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I’m wondering… is the fact that Habitat was “commercial” the only reason it is considered the first MMORPG? I had always thought the MMOG genre was a logical evolution of MUDs and MOOs.

Acromym party!

I thought that the point was it *as an idea* pre-dated MUDs?

Adams’ commentary on the more intellectual aspects of gaming and game design over the years has been consistently excellent - I highly recommend a trawl through the archives of Gamasutra for some of his past articles. Another designer and I put a request for him to be invited to the AGDC a few years back but he wasn’t available. I hope they keep chipping away at him, he’d be a fantastic guest. (perhaps next year’s Freeplay?)

I just read Adam’s talk. I have to say that I find him a brilliant, self-centred, eloquent twit. It is not hard to find artistic technologists in this industry - the industry is in fact rife with them. I can raise my voice and talk directly to about ten of them. Virtually every 3d artist has to combine both disciplines or they will suck at their job. Our engine team needs their asthetics to tailor their good to achieve the best visual look. Our artists need their logical problem solving skills to integrate their art into the game. The basis of his entire talk is demonstratably false.

He throws around a lot of pre-trodden literary history that doesn’t particularly relate to anything games-worthy and makes a ton of value judgements that are presented as fact. The Matrix is souless? Fine. That’s your emotional response. But where’s your mathematical, engineering demonstration of it’s soulessness?

I didn’t see any clear definitions of what the narrative problems faced by the industry are. I certainly didn’t see any solutions or even proposed ways of finding solutions. I just read a lot of very well thought out, educated and lucid mumbo jumbo.

That’s pretty harsh Jason… not to mention quite tortological to say something is “lucid mumbo jumbo”.

I thought it was quite interesting, and took it for what it was… a transcript of an entertaining talk at an industry conference, not a scientific paper.

I actually agree with Bruce. I didn’t agree with Adams’ summation of The Matrix - I always thought the story (first film) was one of the strongest parts of the movie - but his point about art (Romantic) vs. technology (Classical) was a pretty good one. I feel the tension between the two paradigms on many levels in games, and have for a long time. There is a constant battle between them in game development evidenced by the proverbial conflict between artists and programmers (in which, I might add, Jason is an enthusiastic participant ;). Design by necessity is continually making tradeoffs to the Classical approach as well. I’m hoping more people who think like Adams make it into the industry and help push things the other way, as I think technology has advanced to the point where the numbers are small enough not to matter nearly as much as they once did.

hey starky - you need to get the blinkers off mate. and while your at it wipe the brown grin from ya chops!

Well, I’ll have to pile on and disagree with Jason as well —

I’ve just read Adam’s talk and do not find him brilliant at all.

Indeed, it’s surprising he holds such the Matrix film(s) in such disdain. His often superficial crit lit & philosophy 101 name dropping should make him feel right at home with the Wachowskis’ efforts.

I understand this is a lecture, and one aimed at lowly game developers, but the amount of almost baseless belief offered as fact is more than a little annoying. In fact, the nature of his audience should enourage him to limit the use of terms and names that would be foreign to many, and explain at least a little what they represent when they’re necessary.

And Harlequin novels notwithstanding, suggesting that “It’s so easy to create an immersive book…” should set
anybody’s alarm bells ringing.

On top of that, the conclusions he draws from his own facts are at best dubious: He claims we are not post-modernists because one of our holy grails is ‘immersion’. Perhaps this is indeed the grail we should be chasing, but it seems few developers are ‘working hard enough’, in Mr Moriarty’s words, towards this goal — as he suggests, many, if not most, games break the forth wall in both dramtic and ludic fashions.

Yes, I’ll be first in line to decry these context/consistency/continuity breaks in many cases, but most are deliberate, many in a very simplistic, but still self-referential, manner.

Of course, Ernest doesn’t ignore this idea entirey. He follows this ‘non-post-modern’ claim with the notion that self-reference is nothing new to us. Apparently, we’re not post-mondernists because we’ve been doing that stuff all along! You have to give him credit for the rhetorical chutzpah, here.

I’m being a little bold here myself. He does make it clear he’s referring to code recursion and re-use, which is the kind of semiotic reading of ’self-referentialism’ any post-modernist would be proud of. Now, perhaps this is just meant to be a clever aside on his part, or just another term to float down the ear canals of an unassuming audience, but considering that many games *do* make use of various self-referential ideas and ‘phrases’ (both in their narrative and gameplay elements), perhaps he’s just not clear on the whole thing….

Perhaps I’ll leave it there — unless someone calls foul — but almost every paragraph seems to contain something interllectually… er, let’s say, ‘unrigorous’. Most of all, I find it insulting the amount of theory he leaves out, especially that which might call into question or at least add nuance to many of his claims — And here, I’m not talking about his end-contention claim that the problem with the industry is that we’re romantics working as classicist brains and tools, but the claims he offers as bedrock facts on which to build this notion.

Of course, pointing to the problems inherent in the difficult but productive marriage of art and tech is something you’ll find few disagree with. And that’s the problem. I find little of value in the new clothes he dresses this age-old issue in, and I find the manner and method by which he fashions this outfit wanting.

I guess what I’m sayin that there are a few loose stitches in this lecture, and I think he’s sewed the pockets onto the wrong place. And also, if you haven’t guessed by now, I’m saying that I actually agree with most of what Jason writes — if not the sentiment behind it.

Woah, longer, and yet more compressed and disjointed that I thought. Also, “romantics working WITH classicist brains and tools”, not as. Apologies. USE PREVIEW KIDS. Oh, and don’t use drugs.

Also, Bruce, ‘lucid mumbo jumbo’ is at ‘worst’ an oxymoron, but certainly not a tautology. And I’m sure Ken will tell you that the beauty and utility of oxymorons is that they express are complex, paradoxical idea so succinctly.

Chris, did you have too much coffee this morning?

Unfortunately, the problem was that I didn’t have enough.