[MUD-Dev] DESIGN: Online adventure games

[Amanda Walker]

On May 24, 2004, at 10:44 AM, Steven King wrote:

> Now imagine if, along with the original goal, the players could
> take part in events from the movies.  Players could play the parts
> of the ground troops on Hoth during the evacuation, or on Endor
> during the last battle.  They would be a part of a larger story
> and have more purpose.  The problem is that you must have enough
> content in your adventure to last the span of the game AND be able
> to accomodate 10,000 players at a time (or however many are on
> each server) regardless of experience level.

I think that the "galactic civil war" story arc is an attempt at
this, but there's one big problem with trying to tie movie events in
with a game.  Movies last 2-3 hours, are told from the point of view
of the heros and villains, skip the boring parts, and have a script.
This is fine for a console or single-player game (and, in fact,
KOTOR does really well at creating a movie-like experience).  I
don't think it translates well into an MMO framework.

SWG's "theme parks" (which is a great name for them, BTW) are an
interesting compromise.  They bring in licensed content and
characters from the movies, but don't try to incorporate them into
game-wide player events.  So you can go visit scenes from the
movies, go get your picture taken with Han and Chewie, etc., but
they aren't blocking the main flow of the game.  They make for fun
mini games and field trips, though.

Amanda Walker
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