[MUD-Dev] Gossip, fiction and tactical lore

[John Buehler]

Matt Mihaly writes:
> On Wed, 31 Jul 2002, John Buehler wrote:

>> I look forward to the first game that explicitly acknowledges the
>> existence of the player in addition to the character within the
>> overall context of the game. This means things like having the
>> ability to contact a player by name instead of contacting them by
>> character name.  Or player-to-player voice communication.
>> There's a reason that we didn't bother much with characters
>> talking to each other in our D&D days.  The player conversations
>> were far more fun.

> But characters don't have conversations in the sense I think
> you're using it. Players already do, using the characters as
> mouthpieces and semi-anonymous masks. I don't think most people
> would play a game that required them to make their real name
> available to other people, and without that requirement, you have
> to have some way to identify people. A character name seems as
> good as any to me.

I think it's short-sighted of games to cap the means of relating
through games at the character level.  While you're absolutely right
in saying that players will be hesitant to hand out their real
names, I'm also fairly sure that players *are* transitioning into a
comfort zone with certain players where they're willing to take that
step into reality.  The fact that games do not 'saction' or
'encourage' players to communicate with each other as players only
enforces the pattern of sticking to character-level communication.

I see game communication split along the following lines:

  1. The voice of a character travels according to the reasonable
  limits of the virtual world.  If my character speaks, those
  characters nearby hear what my character says and the players
  running those characters are informed (they hear it).

  2. The voice of a player travels according to whatever rules the
  game has established for player socialization.  I assume that any
  player could talk to any other player at any time.  The rules
  would be essentially what ICQ uses, but with actual voices.

This is intended to foster player community, while retaining
character-level interactions for those who prefer such things.  If
it is deemed necessary to permit long-range communication between
characters, that can be put in as well.  But it is a goal of the
setup to make player-to-player communications the most direct means
of communicating.  And using real world voices so as to establish
that this communication is NOT part of the game.

One deficit of character names is that a player may run multiple
characters.  If I want to talk to Tom, I have to track four
character names in order to talk to him.  Heck, a player can run
characters on other people's accounts.  Talking to the player cuts
through all the obfuscation.  If a player wants to hide behind the
mask of a character, then they don't have to hand out their 'ICQ'
identity.

Lastly, these player identities could be game-independent.  Perhaps
they should be an actualy ICQ or MSN Messenger identity.  MSN
Messenger already does voice over the internet (but not party
lines).

JB


_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev