Monday, May 7, 2012
Molinare Practicum Post 4
One of the things I have noticed about LambdaMOO that is different than
modern games that I have played is that LambdaMOO's game play is not
intuitive. When you play a modern video game, often the first level is
an in game tutorial. One of my favorite examples of this is the
Uncharted games. Right away Uncharted springs you into a battle, but
text shows up on the screen telling you how to perform certain
functions. This makes the tutorial not only helpful, but exciting.
LambdaMOO's
tutorial is not nearly this exciting. The tutorial is extensive and
while it does give you a lot of information (mentioned in my first blog
post) it also leaves a lot to guessing. I spend a lot of time trying to
figure out commands to make this virtual world work for me.
Above
is just one picture of me failing multiple times. Other players can be
helpful, I have had interactions where they have addressed a message to
me telling me how to properly open a door and I have also learned by
watching the commands that other players use to access an item.
Admittingly, it is kind of embarrassing to know that other players can
see me struggling to get the game to work. It is ruining my street
cred.
Also, interactions aren't intuitive either, I still
am not quite sure what the exact theme of this role play is. Recently, I
Googled "online RPGs" and discovered many that were themed. Varying
from X-Men RPGs to RPGs where you would play an animal, these role
playing games were also purely text based (with maybe a character
picture), but were supported on blog forms instead of being supported by
TelNet.
I think the lack of a theme does allow for player creativity, but can lead to a rocky start for new players.
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Besides the obvious lack of visuals and graphics, it seems like the extra steep learning curve for MOOs is a why they have become so rarely played. In the general scheme of online games, I rarely ever see MOOs being talked about. Even in the world of simple web games, which some companies produce as often a new game a week, I only ever seen one MOO-inspired game. Granted, the invent of more advanced graphics have lured away gamers, but your practicum has showed how difficult simply learning to play these games are.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your assessment of the learning curve driving players away. I will definitely not be continuing to play this online RPG, because it is difficult to use and that removes all the fun. Every time I think I figured out how to navigate this world an other cryptic command gets in the way to interacting with an object or a person. The tutorial/help pages are useful, but I spend more time on those pages than in actual game play.
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