[MUD-Dev] Gratification-based MUDs

[luke at rocketship.com]

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Original message: http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/2002Q3/msg00076.php

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002 14:42:58 -0700 (PDT)
"Koster, Raph" <rkoster at soe.sony.com> wrote:

> A nice post and subsequent thread by folks on the Star Wars
> Galaxies boards.  I'll include some of the postings here, but I
> urge people to read the full thread because
 
>   a) it shows that players aren't clueless :) 
 
>   b) it's a collectively revealing analysis of playstyles
 
> http://boards.station.sony.com/ubb/starwars/Forum3/HTML/062581.html

Very interesting thread. It does seem to confirm something I've long
suspected about online communities: They are so wrapped up in trying
to be "fun" (gratifying) that any true artistic, educational value
is often traded off for little repetitious gratification traps. This
is very immature, and is one principal reason I (virtually) quit
mudding years ago. Some MUDs can be pretty nice artwork using copied
literature - The Two Towers LPMUD comes to mind. But really, you
could get almost as good (better in some ways) from the book, in so
much less time.

MUDs today appear to be designed for people who have way too much
time on their hands to burn. If I sit down to MUD (maybe it's my
personality, but a lot of people seem to be similar) I often don't
get up for 6-12 hours unless I have to.  Furthermore, all the memory
I have to show for it is often running around killing orcs to try to
level and thus be safe enough to try out something else to satisfy
my longing to explore. For hours on end. I'm sorry, but I would like
to come away from my escapism feeling a bit more grown up and able
to handle life's problems instead of becoming more of a wimp who
needs to escape more.

At the other extreme are totally disorganized Social MUDs where you
can explore a billion rooms, but they are all totally meaningless to
the game. You never know where someone might have put an interesting
mini-world but who wants to waste their time sorting through the
meaningless gag worlds? Not me.

I think the next generation will be a hybrid systematized game and
creative forum. Some kind of peer-review system could be rigged
(think slashdot) to filter out anything that doesn't contribute to
making the experience rich and enjoyably artistic or
educational. Then the players themselves could build the world, with
computer-tracked skills-mirroring points giving them more and more
access to being able to affect the main gameplay with their
creations.


Luke Parrish
Developer of CandleMUD
http://freeman.freeshell.org/candlemud/

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