[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] [REPOST] MMO a temporary phenomenon?

[John Buehler]

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*  REPOST
*
* Original Poster:  John Buehler
* johnbue at msn.com
*
* 11/19/2005 9:26 AM
*
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At present, the online experience is fairly primitive.  We all know that
huge advancements have been made, but that we're still in the bronze age
of virtual experiences.  In a screwy way, this ensures that those who
enjoy the bronze age experience are the ones who are most comfortable
with the current experience.  It's anonymous, it's low-fidelity, the
social norms are very different from those in life, etc.  Those who
require the comfort of the norms of the real world are simply not
prepared to deal with something so odd as the online world.

As the fidelity of the online experience improves, I'm wondering what
will happen.  Right now, the people who are enjoying our bronze age are
either comfortable with alien experiences, or they're comfortable with
the traits of this bronze age.  As things change, the xenophiles will
stick with it, while the bronze age players will drift away in
dissatisfaction, to be replaced by the iron age players.

What will iron age players want?  Farther along, what will steel age
players want?

If the fidelity of experience keeps improving, grief actions by others
will be that much more impactful.  Something will have to be done to
guard players against the negative actions - and simply negative
experiences - that an MMO can bring.  That's true whether the negative
actions are intentional or accidental.  To my mind, that means either a
loss of anonymity, suggesting a certain accountability on the part of
those who visit a given experience, a reduction of interaction (e.g.
watching a baseball game through a privately-controlled set of cameras),
and/or a supplanting of the MMO model by a GO model.  Groups Online. 
Playing with buddies.

If a virtual deer hunting park was created, would it make sense to put
all the hunters into one virtual world and let them blast away at the
same deer?  It seems unlikely to appeal to deer hunters - who I assume
to be steel age players.  They want high fidelity before they'll go
online instead of hopping in their pickup to go hunting with buddies. 
And that's somewhat where I'm going with this: the people who are more
comfortable with other people tend to spend time with other people that
they know instead of going online and playing with people that they
don't know at all.

As the fidelity of online experiences improves, will the sort of people
who then come into the online arena want to retain their ties to their
existing social circles, or will they too decide that the value of the
experience itself is superior to the value of experiencing something
with their real world friends?

As an example, consider the deer hunting example.  If deer hunting can
be jazzed up to be high fidelity dinosaur hunting with automatic weapons
from hang gliders, will hunters be more interested in the dinosaur
hunting or the appeal of hunting something with friends? If the former,
then tossing a bunch of strangers into a group to have them go hunting
will still work.  They're all enthusiasts of the hunt more than they are
enthusiasts of sharing the hunt.  If the latter, then tossing a bunch of
strangers into a group will leave a certain stale taste in their mouths.
 "I sure wish Bob was here to lighten everything up a bit."

Remember that I'm not talking about the current crop of folks who are
content with the online experience as it is (even as they hope for
something better).  Those are people who are happy to do the stuff that
we can do online without the touchy-feely experiences of another person
when they talk to them or interact with them in some way.  As the
fidelity goes up, that will change the appeal of the experience to the
world population as a whole.  I can understand wanting a fairly sterile
experience when interating with many strangers, as in an MMO experience.
 But as the fidelity goes up, will the dominant group of people
interested in that higher fidelity still want to be surrounded by
strangers?

This question might be better put to those who don't currently like the
bronze age of the internet.