April 2007
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Richard A. Bartle
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguardreviews and rants) John Buehler
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rant againstVanguardreviews and rants) Raph Koster
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rantagainstVanguardreviews and rants) John Buehler
- Importance of emoting (Was: ArantagainstVanguardreviews and rants) Raph Koster
- Importance of emoting (Was: ArantagainstVanguardreviewsand rants) John Buehler
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rant againstVanguardreviews and rants) Michael Hartman
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rantagainstVanguardreviews and rants) John Buehler
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rantagainstVanguardreviews and rants) Chris Richards
- Importance of emoting (Was: ArantagainstVanguardreviews and rants) Raph Koster
- Importance of emoting (Was: ArantagainstVanguardreviews and rants) Amanda Walker
- Importance of emoting (Was:ArantagainstVanguardreviews and rants) McDonald, Stephen
- Importance of emoting (Was:ArantagainstVanguardreviewsand rants) Richard A. Bartle
- Importance of emoting (Was: ArantagainstVanguardreviews and rants) Matt Chatterley
- Importance of emoting (Was: ArantagainstVanguardreviews and rants) Morgan Ramsay
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rant againstVanguardreviews and rants) Dana V. Baldwin
- Importance of emoting (Was: ArantagainstVanguardreviews and rants) Dana V. Baldwin
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rant againstVanguardreviews and rants) Michael Hartman
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rant againstVanguardreviews and rants) Richard A. Bartle
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Mike Sellers
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Tess Snider
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Damion Schubert
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguardreviews and rants) Raph Koster
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Dana V. Baldwin
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellentcommentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Raph Koster
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellentcommentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Caliban Darklock
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again)was:[Excellentcommentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Raph Koster
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again)was:[Excellentcommentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Caliban Darklock
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again)was:[Excellentcommentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Sean Howard
"Raph Koster" <raph@areae.net> wrote:
> MMOs are not games. They are spaces into which games are put, just as
> playgrounds are spaces into which games are put.
That's like saying computer games aren't games because you can IM people
in the background, or Joust isn't a game because you can choose to play it
against the design, or Tetris isn't a game because you have to pause the
gameboy when the pizza comes.
No games exist in a vacuum. Multiplayer games merely include within their
boundaries these additional possibilities, to be controlled for and
designed towards.
Certainly, there are multiplayer experiences which are not games, like
posting in a forum (most of the time) or conversing through a mailing list
(most of the time), but I don't think multiplayer games are anything
special that deserve such a distinction.
Yes, they are harder to design just by the chaotic nature of social
interaction between thousands of very different people forced to live in
the same house where people stop being polite, and start being real, yada
yada yada. But I absolutely oppose the notion that MMOs are not games by
nature or that they deserve any special attention or praise that something
like Tic Tac Toe does not.
There's a tendency to make games into something more special than they
really are. Heck, I used to be that way, because I so desperately wanted
the things I was interested in to be special - to be better than the
things other people were interested in. But games really aren't that
special at the top level. We've got rules for designing particular genres
of games, but no steadfast rules for games as a whole that will always be
true in every situation. As such, games are a classification of a million
different things that are only related because we choose them to be
related. Any generalizations we make will neccessarily only speak to a
subset of that. So we need to be really careful about where we draw the
lines.
> Even in the combat MMO, you don't have an ongoing game of combat. You
> have brief games of combat interrupted by other activities (such as
> travel, restocking, healing, etc).
You could say that about any RPG, multiplayer or not. That's not a proper
division for "game". Otherwise, we'd have to say that each level in Star
Fox is a different game, and the tank levels versus the fighter levels are
fundamentally different games. We can assume most complex games are made
up of interconnected sessions. Point out that a tooth is not a nail does
not change the nature of the beast.
