The lessons of Lucasfilm’s Habitat
Well, I thought this article became more entertaining the more I read. I have to say I really didn’t get the backend / frontend thing, so anyone who understood what the author was trying to say in that passage, please help me out with that one.
I found the lesson towards the end very interesting. The way people reacted when the programmers interfered. Appearently many people use these kind of games as a get away from reality, or to live a character they would like to be but aren’t. So adding the societies moral to the game didn’t go very well with the players.
Playing along their way though in order to get back to “normal” was greatly appreciated. Lets pay lots of money to buy the gun back. To be honest I expected the exchange of money for gun not to go over as peacefully as it did. I thought the gun holder would shoot everyone present and take the money anyway…
I was very amused as well with the people spending hours buying and selling dolls, just to spend the money on a treasure hunt.
So basically I guess the lesson that Lucasfilm’s Habitat learned throughout the whole article is that they can’t plan what is going to happen and that it is best to interfere as little as possible, even if that means giving up their own moral standards. But essentially the players will take care of things themselves and even create a democracy. And if they don’t that just shows, that crime in video and computergames is becoming more and more acceptable. Whether it is cheating or killing or stealing, or manipulating…
I understand though, that for a programmer it must be very frustrating if someone cheats by manipulating the programm they built, because it is a way of destroying a piece of art.
And as with most of the articles before I find it very amazing how fast new and better things are developed in the new media sector and that something like Habitat which was developed 17 years ago has been recreated on a much higher level and still attracts many many players, and they even invest real money into their characters. And the people working on Habitat knew that all along.
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