[MUD-Dev] Re: Bringing in friends

[Amanda Walker]

On Apr 22, 2004, at 4:51 PM, Pat Ditterline wrote:

> I understand that this is a problem, and bringing in friends at
> your level would be nice.  But pen and paper games are controlled
> by their nature, in that someone is running the game and on some
> level chooses who joins.

Agreed.  And, in fact, many strategies work in small,
controlled-membership groups that fail miserably in large, diverse
populations.

"Games," for example.  A game, at its most fundamental level,
depends on the fact that group of players that agree on rules *by
which they agree to control their own behavior.* Chess, for example,
needs no rules about grief play or "exploits."

The larger the playing field, the more this becomes a problem.  In
professional sports, cheating and exploiting (drugs, gambling,
whatever) are more of a problem than in the neighborhood softball
league.

I'd even go so far as to say that massively multiplayer virtual
worlds are not games at all (except maybe in a game theory sense,
which would also include things like the stock market and politics).


Amanda Walker
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