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

[Sean Howard]

"Samantha LeCraft" <slecraft at onlinealchemy.com> wrote:

> People who grew up playing MMOs, but have never really played a
> MUD, much less worked on one, and who have never worked on a
> single-player game, will create different sorts of MMOs than those
> who grew up playing arcade games and MUDs, and moved on to work on
> MUDs or traditional games, and from there moved to working on
> MMOs.

I don't agree. I think that someone who sees possibilities will
still see the same possibilities regardless of his past
experiences. I never made a webcomic before I started making one,
and now it's one of most popular webcomics out there.

My original point was more a stab at the game industry than personal
creativity. The game industry is kind of inbred, and I liked the
idea of some new voices being promoted to decision making
positions. I'm getting sick of reading about the same 5 visionaries
for the past 20 years.

> There are members of my family who are in the industry who came to
> MMOs from MUD experience, and I think this gives them a different
> perspective on MMOs than I have.  Then I look at my younger
> siblings, who have grown up playing MMOs even more so than I did,
> and I think they will have a different point of view than I have,
> should they ever decide to enter the industry.

I think that, if experiences are all you have, then that's the only
place where you can draw conclusions from. But you've got knowledge
in addition to experience. You don't need to have played MUD2 to
appreciate the literature written about it - and take some important
insight from it.  Kind of like how you don't have to have been in
the Vietnam War to avoid making the same mistakes.

> We're still a fairly young industry

You mean inexperienced, not young.

> and I think we're a long way off from being able to say we've
> discovered everything there is to discover about this form of
> entertainment, and we'll now just swing back and forth between two
> extremes.

Nah, the swinging thing only happens when you've got one string and
one weight. I expect that, like videogames genres, MMORPGs will
eventually split into sub-genres themselves.  It's already
happening. The only problem is that those making the games are so
few and elite, that we don't have the breadth to support those R&D
and possibly unpopular and risky projects.

What we need is indie MMOG development. Most game companies can't
support a side scrolling shooter, but indie developers with less to
lose and more heart to give keep the genre alive. Perhaps
streamlining the development process to the point where a small team
can make a MMOG is the best direction we can take MMOGs at this
stage.

- Sean Howard
www.squidi.net
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