[MUD-Dev2] [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants

[Matt Chatterley]

On 02/03/07, Richard A. Bartle <richard at mud.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On 28 February 2007, John Buehler wrote:
>
> >1. Professionalism
> >This is kindergarden stuff.  Everyone should be learning of the need to
> work
> >hard, work smart, produce quality and take pride in what was produced.
>         I'm sure they do. WoW was polished until it shone. There's a pride
> in the craft there. However, the craft is being used to make things which
> are not as deep as they were in the past.


It's a different sort of pride, though - OR perhaps more accurately a
different sort of craft (no pun intended). The overall playing experience
isn't as deep - I have only been vaguely tempted to try some of the new
generation games (by which, I literally mean, the graphical generation!). I
haven't done more than dip toes with any so far - certainly haven't shelled
out any cash. Nor will I, yet.

As other posters have mentioned, the target audience may be different (more
mainstream), and the "hooks" which appeal to that audience are certainly
different.

>2. Fidelty of the fiction
> >I find that depth
> >becomes mandatory after the first impressions are taken in.  The absence
> of
> >that depth is a glaring void, like sitting down to a meal only to find
> that
> >the food is plastic.
>         Those lessons of depth will have to be re-learned eventually.


I agree, although I wonder about "eventually" - that might be a long way
off. It might arrive after the market is saturated with online graphical
RPGs and the popularity starts to wane - if it ever does.

Ultimately, no text based Mud was ever as rich a playing experience as a
real-life D&D adventure with some friends, although some came close at
times, and others were more enjoyable in other ways - certainly they require
little to no preparation time to play!

I'm waiting for the day when the depth of imagination and creativity found
in some text Muds permeates to the graphical ones - when the quality of the
playing experience, and the type of playing experience begins to morph into
something altogether richer - there are some silly examples, like "I want to
go fishing, because I can" - but if you extend these out (I want to go
fishing, feed myself so I don't have to buy as much food, and sell on the
extras to put down a deposit on a shop where I can sell other things I like
collecting or producing..) - this has already happened to some extent.

Is there confusion over complexity and depth?

What I really want is a "quest" which is near-unique, so I can't google the
"answers", and which emotionally captivates me to a point where I become
driven to complete it - and also, the notion of "failure" - not "lack of
success" and "try again".

>I assume that the reason behind the lack of depth is that it's more
> >difficult to do, and that products can be sold and be financially very
> >successful without it.
>         It is more difficult, but not THAT much more difficult. If you're
> going to employ 50 artists to make the world look pretty, then adding
> an extra designer and a programmer to make it a richer world doesn't
> seem excessive.


[Snip]

Perhaps the current driving force behind games is contributing to this - the
graphical capabilities of computers are still evolving faster than consumers
can even keep up (certainly faster than I can keep up - and I update my
hardware frequently as I use it for work purposes) - and one of the most
important things for any new game is to use all the new features and hammer
the best possible results out of top-end kit. NWN2 for example, runs badly
on my system, which I thought was pretty high end. Turns out there are
several generations of graphics card above the one I have!

At the moment, stand-alone physics hardware for use in games is just
entering the market in a serious way - the madness hasn't stopped yet.

I wonder if it will only be when a slowdown in this rate of change occurs
that we will begin to see 99% of designers making their games "better" in
ways that don't involve more realistic daisys and grass.

I'm not well versed in these games, though, and I may have missed some
things which are already there?

Generally games (and really, programming in general) have become lazy of
late though - computing power is cheap, so why work really, really hard to
make more from less?

>Text MUDs are really the province of true zealots.
>         These days, you're largely correct. There are some newbies coming
> to
> the scene, so it's not all doom and gloom (the Internet is large, and
> even minority interests can find enough people for a critical mass).
> We're not talking hundreds of thousands per textual world, though...


Which in itself can be limiting - using numbers of players creatively can be
very interesting (e.g. increasing the content generated through human
interaction) - Insomnia mud used "pirate raids" on the town to bring this
into effect sometimes - 20-30 players online all scrabbling to defend the
town from the raiders was immense fun.


[Snip]

>They exist by their eye candy.  The voices of those demanding
> >depth of experience are drowned out by those who want loot, levels and
> >power.  There are millions in the latter camp.  Precious few in the
> former.
>         The thing is, the two aren't mutually incompatible. You can have
> loot, levels and power AND depth. Furthermore, the more that people are
> exposed to the depth, the more they are likely to appreciate it.


This to me is equivalent to a very fun, playable, immersive text mud with
poor descriptions or even the odd spelling mistake, versus a wonderfully
crafted textual experience thats bland as hell  - its swings and roundabouts
to a quite large degree. You can definitely be a powergamer and enjoy the
depth of a game - and you're spot on about people appreciating it the more
they see it. If player run shops are common, people will come to expect them
- simple example, but the point stands.

>To break out of this pattern, it's going to take things like inexpensive
> >graphics engines that will let every Tom, Dick and Harry Developer take a
> >shot at the graphical genre the same way that printf permitted the
> parents
> >of those developers to take a shot at the textual genre.  That's when the
> >zealots for depth will be able to step up to the plate and build
> something
> >that will put World of Warcraft to shame.
>         Well, it might at least give the developers with megabucks
> something
> they're willing to look at for experimentation and ideas. I doubt a couple
> of guys working in a garage could create something that would beat WoW on
> volume of content anytime soon.


True. Although, amazing things come out of two-man-bands in garages. All it
takes is one real flash of inspiration and enough technical know how to get
things moving - who knows what can happen later on. I wonder if the
time-to-shelf might be quite long for very deep games, though.

You're spot on (again) about graphical engines, too - something intruiging
about puzzle pirates / bang howdy is the free libraries which are available
to create online games - just started looking at them properly following
recent posts here, and they seem like a good start - different genre/style,
but equivalent in a way - UI/Presentation layers which will permit people
who want to write "fun engines" to do so without too much code to lay out
the front-end, link up buttons, handle tcp comms, etc.

>In a few years, we may all hear about it and be delighted that what
> >will probably become known as "a new genre" has come into being.
>         Yes, and then the likes of WoW and EQ will be ignored as
> irrelevant,
> just as text MUDs are now (sigh).


Yup. I'm very curious as to what the next generation in the evolution of
games will be. And I hope we're all here to pan it when it happens!


Cheers,

Matt