[MUD-Dev] Stranger in a Strange Land (was Usability and interface and who the hell is supposed to be playing, anyway? (Was: PK

[Maddy <maddy#fysh,org>]

Previously, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote....
> Sender: Maddy <maddy#fysh,org>
> 
> On Thu, 25 Sep 1997 08:17:06 PST8PDT, clawrenc#cup,hp.com wrote:
> 
> >Is lack of a social context for new players a Bad Thing?  There are
> >ways to work around much of the initial barrier to entry to the
> >non-social world problem (cf Avalon's guides), however that doesn't
> >address the problems of entering the social world, or the question of
> >social context.
> 
> There's also the consideration of other social contexts. Some of the
> people I used to MUSH with on DarkWeb (now defunct) were friends I had
> met at gaming conventions, and many of the players there turned out to
> have other characters elsewhere; I went from DarkWeb to Cajun Nights and
> found myself with an instant social context in the sense that I as a
> player knew and could contact a large number of people there. These
> people could, from their previous association with me, introduce me as a
> character to others, providing another accelerated social context. 
> 
> Similar sorts of accelreated social context can be gained from
> surroundings, like a university, and from other channels like webrings,
> IRC, guestbooks, or even newsgroups and mailing lists. If, for example,
> someone here was describing their new server and it sounded really cool,
> I might log on there. Chances are I'd name my character 'Caliban', which
> would provide some instant recognition, and I would probably find myself
> in some social context with other list members on the server. (Whether
> that context would be positive is rather iffy.) 
> 
> Unfortunately, people who have the experience of being in some social
> context or other on first login (university students are rather large
> context. Sort of like the way people with T-1 lines out of their houses
> tend to do web sites that take an outrageous amount of time to DL over a
> modem, and people with really big screens will do interfaces that don't
> fit on most other people's monitors. Natural human narcissism, which I
> could probably write several more pages on...

When I first arrived at university I only knew one person, and he was my
roommate so it was kinda hard not to know him.  Everyone else I met either
through my course or through the socities/clubs I joined - namely the had
similiar interests to me.  I didn't know everyone, I doubt by the end of the
course I knew even 1/10th of my peers.

This analogy fits quite well to the idea of joining a mud and not knowing
anyone.  Given that there are pubs where you can meet and chat to other
people, and guilds/religions where people of similiar interests/faith can
meet you could (if you want) gain a collection of people that you consider
to be your friend.  Add a method in which you can associate these people
with a name (they might not tell you their real one) which decays over time
and I think you'll have a pretty nice system.

Maddy