[MUD-Dev] integrating information streams into the game (was: Creating a Player Narrative)

[ceo]

HRose wrote:

> I think that a nice idea could be to bring and develop all this
> inside the client engine. for example it could be really
> interesting to access all the informations that DAoC displays on
> the Herald directly from inside the game, perhaps in specific
> locations like in a big town.

> I also always liked the idea of accessing the forums from both
> inside and outside the game. The idea is to push all these
> resources to be part of the game directly, instead of being an
> added tool that you can access only from elsewhere and that isn't
> really part of the game.

FYI this was a core aim of the GrexEngine from right back at the
initial design phase years ago. We believed that one of the next
major steps forward would be more tight integration of activities
like selling of characters (using ebay), OOC discussion
(website-forums), and even other things that still haven't really
flourished yet in the big MMOGS: for instance informal gambling on
the outcome of in-game events. It's been a major feature of our
internal tests right back since the first complete prototype.

It's been a little frustrating that games designers have by and
large failed to see any advantage in this (not just in games that
are published, but when we talk to potential licensees - they just
don't see much value in such systems, although I'm convinced most
will probably kick themselves sooner or later when they realise what
they could do with this approach ... perhaps not until someone else
manages to do something really exciting with it). IIRC I also
proposed an article on this to Game Developer magazine some years
back, but they had no interest in it at all.

Going further in this direction, we've started a skunkworks project
to build a CMS on top of the GrexEngine. We were cold-called by a
potential customer who wanted a CMS (Content MAnagement System) at
about the same time as I was looking for a CMS which "could also run
embedded game servers for many different games in parallel" for a
personal project I was working on. (NB: years ago I used to run an
IT consultancy specialising in the kinds of stuff that later became
known as CMS's, so this is familiar ground for me, and it's mostly
just me working on this skunkworks project at the moment).

If you're interested in how this goes, email me in a few months, by
which time a live system ought to be up (somewhere), and I'll be
able to comment on what happens when you try to combine a CMS with
an MMOG platform :). Who knows...perhaps the answer will be "...you
decide to quit selling MMOG middleware and just sell CMS's instead"
:P.

Adam M
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev