
>the triangle).

Being a member of that particular camp of 'no numbers', 'simulation', etc,
I'd like to say that one of the more enjoyable games that I've played is
Wild Metal Country.  It is a game where you get to drive a tank across a
broken terrain arena.  There are rocks that you can bump into, shoot and
move, items to be run over in order to pick them up, and bad guy tanks
and transports.  After having played the game through the two demo levels
I quickly got bored of beating the AI of the tanks, even though I'd do
it repeatedly just to see how many different ways I COULD do it.  I could
win the game in many different ways and I could experience unexpected
things because the world was nicely simulated.  The tank shots lobbed
nicely, there were concussive effects from the blasts, there were also
mines that could be dropped that would roll downhill (like 55 gallon
drums), and the terrain itself varied from grass to snow, where the snow
was slippery and you could be sliding around.

This is all physical simulation stuff and it adds a whole dimension to
the game.  I jumped into the game just to ram other tanks to see how
they'd behave.  Or shoot a rock at the top of a slope to roll down
onto a passing transport.  The rocks never rolled the same way twice,
so there was some planning required.

I'm in no way suggesting that this is the end-all-be-all of gaming,
especially in that player skills are important in the game, making it
somewhat Quake-like.  The point is that simulation DOES add to the
variety and depth of a game experience.  I have a number of years
under my belt spent developing a multi-user flight simulator, and the
enjoyment of simply playing around with the physics of the aircraft
(that we expanded to include spaceships, cars and boats) kept us
amused literally for years.  I can well imagine users playing around
with the physics simulation in a game world, firing arrows at this
and that, witnessing the results and delighting in new experiences,
however small.

JB





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