[MUD-Dev] MMORPGs & MUDs

[Michael Tresca]

Koster, Raph posted on Sunday, January 13, 2002 12:49 AM
> Mike Tresca posted:

>> 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.

I disagree.  But then apparently I'm biased. I'll spare us all the
"You're biased!", "No, you're biased!" accusations. :)

>> 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 role-play more as they improve.

Within the context of their game, they most certainly do get more
advanced.  I do not consider role-playing a separate kind of game,
not at all.  Role-playing applies to a game that expresses human
communication -- the closer the game wishes to approximate that, the
more likely role-playing is a feasible gaming style.  Not a kind of
gamer, a style.

A chess player may start out just trying to "win" in a very direct
manner.  He may begin to examine other tactics, observe famous chess
games, and generally become a more sophisticated and knowledgeable
chess player as a result.  He has, in a sense, become more advanced
within the context of the game.

Chess doesn't have virtual bodies.  It doesn't try to imitate the
human experience in a fantasy universe.  MMORPGs do.  Role-playing
will always be applied to it because it is a natural outgrowth of
person-to-person communication.  MMORPGs are continually refining
their graphics and interaction capabilities.  The more they
approximate communication -- until it is indistinguishable from real
life (see eXistenZ) -- the more role-playing fast becomes a more
feasible style.

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

Here's where we're diverging.  Everyone is a producer of said
content.  The guy who acts like a punk and uses Dude-speak is a
producer of said content.  As is the person having an "in game"
conversation. As long as they are communicating, they are producing
content.

Role-players just happen to focus on that content.  Because
role-players are looking for some level of internal consistency,
that "content" is subject to the population itself.

As MMORPGs slowly begin to approximate the normal communication we
experience in everyday life, it will be more and more subject to an
audience who is quite critical in its assessment of role-playing.
It's one thing to see Buttcheex say "Yo dude, what's happenin?"

It's quite another to see Buttcheex walk up to you, stroke your
cheek, toss back her auburn hair, smile, and then say in a throaty
feminine voice, "Yo dude, what's happenin?"

In a sense, I believe MMORPGs will rapidly become victims of their
own attempts to make games so graphically appealing that it competes
with our real life senses.  Once that happens, role-playing
consistency will become more and more critical because the audience
will be more easily capable of distinguishing between what's "in
game" and what "isn't".

>> 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 role-play as a style" with
> "the percentage of individuals who do so in the playerbase," and
> it's just not the same thing.

Nope. I mean the ability to effectively role-play as a style is a
measurement of gaming richness/depth. I have stated before that
player's perceptions of the game advance.  I've already seen a
higher intolerance of buggy games -- player's want fully functional,
in-depth games.  To JC's point, the perception that a game COULD be
role-played on is perhaps of more importance than the actual ability
to role-play.

Regardless, that perception of role-playability as somehow being an
inherently "better" game is part of what I believe to be a natural
evolution of exposure to MMORPGs in general.  Players will get more
and more accustomed to the flashy graphics, to the appeal of
millions of players, to all those factors that make MMORPGs MMORPGs.
Then they start looking for something else.  Maybe that explains the
popularity of the RP server on DAoC.  I don't know.

But I do know that role-playing isn't some secret.  It's merely part
of the communication we do each day.  The pen-and-paper RPG market
IS a smaller group.  But players who are appreciative of the
role-playing richness, even if they are not taking advantage of it,
are much more numerous.

If this role-playing richness and its appreciation for it continues
to grow, MMORPGs will need to pay more attention to their players,
and may even see too many players as a liability.  The human
experience cannot normally account for meeting hundreds of strangers
in a day.  I believe the more advanced MMORPGs get, the more being
too connected will be a liability.

Thus we come back to my original argument.  MUDs are all about being
insular.  But they should not be ignored because of their limited
playerbase.  Rather, MUDs are cheating -- they use the imagination
to produce all the realism a player needs.  The closer MMORPGs reach
that goal (and they WILL reach it), the more a tightly focused
approach on players will be necessary.  Because the closer of an
approximation a MMORPG gets to representing real life, the more
disruptive non-game elements appear -- even to folks not interested
in role-playing.

>> 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.

