[MUD-Dev] Re: MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article

[Matt Mihaly]

On Fri, 23 Aug 2002, Marc DM wrote:

> However I do get the point you were making Matt, you are saying
> that the experience online worlds can offer you will never be that
> deep as the equivalent in real life society. I think you are right
> on this point.

Well, it's not that I think that the experiences they can offer
can't be as deep, but that they can't be the same, by
definition. For instance, playing a character with black skin in a
game can't ever be the same simply because people know they're in a
virtual world, and won't act the same way as a result.

> However I do feel that just like a good director or painter, some
> situations of real life can be expressed better through our new
> medium then that they are currently being expressed. There are
> even a lot of possibilities of experiences to be lived in online
> worlds that are not present yet. Probably the same situation when
> film was suddenly discovered and there hadn't been mad yet movies
> about certain subjects.

Sure, I definitely wouldn't disagree with this.
 
> I do certainly get cold shivers, just like you do probably, when
> seeing that online multiplayer worlds but also computer games in
> general are being designed from a 'storyline' approach. I'm not
> attracted at it, not for single and not for multiplayer.

Well, I don't mind computer games in general being designed that
way, as I've played some games I really enjoyed that were designed
that way, but I'd tend to agree that I think designing text or
graphical MUDs that way is a mistake.
 
> I feel online worlds should not be build from the 'quest approach'
> (and I'm quite surprised that most MMORPG's are still build that
> way, hence Star Wars Galaxies) but should be build from the bottom
> up, where homes can be build, where children (new players) are
> born, where people organize themselves into governemental
> organizations, etc... . ( Player created content indeed, described
> by you and others in the other post. ) When you as designer
> incorporate the existence of races and incorporate the right
> conditions for rascism to emerge you will have the possiblity to
> be born in a black family and have a close experience of how it
> is.

Well...remember this is pretty hard to do. We do some of what you're
talking about, but we're in the nacency of a pretty complex genre.

--matt
Dubya is a drooling moron.


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