The Ongoing Influence of MUDs

I have to say that MUDs and today’s MMOs are both different and similar. The similarity is with people interact with each other, the difference are in role playing value and functionality.

I remember when i was young and me and my friends pretend to do something, chairs can be castles. It is much easier for MUD players to maintain the pretending mode because the imagination is all yours, not limited by graphics designers.

However that kind of mental ability is not attenable by anyone, and most people would rather put that burden on the designers and just let the game designers “WOW” them. it is just a different level of thinking. I remember I was reading a book on some Microsoft technology, and one of the young engineers told me reading is useless, I should just check some examples. Well, that will be faster but I want the whole picture. Very similar.

Im kindof trying to understand what Bartle really is saying. My current candidate for interpretation is something like:

- We already grokked the “xp, classes, levels, grind” system and now find such designs lacking.

Or maybe that is purely my own problem and Bartle is saying something else. However through an abstract lens I am convinced I know exactly how a new game based on the idea of “xp, classes, levels, grind” will define its social structures. And since social structures define an mmorpg’s major indirect user values new titles fail to be worth playing for me. (But not for younger mmorpg players who didnt get started before WoW since they need a few more titles to master these patterns.)

In a few years the whole crowd who got hooked by the WoW generation of mmorpg’s will have grokked this design. This will cause a great market oppourtunity for alternative designs to evolve unless the industry decides to kill them by risk averse practices.

Your reply to my question at Raph’s blog indicates that the requirmenet for a successful alternative mmorpg design to emerge is basically an evolutionary anomality. I’ll try list the reasons as I see them:

1: The cost of reaching “success” within the mmorpg industry is very high.

2: The method of increasing development budget is for any “new” organization incremental by about a factor 4 per iteration.

3: The time for a successful iteration which leads to higher future budget is long. 4 - 8 years?

4: The average durability of a talented game designer is short.

5: The average durability of game development talent within the industry is not great either.

This leads to anyone starting from scratch will need to spend about 20 years with developing a reputation before they have any significant influence over an artistic message relayed successfully to any cosiderable audience. The chances of any “team” from the first iteration surviving is limited to if lucky, or extremely dedicated, a creative network.

However the market will be “needing” change a lot sooner than in 20 years. My estimate says about 3 years.

Since the evolution within the mmorpg industry is this predictable the change will come from elsewhere. Someone will grab this market oppourtunity but it wont be from where we expect it. Or will it? ^^