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

[Amanda Walker]

On Jul 14, 2004, at 12:41 PM, Koster, Raph wrote:

> I've been banging the "embedded experiences" drum for many years
> now.  That said, I think there is a qualitative difference between
> the philosophy you describe, and the philosophy that I hear
> commonly expressed by commercial developers and players of their
> games.

Oh, certainly.  And I'll admit quite freely that I'm much more in
the "virtual world" / "simulation" camp than in the "game" camp.
I'm a ringer on MUD-Dev: an early MUD user, occasional gamer, but
professionally I'm a networking & graphics geek , currently working
as a systems engineer in the military simulation world.  My interest
in MMORPGs stems from my interest in such topics, not because I find
it particularly rewarding to go on dungeon crawls--the communities
that form in MMORPGs are much more interesting to me than whether
pets unbalance combat, yada yada.

> In yours, you cite creating a virtual world, and then embedding
> game experiences within it. The commoner reaction is "just make a
> game."

Agreed.

> But the fact is that the market is wanting stuff that is more fun
> more immediately.

Also agreed.  And as consoles stretch upward and outward, the
communities of "console gamers" and "computer gamers" have more and
more overlap.  CoH, for example, strikes me as being most like an
MMO console game--and a really well done one, at that.

>> One of the things I've talked about before is the promise of
>> virtual worlds as gaming (and storytelling) contexts, rather than
>> as "games" per se.  I think that the move towards
>> games-within-games is a sign of this happening.

> Platform, platform, platform. :)

You betcha.  Among other things, if you have a virtual world
platform, you have a head start on individual embedded
games/experiences--you don't need to reinvent the graphics engine,
physics model, player management, etc.

Amanda Walker
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