Saturday, September 23, 2006

The Central Tension in Multiuser Worlds

The central tension in multiuser worlds is between a player's conflicting desires to both effect changes in the world experienced by other players while not being unduly subject to the changes wrought by other players. This is a fundamentally unsolvable dilemma.

Two strategies for mitigating the conflict are to reduce the level of impact a player can have on the world or to increase a player's sense of opting in to the impact another player has on her.

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