[MUD-Dev] DGN: Reasons for play [was: Emergent Behaviors spawned from...]

[Michael Hartman]

Sean Howard wrote:
> "Lydia Leong" <lwl at black-knight.org>

>> While Frank Lloyd Wright probably didn't have any special passion
>> for gas stations, he was passionate about his _work_; he had an
>> artistic vision for the world, which infused whatever he created,
>> even the most mundane of things.

> Which was my point - to contradict a statement by somebody who
> said that the best way to make the Sims Online was to get somebody
> who liked the Sims, liked MMORPGs, and had a whole bunch of luck.

That is a mischaracterization. "Luck" is your addition to the
equation.

> merely state that great designers require neither luck nor
> familiarity. I think it may be a mistake to confuse Wright's
> interest in architecture as passion - if it wasn't buildings, I'm
> absolutely 100% positive that he would've found something else to
> design with equal fevor. He was passionate about designing; I
> doubt very much that it mattered what.

I think it matters a great deal. If you do not have a personal
interest in what you are designing, it will be (as Damien already
pointed out) soulless. That is the domain of movie-themed schlock
that is churned out for a cross marketing purpose rather than to try
and make a game that is fun.

>> Experience, too, is immensely valuable, no matter how natively
>> talented one might be.

> I've been down this discussion before when I was trying to get
> into the game industry in the first place. Most of the people
> argued that experience was more important than knowledge/talent -
> I guess I should've known the industry wasn't for me right then
> and there. Never much cared for the arrogance of "experience".

I am not sure how much of a serious discussion is even possible if
you so casually blow off the importance of experience in making good
games.

I have been making games for 10 years. Any game I make from this
point forward will be immensely superior to games I made 10 years
prior, largely because of invaluable experience. In my current work,
I frequently notice how much better something I have designed turns
out specifically because of lessons I learned in the past.

> People with lots of experience have refined their theories on
> gaming, but it won't matter if you started out with something
> fundamentally unsound in the first place.

No, people with experience have seen things that work and don't
work. They have, hopefully, also figured out why.

> But put this in your pipe and smoke it: Frank Lloyd Wright didn't
> make gas stations and low cost housing because he wanted the
> challenge; he was unemployable. He was arrogant, disagreeable,
> impatient with authority, and all around a grumpy gus - but he is
> probably the greatest architect in the past 200 years (if not
> longer). History's greatest inventors are infamous for being
> unemployable - Charles Babbage had dead monkeys flung in his
> window while he was on his deathbed.

I really think the Frank Lloyd Wright hero-worshipping example is
not only a bit worn out but also wildly inapplicable. I am willing
to stipulate that Frank Lloyd Wright was a brilliant architecht if
you'll promise to stop gushing about him. :)

Frank Lloyd Wright was not creating consumer entertainment.

A game developer IS creating consumer entertainment. A game
developer needs to make a product that will be enjoyed by thousands
(or millions, depending upon the platform and genre) of customers
who will each pay a small portion of the cost of its creation. With
the possible exception of games like America's Army, a game
developer has to get paid by each individual user of his product- an
architect does not.

The two types of design are really not very comparable whatsoever.

> So, to answer you original question - a great designer is someone
> who can design something great that wouldn't exist if he, himself,
> didn't design it - something that inspires other creators with new
> ideas and courage - and the world would be worse off without his
> contributions.

Honestly, this has very little to do with developing games. A great
game does not need to inspire other creatores with "new ideas and
courage" in order to be great. Also, I daresay that the world would
not be "worse off" without even the best games ever made. That is a
pretty severe overstatement. One of my favorite games, as a player,
was Diablo 2. The world would not be "worse off" without Diablo 2.

> He doesn't have to be a model employee, and I dare say that if he
> truly wanted to create something unique, there's no way he COULD
> BE.

This sounds to me like the theory of an anti-social, non-team player
trying to justify their behavior by saying "only a jerk like me
could ever make something great." I am not saying that about YOU, I
am saying that the above words sound like the argument such an
individual would make.

Being anti-social and disagreeable are not requirements for
greatness or creativity. It is, quite frankly, insulting to say so.

--
Michael Hartman, J.D. (http://www.thresholdrpg.com)
President & CEO, Threshold Virtual Environments, Inc.
University of Georgia School of Law, 1995-1998
Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, 1990-1994
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