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

[Matt Mihaly]

J C Lawrence wrote:
> Morris Cox <morriscox at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Not only would that expose players to more
>> possibilities/experiences, it would be easier to encourage them
>> to try virtual world X or Y or Z, etc.

> I love the idea, always have, but I doubt we'll ever see much
> support for it.  From a marketing perspective this creates
> problems. First up it becomes far more difficult to create value
> differentiation when you're operating merely a node in a mesh, and
> that's exacerbated by the ease with which any value you do create
> will be aped and copied by surrounding nodes attempting their own
> value grab.  These factors in turn make establishing any sort of
> identity, let alone a recognisable brand even more difficult.
> And, worse, both these problems would seem to apply equally to
> both the $FREE and commercial services.  The $Free services have
> the exact problems above, and the commercials are forced to
> attempt to curtail and constrain the problem through tight
> partnership agreements -- but that only works while those services
> are the underdogs.  As soon as one becomes particularly successful
> the partnership contract becomes more of a drain and a burden than
> a benefit to them.

We get regular idea submissions/requests from players of the various
Iron Realms games to allow them to move between the games via
in-game portals. They all use the same engine and have some
fundamental similarities in gameplay focus and even share some
non-core code systems. It'd probably be easier for us to do it than
just about anyone else because of this and because of the fact that
all the games are owned by the same parent entity. And even so, it's
just too damn hard to be worth doing.

>> A multiverse of games would also offer more value and
>> playability. (A book of spells hidden in a nonmagical world that
>> you must retrieve for a quest).

> Getting object portability right among competing and frequently
> unfriendly systems without fundamentally breaking those systems is
> Very Hard (tm).  There have been numerous attempts ranging from
> the simple callback schema in CoolMUD on up to full object
> brokering implementations.  The only success has been in migration
> among tightly bound systems.  The problem: what prevents the
> world-breaking objects being imported?  Logically inconsistent
> systems are, well, just that, and even more especially when
> neither side can trust the other.

*Shudder* Total nightmare.

--matt

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