[MUD-Dev] narrative

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

From: Brandon J. Van Every [mailto:vanevery at 3DProgrammer.com]

> Statistically speaking, you're absolutely correct.  The vast
> majority of game designers see themselves as programmers, far more
> than any other hat they might wear.  Very few see themselves
> primarily as fine artists, filmmakers, or writers.  Most apply a
> programmer's sensibility to what's worth doing or not doing, what
> R&D sounds cool and what sounds like a waste of time.  There's a
> tremendous apathy to the craft of writing in the game industry,
> because the vast majority of game developers are non-writers.
 
> What will ever change that circumstance?  I think it will take a
> game that finally shows what interactive story can be, that makes
> a lot of money, that blows all this amateurish player-driven
> emergent "narrative" stuff out of the water.  Something that is
> compelling beyond gamer geeks, that provides what mass market TV
> and film audiences expect out of entertainment.  Only when someone
> makes a big pile of $$$$$$$ on story will the game developers
> start to regard it as important.  Even then, they'll resist it for
> a decade.

Doesn't sound like you are in the correct genre then. MMORPGs need
to cater to a lot of simultaneous players, I think most of us simply
disagree with your assertion that you could have a farm of script
writes producing content at a sufficient rate to entertain 2000
people.

Perhaps you are better off looking at games that are trying to
deliver compelling single player story, take 'the longest journey'
for instance. I don't see how you could try and write 2000 of those
plots and have it work in an MMORPG. Hell the guys who wrote 'the
longest journey' had a shot at it and created Anarchy Online...

Do you have any examples of what you think are positive steps, or
instances of what you are trying to describe. Right now it all
sounds like unsubstantiated bluster and negativity.

Dan

<EdNote: (Not picking on you here Dan, just taking the opportunity)
MUD-Dev covers both games with very large large player bases and
games and small player counts and everything in between.  There's no
size exclusivity on this list.  There are problems unique to both
spaces, unique to the middle grounds, and shared across any subset;
and they're all on-topic for this list.>
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