[MUD-Dev] pluggable MMOGs

[ceo]

John Robert Arras wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Apr 2003, ceo wrote:

>> The problem with such games was that they were massively
>> disjointed and there was no feeling of any relationship between
>> different levels;

So, the console games like Crash are just more of the same old
rubbish. Crash is a great game, but it works well as a no-brainer,
dumbed-down "play for five minutes when you're bored", console
game. It doesn't even work well as a modern platformer (too
simplistic; too few secret areas, etc) - it has a specific niche of
being ultra-simple. Since it doesn't try to be anything more
interesting or complex, the problems highlighted above never really
manifest as problems.

> The stories in games are usually pretty thin anyway, but that's
> not the point. I don't play games like that for the story
> anyway. Well, the only games that I really like to play for the
> story are single person RPGs.  If you allow people to keep their
> characters and whatever they take out of the levels, I think
> they'll be happy with it.

Indeed, this is not an issue related to story. If anything, it's
most closely related to the previous discussions about AC2's
buildings made of solid diamond (i.e. indestructable, immovable,
with solid doors that can't be entered).

The problem of "a world which you cannot affect". If two subgames
are wholly independent (your actions in one do not affect the
other), then immersion is rapidly shed.

It might help if I explain that I first started thinking about this
whilst looking at simultaneous multi-platform MUDs/etc. (Where
"platform" means "client experience"). Initially, thoughts on
enabling text MUDs to also simultaneously be played from FPS 3D
clients. Later on, problems like "how do you get a mobile-phone user
and a PS2-user to be able to play together at the same time in the
same game?"; mobile phones have been able to play Doom properly with
all graphics sounds etc for ages, but it's not simply a case of
"Pump the same client to each device"; that ignores the strengths
and weaknesses of different devices.

>From there it's not a large step to looking at allowing people to
choose the platform to play with on the device they're using -
rather than forcing "this platform exists only for this device" -
and enabling people to play the same game in different ways from the
same devices.

> different vehicles in different levels. It gives designers ways to
> create different kinds of content based on different play
> modes. The best part of it is that it doesn't have to make sense.

Right; it sounds like you're following a different, unrelated, line
of thought to me. You sound like you're trying to develop a new
console game (I'm not being disparaging, it's just that that's a
specific genre-niche combination, and has it's own rules and
features). I'm talking about large-scale networked multiplayer
games.

Adam M


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