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Re: designing socially-constructive spaces
Sun, Jun 26, 2005 at 06:11:38PM -0700 in <42BF524A.4020700@indiegamedesign.com>,
Brandon J. Van Every <vanevery@indiegamedesign.com> spake:
>Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes wrote:
>>Tue, Jun 14, 2005 at 01:47:01AM -0700 in
>><42AE9985.6010009@indiegamedesign.com>,
>>Brandon J. Van Every <vanevery@indiegamedesign.com> spake:
>>>educated about the masks. Can't remember more. Perhaps the idea of
>>>"there's only 3 roles for anyone who comes here" is a good
>>>simplification to make.
>> That's already done with humans in MMORPGs and combat-oriented MUDs.
>>They call the masks "classes" ("races" only determine how easy each
>>class's job is to perform), and your job in a party is determined by
>>your class. People who don't correctly fill their job of tank ("keep
>>the monster's attention and get hit"), puller ("find monsters, plink
>>them with arrows, then bring them back to our ambush"), healer, dd
>>("damage dealer", whether physical or magical), or debuffer ("lower the
>>monster's defenses") are lectured about their duties and then ostracized
>>if they can't conform.
>> Doing your job badly will result in yourself and others "dying" and
>>having to waste 10-15 minutes getting back into play, so there's a vital
>>community purpose served by the harsh reactions bad play gets.
>Sure. But I was more interested in defining simple social roles than
>simple combat roles.
I'd rather have drama than combat, too, but it suggests a design
principle if you want players to self-enforce your game's roles,
limiting individual range of action in preference for actions that makes
the game more fun for the community.
To make players enforce social roles, you need to figure out how to
tie game effects to them, and hurt the players (by costing them time to
recover, or taking items or money that took time to acquire). Whuffie
(see Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom") is one
mechanic that can work, but it's easily abused, as seen in the "karma
whores" of Slashdot and Kuro5hin.
Measurement is the hard part. We have plenty of combat-based
mechanics for awarding XP/shiny things/whatever else players want, but
it's more difficult to measure the value of a conversation. Chris
Crawford's limited input mechanisms help, but are difficult to apply
beyond purely-social worlds, and are inapplicable to inter-player
interaction.
--
<a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/";> Mark Hughes </a>
"I think [Robert Heinlein] would take it kindly if we were all to refrain from
abandoning civilization as a failed experiment that requires too much hard
work." -_Rah, Rah, RAH!_, by Spider Robinson