Bartle Mourns the Loss of Creative Freedom in MMORPGs
by Alphaville Herald on 23/09/04 at 10:39 am
In a recent post on Terra Nova, game making pioneer/god Richard Bartle (d00dz, he co-wrote the first MUD) mourns the loss of creative freedom in the new MMORPGs. Why are we all giving up our creative freedom so happily? Do we all just wanna be SOE’s beyotches or is it just that we have no alternative.
Here’s a sample passage:
“Players still have freedoms, but they’re restricted. The designers don’t let you be who you want to be, just who from a number of class/race combinations you think you want to be. They don’t let you do what you want to do, because then you might upset people whom it inconveniences in some small way. The limitations are much stronger than they were before: even the designers themselves have less freedom, being increasingly wrapped in creative paradigms from which they can’t escape.”
Lisse Livingston
Sep 26th, 2004
That was a fascinating article. I stumbled across Bartle’s Essex-based MUD1 in 1984, playing from my Commodore 64, and he’s always been a net-hero of mine. I can’t say I agree with everything he says, but my experience is admittedly more limited than his (SL is my first MMORPG since 1996). Certainly some thinking points there.
urizenus
Sep 27th, 2004
>stumbled across Bartle’s Essex-based MUD1 in 1984, playing from my Commodore 64
Wow. Someone should give u a statue for that. It’s a lot more impressive than the awards given out nowadays for things like “being online when we released version 7.4.8 last week.”