Did I say this was a new phenomenon?  Large MUDs suffer from the
same problem.  Poorly run small MUDs have it happen all the time and
it can make or break the MUD.  Get the right social hubs hooked to
as many in-game elements as possible, and they in turn bring a loyal
playerbase with them.  Failure to focus on that group as a target
audience (as opposed to the physical filter of anyone with a credit
card) and those social groups are fluid, coming and going at their
own whims rather than actively being courted to stay on the game.

Missed opportunity.  Lost dollars.

>> 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.

Not all MUDs, certainly.  But the MUDs with a tight target market
certainly do retain those players with long-term gaming styles. I
can only speak from my experience with RetroMUD and other MUDs that
have retained fiercely loyal groups precisely because they manage to
make the MUD feel like the players OWN it.

Very hard to do with a MMORPG because of its scale.  Not impossible
-- it just means hiding the Massive elements.  I do not believe
Massive is inherently good except from a person to credit card
ratio.

>> 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.

That's merely attracting the group.  That's not retaining them.
Social groups arise out of having a common interest in anything.

Again, if you're merely looking to make money, attracting players is
enough.  If you're looking to build a social community that
literally cannot exist outside of your game, that's something that
takes a lot of personal attention and care.  Helping mold a social
community that is harmonious with your game is HARD.  Some MUDs, not
all, have achieved this.

Letting a million people do whatever they feel like is easy.  And
inexpensive.

<snip>

> 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.

My assertion is indeed that the above problem is worse in MMORPGs
because it is magnified by the size of its playerbase without a
similar magnification of staff to deal with it.

Fundamentally, I believe that you cannot code "problem people" out
of the system.  It requires a rational human being who works within
a set of guidelines but attempts to adhere to the spirit, not the
law, of the rules set out for that particular game.  Ban certain
names and you reduce your global appeal to international gamers.
Ban certain activities and players find another way to do it.
Ensure that the culture that starts on your game doesn't tolerate
that sort of behavior.  Some games get lucky.  Others are not so
lucky.  And it's entirely possible that over time there's an
entropic decay that eats away at it.  Which means you can never let
the game just run by itself.

This approach, this personal touch, is what's at the bottom of
everything I've said about MMORPGs.  Massive, but not personal, is
not necessarily a good game -- good money, but not a good game.

>> 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.

I don't disagree.  I fail to see how this makes MMORPGs appealing.
If the target audience is clearly defined, why are two very
different gaming styles indistinguishable from each other?

I don't feel MMORPGs are defining their target audience.  I think
they take the money and don't look back.  I think that will change
though.

>> 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.

If a MMORPG lets a target market define itself, then it will be
inevitably be replaced by a more tightly focused game.  One would
expect to see players hopping in groups to the next game they think
caters to their needs.

n fact, that's what I believe is the cause of the clan-hopping I
mentioned previously.

>> 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).

Yeah, no one ever does that in real life either.  >:)

>> 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.

Sorry, not making myself clear: MMORPGs are not taking advantage of
MUDs as mini-experimental stripped down versions that get to the
core of what's fun in gaming. The MUD approach is fundamentally
scaleable, similarly to how any other approach to working with large
masses of humanity have worked (from controlling armies to running
giant corporations).  You make it FEEL small.

MMORPGs don't feel small.  They go out of their way to feel massive.
You've got world spanning maps, with an entire online population of
a large city, and oh by the way, you're this teensy blip in the big
scheme of things.  People want to belong to something -- they create
clans to fill that void.

MMORPGs are not doing a good job of dealing with their millions.
The millions, instead, are fending for themselves.  And worse, the
millions are mostly anonymous, often an unknown quantity.

The MUD approach is the mom and pop store of the game business.  It
doesn't make as much money.  But it works.

Where's the Wendy's of MMORPGs?  I have yet to see it.  I think the
first MMORPG that pulls that off will do better than MMORPGs before
it.

>> 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

I'll let other MUD administrators speak for themselves.  As for
RetroMUD, we only knew what our target audience wasn't, and worked
from there.

<snip educational info about MUD typologies>

> 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

We had crafting before Ultima and several other MUDs that were
similar to Retro had it before us (BatMUD, DarkeMUD, to name two)

> 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.

No argument from me there.

> 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.

Which is odd, since the target audience seems so loosely defined for
a commercial venture.

>> 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.

Well, thanks for trying anyway. :)

Mike "Talien" Tresca
RetroMUD Administrator
http://www.retromud.org/talien


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