Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Persistent worlds significantly predate today's popular graphical MMOGs. Since
1978, a small but dedicated community of developers has been building, playing,
and studying text-based persistent worlds called
MUDs
(
multiuser dungeons
or
domains
, depending on who you talk to) that could be played by groups of people
over the Internet. In these worlds, in which players interact by typing commands,
a rich culture of online role-playing evolved.
NOTE
Persistent
worlds used to be
commonly called
massively multiplayer
online role-playing
games or MMORPGs,
because the earliest
ones belonged to the
role-playing genre.
More recently the
industry has begun to
call them massively
multiplayer online
games (MMOGs) in-
stead, to reflect their
growing diversity.
This topic won't go into MUD design in any detail here; there is no commercial
market for MUDs, and you can already find a vast amount of literature about the
subject on the Internet. Many of the design problems of today's MMOGs, particu-
larly those relating to social interactions among players, were solved—or at least
studied—long ago in the MUD community.
How Persistent Worlds Differ from Ordinary Games
Part of the appeal of computer games is the environment in which the player finds
herself: a fantasy world where magic really works or behind enemy lines in World
War II. Another part is the role the gamer will play in the game: detective or pilot
or knight-errant. Yet another is the gameplay itself, the nature of the challenges the
player faces and the actions she may take to overcome them. And, of course, there
is the goal of the game, its victory condition: to halt the enemy invasion or find the
magic ring. The victory is usually the conclusion of a story that the player experi-
ences and contributes to.
Persistent worlds offer some of these things but not all of them, and there are sig-
nificant differences between the kinds of experiences that persistent worlds offer
and those that conventional games offer.
STORY
Because persistent worlds have so many players, and because they are intended to
continue indefinitely, the traditional narrative arc of a single-player game doesn't
apply. Persistent worlds may offer storylike quests, but they always return to the world
eventually; you can't have a once-and-for-all ending in the sense that a story does.
NOTE
The MMOG
A
Tale in the Desert
is un-
usual in that its world
regularly comes to an
end and starts again
fresh in a new edi-
tion, called a
Telling
.
Although the game
persists for months at a
time, it does not persist
indefinitely.
The setting of a persistent world consists of the environment itself and the overall
conditions of life there. It can be a dangerous place or a safe one, a rich place or a
poor one, a place of tyranny or a place of democracy. You can challenge players to
respond to problems in the world as it is or to problems that you introduce,
whether slowly or suddenly.
The goal is a quest or errand that the player undertakes as an individual or with
others. Goals can be small-scale (eliminate the pack of wild dogs that has been
marauding through the sheep flocks) or large-scale (everyone in the town gets
together to rebuild the defenses in anticipation of an invasion). Most persistent
worlds offer large numbers of quests from which players may choose.
