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<H1>[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions</H1>
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<LI><em>To</em>: "'<A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A>'" <<A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A>></LI>
<LI><em>Subject</em>: [MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions </LI>
<LI><em>From</em>: "Koster, Raph" <<A HREF="mailto:rkoster#origin,ea.com">rkoster#origin,ea.com</A>></LI>
<LI><em>Date</em>: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 21:56:04 -0500</LI>
<LI><em>Reply-To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A></LI>
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<PRE>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Adam Wiggins [<A HREF="mailto:adam#angel,com">mailto:adam#angel,com</A>]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 30, 1998 8:08 PM
> To: 'mud-dev#kanga,nu'
> Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions
>
>
> On Wed, 30 Sep 1998, Koster, Raph wrote:
> > Hmm, I really wonder whether an awareness of the "old way"
> as a "way"
> > was really present, if you know what I mean. Meaning, how
> many decided
> > to view the split between simulationist and storytelling as
> an aesthetic
> > choice, and how many actually just made the hodgepodge
> because it was
> > all they knew?
>
> I doubt they weighed the different approaches they could
> take: they started with a certain codebase, and tried to make the
> best mud they could. In time many of the originally very
> scripted elements
> became more simulationist; many objects in rooms that were
> originally just
> extra descs became real objects that could be manipulated in a more
> consistent manner.
That's kind of what I was trying to get at with this thread, Adam...
that I don't think people have really tried to REALLY do a storytelling
based environment well, and that maybe it's a valuable direction to
explore. When you said that "this is how muds now do it" I was rather
taken aback, because I can't really think of any muds that do it as
their real purpose.
Now, remember, I say this as a simulationist myself. :) But I have to
admit that the one thing that really gave me chills when I read about
Physmud was that if you drank a love potion, it made you see the world
like a person in love.
Doing this with simulation is mot only somewhat difficult, but also
raises the question of where the burden of the fiction falls: on the
player, or on the world? The love potion, by actually starting to
simulate the state of mind of the character you are playing, probably
crosses the line for many players.
Yet it fascinates me--the idea of entering a world where my actions were
constrained or encouraged in different ways from the way I myself might
behave (echoes of JCL's functional roleplaying?) seems like a worthwhile
one from a design perspective.
> I would say that one of the best things mud dev has done is made
> potential new admins analyze the existing art a little more carefully,
> and maybe realize that they *do* have a choice as to how they are
> going to approach it.
Amen.
[snip regarding UO's success compared to Gemstone's]
> True. In this case I'm not referring to monetary success, but rather
> impact on the gaming population as a whole. Perhaps it's not fair to
> Gemstone that the (potential) online gaming population is now
> much larger to due availibility of both computers and cheap internet
> connections, but there you go.
Very true--the way I'd describe it is that UO is the first online game
to really penetrate the typical gaming market (and to some extent, the
mass market). It is in fact a bit of a shock when you as an admin or
designer find yourself having to cater to people who don't know what
Unix IS, btw. The administrative problems we had increased dramatically
as we reached the broader audience--much less empathy for fellow players
was present, a lot less understanding of persistence, very little
instinctive grasp of the need for cooperative play in defending what was
valuable...
In fact, the proportion of people who "don't get it" is one of the
reasons why UO has repeatedly had to flirt with external control of the
playerbase, rather than allowing players to self-determine on matters
like policing, etc. The playerbase was simply not ready for doing so,
and in fact may never be because of issues of scale and the amount of
time more casual players are willing to devote to a game.
> What we're talking about, a simulationist engine. :)
I'd credit a lot of its success to it. The cities, houses, vendor-based
economy (btw, UO now has something I've never seen before though I
imagine it must have existed before--there's now an EXCHANGE RATE
between UO gold and real world money...) and the numerous businesses and
such that have cropped up are all due to the simulationist approach.
> > Graphics? The fact of graphics in itself was not new.
> > The display engine? Bitmapped 640x480 16 bit color was nifty when we
> > started, but was just up to par when we shipped, and is now dated.
> Indeed. I would refer to the art as "functional" (it works well and
> there's a ton of it), but not really pretty. Ultima 8 probably was
> more aethetically pleasing.
