FW: [MUD-Dev] MMORPGs & MUDs

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

Bah, I accidently sent this mid composition... Here is the finished post!

From: Michael Tresca [mailto:talien at toast.net]
> Koster, Raph posted on Saturday, December 22, 2001 7:26 PM

>> I'm getting the impression that the problem is that you feel the
>> target customer should be someone else than who it actually is.
>> It's fairly expansive:
 
>>   - people who don't need a story told to them
 
>>   - and aren't hung up on fictional consistency
 
>>   - who want to do things they cannot do and visit places they've
>>   always wanted to see and have their wishes and dreams fulfilled
 
>>   - along with other like-minded people
 
> Number 1.  Role-players don't need a story told TO them. They want
> to share THEIR story with others.  MMORPGs actively prohibit this
> by having large, anonymous groups.

My anonymity has nothing to do with my tolerance for player
generated pablum (I like that word! Thanks Raph). I find trite
roleplay intolerable. As has been mentioned before, just because a
game is large doesn't mean that you regularly interract with more
than a small group. A large number of people find role play boring
but enjoy these games. The role players need to have their
expectations managed if they are expecting table top games but
better.

> Number 2. Fictional consistency?  Heh.  You'll need to flesh this
> out more.  I just can't imagine George Lucas turning around and
> saying, "The people I want to see my movies are the ones who don't
> care about those freaking midichlorians, it's a plot device
> people!"

Isn't he the same director that had a whole attacking force of
robots have a single point of failure in one space ship? He appears
to be a great fan of plot devices. Even in the consistency aspect he
lacks, Star Wars seems founded on heroic battle, yet he adds Ja-Ja
who surives through comedic luck. Killing droids with a gun caught
on his toe trivialises what was meant to be an epic struggle. What
the hell though, he got to sell Ja-Ja dolls off the back of it
right?

Nevertheless, I imagine the point is more directed at topics such as
perma-life, respawning creatures, level progression et al.

> Number 3.  Yeah, that'd be role-players.  And MUDders.

and people who like novels, cinema, plays...

A sparrow is a bird. All birds aren't sparrows.
 
> Number 4.  AHHA!  And here we have it.  What are the odds of all
> one million people being like-minded?  An impossibility.  Unless
> those small social groups are defined, that like-mindedness is
> damned hard to develop.  Psychological filters develop
> cohesiveness by refining small social groups.  MMORPGs don't have
> enough of them to ensure that "like-minded" people are really
> like-minded.
 
> Because if like-minded ends up being Buttcheex, that's no game I
> want to play.

As you say, its self-selecting. Even in these games you can choose
your peer group, one really doesn't have to spend time around
Buttcheex if you don't want to. Frankly I'd rather be around him
than the RP fanatics mentioned in Jeff's article - these are the
ones who make themselves upset if you don't play according to their
individual vision. Look at the role play servers in DAoC - there are
a lot of people who thought they might like to role play until they
played on one...

Anyway, what the hell is a role-player and why would he want to play
a computer game? Surely RP is about human interaction, and the
computer isn't really a great tool for that. I wonder if these
disgruntled role-players aren't expecting other players to be
literary genious, veritable Tolkeins arrayed to place them as heroes
and villains within a magnificently scripted plot.

Dan
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