[MUD-Dev] Persistent Worlds

[the_logos at www.achaea.com]

On Fri, 16 Feb 2001, John Buehler wrote:

> Matt Mihaly writes:
 
>> Yes, it's not realistic to have re-popping mobs. Of course, dragons
>> and magic are also not realistic, and neither is eating and never
>> having to use the bathroom.
 
> Having to eat is generally not entertaining when your senses are
> limited to sight and sound.  Having to use the bathroom isn't
> entertaining regardless of your senses.  Having dragons and magic is
> entertaining.

I didn't say anything about entertaining. I was just commenting that
realism is not the goal. If it was, there'd be no need to play in a
"non-real" virtual world. (Note that I believe the virtual world is
just as real as anything else, but I don't think he meant real in the
sense that I do when I say that.)

> Is having monsters and other beings spontaneously pop into existence
> entertaining?  I would argue that it is not.  Why?  Because it
> gratuitously detracts from the sense of reality that the game
> experience is attempting to provide.

Well, it's more entertaining them there being no monsters if the
purpose of the game is bashing monsters. It is probably less
entertaining then going about producing monsters in another way.

> Magic and dragons are entertaining.  But they both also detract from
> the sense of reality in the game world, just as I've opined that
> spontaneous generation does.  Does this add to the 'gameyness' of
> the virtual world experience?  Is 'gameyness' an undesireable aspect
> of these applications?

Hmm. I disagree I guess. When I'm in a text world and have gotten used
to the way a world works, and if it continues working in that manner,
then the way in which it behaves becomes my reality when I'm there
(I've never actually experienced that depth of feeling with a
graphical mud). How many of you wonder if you'd notice if your house
was on fire when you're really enveloped in playing a MUD (graphical
or text. My preference just happens to be text.)? You _are_ in that
world, at least in my opinion. There's no 'virtual' about it to me if
virtual is being used to describe something less than real.

> Gameyness would tend to suggest to players that none of their
> activity is at all related to the real world, so they don't behave
> in real ways.  Teleportation, fireballs and the like are constant
> reminders that the virtal world is not real, and players will have a
> tendency to not bother suspending their disbelief.  They just won't
> bother with believing that it's a virtual world and instead just do
> whatever they feel like.  In the case of EverQuest, that means
> exploiting the software and optimizing gameplay as much as possible.

But why is exploiting the software and optimizing gameplay not
reality?  If I found out that I could magically produce a bunch of
money in real life by picking up and putting down $20 bills over and
over again, you bet your ass I'd do it.

Listen, my explicit goal in my life is to enjoy myself as much as
possible. To do this, I am trying to optimize the way I play the game
of life in order to achieve this goal as efficiently as possible. If I
could 'cheat' I'd do it in a second. Does that make the way I play
life somehow less valid? I don't think so. I am created this way, and
placed in this world. I am after pleasure because pleasure is an
axiomatic good (not using good in the moral sense. It's simply what I
believe human beings are always pursuing, conciously or not. Even
Buddhism or Epicureanism's ataraxia fall under what I think of as
pleasure.) Pleasure has been defined by reality as being good for me.

Likewise, the rules of the sub-reality of Everquest dictate that
having a high level and lots of money is good. So there should be no
surprise if people try to play as efficiently as possible.

Now, granted, Everquest is, as I said, a sub-reality, and so does not
escape the prime directive of pleasure. It may be _illogical_ to play
Everquest as efficiently as possible to get a high level and gold,
because that is probably not the way in which you're going to achieve
maximum pleasure, but it's certainly completely understandable, and
taken in the context of Everquest alone, does not differ from the way
in which people behave outside of Everquest.


> Disneyworld analogy before and I'll suggest it as a more appropriate
> model for referring to MUDs.  Should we be referring to Achaea as a
> theme park or as an amusement park or something similar?  Should the
> people who spend time there be called visitors and/or guests?

If you wanted to call them that, you could, sure. I think it
understates the level of participation of the visitors or guests, but
I think that's mainly a semantical argument.


> Is that a more appropriate way to have users approach these
> programs?  In all documentation for MUDs, they are referred to as
> games, and the users are players.  Should the words used by the
> documentation change?  Should there be a natural separation of
> character and player?  Should the documentation say things such as
> 'the character' instead of 'you': "When you draw your sword..." 
> would be replaced by "When the character draws its sword...".  Why
> bother?  So that your park guests understand that they don't *own*
> anything (leading to a recent thread's topic), and that they think
> of the whole experience as NOT being just another single player game
> in which they can do whatever they like.

I try to refer to them as worlds more than games. Further, why would
you want to shove the fact that they don't own the MUD in their faces? 
That just seems counter-productive to me.

> The use of the theme park notion is an attempt at legitimizing or
> mainstreaming the MUD.  I want park guests to think of themselves as
> park guests instead of game players.  Does a park guest typically
> bother with trying to figure out how the rides work?  Generally not,
> although I'm sure there's a disproportionately high number of people
> on this list who might be interested in such things.  Most guests
> just ride the rides because they're entertaining.  If a MUD were
> sufficiently entertaining, and the theme park paradigm were used in
> all ways that the MUD presented itself to its users, I wonder if
> there wouldn't be natural tendency for the park guests to behave in
> a rather different way.  And it might very well attract a different
> kind of customer.  That casual player.

Yep, a worthy goal. Not my kind of thing, but obviously it's for a lot
of people. I was at Disneyland last week. It's a reasonably large
place. Cost a lot of money to build, etc etc. I couldn't spend more
than 1 day there though, and won't have any desire to go back again
for another 5 years or so I'm sure. When I played MUDs obsessively, I
enjoyed playing them almost every day, and a lot. To each his own!

> This treatment of the MUD would have to permeat *every* interaction
> of a park guest with a representative of the park.  Every employee
> of the park, every document, every image that is presented by the
> park would have to reinforce the idea that the virtual world is a
> theme park.  Maybe 'adventure park' is the best term.  It would mean
> that the gamemasters (which would be refered to as NPC wranglers)
> don't hop into the park and start adventuring for their amusement.
> They are park employees and they treat the park guests with as much
> respect as they can muster.  Their job is entertaining the park
> guests.

Check out www.neopets.com. It is more or less what you're talking
about. You adopt pets whom you have to take on adventures, explore
with, etc. The distinction between you and the pet (character) is very
clear and the handful of people I know who play it a lot don't seem to
feel any sense of ownership, and haevn't taken to trying to figure out
how things work (I've mentioned Neopets before. Really, check it
out. It is very impressive when you start realizing how many features
it has. Things like opening your own amusement park for pets and
listing it on a stock exchange, etc.) It can also happily be played
for as long or as little time as you like.

> The terminology and presentation of MUDs seems to be a bit of a
> stumbling block.  Are MUDs (etc) ready to move to the 'adventure
> park' level, or do we still have a ways to go before we can attempt
> the transition?  Is the transition desireable, or do folks consider
> keeping MUDs as 'games' to be 'played'.

Well, I don't want mine to be a game or an amusement park. I want it
to be a world.

> Such a model will not appeal overmuch to hardcore gamers who want to
> build that alternate life.  But I'm hoping that it will appeal to
> the more casual folks who are just trying to kill a couple hours
> doing something fun.  Not 10 hours a day trying to build an empire.

Definitely check out neopets. It is the best casual mud I've seen so
far (and it either doesn't know it's a mud or doesn't call itself a
mud).

--matt

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