"Advanced" use of virtual worlds? (Re: [MUD-Dev] MMORPGs & MUDs)

[Matt Mihaly]

On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Ola Fosheim [iso-8859-1] Gr=F8stad wrote:
> "Koster, Raph" wrote:
 
>> 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 keep wondering why commercial designers keep saying stuff like
> that.  Follows the line of statements we get to see like "we are
> not going to have a RP server, because there is no common
> definition of RP", "regular players RP too in their own way",
> etc... RPers are quite obviously often more advanced in the way
> they use the game, because they use the game on multiple levels
> and in ways which has not been designed for and provide
> significant enjoyment (or the opposite) for other players as
> well. Now, the commercial designers treat them as "just a kind of
> gamer" because they dont constitute a significant population...

Quite obviously? Clearly it's not obvious or there'd be no
discussion about it. I'm not sure why using the game in ways it
hasn't been designed for is a sign of an advanced gamer. If I take a
chess board and start throwing the pieces across the room (using it
in a way it wasn't intended) that hardly makes me an advanced chess
player. It just makes me a person who enjoys chess in a different
way.

I see nothing more advanced about roleplay than there is about
strategic PvP combat and certainly not compared to the political
game. Certainly the level of practice and skill put into being a
chessmaster in Achaea is far far greater than is required to simply
act out a few things, but I wouldn't necessarily label the couple of
killer chess players in Achaea "more advanced Achaea players". I'd
just label them "more advanced players of one particular part of the
game, e.g. the chess part of the game." I'd do the same with
roleplayers. One person could be a more advanced roleplayer than
another, but beyond that, I don't think you can make a valid
comparison.

>> 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.

> Producers are often "more advanced" in their approach than
> consumers, right?

To say that A is more advanced than B is to say that there is a
continuum using some measurement criteria upon which you advance. I
think it is fallacious to say that a basket weaver (a producer) is
more advanced than I, a consumer of baskets. I do not, in fact, see
any continuum on which you can measure their relative levels of
advancement.

Likewise, for roleplayers to be automatically considered advanced
players, there'd have to be some logical continuum to progress
along. Where is the logical continuum from tactical combat to
roleplaying? It strikes me (and a lot of others apparently) as
simply different, fairly unrelated areas of the game. That's why we
say that they are simply another KIND of gamer. There's no logical
way to measure tactical combat (or politics or chess or whatever)
vs. roleplaying, as it's apples and oranges.
 
--matt

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