[MUD-Dev] Mass customization in MM***s

[John Buehler]

Ron Gabbard writes:
> From: "Damion Schubert" <damion at ninjaneering.com>

>> Online games have a different promise, and what that is can vary
>> from game to game.  In Ultima Online, it was 'be part of a
>> living, breathing fantasy world'.  In Ultima Online 2, we were
>> aiming for something closer to 'Be a part of an epic'.  We
>> actually identified the problem of getting people who were used
>> to the single-player tradition of 'be a hero' into a massively
>> multiplayer game to be one of our top challenges in tapping the
>> mass market.

> I've been trying to think of real-life examples where societies
> were engaged in a conflict and everyone got the opportunity to be
> a 'hero' in that they were significant in their contribution to
> 'the cause'.  The best example I could come up with is WWII.
> Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton were all 'heroes'.  FDR was a
> 'hero'.  The soldiers and pilots were 'heroes'.  But, less
> obviously, the women that went into the factories to make tanks
> and weapons were heroes.  The neighborhood patrolmen that
> conducted air raids were heroes.  The people that grew Victory
> Gardens were heroes.  I am expecting that things were much the
> same in the UK in that almost every member of society contributed
> and believed that their activities made a difference... even if it
> was just buying War Bonds and abiding by the rationing programs.
> It was the Allied war 'machine' versus the Axis war 'machine' more
> than warriors versus warriors.  Thus, factories and power plants
> became key strategic targets and the people that worked in those
> facilities, 'heroes'.  The trick is that this type of player
> emotional involvement at all levels requires 'patriotism' which
> can't be artificially coded into the game.

> The reality is that players are going to be investing different
> amounts of time, energy, and skill into the game.  The
> 'Churchill', 'FDR', 'Patton', and 'Rommel' roles will be played by
> players that spend significant time in the game.  Creating games
> where the core gamers get to be heroes isn't as large of a
> challenge as creating a game where the casual gamer can still be
> significant.  Can the infantryperson, platoon-leader, or
> factory-worker role be made such that it is significant, fun, and
> fulfilling in the grand scheme of things?

Yes, but only if players care about the grand scheme of things.

In Dark Age of Camelot, if I'm involved with a keep assault or
defense, I do my part of simply contributing as a secondary
participant and I did it happily.  I was contributing the overall
effort and I was part of something that was pretty big.  It's like
going to the Vatican for the Pope's birthday.  I was there.  I saw
him.  Or a rock concert or anything else that you think is 'pretty
big'.  Dark Age of Camelot's downfall with regard to keeps is that
it didn't really doesn't matter to me if the derned things fell.  So
I ignored the whole thing, visiting the PvP grounds only when my
friends went there.  It really wasn't any different than killing AI
monsters.  Initially I cared about the grand scheme believing that
there was something to it.  When I found out there wasn't, it was
ignored.

It is my opinion that a game that would hold my interest is one that
has a grand scheme that is controlled by the publisher and affects
the majority of the game world.  Let me be an X-Wing pilot in the
actual storyline of "Star Wars".  Or just a technician getting one
of the X-Wing fighters ready for use from its tired condition.  I do
it knowing that the Death Star is coming our way and that we have a
collective fight on our hands.  If we win, then I was there.  I did
something to help.  If we lose, perhaps my character survives to
tell the story of what went wrong and how we need to put down the
Empire.  (The Death Star use is a problem in that it
catastrophically wipes out whole planets, precluding non-miraculous
'survival', but you get my point)

The grand scheme here must be one that grabs the imagination of the
players and they log in each week to find out how they can help, how
they are affected, what happened, etc.  It's a big soap opera with
thousands of moving parts and it stays interesting and entertaining
because the publisher makes sure that it stays on track.  There are
no abrupt changes where some sneaky player character slinks into the
Emperor's chambers and whacks him, ending the entire story.

In my own game design, I have the player characters being unwilling
to break the game fiction.  I can tell my character to pinch
Princess Leia's rear end, but it won't do it because it would be
disrespectful to someone that my character respects.  But I can tell
my character to do things within its own sphere of influence just
fine and it will do them.  The player characters remain in a given
stratum of the game society and they can compete or cooperate as
they like, but the overall game fiction continues its relentless
activity.  Social strata above them affect them without real regard
to what they want or don't want.  It's a bit like the weather in
that regard.  Social strata below them are affected by them as they
see fit.  So henchmen, staff and hirelings do their bidding, just as
the player characters must abide by the mandates of their social
superiors (operated by the publisher).

>> I figure you can do one of three things:

>>   1) Incorporate lessons from those single-player experiences
>>   into your MUD/MMP as best you can.

>>   2) Conclude that MMPs are evil.  This choice does seem to be in
>>   vogue nowadays.

>>   3) Recognize the strengths of MMPs (communities, group
>>   dynamics, etc), and work with them as best you can.

>>  For those reasons, I've been focusing more on #3 -> identifying
>>  and creating features that would suck if you were> playing
>>  alone.

> I will agree with you here that MMPs could do a better job of
> leveraging the players and the amount of energy and creativity
> they can contribute in terms of the areas you mentioned.  I guess
> it gets back to the original question of whether the resulting
> game is one where the player logs off after each session feeling
> that they were significant or if the experience just didn't suck.
> In other words, if the Fates were to go to the beginning of a
> character's life and cut the thread such that they never existed,
> would it make any difference whatsoever in the web of the world?

That's the trap of the hero archetype.  I think that Americans are
of the opinion that only the hero is worth anything.  Yet it's the
littlest things that make a difference in the success or failure of
what goes on in America.  Or any social setting.  "It's a Wonderful
Life" says it far more eloquently than I ever could.

If I'm a technician that gets X-Wings up and running, maybe I
serviced Luke Skywalker's fighter one time over a year ago.  That
service made sure that the fighter survived another cycle of use and
eventually got used by Luke to pop the Death Star.  Just being at
the celebration at the end of episode 4 might be enough to let a
player feel like they were a part of the story.

But none of that works if the grand scheme doesn't grab their
attention.  If the grand scheme is wranglings between petty
dictators and its all chaotic, then players won't be inspired to
follow it.  It's just white noise.  Make the grand scheme a true
epic and you've got something.

JB

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