[MUD-Dev] Mass customization in MM***s

[Michael Tresca]

Sasha Hart posted on Wednesday, July 24, 2002 7:29 AM

> Appeal to "democracy" doesn't help if the elected official is a
> putz, or if the majority is actually made up of neo-nazis, or if
> people get bored and use the enforcement of harsh laws as a kind
> of sanctioned griefing. If giving players the tools to enact a
> totally annoying tyranny of the majority is the tenor of
> "democracy" -- sign up me as a monarchist.

This is consistent with my experiences as Mayor on BatMUD.  The
resident group at the time had a manifest interest in not being
governed, even though I was attempting to merely keep the game's
"Wild West" code of rules.  The gamers who felt they "owned" the
game disagreed with any sort of law whatsoever.

Eventually, one of the lead members of the group became Mayor and
nullified the role.  In other words, he became Mayor only so no one
else could.

This goes back to the overall gaming culture of a MUD.  You can make
all the laws you want.  If a dominant group determines a certain
style of play, you cannot change it short of removing them from the
game.  Failure to closely monitor a game's initial playerbase
atmosphere runs the risk of a griefer/GOPer,
only-the-strongest-survive game that is extremely unfriendly to
newbies.  Which is fine if that's what you wanted, not so fine if
you wanted to let a game naturally evolve -- it doesn't.  Games that
involve violence suffer a form of personality entropy that
eventually degrades to outright PK.

Mike "Talien" Tresca
RetroMUD Administrator
http://www.retromud.org/talien


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