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

[Raph Koster]

Mike Sellers wrote:
> Damion wrote:
> > On 3/22/07, John Buehler <johnbue at msn.com> wrote:
> > > No argument from me on any of that.  What is the role of EMOTING in
> > > World of Warcraft?  None of this is about multiplayer games being
> > > social.  They are highly social.  We started off with "Why is the
> > > /bow command in certain
> > > games so weak?"  I think the game was World of Warcraft, but I can't
> > > remember.  Perhaps it was only implied.  In any case, I don't want to
> > > lose sight of the original premise.
> >
> > ...
> > I'm personally not a big fan of making such emotes a required gameplay
> > mechanic in any way.  They should remain social tools.
>
> It's commonly accepted that "social != gameplay" but I think that's an
> unnecessarily limiting view: it's an Achiever's POV of the totality of
> the gameplay space that leaves a lot of others out in the cold.
>
> 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.
>
> > If you want to see more emotes, I personally would try to identify ways
> > to create cultural change inside the game that made them more
> > widespread.
>
> > SWG's bots not withstanding, there was a huge culture in that game that
> > encouraged more face-to-face contests, as well as impromptu beauty
> > pageants and dance contests.  A lot of that came from simply giving them
> > the tools, but also pushing people towards other people in the cantinas.
>
> That's a good zeroth step, but it still doesn't do much in the way of
> making social *gameplay.*  Just as emotes aren't gameplay, neither is
> non-interactive dancing, or dancing without real consequence in the
> world.

The original design of dancing as implemented in SWG actually had quite
significant consequence in gameplay. Players as they fought took damage
not only in the usual ways, but also accrued "combat fatigue." This was
healed via the entertainment system -- it was an attempt to drive
players on a regular traffic cycle back to towns and back to social
centers. Until the rise of bot entertainers, this seemed to be working
OK, though combat players resented it to a degree.

Once the Jedi system was revealed and started incentivizing people to
macro professions they didn't like, that's when we started seeing tons
of macro entertainers. Prior to that, you didn't do entertainment skills
unless you actually wanted to.