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

[John Buehler]

Matt Mihaly writes:
> On Wed, 24 Jul 2002, John Buehler wrote:
>> Matt Mihaly writes:

>>> 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.

> Hmm, yeah, I hadn't considered the fact that you can go through
> the park with a group of people. But here's a question: Given that
> you are quite into the idea of MUDs with a more mass-market, and
> with a more casual gameplay style, do you think people will
> actually group together online to run through this game?

I think that players will want to interact with each other, but only
casually.  For short periods of time.  So the tasks available to
those players cannot involve a time commitment of multiple hours.
They should be more transient.  One model that jumps to mind is the
notion of having the 'front lines' for combat.  If you want to
casually engage in combat, you go to the front lines and help out.
You might stay for one attack or one defense, but if they happen
regularly and you aren't an integral element to the success of an
encounter, you can come and go as you please.

Compare that with the class-based games where the formation of an
effective group is a lock-and-key exercise.  "Looking for a healer!"
"Looking for a bard!"  The class-based structure makes the existence
of a player's character in the group critical to the entertainment
of the group.  In that respect, I consider it almost a grief
structure because it places the entertainment of multiple players in
the hands of a single player or of few players.  It's a grief
structure only in the nicest way of course, because there is an
invitation to the critical player character.

> I noticed on Warcraft III on Battle.net that the larger the group,
> the faster my side loses. We're all terrible at it, but manage to
> get online together because we all 'hang out' in Achaea. Any group
> above 2 people on the enemy side, however, seems to be composed
> entirely of highly-skilled teenagers with names like HappiMooCow
> or mo_murdah. It leads me to speculate that the only people who
> are actually getting together in groups online, at established
> times to participate together, are hardcore gamers. Being a casual
> gamer would seem to preclude setting yourself a gaming schedule.

I generally agree with this paragraph, but remember that you look to
PvP as a primary source of entertainment, and that gets very
personal.  I assume that players *want* to go up against the same
opponents because it's the personal element that makes it most
entertaining.  Beating or being beaten by random opponents isn't
really in the true spirit of competition.  Competition takes a
desire to excel and to invest of one's time and energies to get
better.  And that is the opposite of a casual gamer.  Or so goes my
claim.

Note that I don't equate 'casual gamer' with 'flippant gamer'.  A
casual gamer can be very interested in the game, but doesn't want to
be playing it for more than a couple hours at a time, and only once
or twice a week.  A casual gamer probably has a very specific time
that they play, as well.  They shoehorn the game into their day,
possibly playing for that hour at the end of the day when the kids
are put to bed and they have a little time to fool around.  They
could read a book, watch television - or play a game on the
computer.

I emphasize social interactions in the games, but try to keep
interdependencies light so that a casual gamer feels comfortable
coming and going according to their own schedule.

>> 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.

> Right, I see what you're saying. We actually do this to some
> extent, insofar as our admins are also in-role Gods that regularly
> interact with players, patron various organizations (city-states,
> guilds, etc) and provide guidance and that kind of thing. I don't
> think the intensity of our God-mortal interaction would scale very
> well though, because the extra layers of management you'd need to
> support this kind of highly-empowered admin structure would be
> extremely expensive. (I don't think using volunteers with the kind
> of power ours have would work well at scale either.)

Yes, and I can't figure a way to efficiently handle it using people
power, nor with any existing technologies.  So, as you already know,
I'm just blowing smoke for the future.  I'm working on my ideas in
artificial intelligence for this exact reason.  Once the NPCs can be
relied upon to set the stage and keep the world's fiction moving, I
believe that the players will adapt to that fiction.  And I believe
that this is very well suited to my image of the casual player.
Casual players want to have things happening, not to have to make
things happen.  Non-casual players that want to make things happen
may very well oppose the flow of the world's fiction.  Or simply
control it.  Which takes me back to the whole problem of players
influencing each other.  So long as players are into that - and
Achaea is successfully pursuing that model - that's great.  I
continue to wonder about the size of the player groups that are
interested in actively investing of their time and in being
entertained more passively.

JB


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