[MUD-Dev] Re: MUD-Dev digest, Vol 1 #301 - 15 msgs

[Baron]

Dr. Cat speculated:

> You did mention The Sims - Raph told me thursday night he thinks the
> online Sims game will beat both of us to the one million user mark,
> and I think he's probably right.

I have to disagree with you both on that one, I'm afraid.  No, not
simply because I found the Sims, as a stand-alone game, to be much
like real life, only infinitely more depressing.  And, no, I'm not
discounting its prospects by imagining it as it is, only with hundreds
of thousands of others present.  Clever things can be done to make
frequent contact among players mutually beneficial.

My concerns are two....well....three:

  1. EA is betting the farm on it, which means they'll be watching it
  closely.  I am not convinced that their executives can yet assess
  value in the MMOG medium.  UO succeeded because it was left alone,
  far from their radar.  Sony was so convinced that EQ would fail that
  they cut 969 loose prior to its launch, only to come crawling back
  later.  Simply put, there is little understanding of this medium by
  top execs in the games industry, nor is there abundant willingness
  to trust medium veterans.

  2. The great assumption in the online game's initial design is that
  people will care about the glory boards: most popular, best house,
  nicest furnishings, etc.  The vast majority of customers for the
  original game were non-gamers, and the bulk of these did not view
  the game in a competitive light.  Rather it was brilliant for its
  ability to deliver a remarkably individual, absorbing meditation to
  a wide variety of people, most of whom ceased playing when the level
  of challenge diminished - not when they attained the upper limits of
  the designed achievement spectrum.  Thus, I'm not confident, based
  on the details released to-date, that they know their audience
  terribly well.

  3. An online gaming world must offer a departure from the physical
  one.  No, it needn't be pre-Christian medieval fantasy, the air war
  in the 1940s, or adventures in imaginary realms of imaginary
  galaxies.  The very extremes of our game worlds to-date may well
  have limited our audiences.  Nonetheless, there must be a departure.

	Jonathan
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