[MUD-Dev] New Bartle article

[Richard A. Bartle]

On 23rd February, 2001, Dave Rickey wrote:
> I read it, and it's pretty obvious some was directed in my direction

Not at you personally, no. It was directed in a general direction of a
body of opinion which you may or may not share, but I can honestly say
your name never entered my head when I was writing the article. I was
concerned more with the way that online game design is starting to be
by herd rule. I want people to think about the design of games from
perspectives outside of the prevailing paradigm. I don't particularly
care one way or the other whether the resulting argument repudiates or
justifies the way things are being done at the moment, so long as
there's actually real thought involved beyond the Will Of The
Collective.

> DAoC will be geographic PvP without PD.

DAoC is one of the better designs out there. From my own, designer's
point of view, I feel somewhat cynical about the 3-way conflict so
no-one actually ever wins approach, but there's no doubt that players
at large will lap it up.

> I believe that's about as ambitious an experiment as the market is
> for, both in terms of the state of design and player state of mind.

I agree, the market it not yet ready for anything much more radical.
In part, though, this is because of the conditioning by early success
games such as EQ, which have let to a climate where decisions taken
quickly under pressure are now virtually industry standard.

> If nothing else, the players are gunshy about PvP at *all*.  As the
> article points out, if they don't feel like they'll have the ability
> to say "I don't want to be killed by a player today", they may not
> take the box off the shelf.

That's the dilemma.

Perhaps players have been spoiled, perhaps they haven't. Perhaps games
can be kept alive indefinitely through external influences like
numbers of newbies and new modules, perhaps they can't. Perhaps the
market will mature, perhaps it won't.

Unless these issues are actually debated at a level other than "in my
game X happens" or "I won't play if you do Y", we're not going to find
out, though.

		Richard

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