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

[cruise]

Thus spake Caliban Darklock...
> 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.)

But it doesn't have to be an individual playing with a "toy" to become 
disruptive. If you have two groups of players, one playing soccer, the 
other basketball (potentially with the same ball) and it's just as, if 
not more, disruptive.

It doesn't matter whether there is one player with a "toy" or lots with 
a "game" - if there is /any/ disagreement about the rules, no matter the 
numbers, these problems exist.

The problems, however, arrise from the players' expectations - if both 
groups expect to be able to play their game, then these collisions 
occur. If they know beforehand that they will be sharing their area with 
others, then adjustments can be made.

Most players in an MMO don't seem to have this understanding; they 
approach the game as if everyone will play it the same way as 
themselves, and are thus discomforted to find otherwise.

The best example of to overcome this is Eve - there are almost no 
"rules" governing behaviour, and this is made very clear up front. Thus 
there is no griefing, because by definition, such anti-social behaviour 
is implicity included within the "rules."

> The responses to this are where the fun is. It's easy enough to just
> forbid toys, but you can't enforce this - a toy is just something with
> which a player has decided to play, and frequently that something is
> other players. If nothing else, you can claim to be having trouble
> playing the game because a particular command doesn't work, and then
> see how much time you can consume from how many players when they try
> to help you. Which is where things start to get really interesting,
> because it seems the more restrictive you are in your toy policy, the
> more destructive the toys tend to become.

Okay - I still disagree with your nomenclature, but I can at least 
appreciate why you want to make the distinction :P

I think that last sentence can be written as:

"The more rules in the game, the easier it becomes to be disruptive."

Which is reasonably self-evident, I'd think.

Combine this with your second sentence, and we end up with:

"You can't stop players playing with toys, and trying to enforce this 
only creates more opportunity for disruption."

 From this it follows that the best multiplayer environments encourage 
the use of toys, and impose as few limits and rules as possible. These 
are commonly termed "sandbox" games.

I'll leave it to the list to determine whether that is true or not :P