[MUD-Dev] Maintaining fiction.

[John Buehler]

Matt Mihaly writes:
> On Mon, 11 Jun 2001, Madman Across the Water wrote:

>> I'm not sure where to go from here- I think permadeath can exist
>> and is meaningful. Aside from that it's all vague.

> I do too, I just don't think any game can legitimately claim to
> have any control over whether the characters in it die permanently
> or not.

So do we give games ratings on the permanence of their character
death model?  Like bond ratings?  BBB and below is 'junk death',
like EverQuest and Asheron's Call?  :)

In fairness to the games that make the attempt, I hope that nobody
is planning on jumping game developers who claim to implement
permadeath.  The more mechanisms that they put in to discourage
*rapid* remanufacturing of an identical character experience, the
greater the permanence of death.  For example, if automatic,
time-based character aging took place, then when a fairly mature
character dies, it is replaced by a youngish character.  Players
aren't obligated to claim that they are a younger cousin or child of
the original character, but that's the most likely explanation.
Games that put elements into a character definition that are outside
of the player's control, but which are unique to a given character
should score particularly high.  Assuming that they implement the
in-game part of permanent death such that the original character
doesn't get automatically reconstituted by the game itself.

In the end, foiling rapid reconstruction of a given character seems
to be the best that we can do in the direction of permanent
character death.  The greater the perceived break in continuity of
operation of a given character experience, the more that players
will accept death as permanent.  Implementing such a game has all
sorts of consequences to game systems - such as the inability to
rapidly redefine a character.  That detracts strongly from a
AAA-rating because it permits rapid reconstruction of a given
character.  Without a sufficient break in continuity, other players
will simply accept the new character as being the same as the old
character.

JB

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