[MUD-Dev] Are gratification-based (online) societies doomed to being immatu re?

[Matt Mihaly]

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Derek Licciardi wrote:

> As I was reading this thread, I became pretty depressed about the
> human condition as perceived by the players posting.  Although, I
> agree with the posts in the thread, I couldn't help but think,
> that this couldn't be the end-all-be-all of MMOGs and
> psychological behavior in MMO games.

As far as I'm aware, the number of actual, legitimate studies of
their psychological behavior is extremely limited. Few truly
satisfactory conclusions have yet been arrived at. It's nearly all
speculation by amateur psychologists.

> In my mind there has to be a way to empower the players to create
> stronger societies such that the threshold for accepting loss is
> raised high enough to support higher forms of cultural and
> societal interaction.  We can't have every city war/trade
> war/political war resulting in 50% of participants canceling
> subscriptions because they lost.

This doesn't happen though. We'd be out of business if it
did. Granted, we're not subscription-based, but still, there's not
much of the "I lost, I quit." phenomenon that I've noticed.

> If the threads assessment of players holds true over time, then it
> is nearly impossible to build communities in game that thrive from
> politics, tradewars, and other emotionally deeper PvP types.

Those assessments are flat-out wrong. These are not new idea and
Achaea is not revolutionary in focusing on these aspects of the
player experience.  These sort of communities have existed in MUDs
for over a decade. I'm not sure what the fuss is about.

--matt
"[AIDs is] the greatest single assault on humankind that we've ever known,
greater than war and greater than the Black Death." - Stephen Lewis, UN
special envoy to Africa.

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