[MUD-Dev] Innovation restrictions (was: Information sharing)

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

"Richard A. Bartle" wrote:

> The point of the article was to cut through the smoke and mirrors of
> technology and get down to what games are really about.  They're
> about speaking to the imagination.

Yes, and speaking to imagination means leaving room for
interpretation.  Does text allow that in itself? Maybe if the game
have more depth than the player can get to understand. Interestingly
chatrooms provide such depth. You can't predict what a guy that has
"ripped off your left arm" is doing with it or what he is going to do
next. You can only imagine it... For MUDs... I don't know.

This is an old topic, which I'e argued years ago on the list, but
darkness and strange sounds really achieve that to a large degree as
long as the user does not know and understand the underlying
gameworld.  I.e. he believes in the possibilites and come up with his
own explanations... To me that's the ultimate MUD experience. That is
the newbie experience to some extent.

Maybe being less explicit is the issue and not the medium you use for
conveying your world. I think you can get to something less explicit
than text.

--
Ola  -  http://www.notam.uio.no/~olagr/

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