[MUD-Dev] MMORPGs & MUDs

[Koster]

Michael Tresca wrote:
> Raph Koster wrote: 

<EdNote: Please, never attribute to "me", "I", or "you".  It doesn't
preserve value across quotes>

> Here's my theory:
 
> Role-players are not a unique, insular group of sorry sacks.  They
> are an advanced level of gamer. That means they're on the same
> continuum of other gamers.

The word "advanced" says again to me that you are applying
particular biases. They're just a KIND of gamer, not an advanced
level of it.

> My theory is that as gamers mature, they seek richer content in
> their games.

I would agree with that. But the richer content may take many other
forms besides increased playacting. I don't see anyone saying that
chess players tend to roleplay more as they improve.

> As gamers mature, they seek a richer experience.  Richer
> experience = richer content.  [snip] ...new players ARE
> content. [snip] Two years down the road.  They're pissed about AOs
> and WWIIOs.  They're seeking something substantial.  Of course,
> there'll always be a plateau for some gamers.  But not all of
> them.
 
> Four years down the road, those gamers who have broadened their
> playing styles are not interested in MMORPGs in their current
> state.  They want role-playing richness, to adventure with their
> heroic allies (who share their gaming style), and their idea of
> fun takes on a higher level of sophistication.
 
> If you haven't guessed it yet, I consider role-playing to be an
> expression of that "richness" in gaming style.

The argument you've just made is that they are *consumers* of
roleplaying. I agree 100% with that assertion. That does not mean
they are *producers* of said content. I define roleplayer as a
*producer* of said content.

> So.  Even if a game does not have folks role-playing on it, I
> consider the ability to effectively role-play as a style to be a
> measure of the richness of a game's content.

The fallacy I see in your argument as a whole is that you seem to be
equating "the ability to effectively roleplay as a style" with "the
percentage of individuals who do so in the playerbase," and it's
just not the same thing.

> Clans play across different MMORPGs.  They then pull up stakes and
> leave when the next game comes along.  They do it in large groups
> too.

Just as they did in smaller scale environments. You're not
describing a new phenomenon by any means, yet you're asserting that
the issue is central to MMORPGs as opposed to being an issue in
muds.
 
> This means that MMORPGs are not actually capturing long-term
> player loyalty.  When clan loyalty, outside of the game, is more
> powerful than the appeal of the game itself, MMORPGs are not
> retaining that long-term gaming style.

Then neither are muds.

> Be wary of giving MMORPGs credit for social groups that would
> arise out of a million people getting together.  The odds of
> social groups arising is pretty high.  The retention of said
> social groups is key -- if they pull up stakes and leave to some
> other game, you never really had those players in the first place.

Of course you had them in the interim by any measure we can use. :P
Saying "well, they were never truly committed" is completely
unmeasurable. We measure commitment by when they depart.

I would challenge the very basic premise in your paragraph. The
MMORPG deserves the credit for getting the million people together
in the first place. Frankly, mud, MMO, whatever, all we're doing is
providing the gathering space and attempting to bring those people
together, those people who fit the target audience. That is the
first and foremost mechanic that applies.

Be wary of giving muds credit for social groups that would arise out
of three dozen people getting together. What sort of statement is
that? That particular group would not form if the nucleus were not
there. Hence I give credit to the mud.

> Buttcheex gets experience points and gold by slaughtering people
> and animals and insects.  Since he's still in high school, he has
> LOTS of time to play.  Buttcheex spends all day and all night
> killing monsters.  It's all he does.  When he talks, he talks
> about his girlfriend.  When he trades, he uses abbreviated speech.
> When he gets mad, he makes personal threats against players, not
> their characters.  After a few months, his Buttblade becomes a +50
> weapon of destruction.  Buttcheex then goes around killing dragons
> and bragging to his friends about it.
 
> Bob, on the other hand, decides to name his character Patronymus.
> He develops Patronymus' background because the game has that
> function.  He decides his character doesn't like to fight women
> and patently refuses to battle a female giantess.  He has a
> signature color, fuchsia (which the game allows him to create),
> and Patronymus is always color-coordinated.  Patronymus likes to
> be unique.
 
