On Nuts and Gum

I have seen an awful lot of Muds, and a lot of awful Muds. The current crop advertises a level of detail we heretofore only dreamed about. Most of these have already failed. APB looks dreamy, but it has already failed. Minecraft, OTOH, is doing so remarkably well that for a time Paypal suspended the company's account for money laundering suspicions.

This is so because simply adding technology is not the make-it-or-break-it factor. APB is dead and Minecraft is alive because the latter offers play and the former offers… I have no idea. It appears to have been a Nuts & Gum idea; some sort of hybrid between Second Life and GTA. How could such an abomination come about? The logic is fairly simple.

Some designer likes nuts. He also likes gum. He likes nuts because they are hard and crunchy. He likes gum because it is soft and chewy. He then sets out to combine the two and make his fortune with Nuts & Gum. The trouble is these two pleasures can be contentious; possibly even mutually exclusive. They just don't belong together. As a consequence his prototype just doesn't meet his expectations. The designer could listen to the feedback (often difficult, especially when the negative feedback is coming from the originator himself), but instead puts on the blinders. The design just isn't engaging. Some business types step in and (for whatever reason) insist all it needs is just better visuals.

Doubling the number of polygons, or using megatextures, or octophonic sound effects will not save this misshapen brute. Nuts & Gum is simply an abomination which never should exist. If your playing point is It is like Nuts & Gum, or It is like Nuts, but with Gum, then you have already failed. The trouble is not your technology.

I like nuts and I like gum, but no one likes Nuts & Gum. Reconsider your idea. Do you really want to make Nuts & Gum? Nut flavoured gum might actually be a better fit. EVE Online is primarily a PvP game, but it has PvE and crafting elements. CCP Games did not make Nuts & Gum (It is like PvP, only with PvE and Crafting); they made a PvP game with PvE and crafting flavour. This is quite delicious! For all I know, their market system is just a simple set of shell scripts. The game physics are pretty simple (which helps the servers step the simulation quite fast). Only recently did the player have an avatar, and that avatar isn't even necessary!

The next time you have a Nuts & Gum idea, do yourself a favour and reconsider. Gum flavoured nuts is most likely the game you really want to play.