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MUD-Dev
Conference Trip Report
Heather Logas
“MMO…whatever….They’re
all MUDs” –conference attendee
Saturday
morning after the Game Developer’s Conference, I checked
my bags into the Hyatt St. Claire across the street from the
convention center and wandered down the hallway to find myself
at the MUD-dev conference. I was fairly tuckered out from
GDC, and much was my dismay when I discovered that the MDC
was a one-room affair with a full schedule of lectures –
no sneaking out for me (there was a quilt museum in San Jose
I was itching to check out). Supposedly eighty people were
registered, but I think I maybe saw at most forty that day.
After the giant proportions of GDC, this was almost startling.
I found a seat and prepared myself mentally to try and stay
awake until lunch time.
The mental
preparation wasn’t needed, however. After listening
to the first two talks I was alert and my mind swimming with
possibilities. First up was Alistair
Riddoch who spoke on Designs for Continent Scale Persistent
Online Worlds. He spoke on a system he was using to automate
generating landscapes for MMORPG type games. It would create
realistic terrain, complete (now) with trees. Next up for
him is more vegetation, he says. Next was John Arras, who
handed out a page of Lisp-like code and then talked about
his "Heirarchical World Generation" system. This
system,
so far only fully implemented in text MUDs, generates whole
worlds, complete with countryside, cities, and even denizens
in the form of NPCs who build things, destroy things, go to
war with each other, and develop relationships with player
characters. He has now started work developing it for graphical
applications. Lunch was wonderful, as I chatted with John
and two other attendees. These people were extremely friendly
and clever. They were fun to chat with and none of them took
my student standing as a sign that I was somehow “un-professional”.
The talks
after lunch were no less fascinating. First was a panel featuring
David James of Puzzle
Pirates, Andrew Tepper of A
Tale in the Desert, and Brian Green of Meridian
59 on running an independent online game. They shared
a wealth of information on business plans and concerns. Next
up was Constance
Steinkuehler, an MMORPG researcher and Lineage
guild leader who encouraged developers to provide resources
for MMOG guild leaders. She pointed out how much time and
energy the Guild leader puts into an MMOG, and how they are
a very valuable commodity for the game. She went on to suggest
a number of "quick and dirty" resources the developers
of MMOGs could add to their games to support the Guild leader's
activities which would only help the game in the long run.
And then Edward Castronova (you remember him...the one who
figured out the GNP
of Everquest in real dollars). His talk was "The
future of Cyberspace Economies". He mentioned that this
is a talk where he can never get past the first two slides
when giving it to economists. The first two slides explain
what an MMORPG is and how much certain individuals spend on
them on Ebay. And finally, a real treat: Randy Farmer and
Chip Morningstar
gave their new lessons from cyberspace. "New Lessons
from the Virtual Outback". (The original “Lessons
from Lucasfilm’s Habitat“ is still very worth
reading…find it here).
After
the talks, I was able to chat with Raph
Koster and the above cyberspace veterans. I was even invited
to be Randy Farmer’s friend on Orkut! Then the attendees
trucked off to Dave And Buster’s for food and games,
and the conference was to conclude Sunday. I parted ways here
though, as I had family obligations in San Francisco. (i.e.
playing Puzzle Pirates all weekend with my mom.)
This
was an amazing and fabulous group of people who have a great
amount of tolerance for experimentation and innovation. I
heartily recommend attending in the future to anyone who is
interested in the potentials of online role playing games.
I know I will.
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