[MUD-Dev] Homogeneity and choice (Was DESIGN: Why do people likeweather in MMORPGs?)

[ceo]

Mike Rozak wrote:
> Damion Schubert wrote:

>> The key to the issue to is to quite simply, ensure that you know
>> what your players find fun and/or challenging and to be sure that
>> you're not 'ant farming'.  Ant Farming is a term I throw around
>> any time someone designs a feature that is more interesting for
>> designers to observe than players to play.  The democracy of the
>> market will always ensure that players will reject the ant farm
>> game for the one that's more fun.

But...often ant-farms turn out to be fun anyway, thanks to the tend
for people to meta-game them. There is the infamous example of
SimCity and SimEarth, both simulations, but the former happening to
be a great game, the latter sucking, but also plenty more where
people have made a lot of money out of taking a hobby for
ant-farming and turning it into something marketed as a game, which
other people *just happened* to enjoy in sufficient numbers to make
it a hit.

I've got a sneaking suspicion that it all comes down to one of those
fundamental defining characteristics of a game: does it keep score?
And suspect that - although trivially "score does not make a game" -
just adding score to a simulation makes it support game-esque
playstyles well enough that it can be a very popular game, despite
lacking many other intrinsic features of games.

Which is incredibly simple, if true :).

> How do you know when you're creating an ant farm?

Question why the things that are:

> [I think would be] fun to PLAY.

are in fact fun. If the answer comes out involving anything to do
with "seeing what happens" or "reacting to what happens",
i.e. passive enjoyment, then it's probably ant-farming. Which can
still be fun (very fun indeed) without being a game, but generally
makes for a very poor game (c.f. the disastrous SimEarth) unless you
do other things too.

> The reason I'm making combat more detailed is because I want it to
> be more fun.

Fair enough. But..it is somewhat information-less as a statement.

I'm not being rude, just pedantic :).

My point is that it says nothing about the key issue: HOW is it
intended to make it "more fun"? Until you know that "how" you cannot
even to begin to evaluate whether it's going to succeed. (you might
substitute "why" if it makes more sense to you. Depends on
interpretation).

For isntance, I see a huge opportunity for games with "combat which
is more fun because the greatly increased detail *makes it more
challenging intellectually, and less dull and repetitive*".

At the same time, I know people who are only interested in "combat
which is more fun because the increased detail *makes it more
realistic*".

... (sure you can think of plenty of others)

The details you go into on this all sound great to me, but
statements like:

> If I weakened combat into just hit points, that would not only
> make combat less fun, but would weaken other aspects of the design

leave me wondering if you have decided the why/how. If not, you are
in danger of making design decisions that seem complementary to your
existing design, because *superficially* they concur, but in fact at
depth they conflict.

Shrug. I feel a bit cheeky saying any of this, since I'm not a
professional designer :).

But it's something I've mulled over a lot, and talked to a few of
the more extreme simulationist game designers (e.g. Demis Hassabis)
about to try and understand better:

  - what planet they're on (tongue in cheek)

  - how it is that their design aims - which to me seem dull - end
  up

often producing games that are great fun and addictive

Adam M
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