[MUD-Dev] wherefor in-game artists?

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

"Koster, Raph" <rkoster at soe.sony.com> writes:

> The measurement is based on characters, nor players. Veteran
> members is defined on the website thusly:

Ok, that is a problem. At least in AO a player can easily have six
characters in the same guild. It's a function of
replayability. I.e. wanting to be with people you know, but have
playstyle choices. It is even common for the same player to create
characters that have roughly the same name.

> This was measured on December 23rd, 2002; UO launched in late
> September, 1997. Call it a bit over five years.

So, it might include inactive accounts? I think a better measure
would be the number of simultanously online players on sundays. My
rough estimate based on interviews would be that this can be as low
as 5% of the number of characters in the guild for a mature
game. (in AO) 30-50 players logged on at the same time shouldn't be
a problem. Might even be close to ideal if you want to locate people
do build teams with etc. So, yes, I think that typical guild sizes
are at the lower end of the range, not at the higher end. Strain on
leaders is a problem, but I don't see any relation to brain-size
there. It is related to time-requirements and conflict, which isn't
a function of group size alone.

> It is undeniably a function, and one which we do not understand
> all the variables to. In the case of online worlds in general, and
> UO guilds in particular, I would expect most statistics to be
> inflated because of alts and multiple account holders.

*nods* Active players are likely to be in guilds and may have 2-3
accounts. I've even seen a player having one account for each
character for convinience reasons.

> It appears to be very common for multiple accounts to all belong
> to the same guild, rather than be in multiple guilds--which in
> itself may be support for Dunbar's number.

Yes, people want to be with people they know, but why do you see
this as a support for Dunbar's idea about social group sizes being
limited by brain size?

Some limiting factors to group size:

  - Too many new members makes norming difficult, hence more tension
  and strain. Can lead to guilds fracturing or freezing of
  recruiting.

  - Not enough differentiating "marketing channels" for guilds
  leading to acquiring new members that doesn't fit in. More tension
  in guild.

  - Leadership as a single person rather than as a function
  distributed over many players. Bottle neck: number of incoming
  tells. This can partially be resolved by design.

--
Ola - http://folk.uio.no/olag/
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