Richard A Bartles article 'Players who suit MUDS' was definitely an interesting one. Bartle describes (in a nutshell) that there are four main types of players who play MUDs. These are:
The Killers. The people who go online and slaughter as many unsuspecting victims as possible. These are the aggressive players who if you have ever been unlucky enough to meet on an online game will show you no mercy. Funnily enough I have a couple of friends who play World of Warcraft and fit this category quite nicely.
The Socialisers. The people who see the game as a back-drop and use the online freedom to make friends, chat and discuss like a forum. These are some of the people who make fresh meat for our guys in the first category.
The Achievers. These players like to rack up the points. They exhaust every quest, tutorial, side quest, raid etc to level up, show off their stuff and be the best the game has to offer. Killers can fit into this category if they are feeling bored, how sensitive of them.
Last but certainly not least, the Explorers. Personally sitting on this side of the fence myself, explorers like to make their way from one end of the world to the other, finding the secrets and bounties of unexplored areas. Not without its risks, for sure, but can be very rewarding.
After being discussed in groups, it was decided that this might not necessarily be 100% accurate. I mean players most definitely suit one of these styles but something that personal experience has taught me is that mood plays a vital role in MUDs. With such a vast array of varied possibilities, a player isn't going to stick to one category for too long. I mentioned that I'm more of an explorer, which is true, but I've also had days where I want to play in the shoes of an achiever, just get on with the game and make a place for myself amongst the hundreds of thousands of competing players running past you, all with their individual agendas.
And every single player has an impact on the MUD. Every player is waltzing around enjoying their personal experience of the game, doing their own little thing. This is why it helps to categorise the players and their styles, to break up the immense numbers of what player is doing what in the game. Granted you could probably break these groups down even more, but as a basic means to comprehend whats going on in the MUD it's a great system.
Wednesday, 1 December 2010
The Iteration Process
A very valuable lesson we have been learning in Robs Tuesday morning lectures is the importance of iteration. Iteration is primarily a way of improving ideas and concepts at an early stage, where the risk of things going wrong is practically non-existent. If a fantastic idea is made and progress is made on this it may not be reaching its full potential. If the idea has already been implemented and the game is 6 weeks down the line into being made and it's suddenly realised something doesn't work, then that causes big problems. Lots of wasted time, resources and effort. Yikes. Luckily we're getting into a good habit of finding an idea and iterating rules and gameplay before anything goes wrong.
The same goes for regular and existing games!
For example, one Tuesday morning we learned to play a game called 'Liars Dice' which I (and probably the majority of the class) recognised as the game that Will plays with Davy Jones in the second Pirates of the Caribbean films. The game by itself was alot of fun, I thought. I know one of group mates felt it was too slow and she became bored with it quite quickly. We were set the task of iterating the rules for this game, improving what we could find to be hindering the fun of the game. After some deliberation we came up with a set of rules, which having used, we realised didn't really work as well as we had thought. The beauty of this iteration was that in discovering one of our ideas hadn't worked, we only lost about 10 minutes. Boo hoo. It feels much better to experience the perks of iterating the right way than to lose (as mentioned earlier) time, effort and resources.
Recently it happened again, we were set the task of iterating the rules of a card game called 'War'. With pretty simple mechanics and alot riding on chance, the game can be played amongst a number of people, although we practised in groups of 2. Although the tricky bit came in when one of the instructions in the iterating was to 'add an element of skill'. Well now. This stumped me and my partner, how were we to add skill to a game of chance? We had a few ideas, but nothing that didn't involve the chance card. In the end we had nothing. Nada, zip, zilch. I felt quite defeated, but understood when we heard everyone elses iterations. It seemed like in order to add an element of skill to this game, everyone who participated in sharing their ideas had to change (most of) the game itself. This is completely understandable, it seemed the only way, but in changing it and iterating it to that degree, surely it's not the same game anymore? I mean you can change the rules of a game without changing the game itself right? I need an example. . . .
Ok this took me 3 seconds of staring out of my window into the snow to dream up, so sorry if it's a poor example. In Monopoly, we're going to void the money. Money doesnt exist any more in Monopoly. Instead, everytime a player passes a side of the board (from Go>Jail>Free Parking>GoToJail>Go) they are allowed to choose a property they want to possess. Now we've changed the rules quite significantly, destroying money, the one asset that Monopoly as a game feeds off. BUT, it's still the same game, players still have to get round the board and collect sets of properties before the others etc.
So I'm wondering what's the balance? How much of a game or an idea can you change and iterate until it's something completely different? It seems like quite an important cut-off point, but I can't help but wonder. . .
The same goes for regular and existing games!
For example, one Tuesday morning we learned to play a game called 'Liars Dice' which I (and probably the majority of the class) recognised as the game that Will plays with Davy Jones in the second Pirates of the Caribbean films. The game by itself was alot of fun, I thought. I know one of group mates felt it was too slow and she became bored with it quite quickly. We were set the task of iterating the rules for this game, improving what we could find to be hindering the fun of the game. After some deliberation we came up with a set of rules, which having used, we realised didn't really work as well as we had thought. The beauty of this iteration was that in discovering one of our ideas hadn't worked, we only lost about 10 minutes. Boo hoo. It feels much better to experience the perks of iterating the right way than to lose (as mentioned earlier) time, effort and resources.
Recently it happened again, we were set the task of iterating the rules of a card game called 'War'. With pretty simple mechanics and alot riding on chance, the game can be played amongst a number of people, although we practised in groups of 2. Although the tricky bit came in when one of the instructions in the iterating was to 'add an element of skill'. Well now. This stumped me and my partner, how were we to add skill to a game of chance? We had a few ideas, but nothing that didn't involve the chance card. In the end we had nothing. Nada, zip, zilch. I felt quite defeated, but understood when we heard everyone elses iterations. It seemed like in order to add an element of skill to this game, everyone who participated in sharing their ideas had to change (most of) the game itself. This is completely understandable, it seemed the only way, but in changing it and iterating it to that degree, surely it's not the same game anymore? I mean you can change the rules of a game without changing the game itself right? I need an example. . . .
Ok this took me 3 seconds of staring out of my window into the snow to dream up, so sorry if it's a poor example. In Monopoly, we're going to void the money. Money doesnt exist any more in Monopoly. Instead, everytime a player passes a side of the board (from Go>Jail>Free Parking>GoToJail>Go) they are allowed to choose a property they want to possess. Now we've changed the rules quite significantly, destroying money, the one asset that Monopoly as a game feeds off. BUT, it's still the same game, players still have to get round the board and collect sets of properties before the others etc.
So I'm wondering what's the balance? How much of a game or an idea can you change and iterate until it's something completely different? It seems like quite an important cut-off point, but I can't help but wonder. . .
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