[MUD-Dev] wherefor in-game artists?

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

"Christopher Allen" <ChristopherA at skotos.net> writes:

> scale well. Socialization requires trust, and trust doesn't
> scale. One of the interesting anecdotes of our experience with
> this is that one of the limits may be the Dunbar Number

I am very weary of these socio-biological number-games, especially
when they are based on studies of non-human primates. It makes sense
of animals, they belong to one primary group and are more dependant
on instincts. Makes little less sense for modern humans who
participates in many groups, and err... think?

You can twist and turn these numbers and make them fit just about
everything. Why are these numbers interesting for MUD design anyway?
Any uses? I've noticed that guilds tend to split up into
main/recruit/alt guilds when they cross around 600 characters, yet
another number... Of course, in a MUD you have a S/N ratio to take
care of, so yes, there is an upper limit for a single guild
chat. That is of course not limited by the number of members, but
the number of simultanously chatting members.

At a much lower number affiliate-type individuals may feel
over-looked and anonymous. How many people do you need to get crowd
behaviour?  Less than 40?  *shrug* Anyway, with enough empathic
guild members you can probably compensate for over-sized guilds, or
by having rules, or by making it difficult to leave, or...

Other number examples:

  Soccer: 11
  School class: 25
  Army-school unit: 50
  Pop group: 4
  Orchestra: 20-100
  Church community: 10-1000
  Village: 1000-2000

There is no silver number...

--
Ola - http://folk.uio.no/olag/
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