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

[Sean Howard]

"Koster, Raph" <rkoster at soe.sony.com> wrote:
> From: Sean Howard

>> Most of the literature I've read have chosen to call these things
>> "virtual worlds" rather than "online games".

> Well, I for one prefer the term because it's evident that these
> things are used for plenty of non-game applications all the
> time. Ergo, calling them all games is disingenuous at best and
> misleading at worst.

It depends on your definition of "game". My definition is not a
particularly narrow one. Where Will Wright calls SimCity a toy, I
say that it is obviously a game. A lot of people think that games
require stuff like rules and goals, but that's not true. The two
things you need to have a game are interesting decisions and the
safety to make them.

For example, gladiators would learn to fight through sparring
matches.  These matches were crafted to give them the freedom to
explore different decisions without the immenant fear of death. What
are MMOGs but a safe way to explore the meaning of community without
sacrificing your own standing and safety?

> Hmm, I think I'd argue that we have already seen very interesting
> variants on real world social patterns?

It's only interesting because it is unexpected. A bunch of guys
create a casino night? Last I checked, there are casinos all over
the world, and guys get together for Poker all the time. The only
difference here is that they do it in a world which is predescribed
to be about StarWars.

The really interesting stuff, dealing with anonymity and separation
of ego and self image, can be seen just as readily in forums and
other online communities as they can in real time, state of the art,
expensive as all hell MMORPGs.

I'm not saying you can't take something away from it. You can, if
for no other reason than the juxtaposition of Star Wars and Gambling
can open your eyes to things you never noticed before.

> I'd also say that there's plenty of research showing that
> community as it is traditionally defined has been steadily eroding
> over the course of the century.

"eroding" is such a strong word. It's changing. 10 years ago, I
could check my email without having 300 spam messages involving my
personal parts. But I got a spam filter, and now only a few German
ones get through for the most part. Things change, we adapt. When it
gets to the point that we can no longer adapt, we invent a
replacement.

You can say that community values are eroding, but communities, like
cockroaches, are will live on.

> Don't get me wrong, I'm not really out there advocating that
> community is the sole point. It's not.

I understand. I'm the same way. It just like the recent CoH
discussion. I think CoH is a great game, but because I place more
importance on deep gameplay than most people - I can get a little
defensive on the subject and it will seem like that's the only thing
I care about.

> By and large, I'd argue that we haven't been designing games for
> thousands of players even n the largest MMOs. Instead, we rely on
> distance and asynchronicity to allow hundreds of smaller scale
> games in parallel instead.

So does the real world. I'm pretty sure that the girl with pink hair
who works in my local Hot Topics doesn't really interact with the
girl with green hair which works in the Hot Topics in LA. And
Battle.net has hundreds of smaller scale games, but there are still
guilds and other communities that have sprung out of it.

I don't think the trick is to have all thousand individuals interact
with each other, but to have them interact on a smaller level. For
instance, I am a citizen of a town, of a state, of a country, and of
a planet. My responsibilities to each decrease the further away you
go. Encouraging smaller, tighter communities, you can have the
communities interact at each level. Basically, hundreds of smaller
scale games that interact themselves rather than the players.

- Sean Howard
www.squidi.net
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