[MUD-Dev] narrative

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Bruce Mitchener wrote:
> Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

>> If the R&D guys themselves don't write, do they have a talented
>> writer deeply inculcated in the tool design process, or not?
>> Same questions: have you read the writers' results, are they
>> good?  Compared to what?

[much of Bruce's reply snipped]

Ok Bruce, you're dancing away from my pointed question, SHOW ME THE
WRITING.  Let me answer it for you, with regards to the papers you
originally cited: you personally haven't read any high quality
writing from these R&D efforts.

If you had, I don't think you'd hesitate to affirm its existence.
So...  can you at least tell us if these R&D guys have any writing
to show at all?

You're going to make me yawn through these papers you cited, aren't
you?  I'll read 'em... if it turns out they have no writing to show,
I won't discuss 'em.

> I look forward to seeing a dialogue.

The reason we're not having a dialogue is because we're not on the
same page about what's worth discussing.  You have presented papers
about theory.  I am demanding theory + practice!  If you are not
personally evaluating the writing quality of these guys, I don't see
why we should be having a discussion about what any of these tools
can do for writers.

>    Given a larger scale game with a limited staff size (1% or less
>    of player base), how would you provide the players and the game
>    with enough content and stories?

Nobody said you had to provide content through writing, let alone
automated or semi-automated writing.  I think attempts at automated
and semi-automated writing are fundamentally misguided to the core.
A writer needs... to write!  There isn't a special need here.  In
fact, mainly a writer needs the technology to get out of his way.

>    But, they simply don't work for even decent sized MUDs, much
>    less something larger,

There's a reason writing has historically been many-to-one.  You can
use writing in a game any time it's many-to-one.  You can't when
it's one-to-one, not if you want to scale the MUD.  My ideas about
writing in MUDs look much more like those of interactive fiction.
Except that, well, in interactive fiction I think command line
parsers should be abolished as spurious.  Give 'em multiple choice!

>    if we want to increase the depth of the world and the player's
>    involvement and interaction with that world.

Try writing well.  Engineers invent a lot of excuses for not writing
well.


Cheers,                         www.3DProgrammer.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.


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