[MUD-Dev] New Bartle article

[Matt Mihaly]

On Mon, 12 Mar 2001, Marc Bowden wrote:


> Matt Mihaley:

>> Heh. Why do you think this is? It's because of a general
>> unwillingness to think outside the box.
 
> Think too far outside of that box, and trust me, people will
> immediately run to someplace safe and familiar.

Yes, if you go as far out of the box as was possible, there would be
nothing a human being could relate to and thus no possibility of
entertainment. There's not an artist or entertainer in history who
thought that far out of the box, or if one did, no one cared.
 
> I didn't notice this myself until EQ started up and our population
> tanked to something like 15% of normal. People that would roll
> through character creation, then leave in 5 minutes once they
> realized that either there were no familiar guilds, or their preset
> triggers were useless. They weren't a big enough segment to notice
> during normal operations, but they show up against the background
> pretty well at the current threshold. I was floored.

Right. We didn't experience that. We are very unconventional, not just
in terms of classes and such, but in the very focus of the MUD (ie PvP
rather than player vs. computer). We're still growing though, and
didn't notice any effect at all from Everquest. I don't know why our
experiences differed in this respect, as I don't know anything about
your MUD.
 
> You go to what you were raised on, I guess. Or it may be the same
> malady my wife suffers from - she refuses to play any games where
> she doesn't have a Brady guide handy, to provide something familiar
> and safe to go to as a reference point.

Not everyone is this way though, and not everyone needs to appeal to
the widest possible audience. Just as the majority of people may
choose to read the latest legal thriller by one of those guys who seem
to specialize in legal thrillers, others might prefer more varied
material.

The game world suffers from a serious case of me-too. The vast
majority of games that get any attention are aimed directly at the
mainstream. I suspect this will change. In the same way that a culture
of connoisseurship has developed around film, I hope to hell that one
develops around games. We're certainly never going to be taken
seriously as a potential art form if we _all_ pander to the masses
rather than showing them what we, the creatores, want to show
them. That's one of the big differences, in my opinion, between
Hollywood dreck and a good movie. The studios are like
politicians. They find out what the public wants to see, and gives
them that. They are not bad at that. Quality directors like John
Sayles (Men with Guns, Lonestar, Limbo, etc) or PT Andersen
(Magnolia), however, like all good artists, let us experience
someone's vision, rather than simply feeding us something watered down
enough to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Games need to be
treated as art as well as product, because they certainly have the
potential to be both.

There's a great review for one of my top 5 favourite movies ever, "My
Dinner with Andre" by director Louis Malle. The review was written by
Roger Ebert in 1999, when a restored print of the 1981 movie was going
around.

The review starts, "Someone asked me the other day if I could name a
movie that was entirely devoid of cliches. I thought for a moment, and
then answered, "My dinner with Andre.""

Aside from an opening shot of Wallace Shawn on a new york subway, and
Wallace Shawn going home after dinner (with actor Andre Gregory), the
entire movie is simply them having dinner and talking. Yet, due to the
incredible writing and directing, if I could only watch one movie
ever, it'd probably be that one (although it's not #1 on my list, it's
the most watchable to me). Not only is it absolutely entrancing, but
the discussion between the two (which largely involve Andre telling of
his experiences studying the theater in Poland and other locales)
raises existential issues that anyone with a mind wrestles with at
some point.

That's what I want to see in games. That same spirit of creativity and
a willingness among at least some designers to consciously try to
provide an experience that is fundamentally different (and dare I say
more intellectually stimulating) than the blockbusters.

I'm certainly not trying to insult anyone doing mainstream games, like
Raph, as I recognize that maybe at this point in the medium's
development, maybe just doing a game period is an achievement, but I
hope that there will be room in gamings future for the equivalent of
an indie director.

--matt

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