> Then Patronymus gets PKed by Buttcheex.
 
> Who won out here?  Who succeeded more?  Buttcheex used the game's
> legitimate style of gaming, but so did Patronymus.  Patronymus may
> never be even seen, but people joke about "the guy who always
> wears fuchsia" and some people log in just to meet him.
 
> Is Patronymus going to be better off in the game than Buttcheex?
> Is Patronymus playing the game the "way it was intended"?  If so,
> why does it seem Buttcheex is the more powerful of the two and, at
> the end of the day, can more easily murder the guy who was "acting
> like part of the game."

Again, your example does not support your primary thesis, which lies
in pitting MMORPGs versus muds. Your assertion is that the above
problem is worse in MMORPGs than in muds, or that muds are
inherently better at preventing that sort of problem. I'd argue that
the issue you describe has been around since 1978. If it's better in
muds these days than it is in MMORPGs it's in large part because
little Timmy doesn't have the patience to play a text game. But
"massive" doesn't have much to do with "interface" per se.
 
> Then you agree with me that MMORPGs must tighten their focus so
> they know who they're targeting.  Because as of right now, MMORPGs
> are not targeting a particularly specific group -- it's rather far
> ranging in scope.

If MMORPGs have to choose, on a pure business sense they will target
Buttcheex since there are an order of magnitude more of him than of
Patronymus, unfortunately.

In practice, it doesn't work that way. It's much more pyramidal. The
roleplayers are part of what the company is selling. (all players
are part of what the company is selling). Patronymus' presence
happens to be a draw for most gamers. Buttcheex' presence is not a
draw for Patronymus, certainly.

But at the scale that commercial games play, the difference between
them is almost invisible compared to the difference between both of
them and, say, Myst players.

> Well at base, I believe players failing to play as intended ruin
> it for everyone.  Because players are content.

Yes, they are content. But if they are all playing in a manner
different than you intended, then they are all supplying the content
they presumably want. All these games do settle down to a sort of
equilibrium, where the players self-select their mode of having fun
and also who's in the game. It often is not the equilibrium YOU
wanted as the game's developer.
 
> Well, the argument that's come through loud and clear here is that
> quite frankly, FUN is not what it's about.  The gamer who is not
> playing the game as intended is paying just as much as the gamer
> who is.  I think The Sims is a fabulous example of targeting the
> audience correctly: most of humanity understands HOW TO PLAY BEING
> HUMAN.  THAT is a very wide target audience.

You need to learn more about The Sims and how people play it. A
substantial percentage of the hardcore Sims users find the fun to
lie in torturing their Sims, for example. (And no, this is not an
ephemeral, jokey, or insignificant anecdotal group. This is based on
very solid audience research).

> Eeew, let us never go back to text.  To be clear, I am not stating
> that MUDs are superior to MMORPGs.  I am stating that MMORPGs are
> not taking advantage of MUDs as mini-experimental stripped down
> versions that get to the core of what's fun in gaming.

That's not the argument you've made over the last many
posts. Certainly muds have great value for that purpose.
 
> That's true.  Or, to use my language, MUDs know their target
> audience very well, and MMORPGs act as if they don't have one
> (when they most decidedly do).

I'd argue that most muds start up with only a vague idea of CONCEPTS
like target audience. :P
 
> You've summed up my points quite nicely.  MUDs went through the
> "level treadmill" and already succeeded/failed because of it.

Muds divided into four typologies: chat spaces, building spaces, PvP
spaces, and level treadmills (games).

Of these two, chat spaces and games are by far the largest. Some of
the chat spaces are roleplay-themed and some are not; some of the
games are and some are not, whatever, but the presence or absence of
roleplay is more a major typology differentiator, to my mind.

These typology differences correlate very strongly with particular
code bases; we readily associate MUSH/MUCK with chat, MOO with
building, and MUD with the two types of games (competitive and
cooperative).

> MMORPGs simply followed suit.  And yet they did not adopt the
> other aspects of MUDs that have kept MUDs alive today.  Why?

