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

[John Buehler]

Sean Howard writes:

> "John Buehler" <johnbue at msn.com> wrote:
>
> > To me, professionalism is about the rank and file worker being diligent
> > in his work, completing it to the best of his ability.  It is a
> > mindset. For the 1% of the population that comprises the geniuses of
> > our society, they can work however they like.
>
> I find it very interesting that you make a distinction between the "rank
> and file" employees and the "geniuses". So, professionalism is only
> worthwhile to the stupid and uncreative? Okay, I'll give you that.

We fall into that 99% group.

> But the problem comes from singling out that 1%, because they, more than
> anybody, are confined and controlled by professionalism. I mean, if you've
> got an IQ of 160, people think you should be able to arrive to work on
> time and not take three week breaks to measure the acoustic qualities of
> your ceiling tiles. Being a genius usually involves exhibiting extremely
> unprofessional behavior and thought, but that doesn't mean they get away
> with it in practice.

I'm not sure of your point here.

> > Thank you ever so much for supporting my comments to Richard Bartle.
> > Richard, this is exactly the type of player mindset that I'm thinking of
> > when I say that depth isn't in the games because the players
> really don't
> > care about it.  It doesn't have inherent appeal to those who
> are drawn to
> > the current crop of games.
>
> That is NOT what I said as all. I said that depth is but one tool in the
> toolkit. You can make games without depth just like you can make games
> without graphics or without stories or without breadth. I made NO
> judgement on the players or their preferences. Depth is optional because
> depth is not the only virtue videogames have. It isn't the holy grail. It
> isn't the One True Way(tm). It's just something that good designers know
> when to use, and perhaps more importantly, when not to.

I'll requote the paragraph that most inspired me to suggest that Richard
Bartle might want to read your words:

"The reason that games sell without depth is because depth isn't actually
important. The pursuit of depth is the game designer's favorite charging
at windmills philosophy, and the sooner we move past it and realize depth
as an optional part of gaming, the sooner we can start recognizing and
understanding all that other cool stuff that people ignore."

That was my anecdotal evidence, and I was pointing to it as support for MY
judgement on players and their preferences.  Taken back to back with the
comments that Richard Bartle originally made, the two would seem to be in
diametric opposition.

[snip]

> To make a long story short (too late), it's not the graphics engine which
> is the problem. It is the WHOLE engine. With a certain homogenized MMORPG
> engine (something like a graphical lpMUD with not just a world mudlib, but
> also a graphical mudlib, upon which players can build rather than create
> from scratch), you'll start seeing the variety, depth, and virtues that
> old text MUDs exhibit that you believe lack in more modern
> interpretations. It's not just the graphics. It's the networking, front
> end, back end, database, customer service, testing, yada, yada, and yada.

This whole thing got started with Richard Bartle's observation about the
lack of depth in MMORPGs.  I observed that spending resources on depth is
opposed by all the resources spent on visuals.  That a garage effort would
go nowhere on depth if they had to spend a lot of their time getting the
visuals right.

Garage efforts DO make progress on depth so long as they stick with text.
They do the networking, the front end, the back end, the database, customer
service, testing and all the yadas.  Make it possible for the garage guys to
handwave graphics in the same way that they handwave text and they can do
what they've been doing with text MUDs for years - only with graphics.

That then would explore whether or not depth is significant to the genre, or
if it's just windmill tilting.

JB