MMO Communities (was RE: [MUD-Dev] MMORPG Cancellations: The skyis falling?)

[Tom "cro" Gordon]

Thursday, July 22, 2004, 5:45:59 AM, Raph Koster wrote:
> Tom Gordon wrote:

>> What I do find interesting about MMO games and MMO game
>> development is the pre-existing work and experience in very large
>> and ultra large communities is not being applied in any
>> meaningful way, and the tools available to create, manage and
>> support these communities in an online environment are really not
>> being applied as well as they could.

>> Since the essence of community is not any one virtual space, but
>> a cocnept of identifying with a certain item, game, group or
>> other identifying label, you quickly see communities far larger
>> than this supposed 250 person limit springin up all over the
>> place.

> Raph Koster wrote: By this definition, all the big commercial
> services are running nicely large communities. The SWG one, for
> example, is in the hundreds of thousands.

I would agree wholeheartedly here, and SWG is a good example of a
very large community.

> That said, it's not really accurate. Of those hundreds of
> thousands, we have many subcommunities. The one that is directly
> managed in terms of interaction is the message board community,
> which is in the tens of thousands. But even that one is divided up
> into subcommunities on a per forum basis. And so on.

Again, true. A lot of the time breaking down the playerbase or
userbase into smaller chunks makes it a lot more manageable,
although often given the choice these smaller community members will
also opt to partake in a wider form of community activities, given
the choice - as happened with SWG's own general discussion board
from memory :)

  (When I played SWG I identified myself with the wider SWG
  community and never with any of the smaller profession-based or
  server-based communities or guilds, and didn't use those tools or
  forum boards, choosing instead to only participate in the wider
  community. And yes, I was in a guild, but it took me nearly a 9
  months to join one.)

> This is not an idealistic statement like "we're all a member of
> the mud-dev community" or "we're all members of the human
> community."  Speaking in practical terms, JCL may moderate a
> larger community but the community of interactors (and therefore
> those who can be directly managed) is significantly smaller, just
> as our identification with "the human community" is comparatively
> weak.

> I am unsure which tools you are specificall referring to in your
> suite of large-scale community tools, but I'd bet money right now
> that a significant portion of them are actually designed to
> encourage and support subcommunity formation--and more,
> intentional segmentation of the larger userbase.

I'm only going to touch briefly on this on the list for a number of
reasons (mostly 'cos I'm putting most of this into a chapter for the
next MMPGems book). I'll start by saying that perhaps the use of
'tools' in it's physical meaning is the wrong word to use. This is
my fault, as when I think of 'tools' in managing very large
communities, I am not thinking exclusively of software, although
yes, software does play a very large part in creating and
maintaining them.

What I really mean when I talk about 'tools' is more of a
methodology that takes into account pre-existing software tools,
custom control tools, and 'enabling' work practices (which is a
really *REALLY* crap term) - an overriding practice that can be
applied to any community.  The word 'tools' can (and should!) also
encompass procedures for customer interaction, from the very
beginning (when a customer first walks in) to the very end (when the
service shuts down and you say goodbye) and everything in between,
as well as hiring practices, corporate interaction with customers
and so on.

I will say up front that the single most powerful 'tool' I have ever
found for creating, building and maintaining a community - and for
managing the support teams needed to keep the community going - is
an IRC client connected to a friendly network. But beyond just the
software, the more important 'tool' in this relationship is how the
software is used.

> I'd bet money right now that a significant portion of them are
> actually designed to encourage and support subcommunity
> formation--and more, intentional segmentation of the larger
> userbase.

Whilst the pre-existing software we use (IRC clients, forum
software, website software, clan/guild management tools etc) are all
designed as you say to encourage subcommunity formation, they are
not the core reason for having them, they are provided as a service
to those who want to create such subcommunities themselves. Support
is always given to these groups *after* they've formed, not before,
but we never deliberately try and segment the larger userbase.

Regards,
Tom "cro" Gordon
CEO, AlienPants Ltd
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev