In other words: my living room.I've been fooling around with the UE3 editor a bit lately and it can be quite a bit of fun. It reminds me a lot of a CAD program named "Solidworks" I used to use. Albeit it turns out that this is much more intuitive. I'd like to make a working level with the current package and then see if I can make a few of my own objects to toss around later. What I really don't know is what kinds of triggers a programming bumpkin like myself might be able to pull off. I'm betting a map that serves as a rudimentary non-persistent RPG with some form of very simple progression could be fairly difficult, but perhaps not. After all, take a look at what the guys over at JKA Galaxies are attempting to pull off.
On another note, I ran into a great article over on TenTonHammer (a site I usually don't like). It dates back to 2006, and basically takes the stance that MMORPG design is an art, and not a science. One would not think it, but it seems that this view flies in the face of what at least some of the established brains believe. Have a read for yourself: http://www.tentonhammer.com/index.php?q=node/107 Jeff Woleslagle does a great job of defending his point. I'd really like to put some time into describing why, but something has a hold of my eyelids and won't stop pulling them shut. Perhaps tomorrow I'll have a go at it.
In the next few days, Iwill get around to more specific MMORPG design business.
3 comments:
While I agree that MMORPG design, and game design in general, is an art more than a science as we know it... I hold this odd personal belief that everything can be "quantized" so to speak - and eventually and turned into a science.
Many things were considered art before they became science. It just took a dedicated individual or two to ferret out all the rules and display them in plain sight for everyone else to catch on that maybe... all of life really is just a game that never had a manual.
Art being what we don't understand and science being our whack at some kind of rulebook that we continually update.
Ironically, my argument completely flies out the window when you say that there's a science to art and an art to science and they are essentially the same. Oh well.
I've felt at various times the same way you do. The problem, at least to me, is that there are some experiential questions that science cannot currently answer (I think we agree on that). Whether they can never be answered is irrelevant in my opinion.
Anything involving the human experience that science cannot currently explain can be expressed in “art.” It becomes an art by virtue of the fact that it is not understood. Since I would call anyone who says they fully understand the experience of games a liar, I am inclined to call game design in general an art. However, I would also submit that science can help guide us, and will probably become more helpful in the future.
Will it ever become so helpful that there is no more "art" left? I don't know.
What you just said there almost has me worried in way. Both for the industry and our future as a society... ehhh, more for the former.
We're here in this point in time, enjoying the surprises of life - of artful discovery. If everything were to have a definition and rigid set of rules, that would essentially remove the thrill of surprise - the fun, the very essence of life itself.
A lot of MMORPGs fall victim to this sort of thing in a rapid way - the worlds created are finite, with mere handfuls of discoveries built into them. When those surprises no longer surprise, the world becomes static and "grindy" (ie: the first wave of players discover everything, post info on strategy guide sites, and thus expect all other players to know how those things work).
When you create an MMOG, you're not really creating a world that naturally evolves over time (and is naturally enjoyable), you're actually just writing one perpetuating "section of time" - a world that exists only in the past and continually loops after a certain point. Only the first wave of players actually get to experience what you intended.
So we add more content in monthly mini-expansions.
Well, adding new content as fast as we can only goes so far since that's a race against the players we cannot hope to win...
In the end, the only saving grace for our industry may be new technology in "constantly (and consistently) generating new content procedurally."
What are your thoughts on this procedural content generation?
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