[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants)

[Lachek Butalek]

On 3/9/07, Caliban Darklock <cdarklock at gmail.com> wrote:
> My experience? If the SDK is easier:
>
> - the quality of content increases linearly
> - the quantity of content increases geometrically
> - the difficulty of finding quality content increases exponentially
>
> The easier your SDK becomes, the more you have to filter submissions.

This is really no different than any user-driven content creation
system. Looking at a few of them in chronological order:

1) Printing presses
2) The World Wide Web
3) Blogs
4) Second Life
5) MySpace

it becomes pretty obvious that depending on the relative ease of use
of the 'SDK' you will have:

1) an initial explosion of content of substandard quality,
2) a continuous production of substandard quality content,
3) but a gradual raising of the "standard quality" bar,
4) driven by a number of high-profile pack leaders, and
5) eventually the degree of sophistication will rival or outpace
commercially produced material

Certainly, the quality of a text decreases when one no longer has to
read it (and have the ability to update or alter it) whenever one is
making a copy, not to mention the fact that cheaper printing means the
art of writing becomes accessible to the "less learned classes". When
users were given access to put up arbitrary pieces of HTML on the WWW,
most believed the WWW "userspace" would never progress beyond vanity
pages and virtual soapboxes. The same was believed of blog pages a
year ago. The media didn't start reporting "seriously" on Second Life
until a few months ago. MySpace is a ghetto of poor taste with some
rare shining stars - I'm still waiting for that one to turn around. :)

Yes, the easier your SDK the higher the crap:quality ratio, but
without an easy SDK the quality bar can remain low for a very, very
long time due to lack of opportunity and lack of competition. A good
filtering (or indexing, like Google or The Mud Connector) system does
help, of course.

Since Darkstar and WorldForge were mentioned, where does Multiverse
fit into this, by the way?