[MUD-Dev] Re: MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article

[Marc DM]

From: "Matt Mihaly" <the_logos at achaea.com>
> On Sat, 21 Sep 2002, Marc DM wrote:

>> How would it be to step into the skin of a 'nigger' in a rascist
>> society?  This is what online worlds make us possible to do.

> This might be picky of me, but I don't think online worlds will
> -ever- let us do that in a meaningful way. Essentially just
> painting your skin black doesn't even come close to simulating the
> experience of a black person in America, particularly when
> everyone playing with you knows that the only you they actually
> care about (the player rather than the character) may or may not
> be black, or whatever other minority you want to pick.

For the experience of being a black person in a racist society you
need a deep simulation of society in all his aspects. What makes the
experience feel like it's real is of course not the black skin you
suddenly have in that virtual world but how the relationships
between certain people and groups are in that online world, how
people behave towards people with black skins in that world.

This is just like in the real world, imagine you could change your
look so that you would look like a black person. Now if you stay
home you won't feel many difference between being white or being
black but if you leave the house (and are in an area where racism is
active) then you will start to feel, through the contacts whith
other people, what difference exist between being black or white and
how it feels like. You will grow up with and see how your best
friends and family are being discriminated by public sevices.  How
your colored brothers are being friendly towards you, an experience
you didn't have as a white person in that neighbourhood. You will
feel how it is to be treated like rubbish by public authority. You
will experience how you are being dragged into a gang of colored
brothers who are canalizing their frustrations by taking revenge
through criminal activities.  In short you will see the difference
of being born through a black family in that setting as well as
being bron in a white setting. (For the experience to be as
intensive as possible you will have to really play your personage a
lot and really wanting to make something of that personage.)


I would like to note here also that in Everquest you can be a girl
too, you won't feel how it is af being a women the moment you change
your skin ofcourse but you do will feel the difference after a while
through the interactions you have with other people. You will notice
that boys treaten you differently, more friendly and will start to
get a grisp of how it is of being a women. Of course here again the
simulation can never go as deep as in real life as you do not have
the biological form of a women with all his consequences and also
here, it's a parralel world, you are not constantly experioencing
it, you can step out. But you can highlight certain aspects just
like you can do this with a movie. And the difference is that you
can actively experience it instead of just watching it happen.

The Norrathian Scrolls: A Study of Everquest had an interesting part
describing this experience of gender bending:

    "Female players who have tried playing male characters commented
    that male characters were treated more seriously, and given more
    respect:

    Yes. I felt that I was taken a little more seriously. When I
    play my male characters, other male members of the party will
    listen to me better, take me more seriously. In my male form I
    could give orders and have them listened to, where as a female,
    my characters aren't always taken quite as seriously. Also,
    where my female characters were gifted many things when they
    were young and naked by random players, I didn't see it
    happening with my males, which I didn't mind at all. I've
    enjoyed the higher level of "respect" for my abilities that
    seems to come with playing in a male body. [f, 22]

    I was in a group I had worked with for a while. I was playing my
    male paladin and trying to be the group tank. I was pulling the
    mobs too ( in a rather dangerous zone). After a while, a
    conversation about our home lives started and I made a comment
    about my husband. Immediately the guys in the group asked me if
    I was really female in RL. When I confirmed it they started
    sending out another male character to pull the mobs. I found the
    whole group suddenly expecting me to do less melee.  I'm not
    sure if they became protective of me or if they just assumed
    that a female would be less capable in the role of a tank. [f,
    29]"

I do can imagine me an online virtual world that offers a simulation
of a society (actually this is not a simulation but a real society,
it's just virtual but it's real, the relationships are real, hence
'A story about a tree') that quite well reflects real world
situations. Be it certain relationships, be it certain physical
simulations, be it certain professions, whatever you find to be
experienced in the real world.

However I do get the point you were making Matt, you are saying that
the experience online worlds can offer you will never be that deep
as the equivalent in real life society. I think you are right on
this point.  However I do feel that just like a good director or
painter, some situations of real life can be expressed better
through our new medium then that they are currently being
expressed. There are even a lot of possibilities of experiences to
be lived in online worlds that are not present yet. Probably the
same situation when film was suddenly discovered and there hadn't
been mad yet movies about certain subjects.

I do certainly get cold shivers, just like you do probably, when
seeing that online multiplayer worlds but also computer games in
general are being designed from a 'storyline' approach. I'm not
attracted at it, not for single and not for multiplayer.


I feel online worlds should not be build from the 'quest approach'
(and I'm quite surprised that most MMORPG's are still build that
way, hence Star Wars Galaxies) but should be build from the bottom
up, where homes can be build, where children (new players) are born,
where people organize themselves into governemental organizations,
etc... . ( Player created content indeed, described by you and
others in the other post. ) When you as designer incorporate the
existence of races and incorporate the right conditions for rascism
to emerge you will have the possiblity to be born in a black family
and have a close experience of how it is.

So in short, I think such an experiences are possible in online
worlds. And as such, such an ideals of experiencing this kind of
other roles (being a politician, a hooker, a gangster or a black
person in a racist society) as deep as possible is my guidance when
designing my worlds, when choosing how they should work, what rules
they should follow and what looks they should have.

--MarcDM
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