FW: [MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)

[John Buehler]

Zak Jarvis writes:

> I think perhaps the basic problem here is the assumption that
> suspension =f disbelief is required for role-playing, and perhaps
> more profoundly, =hat it's a desirable end result.  I've given a lot
> of thought to =odeling character knowledge versus player knowledge,
> I've previously =ome to the same conclusions you seem to have; that
> player knowledge can =isrupt, that players who aren't 'in character'
> bring others 'out of =haracter', that not being *in* the environment
> is a bad thing.

> I've sense tossed out all those theories. They're were all built
> around =y initial honeymoon period with multiplayer games. I grew
> gradually =ore and more disillusioned with it until finally I felt
> "Dammit! No one =akes this world seriously!".

> Of course they didn't. It was a *game*. Moreover, it was a game that
> could never, ever live up to the billing of an alternate world.

Perhaps you misunderstand what I'm after.  I'm after entertaining my
players, not in getting them into an alternate reality.  I've been
trying to articulate this delicate balance point in another forum and
have been failing miserably.  Perhaps I'll be a little more successful
here.

  1. I want the game world to be self-consistent and to follow as many
  of the real world rules as possible.  This permits players to
  develop expectations about how they can act based on their real
  world experiences.  As you say, there will always be limitations on
  this, but I don't want to set expectations that are simply not true.
  The case of an in-game secret password is the topical example.  I
  don't want to present a piece of information as a password (implying
  secret) when the actual use of that password by the game and the
  game community completely eliminates its secrecy.

  2. I do not want a significantly immersive world.  In every way that
  I draw my players in because the world is self-consistent and
  believable, I will work equally hard to ensure that they don't get
  too immersed in the game.  Immersion implies 'serious' to me, and
  that produces hardcore attitudes.  Emotions are more intense,
  experiences more extreme, etc.  In a movie, presenting a
  self-consistent, very real story can greatly immerse the viewers,
  permitting them to identify with the characters and feel strong
  emotional responses.  Or to identify with the action, feeling the
  excitement of the chase or the battle.  Consider, however, a parody
  or comedy.  In each, there is self-consistency and entertainment,
  but the immersion is greatly reduced.

> It's more desirable -- IMHO -- to build a compelling game which is
> internally consistent and fun and let the players hang their
> characters =ff that than it is to ensure that those characters only
> know what they =hould.

> That said, I *do* think there's loads of room to build character
> knowledge into games, and it's a great way of making them more
> accessible. The important part of the design is that it be a fun
> game =echanic that people enjoy.

If I were to attempt another analogy, I see current games as providing
a foot of entertainment, and five feet of rope.  For those players who
are interested in investing of themselves, they can come up with all
sorts of interesting things to do with that base of entertainment and
the available rope.

The game I want has five feet of entertainment and one foot of rope.
I want players enjoying the activity going on in the world, and they
have some room to play, but I don't want their plans getting too
grandiose.  When they are getting grandiose plans, they are investing
of themselves too much.  They get hardcore about their goals and get
unhappy when those goals are ruined.

Another way of looking at this is to say that, in current games,
players are building a house of cards in a windy area.  The house of
cards is their plans for entertainment, and the windy area is the
multiplayer environment.  Other players are liable to ruin a player's
entertainment completely by accident.  Often, it's just a side-effect
of the game design that nobody saw coming.  In this analogy, the
height of the house of cards is the rope that the game gives the
player.  I want players building houses of cards, but I only want them
going one or two layers.  Existing games offer the possibility of
creating a house of cards that is many more layers high.

JB

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