The first wave of graphical muds in the 90s was actually centered
around the chat model, not the game model. The Palace, WorldsChat,
and similar products were chat spaces, not games. I don't know
current stats for The Palace, but Cybertown has 60,000 users right
now, I hear.

You mention group departures; social spaces are particularly
vulnerable to this because, after all, roleplayers can do their
thing with just IRC.  Chatters can do it with darn neara any
communications medium. The chat spaces failed to offer significant
value added and were not, by and large, able to monetize the
presence of the users.

The building model was also attempted, most notably with AlphaWorld.
Providing the building model in a graphical setting is difficult,
and AlphaWorld relied too much on users creating their own playspace
without providing an overriding purpose. It didn't go much of
anywhere as a result, as it was a directed enough experience.

The competitive game flourished in smaller scale. Competitive games
tend to reset in muds anyway, and have ever since the days of the
"scavenge everything and drop it in the well" muds. Quake et al
played perfectly into that. However, they also did not monetize
retention.

The cooperative game turned out to be what unlocked the wallet of
consumers.  It's strongly retentive, offers significant value added
for remaining in one game for the long term, and provides barriers
to exit in that there are in-game assets that you cannot migrate
elsewhere and are loath to leave behind.

The building model was successfully co-opted to a limited extent by
Ultima Online, and given the success of that limited co-option,
almost every game since has followed suit to one extent or
another--in fact, I'd say that the integration of a crafting
paradigm into the basic advancement game mechanic is much MORE
widespread in MMOs than it is in muds. Similarly, the competitive
game has also been integrated in limited fashion in just about all
of them; just as in the mud world, it's proven to be a small subset
of the game playing audience within the context of an
advancement-driven game, probably because good competitive game
mechanics depend on parity between contestans and an emphasis on
player skills as opposed to statistical advancement on the part of
characters.
 
>> Well, it's not, and I know many, many, many MMORPG designers and
>> developers who were mudders first and know perfectly well that
>> it's not.
 
> Ahem.  MUDders != MUD developer.  Playing a MUD and developing one
> is a world of difference.

I know many MMORPG designers who were mud developers first. UO had
developers from LegendMUD, NarniaMUSH, TooMush, StarWarsMUD (the
LP).  Meridian 59 had developers from Worlds of Carnage and other
muds. The litany goes on and on. It's been argued convincingly that
the problem with many of the first generation MMORPGs was that they
were too mud-centric in some critical ways; the mud folks brought
much-needed expertise on multiplayer game dynamics, etc, but there
weren't enough people with experience in commercial services and
previous generations of commercial online games.
 
>> But I can also tell you that it damn well IS a different ball
>> game once it comes to issues such as policing the environment,
>> dealing with issues with the playerbase, the level of technical
>> complexity required, the level of engineering required, etc.
 
> I agree with the level of engineering and technical complexity.  I
> do not believe the level of people involved differs substantially
> than any other people process.  I see MUDs as just a very tightly
> focused target audience, not in a vacuum of other games, but as
> part of a continuum.

Of course it's part of a continuum. I am saying that the larger
scale makes a *tremendous* difference, a difference large enough
that I don't know that I can convey it to you.
 
>> It would be very interesting to see the stats on loyalty for text
>> muds.
 
> I can only speak for RetroMUD.  Here's the results of the informal
> poll:
 
>   Of 42 players polled, 36% had played for less than one year.
>   7% played for one year
>   14% played for two years
>   10% played for three years
>   7% played for four years
>   7% played for five years
>   10% played for six years
>   7% played for seven years
>   2% played for eight years

These stats are not comparable to the stats of the commercial games
because they leave out the majority of players, the ones who didn't
stay. This is hard figure to arrive at for a text mud, of course, as
I commented.

>> Back when I was working on text muds more actively, the average
>> character seemed to drop out in three months. This still the
>> case?
 
> See my informal poll, above. I'm curious about the results on
> other MUDs (especially the ones bigger than us).

I'll see if we can't get some stats for LegendMUD...

-Raph
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