[MUD-Dev] The audience is the medium. For now.

[John Szeder]

With the recent discussion revolving around explorers, and Nick
Yee's studies, etc, it raised an interesting question in my mind.

  How many people have experimented with having a venue for
  "Observers" in their game?

Admittedly you have GM tools etc that let you be invisible, and in
Ultima Online you can ghost around with impunity as well.

  Has anyone really cottoned to the idea of enabling this more in
  their games?

A lot of people who I talk to who are outside of the hardcore gamer
area struggle with the notion that the audience is the medium.

  Why not introduce the concept of an audience into the game?

There is some talk about a Starcraft channel someplace overseas, as
well as the new game channel people talk about over here.

In a persistent world style game, how many people would pay a
reduced rate of 5.95 a month to have the ability to ghost around the
world and watch things happen?

  Even more to the point, what if you tied into the ability for
  audience people to award points periodically to players they see
  doing cool things?

Essentially you would get people being able to along on these big
plane raids and experience vicariously the thrill of killing some of
the really big nasty monsters.

There are downsides to the idea of course. Some people don't like
being watched, and others are busy doing... well... what lots of
people like to do when they think no one is watching.

I am certain that I am going to catch some flak here from the "this
is bad for the community" crowd too, but I am not sure on what
basis.

I would be interested in hearing people's opinions and experiences
with having observers put in the game.

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