[MUD-Dev] wherefor in-game artists?

[Christopher Allen]

Matt Mihaly wrote:
> Christopher Allen wrote:

>> What hasn't worked well is that this "pure socializer" game
>> doesn't scale well. Socialization requires trust, and trust
>> doesn't scale. One of the interesting anecdotes of our experience
>> with this is that one of the limits may be the Dunbar Number
>> http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/03/the_dunbar_numb.html --
>> we'll find out soon, as our players have now created their own
>> first game using our tools, Lovecraft Country
>> (http://www.lovecraftcountry.com/ in late alpha now), with a bit
>> lighter set of "pure socializer" mechanics, and it will be
>> interesting to see if they can break the size of Castle Marrach.

> What about pure social muds like Shangri-La? They have a community
> into the thousands with over 350 simultaneously on
> sometimes. They're oriented around 'adult themes.' Perhaps the
> lure of sex can skew or otherwise invalidate whatever motivations
> within us sets up the Dunbar number?

It is quite possible that sexual relationships tends to have a
different trust metric then that for group trust at a band or tribe
level.

Certainly sociologists have shown that both males and females each
have different criteria for their less committed possible partners,
thus I suspect since they don't require the same commitment, they
don't require the same level of trust.

Related, achiever games can break dunbar as there are so many
activities that they can do without group trust. Skotos's other more
achiever oriented games break dunbar. Since mudsex only requires two
people, you don't need larger groupings.

-- Christopher Allen
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