[MUD-Dev] Advancement considered harmful (long)

[Zak Jarvis]

> From:J C Lawrence [claw at kanga.nu]
> Sent: Monday, May 29, 2000 10:46 AM

> On Sat, 27 May 2000 22:56:39 -0700
> Zak Jarvis <zak at voidmonster.com> wrote:

> > My feeling is that player burnout is completely inevitable. It's a
> > fundamental aspect of online games. Players continually discover
> > that the experience of playing never lives up to the expectation
> > that *this* game, really and truly will be a satisfying alternate
> > world. Unfortunately, no matter how well realized, *no* world can
> > remain satisfying forever.

> The counter assumption is that by letting players create and define
> their own games via community you change both the players
> themselves, and their view of your game.  The goal is that the
> players sufficiently create and involve themselves in their social
> meta-game that it in itself becomes ideally tailored to them, and
> evolves with them over time.

Actually, I'm talking about a deeper, more philosophic kind of gaming
ennui. The basic problem that no matter how well tailored to the individual
player (and the better tailored it is to one player, the less well it will
work for many others) the game can *never* truly be the alternate world
that players first experience it as when it's new to them. When the game is
new, players overlook all the little things that distract them.

Like the computer funneling the experience into them.

Or the lack of real proprioception in the gameworld.

Or the neighbor banging on the wall and telling them to turn the damn music
down.

Once the shininess wears off, it becomes mundane. The more known it is, the
less the experience of playing can convey any Numinosity. Kind of a
spiritual Uncertainty Principle.

> The problem with this assumption is that it requires significant
> time investments from the players to reach that level.  Some players
> have the idea that they need to "have a life" outside of their
> games.  You are always going to have a large percentage of players
> who drop in for a quick thrill, and then disappear again without
> either participating fully in the game, or having any sense of
> shared investment with the other players.

Agreed. I think it's a thing that we need to design around and give at
least a little bit of context to where possible. Typically, however, it
seems to me like the highly transient players don't get attached enough to
events to leave very large holes at all when they drift away.

-Zak Jarvis
 http://www.voidmonster.com





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