[MUD-Dev] MMORPGs & MUDs

[Sellers]

Michael Tresca wrote:
> Dave Rickey wrote:

>> ...  Social communities form as a response to the 
>> challenges the developers code into the system, and the goals that 
>> players find to pursue within the system.  They cannot be formed in 
>> a vacuum with neat slots and heirarchies.
 
> Social communities will form because there's lots of people 
> sitting around in a group.  We'd love to think that they form 
> because WE want them to (due to the challenges).  They might, 
> sometimes.  But a much more powerful force is the social hub 
> interaction, the element that is so often left outside of 
> games.  They don't have to have a goal.  They don't have to 
> have anything.

In practice that's rarely the case.  Early graphical chatrooms (e.g., Worlds
Chat) did not form viable communities.  There was nothing to do, no
challenge, and no social referents (that is, no external functional objects
-- such as a ball -- that two people could refer to jointly in a social
context).  

A challenge acts as a catalyst for community formation.  The "circle the
wagons" effect is real and powerful: if you give a disparate group of people
a common and external crisis or challenge, they will almost inevitably form
the beginnings of a community.  Whether that community survives long beyond
the crisis depends on whether they are able to form secondary bonds not
related to the crisis.  

In game terms, if it's a lot easier to kill monsters in a group, people will
form groups.  If it's easier over the long-term to get needed information
and items by being part of a guild or other standing group, they will do
that.  But those standing groups will only gel into communities if the
individuals have the means and opportunity to interact socially (chat,
bboard, etc.) AND find that they have enough in common to build
relationships beyond the immediate game needs.  When you start seeing
recipes being exchanged on guild message boards, a community is forming.  

And while the "neat slots and hierarchies" Dave mentions aren't necessary
for early community formation, at some point in a community's growth they
become absolutely necessary.  If you don't put them in your game players
will find a way to fake them consensually.  But if you *do* put in support
for community structures, you probably make the community itself somewhat
less mobile to another game.  

> To parallel this with real life, I'm pretty sure buddies on a 
> Saturday night sitting around drinking beer are not banding 
> together due to any particular challenge.  They do it because 
> they entertain each other -- they are the "content" for each other.

If you actually examine social groups, again, this is rare.  People are
typically drawn together around a single cause, activity, challenge, or
crisis.  They may work together, have a class together, room together, or
share a common active interest.  But what really draws them together is some
short-term common activity on which they all share a common focus, and the
easiest way to do this is to foster some sort of external crisis (whether
that's a term paper, work deadline, or natural disaster).  And only if
additional commonalities beyond the immediate activity/challenge/crisis are
discovered does a community identity emerge.

Mike Sellers
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