--
Sean Howard - [DESIGN] What is a game? (again)was:[Excellentcommentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Vincent Archer
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellentcommentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] cruise
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] cruise
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] John Buehler
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] cruise
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] cruise
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Caliban Darklock
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] cruise
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Caliban Darklock
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] cruise
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Caliban Darklock
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Caliban Darklock
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Caliban Darklock
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Caliban Darklock
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Morris Cox
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] cruise
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Lachek Butalek
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Jeffrey Kesselman
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) John Buehler
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Hideto Koudanshi
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Caliban Darklock
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellentcommentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] John Buehler
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again)was:[Excellentcommentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Dave Scheffer
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again)was:[Excellentcommentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] What is a game?(again)was:[Excellentcommentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] John Buehler
- [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellentcommentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Hideto Koudanshi
- [DESIGN] Rewards cruise
- [DESIGN] Rewards Raph Koster
- [DESIGN] Rewards cruise
- [DESIGN] Rewards John Buehler
- [DESIGN] Rewards cruise
- [DESIGN] Rewards Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Rewards Mike Sellers
- [DESIGN] Rewards Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Rewards cruise
- [DESIGN] Rewards Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Rewards cruise
- [DESIGN] Rewards Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Rewards cruise
- [DESIGN] Rewards John Buehler
- [DESIGN] Rewards Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Rewards John Buehler
- [DESIGN] Rewards Mike Sellers
- [DESIGN] Rewards John Buehler
- [DESIGN] Rewards Jean, Yannick
- [DESIGN] Rewards Dana V. Baldwin
- [DESIGN] Rewards Jeffrey Kesselman
- [DESIGN] Rewards Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Rewards cruise
- [DESIGN] Rewards Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Rewards cruise
- [DESIGN] Rewards Jean, Yannick
- [DESIGN] Rewards Mike Sellers
- [DESIGN] Rewards Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Rewards Jean, Yannick
- [DESIGN] Rewards cruise
- [DESIGN] Rewards Paolo Piselli
- [DESIGN] Rewards Michael Hartman
- [DESIGN] Rewards Raph Koster
- [DESIGN] Rewards cruise
- [DESIGN] Rewards Raph Koster
- [DESIGN] Rewards Jeffrey Kesselman
- [DESIGN] Rewards Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Rewards Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Rewards Mike Sellers
- [DESIGN] Rewards Caliban Darklock
- [DESIGN] Rewards cruise
- [DESIGN] Rewards John Buehler
- [DESIGN] Rewards Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Rewards John Buehler
- [DESIGN] Rewards Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Rewards John Buehler
- [DESIGN] Rewards Dave Scheffer
- [DESIGN] Rewards Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Rewards David Love
- [DESIGN] Rewards Johnicholas Hines
- [DESIGN] Rewards Raph Koster
- [DESIGN] Rewards Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Rewards Michael Hartman
- [DESIGN] Rewards Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Rewards Sulka Haro
- [DESIGN] Rewards Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Rewards Michael Hartman
- [DESIGN] Rewards Michael Hartman
- [DESIGN] Rewards John Buehler
- [DESIGN] Rewards Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Rewards Dave Scheffer
- [DESIGN] Rewards Caliban Darklock
- [DESIGN] Rewards Adam Martin
- Downtime & SWG (Was: Importance of emoting) Sean Howard
- Downtime & SWG (Was: Importance of emoting) Raph Koster
- Downtime & SWG (Was: Importance of emoting) Sean Howard
- Framing and Player Psychology (was: Importance of emoting) Tess Snider
- [DESIGN/OPERATION] A rant about NPC ops Jeffrey Kesselman
- [DESIGN/OPERATION] A rant about NPC ops Dave Scheffer
- [DESIGN/OPERATION] A rant about NPC ops Jeffrey Kesselman
- [DESIGN/OPERATION] A rant about NPC ops cruise
- [DESIGN/OPERATION] A rant about NPC ops Jeffrey Kesselman
- [DESIGN/OPERATION] A rant about NPC ops Peter Keeler
- [DESIGN/OPERATION] A rant about NPC ops Dave Scheffer
- [DESIGN/OPERATION] A rant about NPC ops Jeffrey Kesselman
- [DESIGN/OPERATION] A rant about NPC ops Dave Scheffer
- [DESIGN/OPERATION] A rant about NPC ops Jeffrey Kesselman
- [DESIGN/OPERATION] A rant about NPC ops Jeffrey Kesselman
- [DESIGN/OPERATION] A rant about NPC ops John Buehler
- What is agame?(again)was:[Excellentcommentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] John Buehler
- What is agame?(again)was:[Excellentcommentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] cruise
- What is agame?(again)was:[Excellentcommentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system] Dave Scheffer
- [DESIGN] Crafting Systems: Supply-Driven vs. Demand-Driven Shannon Sullivan
- [DESIGN] Crafting Systems: Supply-Driven vs. Demand-Driven cruise
- [DESIGN] Crafting Systems: Supply-Driven vs.Demand-Driven Dave Scheffer
- [DESIGN] Crafting Systems: Supply-Driven vs. Demand-Driven Morris Cox
- [DESIGN] Crafting Systems: Supply-Driven vs. Demand-Driven Michael Hartman
- [DESIGN] Crafting Systems: Supply-Driven vs. Demand-Driven Chris Richards
- [DESIGN] Crafting Systems: Supply-Driven vs.Demand-Driven John Buehler
- [DESIGN] Crafting Systems: Supply-Drivenvs.Demand-Driven Dave Scheffer
- RE : [DESIGN] Rewards Jean, Yannick
- [DESIGN] Is photorealism the goal? ( was Ray traced environments) Jeffrey Kesselman
- [TECH] Client time-server time sync Roger D Vargas
- [TECH] Client time-server time sync John Buehler
- [TECH] Client time-server time sync Jeffrey Kesselman
- [TECH] Client time-server time sync Hudson, Thomas C.
- [TECH] Client time-server time sync Lachek Butalek
- [TECH] Client time-server time sync Adam Martin
- Whatisagame?(again)was:[Excellentcommentary onVanguard's diplomacy system] Dave Scheffer