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

[John Buehler]

Matt Mihaly writes:
> On Wed, 17 Jul 2002, John Buehler wrote:

>> Would Disneyland be as big a draw if some visits you were able to
>> enjoy the rides, but on other days they didn't work as well, so
>> it was a bit of a crapshoot as to whether you'd enjoy yourself?
>> Nitpicking aside (yes, rides are shut down occasionally), the
>> expectation of a visitor to Disney parks is that they'll have
>> plenty of fun stuff to do.  That they *will* have a lot of fun.

> Probably not, but MUDs aren't amusement parks either. The defining
> aspect of a MUD is that you're playing with other players, not
> merely playing at the same time as other players (such as in an
> amusement park), and more to the point, you're playing with other
> players who remain semi-consistent, such that you can develop
> relationships with them.

I suppose I was offering Disneyland as the ultimate in ensuring that
entertainment would be found, precisely because we barely rely on
the people that we're with in order to find entertainment (I'm
thinking in terms of the people I'm with, not particularly the
people that are around me).  The more we introduce a dependency on
other players for our entertainment, the greater the chance that the
entertainment devolves into random chance instead of structured
encounters.

The observation about consistent contact definitely would have an
impact on avoiding purely random chance, but I wonder how far away
from random things would go.  Typically, a group of enthusiasts in
any field require leaders to keep an organization, well, organized.
I put this onus on the game publisher, not on the players
themselves.  So I look to Disney's parks as a simple model of an
entertainment service provider.  Perhaps I should be citing
Westworld.

JB

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