[MUD-Dev] Defining a community

[Dave Rickey]

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Freeman <SkeptAck at antisocial.com>
>From: "Dave Rickey" <daver at mythicentertainment.com>
>
>> Since there's a sizable minority (including me) that will argue that
>> "The game is the community", I would be *very* interested in trying
>> to establish a better working theory for communities.

> Elobarate, please?

> I can't imagine how "the game is the community" considering that the
> online communities of which I am currently a part of, span pretty
> much all the commercial MUDs at this point (with users travelling
> from one to the other as the spirit moves them), as well as some
> non-commercial MUDs, plus some folks that I'd consider part of these
> communities that aren't playing anything at all right now.

Okay, here's the logic: UO, EQ, and AC, measured by the standards of
single-player games, pretty much all suck.  If you were in a
single-player game that played, as far as the interaction between you
and the system, like any of them, you'd probably use the CD for a
frisbee.

Yet the presence of thousands of other players in the game world
somehow makes the game "not suck" to the point that people continue to
play for *years*.  Ergo: The game is the community, the community is
the game.

> As far as I can tell, MMORPGs (or whatever freaking abbreviation is in
> vogue today) are made up of many sub-communities that are mostly
> *independent* of any one game.  And they do center around message
> boards (actually, it seems to me they center around one person more
> than the message-board or group itself).

Ahh, that's the million-dollar question for 2003-2004, how do we make
games that won't be tossed aside for something "cooler", or with
flexible architectures that can be made cooler as needed?  But we're
still addressing the issue of how to yank the players in and get them
to build stronger communities.

Web-board based communities are not only too protean, they aren't the
whole show.  Something like 50% of EQ players don't read *any* web
boards (and half of those that do read only their "Guild" board).

> Smaller MUDs seem to be different.  I don't get the impression
> there's as much cross-over between them, so I don't see that MUD
> communities are all sub-communities of a larger whole (but then, I'm
> not a member of (a) MUD community(ies), so I wouldn't know).

> I do get that impression about MMORPGs, though.

Current offerrings are all too similar too each other, and there
aren't many choices.  As different MMOG's with different premises and
fundamental gameplay mechanics come into the picture, that will change
(I wouldn't expect much overlap between a space-sim MMOG and a Fantasy
OLRPG, but both might overlap with a Sci-Fi OLRPG).

--Dave Rickey

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