[MUD-Dev] Requirements for MM (was Complexities ofMMOGServers)

Caliban Tiresias Darklock caliban at darklock.com
Sat Jan 11 10:32:01 CET 2003


From: "Ted L. Chen" <tedlchen at yahoo.com>

> I personally question the usefulness of delineating MOGs/OGs based
> on the formation of cliques instead of game mechanics and design.

I would argue that player behaviors *are* game mechanics. All
multiplayer games, by nature, encourage certain behaviors in their
players. Some of these behaviors are intentional, others are
not. Regardless of whether the designers intended those behaviors to
be encouraged, the simple fact is that the game will encourage
certain player behaviors which impact other players.

Very complex and/or difficult games, for example, encourage some
amount of cheating. You can't very well cheat at tic-tac-toe, but
stray much farther beyond that and you start to find some people
sneaking around to try and gain an unfair advantage. It's certainly
not part of the game design, but it definitely impacts the way
people play.

> Besides, we're getting into such a fuzzy boundary area here with
> forums, tradewars, ATC sims, that many interpretations could be
> argued.

I don't see that we really need to *argue* about interpretations, so
much as we might want to examine the interpretations of others. This
tends to challenge our assumptions and get us to think about things
a little differently.


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