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

[Sasha Hart]

[Matt Mihaly]

> Well, that's fair enough, though I'd appreciate it if you'd drop
> the slander, as neither you nor I should be the subject of
> anything discussed here, but rather the ideas we're speaking
> about.

I'm sorry, that wasn't intended to be slander. The comment about
delicacy was actually intended to be sarcastic as I've always
perceived you as being extremely thick-skinned to
criticism. (However, I see you making few apologies for the design
decisions below - which is as it should be).  That was much too
informal on my part, and I am nothing but sorry for the misstep. :/

> You break some eggs to make an omlette.

Absolutely! And, of course, the decision about whether the omelette
is worth it is up to the developer, certainly not up to ME per
se. Good heavens, I go through games at warp speed, and am pretty
unmanageable within each. If my attendance were any kind of arbiter
of game quality then I would fear for anyone making money on MUDs.

As the metaphor implies, it is still impossible to make *any* kind
of omelette without breaking *some* eggs. Which ones you finally
decide to break is fairly arbitrary.  I can think of many worse
decisions to make. Certainly I'm not any happier with giving players
no power, as much as that might free us to think about spawn rates.

> I'm not claiming that nobody is made unhappy by our political
> systems, because they CAN make your life miserable, but they are
> one thing that most of our long-time players love, [...]

You seemed skeptical of the claim, so I made an attempt (poorly
managed, in retrospect) to provide a firm and substantial example of
the problem, in a nutshell. I interpret the above as basically total
acknowledgement of the problem, but a denial that it is crippling. I
would tend to agree, especially in light of the ongoing success of
games which incorporate the idea in one way or another.

What I hope I can convey is that at least some people some of the
time will not like it. Some eggs are broken. Does that matter? Up to
you. I guess I didn't express this adequately in my preceding post.

> I so often see things speculated on here when they've already been
> done, usually in multiple places (I see it more often from people
> who didn't start playing MUDs until the big graphical ones came
> out. You should check out text MUDs even if for the sake of just
> understanding where the graphical MUDs evolved ;from.

There is creativity in text games which the graphical games will
still be afraid to try or apply for years to come. Too much is at
stake. I think exploration, including the trial of design ideas
which are chancy, interesting, counterintuitive, which break a few
other eggs in order to make a different kind of omelette - is both
vastly interesting, and vastly useful. Text games still have a near
monopoly on exploration of the design space (IMO) even if their
scope tends to be much more limited (unless we consider the
hobbyist/amateur, in which case text games win out again - there are
really so few established hobbyist graphical games).

I think we are missing out on huge swaths of the design space simply
because we are too busy worrying about whether everyone will drop
our game immediately on the basis of one tenuously conceived
problem.  Look, all games have problems, and you DON'T have much of
an idea of what will work until you try it (or consult w/someone who
has tried it.)

Achaea is a successful game which nonetheless tries a number of
strange and interesting ideas.  As a consumer of designs this is
what I have the highest respect for, and have the most use for -
successful (even unsuccessful) explorations.) My observation that
some eggs have been broken isn't intended to be a slander on the
game.

Summary:.

  1. I am a martian and my attendance does not represent my esteem
  of a game necessarily; nor is my esteem any objective indicator of
  quality, nor do I even think it is.

  2. Observing the failure modes of an interesting idea is much more
  instructive than observing the homogenous failures of a very
  conservative and boring idea. (To a martian like me, it also is
  more fun.)


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