[MUD-Dev] Re: Ugh, IS Diablo a mud?

["Koster, Raph" <rkoster#origin,ea.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jon A. Lambert [mailto:jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com]
> Sent: Friday, September 25, 1998 7:07 PM
> To: mud-dev#kanga,nu
> Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: Ugh, IS Diablo a mud?
> 
> 
> On 26 Sep 98, Kylotan wrote:
> >
> > I don't think there is much point trying to argue 'Game X isn't a
> > mud, whereas Game Y is, because...'.  With the variety in 'accepted'
> > muds, we have enough criteria to call just about anything a mud, if
> > we wanted, or vice versa.
> > 
> > So maybe it is a question of 'How 'mudlike' is game X?'  Now, not
> > many muds will fit -all- the criteria, but most will fit a large
> > proportion of them.  I propose the following, but I am sure you
> > could add to this.
> > 
> 
> A much better question to ask, is why is there such a strong desire 
> to refine a criterion carefully crafted to insure specific games and 
> servers like Quake, C&C, Diablo and the habitats remain on the 
> fringes of mud-dom?

Well, since I posed the original question, let me state WHY I posed
it... if we're all engaged in this endeavor, presumably we all have
goals in it. Yet some of these goals seem to be very unexamined
assumptions in the field.

For example, when I saw Ola's comment later in the thread about how Unix
could be considered a mud, I immediately said, "No, it can't, because it
doesn't have a sense of shared spatiality within the environment." And
thus I learned that for me, muds are partially or largely about
providing the illusion of SPACE in a virtual setting. And while that
space may be non-Euclidean, Moebius-strip shaped, discontinuous, or for
all I know the inside of a Klein bottle, I still consider spatiality
within the environment to be a basic part of the feature set.

In working on our individual projects, knowing what we want to
accomplish is important. And sometimes, we have a better idea of what we
DON'T want to do; we can more easily point at Quake or Doom and say
"that's not what I am making" than we can point at something else and
say "this is what I am trying to make."

> Based on these very simple criterion alone, the majority of the posts 
> on this list are coming from persons who are not programming muds. ;)

And this is NOT a bad thing; pushing the boundaries of the definition is
a good thing. The purpose is more to have us examine the assumptions as
we do so. Maybe my assumption regarding spatiality is totally off base.
Maybe many of the assumed orthodoxies that populate the list (or at
least the postings of the list's most active membership) such as no
levels, classless systems, simulationist approaches, presence of NPCs,
necessity for a game in the environment, etc, are really absolutely
peripheral to the core of what we're trying to do. (Indeed, I suspect
they really are).

Now, for ME, I can say that muds involve a persistent sense of identity;
a spatial representation of the virtual environment; a sense of social
experience within the environment with others that is independent of
whatever the prescribed activity of the environment is (it might be a
chess server, it might be a classroom, it might be a PK environment--but
can I sit and talk within the mud about things that may or may not have
anything to do with the game's purpose?); and an environment that is
intended, once created, to remain permanently, running whether or not
there are active participants.

Given that, I call Quake and Diablo and Unix and Warcraft not muds.

I also call levels and spawn systems and classes and spell systems
peripheral issues at the basic design level. Instead, the key questions
to decide at the beginning would have to do with how I'd tackle making a
mud:

- how do I provide the sense of persistent identity?
- how do I represent the space, and what is the nature of this space?
- how do I foment the social experience? How do I control the antisocial
element?
- how do I keep it running and thriving?

Interestingly, I notice that threads on the list tend to return to these
issues, which would indicate to me that they are a) not all solved
problems, and therefore have no "right answer" as of yet and b) really
at the core of what we do.

-Raph