[MUD-Dev] Natural Selection and Communities

[John Buehler]

Dave Rickey writes:
> From: "John Buehler" <johnbue at msn.com>
>> Dave Rickey writes:

>> Anyway, that's my take on it.  I don't know that I'm disagreeing
>> with you so much as trying to make a different point.

> Pretty much.  I want the organization to come from the players for
> two reasons: They will be more attached to it if they built it
> themselves, and any structure that they create will inherently be
> more flexible and adaptable than anything I could pre-define.
> Flexible organizations adapt to their environment, part of the
> environment for a player-driven organization is that it has to be
> interesting and entertaining for the players (since it rises and
> falls depending on their participation).  Call it the
> passive-agressive problem of game design, I can't make the players
> do anything, but I can set it up so they can't do anything else.
> If I do, and they aren't interested in doing it, everything falls
> apart.

> So I have to let go, and work from the edges.  Figure out what
> structure of limits and rewards will make organizations like what
> I am hoping to see flourish.  We didn't *make* players develop the
> Alliances and compartmentalized planning in order to carry off
> Relic raids, they did it themselves in response to the obstacles
> between them and their reward, most of them created by...other
> players.

Yes, I agree with your general attitude.  Certainly the players
won't be forced into doing something that they don't find
entertaining.  The very example of relic raids is the sort of
impetus that I'm referring to when I talk about getting players to
organize.  You don't control the resulting organizational structure,
but structures will come into being to deal with the problem of
relic raids.  So you are directly supporting the organizational
structures - even when you don't necessarily know what they are
going to be.  With enough experience, you *will* know what those
structures will become (thus my comments about 'directly supporting'
social structures).

I'm suggesting that developers of games can pose problems that will
cause more complex organizational structures to come into being.  My
mental model of this is that the game itself provides a skeletal
structure for organizations, and that the players use those tools
(game problems, rewards, communication mechanisms, etc) to flesh out
the organizations the way they want them in specifics.  As Paul
Schwanz is suggesting, having choices in social structures is a good
thing and I'd certainly like players to have a sense of exploration
in even how they organize.

As a more specific example, if moving construction materials to a
relic fort for the purpose of rebuilding the damage done by
attacking forces were accomplished in more complex ways than simply
loading up strong characters with lots of wood, I'm certain that
social constructs would come into being to deal with that problem.

As a counter example, note that Dark Age of Camelot does not permit
membership in multiple guilds.  This prevents the players from
easily managing orthogonal memberships.  Shouldn't I be able to
associate with a specific town, a specific trade and a specific
adventuring clan?  I'd like to do that, but because the social tools
of the game don't permit it, I just ignore the idea.  It's far
simpler to ride the rails of the tools that exist rather than to try
to get a bunch of people to agree to go through the hassle of
manufacturing that orthogonality.  If town membership actually meant
something in the form of entertainment choices, again I think we'd
see new interactions between players.  For example, being a member
of a town means that the social ties of the NPCs of that town extend
out in a support network that the player characters can take
advantage of.  "Oh, you're from TweedleDee.  I think I can help you
with your problem."

Continuing with the NPC model, if NPCs interact with the player in a
certain way, it sets a precedent for players to interact with other
player characters in that way.  Unfortunately, NPCs seem to be
little more than animated vending machines, so others may not see
the potential in them that I do.

> The only things the players really care about in the game are
> those they can influence or control, directly or indirectly.  If
> they don't matter to it, it doesn't matter to them.  If you *make*
> it matter to them, they won't like it.

That's an interesting take on player motivations.  This paragraph
doesn't apply to me, for example, so I wonder what proportion of
players it does apply to.  Certainly I don't like to be forced into
doing things that I don't find entertaining, but you've replaced
'entertainment' with 'things that can be controlled'.  I get into
games in order to experience things.  If it happens to my character
in an entertaining way, I don't care if I controlled it or it just
happened to my character.  Actually, I very much like it when
entertainment shows up all on its own for me - not unlike reading a
book or watching a movie.

Different games for you and me, I think.  :)

JB


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