I prefer UO's to U8's, but U8's perspective is nicer. As far as
resolution and color depth, UO is all over U8... (For those of you
making tile-based engines: square tiles are easier to make in large
quantities than diamond-shaped ones; and rotated 45 degree square ones
are easier to make than true isometric "squashed diamond" ones).
> Bah, I remember your post to the Legend message board asking
> for beta testers,
> you think that didn't get people excited? :)
All 80 of them, sure. :) We had 50,000 applicants for beta testing,
though.
> Whether it was internal or external marketing, it still boils down to
the
> same thing for the purpose of my question. Simply by coming from
Origin
> rather than (say) KosterSoft, Inc. generated quite a bit of buzz.
No question. :)
> Only 5 ads, really? I could have sworn I saw both that one with the
> picture of the back of some woman's neck and the one with the
> Tim Hildebrant
> painting on the back of at least a couple game magazines for
> many months
> running.
5 months, yeah. :) I think it was only 2 magazines.
Compare, though, to say, Unreal, which had a two-page foldout in the
inside front cover of ALL the game mags for a solid year.
> I call that a fair amount of marketing, especially since the ads
> were well done (in contrast to the ads for games like Kesmai and
MPath,
> which have usually looked pretty amatuerish).
Well, that's a different issue. :)
> In other words, you DO think the simulation element had a big effect
on
> the size of the playerbase and the game press' interest in it.
Absolutely. I think the degree of freedom promised was a lot of what
attracted people. It's interesting that UO was never really called a mud
by people, whereas M59 was actualy marketed as a mud. This may be
because of the emphasis on the simulationist side.
> True, but you know what I mean - KosterSoft, Inc releasing their
> simulationist, multiplayer game The Legend of Legend! With 16-bit,
> scrolling graphics! Be a fisherman, a tailor, or an alchemist! etc.
It would sink without a trace, IMHO.
> Very true. A similar effect is happening elsewhere, as well:
> movie studios,
> record companies, and other entertainment publishers want to
> put all their
> money behind sure-fire successes and bump off the less likely
> candidates.
Comparing the video game industry to the movie industry is very popular.
There are many parallels including the studio system, with mostly
anonymous "stars," the rise of the independent artist-run studio, most
of which then go bankrupt, the real money being in publishing, etc etc.
> The statistic I heard is that 300 new computer games get
> released every month.
> Of those, the average software store stocks the "top" (as
> rated by magazines
> and other market tests) 50 or so. At the end of the month
> they clear most of
> those out to make room for the next 50.
It costs $50,000 per retailer to get a spot on the shelf. Per month. If
you miss your date, you lost your $50,000. Per retailer/retail chain.
Multiplied by the size of the shalf space you wanted. You get the
idea...
> True, but Diablo wasn't an ongoing world (with, I might add,
> an ongoing
> pay-to-play), so it missed its chance.
Not really missed much, given how successful it was. :)
> But this raises another good question: could Blizzard have turned
> Diablo into a game with the scope and long-term playability as UO,
> and still be going just as strong today? Or would people have gotten
> bored of the same-sameness, and this is the reason why UO's approach
> was "better" in the long run?
Diablo is still going VERY strong, btw. It keeps creeping back into the
top ten games sold, actually. Admittedly, at a value price now.
> Incidentally, I ran into Ron Millar about six months ago, at his new
> start-up. He was the senior designer for the first Diablo.
He also worked on Dark Reign, Starcraft, and both Warcrafts. He actually
sent me a letter once about UO, really excited about it, before it came
out. I have a wall here with "fan letters from developers"...
> I asked
> him a bit about why the design for multiplayer Diablo worked out the
> way that it did; he said that he was largely ignorant of what could
> be done at that time, but he had recently gotten into playing these
> cool text games called "muds" and in fact had downloaded a
> diku codebase
> and begun to fool with it...
We talked with Diablo folks shortly after Diablo came out. When the hype
for Diablo started to build, our marketing department kept asking us if
UO could be more like Dibalo. The Diablo team told us that throughout
their development, their marketers kept asking if it could be more like
UO...
