[MUD-Dev] MMORPGs & MUDs

[J C Lawrence]

On Wed, 9 Jan 2002 22:53:18 -0500 
Michael Tresca <talien at toast.net> wrote:

> I suppose you think communication can't happen unless it's
> face-to-face too, huh. Communication IS part of role-playing, and
> role-playing is part of communication. Human interaction can
> happen on a variety of levels, it's just the "media-richness" of
> the channel that's used that varies.  

A significant point is that simple knowledge of human presence is a
effectively communication.  (Insert cliches of hands reaching across
the interpersonal void here).

> They've played lots of games and they want deeper, richer content.

Not disagreeing with you, but triggering off, "richer content".

It is easy to confuse "richer content" with "better content".
Typically this is done by saying that various multi-media forms,
spiffy graphics trappings, etc are inherently and necessarily
"better" than more constrained and limited forms.  The problem is,
they're not necessary or inherently better.  They confuse technical
quality with effective communication.  They're not the same thing.

Its a perception game.  

Content is valuable to the extent and degree that it is perceived to
be valuable.  (doh!)  The media and internal complexity etc of that
media are valuable to content to the degree that they allow effects
to be created on the recipients that perceived to be valuable.

  More simply:  Its all about communication.

You want to talk to your players.  You want to communicate something
to your players.  Sometimes its a specific idea or effect, and
sometimes its the capability for them to originate and communicate
their own ideas and effects to each other.  You want them to have
various emotional effects from your games (that's a communication)
and you want them to create and enjoy creating/communicating various
emotional effects on each in your game.  Its all about
communication.

Media is a carrier of communication.  (doh!)  Media is valuable to
the extent that it allows and assists in creating the desired effect
on the recipient of a communication.  If it doesn't help creating
the desired effects etc, then it doesn't help you communicate and it
has no place or value in your game.

Now, do such players want deeper, richer, more facile and detailed
emotional effects from their games?  Heck yes.  Do they also want to
communicate deeper, richer, more facile and detailed emotional
effects to other players in their games?  You betcha.

That's a little different from the standard interpretation tho.

				-*-

Text MUDs, as an interface definition and a media type are
incredibly austere (its tough to get simpler than 80x24 monochrome
text and a command prompt) and yet are capable of and have a history
of communicating extremely rich and finely detailed emotionally
laden effects to players.  Some of the more emotionally significant
events in my life occurred via a banging shaking rattling teletype
whacking an IBM Selectric-style golf ball against paper for its
"display".  Its tough to get more primitive than that and still
retain human-readability.

  ObNote: MUDding via punched paper tape is just not as fun as
  MUDding via teletype.

Which is not to say that spiffy rich media is bad, just that it
needs to be understood as different from content, and that content
in this context really has nothing to do with media, but with the
effect rendered on the human it is communicated to.

				-*-

"Boo!"

Did you jump?

I sure did the first time a ghost did that to me in LaserWorld (old
British MUD).  Quite possibly/likely I would have jumped less if it
had been rendered in stereophonic bass-rumbling orchestral quality,
if only for the fact that I would have already been inured to things
making unexpected noises in games (and/or turned the sound off/down
to cut the annoyance).

A very different, much less tangible, and much less desirable effect
from a far richer media.

> The Internet was low on media-richness, but that's changing daily.

Which is not necessarily a Good Thing.  Certainly we're currently
demonstrating that we don't understand the difference between
content communication and media very well at all.

--
J C Lawrence                
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. 
claw at kanga.nu               He lived as a devil, eh?		  
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
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