[MUD-Dev] Point of View

[Shane P. Lee]

--- "Ted L. Chen" <tedlchen at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Second - and hopefully something to provide a seed for discussion
> - why are we all so ingrained into providing only a point of view
> in our games that derive from a simulationists' perspective?  That
> is, the only things we see are what is observable from our
> avatar's perspective.  Is this a result of technical limitations
> (switching POVs requires a lot of wholesale state changes), or is
> it merely a matter of tradition?  

As far as I'm concerned, I build worlds and design game play from a
first-person perspective because that's how I personally like to
play. Well, that's one reason, there are others of course.  I see
avatars as dumb animals, incapable of original thought or movement,
and anything that they do automatically is generally annoying (like
getting hungry) but necessary overall.  For the most part however,
the avatar is simply an extension of myself, a character that I
play. My job is to teach him/her to be smarter, grow stronger and
hopefully someday become the Evil Overlord (insert evil laugh here)
of the world. This personal, one-on-one connection is what I want
and any change in POV seems to detract from that.

Mostly, I see a change in POV to include a broader range as cheating
on the part of the wizard, who doesn't want to put too much effort
into the quality of the game.

For instance, let's say my avatar (Tom) lives in a castle and has
decided to walk around the world a bit. He left through the southern
gate and just crossed the moat. The wizard wants him to find the
treasure to the north and doesn't want him to search very hard to
find it. Now the wizard could simply display a convenient map of the
castle and surrounding area with the treasure prominently displayed
so Tom could easily see what and where it is. But realisticly, could
Tom have known the treasure was there?

A better way to handle it would be to send in an actor, complaining
about losing his treasure to the north of the castle. Perhaps the
actor offers to share a portion of it with Tom if he would be nice
enough to fetch it for him.

By simply taking a little more time and a lot more effort, the
wizard has provided a mini-quest while still holding to the original
POV and improving (IMHO) the game play.
 
> To me, it seems that limiting ourselves to only observable
> viewpoints is part of the difficulty in conveying an engrossing
> narrative.  Imagine if Shakespeare's plays could only be shown
> from one actor's perspective?  A lot of the plot devices employed
> require that the audience knows more than any given character.
> This does border the "what the player/or character knows" thread
> from a while back.

This puts me in mind of one of my favorite authors, Louis L'Amour.
While he may not have been a Shakespeare as far as the world is
concerned, he was still a master storyteller whose popularity has
continued to grow long after his demise. He successfully wrote
engrossing narratives from the first-person perspective, sometimes
never breaking away to show the "big-picture".  When it comes down
to it, the perspective you choose to display to the avatar really
depends on the type of game you want to design.  Another of my
favorite authors, Raymond E. Fiest tends to switch from character to
character, giving you a glimpse of the world from each individual's
perspective and in the process allowing you to see the difference in
each character's personality.

-Shane P. Lee
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