[MUD-Dev2] [REPOST] [DESIGN] Simulation vs. Status Quo

[Johnicholas Hines]

On 10/30/06, John Mauney <montyculligan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, this has been very abstract, and I have left out too much, but part of the premise is that X amount of time can be shifted from designing content such as quests and level-based stuff to creating a deep and broad simulation.  We already know that sandbox can be addicting, and sandbox does not have to mean a total elimination of grind.  Chopping down wood in the forest can be pretty grindy when you need to gather a lot of wood for your house.  However, it also doesn't take a game developer or a programmer much time to conjure up and implement that kind of a system.  A lot less that designing even one quest, probably!  And you are killing more than 2 birds with that stone.  Chopping wood to build a house?  Well, you could also use that wood to build dozens of other items the 3d art department has designed for the world.  You could also use the wood as firewood.  You could also use the "chopping wood" animation on all number of random NPCs in the world, adding some more ambience to the game.  I dunno, I think this kind of game design has merit.

I believe Mauney is hoping for three virtues of his emergent/
1. He hopes that simulations will be easier/faster for programmers to write.
2. He hopes that simulations will be more emergent and robust than
more "questy" or "scripted" stories.
3. He hopes that players expectations of a fantasy world can be accomodated.

In my limited experience with emergent phenomena, there is somewhat of
tradeoff between 1. and 3. You can write a short/easy program to do
some kind of simulation, and then find out what that world is like.
Or, you can struggle to find a short program whose emergent behavior
fits expectations.

To put it another way:
Easiest to program: emergent behavior that probably violates expectations
Mediumest to program: "scripted/rigid" behavior that fits expectations
(by codifying them)
Hardest to program: behavior that fits expectations, but does so
robustly/emergently

If you want to do a simulationish/emergentish MMO, my recommendation
(speaking as someone with no credentials whatsoever) is to try an
abstract/strange MMO instead of medieval/fantasy and hope that you can
get something cool without too much effort.

Note that I'm rating WoW in the "mediumest programming effort"
category - that's still an enormous amount of effort.

Johnicholas