[MUD-Dev2] Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants)

[Tess Snider]

On 4/3/07, Mike Sellers <mike at onlinealchemy.com> wrote:
> Imagine for example if "combat" was considered to be a lame and mostly
> irrelevant addition to an otherwise social game -- depending on your
> assumption set, almost anything can look like gameplay, or not.  Or
> consider that The Sims (a mildly successful game, if I recall correctly) was
> almost entirely social gameplay, using a model that hasn't yet been applied to
> MMOs.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "a model that hasn't yet been
applied to MMOs."  It was applied almost directly (I would argue *too*
directly) in The Sims Online.  The primary difference was the shift of
control from indirect to direct.  If you're ever considering making a
purely social-gameplay MMO of the sort you're talking about, I highly
recommend playing some TSO, and reading some reviews, so you can
improve upon what has gone before.

A quick anecdote (apologies to anyone who worked on TSO):

I logged in to TSO one night during late beta.  At the end of the
evening, I was visiting with a nice lady who had built herself a
pretty fancy house.  We chatted at length on her sofa.  At some point,
she asked me to stand up.  We both stood up, and she started giving me
hugs, and tickling me, and other odd stuff.  I asked her why she was
doing this.  She said, "I have to get my Social up."  I said, "Uh...
talking isn't social?"

Tess