[MUD-Dev] RE:

[Dave Rickey]

-----Original Message-----
From: Sellers, Mike <msellers at origin.ea.com>

> Yep, this is the canonical excuse for not telling meaningful
> stories in games.  And IMO it's a piss-poor excuse.  All it means
> is that we don't yet know *HOW* to tell stories in a
> multi-protagonist, self-directed environment.  Well, the ancient
> Greeks didn't know much about the arc of heroic development in
> their fiction (their heroes start heroes and end heroes; if
> there's any transformation it's for the worse, and isn't a
> transition of character), but over time we've learned a lot more
> about story structure, character motivation and development, and
> avoiding "deus ex machina."
 
> Hopefully it won't take us many centuries to take the next step in
> storytelling and extend this to the multi-person environment.
 
Hell, we don't even know if it is *possible*.  In the absence of
anything remotely resembling a success, I prefer to conentrate on
more promising avenues, like social network formation and conflict.
I not only don't see any signs that it is possible to tell a story
in a "multi-protagonist, self-directed environment", I don't see any
real indication that's what players want.  Our stories suck or are
non-existant, yet people play, obviously they aren't playing to be
told a story.  Why *should* we look for a way to do something
there's no sign we should even care about?

I don't see players asking for stories, rather they ask for the
world to be made to seem more "real" and stories are the only form
of that they've ever known.

--Dave Rickey

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