[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] What is a game? (again)was:[Excellentcommentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system]

[Raph Koster]

Caliban Darklock wrote:
>
> On 4/3/07, Raph Koster <rkoster at san.rr.com> wrote:
> > Caliban Darklock wrote:
> > > Let's say you're playing WoW. You decide "I'm going to run
> > > from here to there and back, and see how fast I can do
> > > it" - and you do. You don't have to tell anyone what you're
> > > doing. Nobody else has the right to say "you can't do that".
> > > But it's destructive to the game, because you're not
> > > playing the game...you're playing with your own personal
> > > toy.
> >
> > Uh, destructive in what sense?
>
> In the sense that you're playing with your toy on the same field where
> others are playing their game. If you're bouncing your basketball as
> high as you can, that's fine; you're playing with your toy. If you're
> doing that in the middle of the key while other people are playing, it
> may be only minimally destructive if other people are playing a game
> of HORSE - you need only have a bit of mutual respect, and both your
> toy and their game can proceed largely unharmed. But if there's a
> full-court game going on, your toy becomes very destructive indeed.
> (And the game is undoubtedly disrupting your play.)

In almost every virtual world, the play field is not the entire space;
in fact, it's typically a very narrowly defined space that often doesn't
include much "space" at all. Typical MMO combat, for example, pays very
little attention to territory and topology, and there could be someone
standing in the middle of a raid scenario playing the harmonica and it
wouldn't make any significant difference to the combat at all other than
minor distraction.

> Individualised play in a group setting is always in some way
> destructive, because that one person's play affects and directs many
> other people's play. The destruction can be minimised by isolating it
> to a smaller area, but it ALWAYS has the destructive effect of
> eliminating a potential player from the game, and any non-player on
> the game field is consuming game resources without contributing to the
> game.

MMOs are not games. They are spaces into which games are put, just as
playgrounds are spaces into which games are put. As such, the space is
continually carved up by consensus and mutual accommodation, and any
given game shifts its boundaries over time.

Even in the combat MMO, you don't have an ongoing game of combat. You
have brief games of combat interrupted by other activities (such as
travel, restocking, healing, etc).

-Raph