[MUD-Dev] Re: DIS: Client-Server vs Peer-to-Peer

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On 05:54 PM 12/18/98 -0800, I personally witnessed Marc Hernandez jumping
up to say:
>On Fri, 18 Dec 1998, Ola Fosheim [iso-8859-1] Gr=F8stad wrote:
>
>> Niklas Elmqvist wrote:
>
>> Surprisingly often does the sum of individual effort score higher
>> than group effort, in my experience...
>
>	This is true in certain cases. =20

What's your immediate reaction to being placed on a "quality team" at the
office?

When someone says "This must have been built by committee," what does that
usually mean?

Hmmm.=20

>However could one person build a
>747? =20

Physically or conceptually? An awful lot of HUGE accomplishments were made
by one smart guy and a boatload of grunts. Consider architecture; how many
of the world's most fantastic buildings were conceived, designed, planned
by one man telling four thousand others what to put where?=20

If the workers don't have an effect on the final result, they're not
actually members of a team. They're just grunts. Look at McDonald's. One
man came up with that. One man built it. Find me one damn fry cook at
McDonald's who thinks of himself as a member of a huge global team that
satisfies the hunger of millions! That fry cook is a dork on minimum wage
hoping he gets another quarter an hour raise next year, and praying that he
gets to work full-time hours soon so he can qualify for benefits six months
from now. And the grunts know EXACTLY what they are, no matter how many
claims the managers and marketers make.=20

There was a line in a training manual I had once, which used Disney as an
example of a team environment: "Even the street sweepers feel as if they're
being part of the act." The young woman who first read that line to me was
Vietnamese and had a very strong accent, so what I *heard* was "...as if
they're being powered up the ass." I think that was somewhat closer to the
truth. ;)

>I hope its not just me that is getting ... annoyed at games that place the
>genocide of entire races into the hands of one person. =20

Design things for people like you, and only people like you will care.=20

It's an ego thing, and the ego isn't going anywhere. Most people will never
do anything worth a good goddamn in their whole senseless, wasted lives.
While it may be unrealistic to depict one guy saving the world, it's
exaggerated specifically to make up for the utter pointlessness and
futility of the rest of the average schmuck's existence. People *want* to
accomplish something of real value. They just never get a chance, for
exactly the reasons you describe -- but games should *not* reflect real
life. Games are SUPPOSED to be fun. Life, on the other hand, generally
tends to suck.=20

-----
| Caliban Tiresias Darklock            caliban at darklock.com=20
| Darklock Communications          http://www.darklock.com/=20
| U L T I M A T E   U N I V E R S E   I S   N O T   D E A D=20
| 774577496C6C6E457645727355626D4974H       -=3DCABAL::3146=3D-=20