What is the world? (was: Re: [MUD-Dev] Weaknesses in the HCDS player type model)

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

"Zach Collins (Siege)" <zcollins at seidata.com> writes:

> To summarise: A fully complete game world provides not only rules
> and data, but its own context in all of its environments, so that
> new players can immerse themselves in the 'foreign' culture of the
> game as quickly and easily as possible.  These rules, dataset, and
> context are to be considered the game world, and it includes the
> actions, information, and context of the players already in the
> game as well as the information and context that new players bring
> with them as they begin to play.

Yes...

So...

You are saying that Richard is wrong? :) Good! I am not only vocal,
but also influential. ;)

Seriously, let me pull out one example of how the very technical
view of what is a world is unlikely to capture the essence of
certain worlds. Active Worlds is a virtual worlds server that
doesn't really enforce any rules to speak of at all. However some
worlds in AW do have written rules and peculiar cultures. For
instance one of the sexist bondage ones, a Gorrean one. This sexist
bondage world does not really exist to me when there are no players
in it!  There are just some traces of a world. Some structures I
don't really understand or care all that much about. It is a dead
world. Junk. Now give me the belief that there actually are a couple
of players in the world doing something, but I cannot see them. Wow,
suddenly the entire world comes into existence. This is a structure
that supports some perverted culture and I feel like exploring the
world which are able to carry such a culture... And I might face
these people during my sneaky exploration of the realm... I might
not focus on the players themselves (I have no interest in
affiliating myself with them, nor to take actions against them) but
approach the world and its inhabitants as a world in an explorer
like fashion. The whole Gorrean concept is so far off from anything
I want to be associated with, thus I can view the players as
NPCs. They are agents in the world, but I view them on a different
level than myself. A level which I don't have to identify with. I
might even "dehumanize" them.

Ok, so this is one aspect of the experienced world, I might view a
certain set of agents as NPCs because I have no interest in
affiliating myself with their controlling humans (players). Thus the
players belong to the world dimension.

Another aspect is that the users of this world has to follow the
rules or else they will be thrown out. Whether the rules are
enforced by a computer program or a human moderator shouldn't really
matter? Or should it?

--
Ola - http://folk.uio.no/olag/

_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev