[MUD-Dev] Middleware

[Luca Girardo]

Raph Koster wrote:

> My personal take is that middleware generally makes too many
> assumptions that end up constraining the eventual game
> design--plus, you have to rewrite most of it anyway or end up with
> generic stuff. This has seemed to me to be true with muds and true
> with MMOGs.

Middleware like every other Commercial Off-The-Shelf software brings
always constraints with it. Depending from the implementation the
constraints can be tight or not. The problem with MMOGs and
middleware or COTS is that there is no real standard for MMOGs,
there is also no unique definition of what is a MMOG. So how to you
design a middleware to have such an open and flexible architecture
that can accommodate most of the requirements of a MMOG developer if
you have no clear specification about what are the needs of a MMOG
developer?

One thing I learned as software engineer coming from the Java
Community is that with the passing of time the standardization and
specification of can have a huge positive in pact for the
development of middleware. One of the strengths of the java
community is the established standardization process: through a well
defined Community Process, a new java specification is developed
through different phases till it is mature enough to be
published. Based on the java specification vendors (commercial or
open source) can implement new middleware addressing the needs of
the developer community and the developer can choose among different
vendors or also decide to do its own implementation of the
specification if new or different functionality is needed.

And with the time the specifications can and are updated, extended
and refined bringing new functionality and addressing new issues.  I
think that is what is missing the game developer community and the
MMOG developer community atm. There are some experienced people who
have been involved for 10 years and longer now with MMOGs, still we
fail to see any clear specification coming out. The same problems
are always arising again and again in the products and solutions
that have been found for problems in the past, have to be reinvented
again.

There are some tentative for what I can see going on like the white
papers of the IGDA. But I think it is still far away from the final
goal of having clear specifications for MMOGs. Tricky is the fact
that a MMOG specification would not be just software
specification. It would need to specify also business processes
(like Customer Support or marketing) as they have a direct influence
of the software architecture and different subsystems.  But the
benefits of such a step would be definitely a boost for the MMOG
developer community reducing development risks, increasing product
quality and reducing development costs.

Would that not be worth investing time?  Could something like that
work without a company leading the effort and investing resources to
support the whole process? Can an independently organization be able
to achieve that?  Is it possible to define specifications to
describe the components of a MMOG system knowing it is a difficult
mixture between software, art, business, marketing, etc. ?

Luca Girardo
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