[MUD-Dev] Bay Area Press re: UO, the good the bad and the Ugly.

[Phillip Lenhardt]

On Mon, Jun 05, 2000 at 11:18:01AM -0400, Dave Rickey wrote:
> cares about, anyway.  My opinion on macroing in games is simply this: If a
> major portion of your gameplay is so repetitive it can be performed by
> simply looping the same mouse-clicks over and over, you already screwed up.

I couldn't agree more. There is nothing gamelike about repetitive actions.
But as far as I can tell, no successful commercial game contains a major
portion of repetitive gameplay. It's just that players tend to focus on
whatever repetitive gameplay there is, provided that that gameplay results
in large in-game rewards.

> Sword of Lambada, is *not* fun.  Deliberately including things that are not
> fun in your game is stupid.

I couldn't agree less. I see no problem with including things that the
designers feel the majority of the players will not find fun. For one
thing, players are perverse and often find fun in the wierdest activities.
For another, unfun activities can serve as a mild form of negative
reinforcement.


Bringing the term "fun" into the discussion muddies that waters, in my opinion.
When we stick to talking about repetitive actions and lengths of play sessions
we are talking about measureable quantities. The neat thing is that reducing
the number of repetitive actions and lengths of play sessions seems to also
increase the fun of the game. So, at least until repetitive actions stop
dominating gameplay, we have a handy way of judging how fun our games are.



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