[MUD-Dev] NEWS: Why Virtual Worlds are Designed By Newbies - No, Really (By R. Bartle)

[Mike Rozak]

Martin Keegan wrote:

> When you said that a time-limited mud would be even more dependent
> on newbies, were you contemplating the imposition of a time limit
> on the whole game or on individual players?

The time limit would be on invidivual players, and it wouldn't
really be a limit. Basically, when the player finished the 100-hours
of content, they'd be told they can stick around and be bored, or
leave and go try virtual world X by the same author/company. (It
could be more drastic; the game could start scrolling the games
credits, but this is a bit harsh and will cause some players to put
off killing the evil overlord forever.)

The problem with this deisgn is that if you manage to attract 1000
players with advertising, they'll finish the content in a month or
two and leave; and then you have to advertise more. (Of course, you
really need a stream of advertisting.) However, a shorter player
commitment results in a larger pool of potential players (more
mass-market), not to mention each player partaking in more virtual
worlds per year, so attracting 1000 players to a 100-hour VW might
be signficnatly easier/cheaper than attracting the same number to a
1000-hour VW.

As I mentioned yesterday, this new construct might not even be a MUD
(or virtual world) anymore, depending upon one's definition. What
you end up with half way between a single-player game like Morrowind
and a MMORPG like EQ. I was joking about the "heresy in these here
parts", but I could readily understand why people would say it's no
longer a MUD (or virtual world).

> I don't remember the first film I ever saw; what I want to know
> about Point #3 is why, for muds, the switching costs are *so*
> high.

By "switching costs" I assume you mean player's reluctance to move
to a new MUD.

I'd say it's because the player just spent 1000 hours playing a
game; they have the UI burned into their brain, have a lot to show
for it in terms of a level 100 PC, and don't want to lose any of
it. If you spend 10 years building a real castle, you don't want to
watch it fall down during an earthquake. But, if you spend an hour
building a sandcastle at the beach, watching the tide destroy the
sandcastle is part of the fun. (Just as beta-testers of WoW had fun
when their characters were turned into chickens in the last hours of
betas, but would have whinged mightily if had been the real game.)

This same agrument, incidentally, was one I saw in favor of
permadeath when one player whinged that permadeath was a lousy idea
because they'd loose 1000-hours of work. Someone commented that if
the world had permadeath, you'd never have a character that lived
1000 hours, so you'd only be losing a character with 10-100 hours
invested, and it wouldn't hurt as much.

> What did you mean by the induction chain?

I was thinking mathematically. My read on the Richard Bartle's paper
was that the final conclusion happens because point 1, 2, 3, and 4
all happen. If you eliminate one of the points then the chain
breaks.

Mike Rozak
http://www.mxac.com.au
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