[MUD-Dev] MMORPG Cancellations: The sky is falling?

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

"Koster, Raph" <rkoster at soe.sony.com> writes:

> Typically depth is described as gradually unfolding many subtle
> variations on a system. This doesn't imply content at all, though
> content can certainly be an element in it. It also does not imply
> breadth of feature set (i.e. number of systems), since each of the
> features may well be shallow. Howwver, interaction between
> multiple systems can also lead to depth.

Hm. I'd say that the fuzzy term "depth", in the context of virtual
worlds, is strongly related to how visible the limitations of the
underlying implementation is to the user when experiencing the
world.

This is an area where fully graphical MUDs quickly come to short for
at least two reasons:

  1. Visual objects tends to be static for design reasons. Thus they
  are symbols representing specific implementations, actions,
  behaviour etc.  Even if you have variation, a user will expect
  something which looks similar to possess the same
  characteristics. The visual medium is very concrete and doesn't
  leave much room for uncertainty in the interpretation.

  2. The server-client protocol limits the design for reasons
  related to efficiency and implementation-burden, implying a
  simplified object oriented design.

Text MUDs can get away from this by:

  1. The non-specificic characteristics of the text medium: "You see
  a man."

  2. Rendering on the server (i.e. text).

Most text MUDs probably don't exploit these advantages, but that is
another story.

--
Ola - http://folk.uio.no/olag/
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