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

[Matt Mihaly]

On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Travis Casey wrote:
> Tuesday, March 27, 2001, 11:10:51 PM, Matt Mihaly
> <the_logos at www.achaea.com> wrote:

>> The game world is part of the real world. It cannot be
>> otherwise. The thought of a unicorn is still a part of the real
>> world. Everything conceivable is.

> This has nothing to do with what he's saying, though, which is that
> the real world is not part of the game world.  I'd say that in a
> perfect world, you should be able to design the game world without
> worrying about players using metagame methods.  From a practical
> point of view, though, you can't.  It's just like computer security
> -- in a perfect world, no one would ever try to harm your data or
> use your system for things you don't want it used for.

It has everything to do with it if you're actually designing a game. I
don't really see the relevance of claiming that in an ideal game
there'd be no metagame methods. I am all for metagame methods as I'm
interested in entertaining players, not characters. Characters are
datasets and have no money to give us. Without a metagame, you've just
got a simulation with no player input.

> (I'd argue, though, that "everything conceivable" is not part of the
> real world.  The thought of a unicorn is a part of the real world,
> but a unicorn is not.  Is a unicorn not conceivable?)

I phrased it badly. It boils down to that the thought of a unicorn is
perfectly real in my opinion. I'm not going to get into it here, but I
might even argue that if I think of a unicorn, it's real.

>> Shrug. I could make an equally silly statement: Even in a
>> Power-gaming light MUD, roleplaying has no place. Both are
>> statements I think are silly, because both illustrate a mindset
>> that says "I want to make my players play like I want them to, not
>> like they want to."

> I think the mindset is rather "I want to play with other people who
> like the same kind of game I do."  No force or coercion is involved.

But you said that power gaming has no place in MUDs. Did I
misunderstand?

> Adventure games (by which I mean what others would call
> "powergaming" or "GoP" -oriented games) are a distinct type of game
> from role-playing games.  They have similarities, but there are also
> differences.

Ah hah, I see what you mean.


> It's like the difference between an action movie and an art house
> movie.  Are the makers of art house movies silly because they're
> making movies that a lot of people won't want to watch?

If you've read my posts lately, I suspect you already know the answer
to that. I have infinitely more respect for art house directors than I
do for, say, Michael Bay.


> However, I would distinguish between powergaming and cheating.  Not
> all powergamers are cheaters -- and many who are "cheating" by the
> stricter standards don't understand that what they're doing is
> considered to be cheating.  Powergaming can be a legitimate part of
> an RP environment.

It's also not a binary condition. Few worlds are either "roleplaying"
OR "powergaming". Most are combinations of the two. (It's also not a
two-dimensional scale with just combinations of those two absolutes
determining the sort of world you have.)

>> You do realize, that UO, for instance, was designed by a text
>> MUDer? It's not as if the people doing graphical MUDs have never
>> played a text MUD.

> I think that J. Coleman is making a classic mistake here -- namely,
> thinking that because he/she likes something better, it *is* better.

What???? Are you telling me that _my_ opinion doesn't define objective
quality?? Outrageous. ;)


> Different people have different tastes in what they like.  For
> example, I personally see Matt's descriptions of what his mud is
> like, and I cringe.  They're nothing like what I would like.
> However, there are many people who are very happy with his mud.
> Further, a mud that I would be very happy with would probably make
> Matt cringe.  Our tastes in muds are just very, very different.

> That doesn't make either of us wrong or bad, though -- just
> different.

No doubt Achaea would make many people cringe. But like you say, so
what. It's fun to discuss our preferences here, because we can speak
as both players and designers. As a player, for example, my
preferences are much different from those of the designer side of me,
and Achaea suffers to this day from decisions I made at the beginning
when I was designing as a player, rather than designing as a designer.

As a player, whatever you like best is best.

As a designer, I feel you can head toward one of two poles:

  1. Art-house: Design and implement only what you want. Damn the
  player, because you're creating here and there's no way the unwashed
  are going to sully your vision with their pedestrian preferences.

   This is how all of the best art that I've ever seen, heard,
   experienced, participated in, etc is created. I do not believe
   commercial products are capable of moving all that far towards this
   pole. Some (like myself) try, but mainly we fail in the quest for
   the almighty dollar.


  2. Hollywood: Try to figure out what the lowest common denominator
  wants and pander to that outrageously. This does take some skill, of
  course, and some creative ability in that you need to interpret the
  data you've (hopefully) gained from some sort of reasonably
  analytical market study. Once you've done that, you create a product
  based on it.

What I think is interesting about this scale is that unlike most
scales, there are actually a lot of products (we'll use movies as an
example) that fall at the extremes. For instance, the American
director John Sayles (Men With Guns, Lonestar, Limbo, etc) falls
squarely at the Art-House end. He doesn't give a good goddam about
what the audience wants. If you have some of the same aesthetic in you
that he does, you'll absolutely love his movies (see Men With Guns
particularly!) If you don't, you won't.

On the other hand, it seems that about 20% of the movies coming out of
Hollywood fall squarely on #2. No explanation needed there I'd assume.

Apologies for the ramble. It's just that I've been doing a lot of
thinking and talking lately on how badly the games industry needs the
equivalent of the indie film scene.

--matt


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