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

[John Buehler]

Marian Griffith writes:
> In <URL:/archives/meow?group+local.muddev> on Thu 11 Jul, John Buehler wrote:

>> 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)

> Actually, I tend to think that the death star is an excellent way
> to make the fight very, very meaningful to the players
> involved. But to work it needs a different approach to games than
> you normally see.  Players would purchase an account with a number
> of 'lifes' to it. If they lose all lifes the account is cancelled,
> and they have to buy a new account to resume playing. In
> compensation the game world is not really out to kill the
> character.  Players can happily spend their time on a little
> backwater planet and never be bothered by anything, much the same
> way nothing much is going to bother you or me in real life.
> However, if they become involved in the game's main politics, then
> they are likely to get into a fight, and those deaths are per-
> manent. That way the big assault on the rebel stronghold is going
> to mean a great deal to the players defending it, seeing that if
> they lose they are one step closer to being forced to reinvest in
> the game.

The only people who are going to want to help out in the assault on
the Death Star are the ones who believe that they are going to get
some remarkable experience commensurate with their risk.  The
inability to ensure that everyone gets something worthwhile out of
the overall encounter is the real difficulty.  If I'm flying my
X-Wing fighter and get blown out of the sky in the first 10 seconds
of the fight, am I going to be happy about having simply been part
of the casualties?  Especially if I've lost one of my lives - which
might be expensive?

Disappointment and disenchantment from game encounters by the player
population is something that I'm particularly sensitive to.  I want
to be able to be sure that I can provide a certain level of
entertainment to the vast majority of my players - and then
underpromise on that experience.  In the chaotic experience of war
with the possibility of catastrophic loss of character or character
life, it's entirely possible that I will not find entertainment out
of what is supposed to be an emotion-packed experience.  I don't
know how to *reliably* provide a positive, emotion-packed experience
in a virtual multiplayer environment and I have yet to see anyone
else do it either.  The sheer volume of messages on boards that say
'such and such game stinks' is, I believe, partly a result of the
game industry's desire to provide that emotionally-charged
environment, but without being able to ensure that the emotions are
*positive*.  Folks are getting charged up, but I suspect that it's a
wash as to whether it's a positive or negative experience.

So I continue to eye a model where the players are on one side and
the gamemasters are on the other, each controlling characters in a
struggle that never gets too emotionally charged because there is
never that much at risk.  Players play the game because it's
entertaining, not because of its ability to elicit strong emotions
from the players.  Those who are entertained only through strong
emotions will simply have to look elsewhere than my non-existent
game :)

JB

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