[MUD-Dev] Natural Selection and Communities

[John Buehler]

Paul Schwanz writes:

> The thing that surprised me, however, was that not one poster or
> dev member hinted at any sort of solution for ED other than a
> global one.  It was universally assumed that whatever form ED
> took, it would in fact be universal.  But here is where I think we
> miss a great opportunity.

> Why not let the player-run cities each decide for themselves what
> form ED will take?

I assume that game developers don't want to give players that much
control.  They fear exploits of feature combinations that will
result in exploitable behavior.  This is the same attitude that has
made class theory rule the day - careful structuring to ensure that
players have fun in the way that the game designers designed the
game.  At best, I assume that they would go with a class-like
treatment of city design problem, and say that the players can have
community types A, B, C and D.  Those types would all be
prestructured for the styles that the game designers themselves
consider to be viable and entertaining.

There may also be a concern that if the classes or city types are
not explored in detail to establish their viability that the game
might devolve to a single class (e.g. tank mage) or a single city
administration type.  That would fly in the face of any marketing
that might suggests that "varied player communities would develop,
providing a range of entertainment choices".

I would think, however, that a small-scale game would be ideal to
explore such a technique.  I'd certainly like games to offer players
some options and tools to let the players interact with each other
in more ways than current games permit (kill, heal, exchange goods,
etc).

JB


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