[MUD-Dev] Efficiency in providing entertainment

[John Buehler]

What aspects of gameplay have the greatest entertainment bang for
the buck?  When I consider this question, I immediately think of
graphics.  They have a very high cost, but themselves provide only
small entertainment value.  They are a building block to make the
entire visual genre practical, to be sure.  But the inherent
entertainment of the graphics is quickly ignored in current games as
players attempt to plumb the depths of the various other
entertainment sources that they were told could be found.

Just to throw around some categories of entertainment in current
games, I came up with the following quick list.

  Graphics
  Character development
  Travel
  Wealth and item accumulation
  PvE conflict
  PvE cooperation
  PvP conflict
  PvP cooperation
  Politics
  Economics
  Crafting and construction

There are many more possible and I don't begin to believe that I've
scratched the surface nor even categorized 'elements of
entertainment' in games at all.  For example, politics can be both
cooperation and conflict with NPCs and player characters, so there's
obvious overlap.

Given any area of entertainment that a game provides, whether the
game is textual or graphical, what is the rough effort that goes
into the creation (and maintenance) of the entertainment, and what
is the rough durability of that entertainment?  A one-time invasion
event might take several people a month to prepare for, and then it
takes a day to go through it, with a certain level of entertainment
perceived by the players.  This seems like another case of high cost
for modest entertainment return.  There has been lots of discussion
about player-run worlds.  Is that the ultimate in providing
entertainment to players efficiently?  Is it the ultimate when
considering the quality of entertainment that is produced?

Anybody got a satisfaction-versus-cost scatter chart for every
feature of every MUD-style game out there?  It'd be interesting to
see.

JB


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