viewtopic.php?p=109695#p109695
Sho wrote:It is my impression that Cantr was created as a society simulator. I'm a lot newer to Cantr than many of the people here, with less knowledge of the beginnings, and of course Jos knows better than anybody, but I read that Jos and his friends started the original Cantr, in Lego, more for the purpose of watching characters live their lives, and the society they formed do its stuff, than for the purpose of causing the characters they controlled to succeed, and thus succeed themselves, as their players.
That, I think, is the central difference between an MMORPG and a society simulator.
In a society simulator, you, the player, look in on the world. You watch the characters live their lives, unaware that they live in a world that is contructed by the programmers and the players. You play your character or characters not as extensions of yourself, but as independent beings who need to be told what they're supposed to do. You might root for your characters' success, but your characters' success is not necessarily yours, and vice versa; a death in style is as good as eternal fame and riches, as far as the player is concerned. That's why you can't use your OOC knowledge for the success of your characters; that would be an empty success.
In an MMORPG, the player is part of the world. You play your character (almost always restricted to one) as an extension of yourself. Your character exists as a vehicle for you to immerse yourself in another world. Your character's desires are your own. If your character does well, you win. If your character fails, it's your loss.
That's why playability is not always the most important thing. In an MMORPG, anything that makes the game more entertaining or easy to pick up is good. In Cantr, there are times when some playability must be sacrificed for greater gains in sophistication, to make it a better, more realistic society simulator.
He posted this in a completely different context, but it applies here in that people really do approach Cantr in different ways. There are players who cannot seem to immerse themselves in a society simulator in a way that divorces their identity from that of their chars. And we do see some PvP approaches in particular to violence, but to other aspects of the game as well. It’s unfortunate.
I’ve had I think half a dozen old chars murdered wordlessly for keys to piles of junk noone needs. For what end? I’ve seen massacres nearly wipe out years of collective stories and culture (including a unique language). Conflict is motivating, but only if there are survivors, to nurture resentments and tell the tales for years to come. Murder leaves a vacuum in a society simulator that we can only hope the attacker has plans to fill as a story, with more than a pile of loot.
It’s good to have this discussion generally, but I don’t think it’s at all appropriate to discuss ongoing events in game, especially in a way that has any chance to influence them.
