[MUD-Dev] narrative

[Damion Schubert]

>From Vincent Archer

> Which brings us back to our original interest. What do we want in
> our games? Good writing, or good stories?

Is it just too simplistic to point out that MUDs/MMORPGs are a
unique medium, and that what constitutes good writing AND good
stories differs from other genres?

On UO2, we hired a screenwriter.  While he was outstandingly
talented at what he did, he had to be taught some things, such as:
players only read short sentences.  You don't control the pacing.
You don't control what order players can do things, or if they log
off without finishing a quest.  He found this very frustrating.

Some attribute the fact that he had to 'dumb down' his stories to
the players of MMORPGs being stupid, but that's not it at all.
Nearly all genres have unspoken rules about their story delivery
mechanisms which, when broken, bore or frustrate the consumer.  For
example, movies that are longer than two hours had better be pretty
damned compelling, or people start to look at their watch.  On the
other hand, internet flash movies that are longer than 5-8 minutes
on the Internet get boring.  Whether this difference is due to
people watching these at work, eyestrain, quality or the fact that
viewers are multitasking is unknown, but the rules have evolved
differently for each medium.  And I think that the future of MMORPG
storytelling is more in 'finding the unique properties of MMORPG
stories' and less in the 'trying to apply lessons from Good Writing
and Good Narrative in other genres.'

--d


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