> UO is only gaining popularity, it seems; and better yet, Origin gets
> to real in $10 a month per player, every month. Diablo only gets sold
> once.
However, UO is in a graphical market, and we'll have to worry about
client getting dated, etc. So there's a real question of how long the
game will be sustainable... we can't really go by the track record of
past games of this type.
> Question: could Origin have given away the UO client and still
> made money? I wager so.
Of course, I can't actually answer this. :)
> I know in my own case, I spent ~$30 on the
> game itself and then was a paying customer for nearly a year,
> amounting
> to $120. (Of course, I wasn't playing most of that time, I just
> kept forgetting to cancel it...)
I had no idea you played it at all, actually. :) I'm scared to ask what
you thought of it given how, er, rough it was for the first year (and
still is in many ways).
> Diablo: (1 million copies) X ($20 a pop back to Blizzard) =
> $20 million
> UO: (.5 million copies) X ($20 a pop back to Origin) +
> (60,000 players a month) X ($10 a month) X (12 months) =
> $17.2 million
>
> (If my numbers are way off the mark, let me know, I'm just guessing.
> I realize you're probably not allowed to "speculate" on such
> things, but
> if I'm dead wrong just say so.)
You're dead wrong. ;) Sales figures for UO and Diablo are both public,
so you can go find those out if you dig... also, you're counting gross,
of course, not net. UO's infrastructure is significantly more expensive
than Diablo's for obvious reasons...
-Raph
</PRE>
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<li><strong><A NAME="00008" HREF="msg00008.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions</A></strong>
<ul compact><li><em>From:</em> Adam Wiggins <adam#angel,com></li></ul>
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<ul><li>Thread context:
<BLOCKQUOTE><UL>
<LI><STRONG>[MUD-Dev] Re: Marian's Tailor vs. Psychopaths</STRONG>, <EM>(continued)</EM>
<ul compact>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00106" HREF="msg00106.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Marian's Tailor vs. Psychopaths</A></strong>,
Koster, Raph <a href="mailto:rkoster#origin,ea.com">rkoster#origin,ea.com</a>, Tue 06 Oct 1998, 19:18 GMT
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00107" HREF="msg00107.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Marian's Tailor vs. Psychopaths</A></strong>,
Koster, Raph <a href="mailto:rkoster#origin,ea.com">rkoster#origin,ea.com</a>, Tue 06 Oct 1998, 19:23 GMT
</LI>
</ul>
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00001" HREF="msg00001.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: META: who are we?</A></strong>,
ApplePiMan <a href="mailto:ApplePiMan#aol,com">ApplePiMan#aol,com</a>, Thu 01 Oct 1998, 05:42 GMT
<UL>
<li><Possible follow-up(s)><br>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00124" HREF="msg00124.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: META: who are we?</A></strong>,
Alex Stewart <a href="mailto:riche#crl,com">riche#crl,com</a>, Thu 08 Oct 1998, 09:41 GMT
</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00000" HREF="msg00000.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions</A></strong>,
Koster, Raph <a href="mailto:rkoster#origin,ea.com">rkoster#origin,ea.com</a>, Thu 01 Oct 1998, 02:59 GMT
<UL>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00008" HREF="msg00008.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions</A></strong>,
Adam Wiggins <a href="mailto:adam#angel,com">adam#angel,com</a>, Thu 01 Oct 1998, 19:05 GMT
</LI>
</UL>
<UL>
<li><Possible follow-up(s)><br>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00007" HREF="msg00007.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions</A></strong>,
S. Patrick Gallaty <a href="mailto:patrick#gric,com">patrick#gric,com</a>, Thu 01 Oct 1998, 17:17 GMT
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00009" HREF="msg00009.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions</A></strong>,
Koster, Raph <a href="mailto:rkoster#origin,ea.com">rkoster#origin,ea.com</a>, Thu 01 Oct 1998, 20:52 GMT
<UL>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00081" HREF="msg00081.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions</A></strong>,
Adam Wiggins <a href="mailto:adam#angel,com">adam#angel,com</a>, Mon 05 Oct 1998, 17:25 GMT
</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
</UL></BLOCKQUOTE>
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