[MUD-Dev] Persistent Worlds

[Scion Altera]

Friday, February 16, 2001, 12:14:58 PM, John Buehler wrote:

> 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.

Also keep in mind that the internet has a quality very different from
your real life amusement parks. The visitors aren't physically inside
the MUD. In an amusement park if you try and put fake money in a
ticket machine, or sneak onto a ride for free, or harass other guests
or the employees, they can not only eject you from the park, but they
can call the police and have you sent to jail.

Jail is not in any way analogous to any punishment possible on a MUD.
When all is said and done and the troublesome character is frozen,
slayed, banned, purged, turned into a newt and/or destroyed, whoever
was controlling that character is still sitting in their comfy chair
in front of their computer screen. There aren't any police officers
stuffing them into a squad car as a result.

The upshot of this is that after a troublemaker has been banned from
one MUD, they have succeeded in their attempt to annoy people, they
have not lost anything in the process except access to that one MUD
(and it is generally very easy to regain access after being banned),
and they are instantly ready to go cause trouble on any one of
thousands of other muds without fear of retribution. The troublemaker
in your real life theme park is still regretting his actions because
they had real life consequences.

All that in mind, I think the increased number of troublemakers on
MUDs in comparison to those at theme parks is due to the internet's
inability to impose real life consequences, and not to the level of
immersion provided by the means of amusement.

-- Scion

"Never underestimate the power of idiots in large groups." -- despair.com

-- keeler at teleport.com -- peter.keeler at brokat.com -- ICQ: 1824934 --


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