[MUD-Dev] Histories and Legends

[Matthew Dobervich]

apollyon [apo11yon at hotmail.com] wrote:

> What if, during your time in EQ years ago, you had gotten together
> with friends and created a player-run city?  You left the game but
> someone else took over the reins.  When you logged back in three
> years later and looked around, what if that city, under completely
> different leadership, still stood today?  Not only stood, but
> thrived.  Wouldn't that give you a sense that there is life beyond
> your character?  That your character's contribution to the history
> of the world will continue beyond the life of your account?  Such
> a scenario is becoming possible with this next crop of new MMOs
> coming out and I'm expecting to see much more of this focus in
> future MMOs if such player-created persistent content creates
> feelings of ownership and history that increase player retention
> and generate additional revenue.

It's widely stated that player-created content is the future of
persistent worlds.  Player created content already exists in great
quantity in the form of fan fiction, fan art, etc. and is already
providing players with the sense that there is life beyond the
retirement of a given character.  It strikes me that this content is
often overlooked as a source of player created content in persistent
worlds.

My personal experiences with this are best illustrated by a
cartography project I undertook during the period I was playing
DAoC.  Under the name Kesta McIlwraith I created a set of maps to
the lands in DAoC that still seam to be the defacto maps in use by
players of the game even after I retired Kesta.
(http://daoc.catacombs.com/map.cfm - click on any of the maps with a
rating of 6).  I find it extremely satisfying that I still receive
emails from new players as DAoC continues to "debut" in other
emails from new players as DAoC continues to "debut" in other
emails from new players as DAoC continues to "debut" in other
emails from new players as DAoC continues to "debut" in other
markets around the world.

What's my point?

To use the current language (and fashion) of scale free network
theory, I don't see that companies producing persistent worlds
recognize that pieces of external >content< represent nodes in the
network that is the player community.  I would argue that they're
some of the most important.

Player created content >IS< the future of persistent worlds, but
most of the discussion tends to get hung up around legal issues and
customer service overhead associated with its inclusion.

Why not create in game tools and systems that leverage the external
game related content already in existence?  A simple engine that
captures URLs a player receives in chat to "weblog.txt" would be a
good first step.  The next step being web connections being built
into the world such as a the texture on a 3d object being an image
behind a URL or a general midi file behind a URL.  You get the idea.

To me this offloads the copy write issues on to another party,
reduces the amount of customer service overhead associated with
player created content (how much is the question), doesn't increase
the hosting company's bandwidth bills, and most importantly helps to
create new links between the nodes in the network that is the player
community.

This may be a naïve view (and probably is), if so, please educate me
on the issues involved, or recommend some reading.
___

Matthew Dobervich
Student of the issues associated with persistent world creation.



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