more in worlds than information and stories

[Douglas Galbi]

we have to find a way to translate some of those thousands of man-years the players spend interacting with the worlds into generating meaningful and compelling environments.
Why don't you think that persons value merely interacting with each other, without producing information/objects or stories? For the past century, this sort of communication has driven demand for photography and telephony. See Section V.B, pp. 122-130 of "Sense in Communication," at www.galbithink.org (http://www.galbithink.org)

A work of art is a message from the artist to the audience.
Generally, that's true only of bad art. "Sending messages" is a much too narrow understanding of art, and communication.
A game, on the other hand, is an experience the audience creates for itself.
Sorry to be so cantankerous, but this seems to me to be way too broad of a description of games. If I remember right, the most popular computer games, in terms of users, are card games (solitare, etc.) and games like minesweeper.

As I point out in the above paper, it seems to me important to distinguish three models of communication: information transfer, storytelling, and making sense of presence. These models also apply to art and to games, both of which are fields of communication. Your column would be a lot better if you recognized these different models.

[dreamless]

Why don't you think that persons value merely interacting with each other, without producing information/objects or stories?

People who do so gravitate toward telephony and photography--and even the combination of the two that modern engineering has made possible--and don't come to online worlds looking for that little extra.

Stories might not be that extra; it might just be the satisfaction of powering up and accumulating booty, or that of crushing your enemies and the attendant lamentations.

But Dave's explanation rings true; I've wandered through these large anemic worlds and talked to their paper-thin NPCs (safe in the knowledge that nothing they say has any importance) and felt the hollowness. It's the one thing single-player games do that isn't yet improved by massively adding players.

Even when players are allowed to influence the environment--defeating large enemies that don't come back for a while, building houses and factories--that change only has meaning for a few players, and creates a tiny eddy of a story at the very most.

(i don't have a solution. you can't require players to use some designers' tool to create content, which i guess implies some kind of simulation? i remember somebody writing--koster?--that you shouldn't just write stories and poems about your character and post them in the boards, but put them on books and distribute them in the game; which is a cute step in what might be a right direction.)