[MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)

[John Buehler]

Matt Mihaly writes:

> On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, John Buehler wrote:

>> All activities in the world must be inherently entertaining.  The
>> maze must be fun to walk, and the cheeze only slightly more
>> desireable than wandering the maze (if that).  As has been said
>> before, the journey must be the cheeze, not the destination.  This
>> means that a multipart quest must involve travel, crafting,
>> fighting, socializing, magic, etc.  All the entertaining things
>> that your world offers.  If you don't have any entertaniment in
>> your world, your players will powergame their way through it in
>> hopes that the cheeze promised will give them a feeling of
>> accomplishment.

> That is a vain goal. I may have read a few books in my life or seen
> a few movies during which I was entertained absolutely the whole
> time, but only a few, and they only take up at most a few hours of
> my time.

> Heck, I paid $40 or so to get into Disneyland a couple weeks ago and
> I wasn't entertained the whole time I was there. I was thoroughly
> satisfied with the experience as a whole though.

And I thought I was an extremist.

Matt, the goal is to make what the player does entertaining.  This is
a statement that is intended to contrast with many people's attitude
of making the player 'work', or have enforced 'downtime', or have the
need to 'slow' the player, etc.  Further, things like exploring in the
world should be entertaining.  And this means that walking around must
offer entertainment to the player so that they don't feel like they're
'working' to get from one place to another.  The alternative is
instantaneous travel between points.  I'm not interested in trying
that plan.

>> How do we make activities entertaining?  By having them never
>> happen the same way twice.  By ensuring that there are so many
>> variables that go into an activity that there is always some twist
>> in the way it is presented to the player or the way it comes out in
>> the end.

> Entertainment is not mere variation. If it was, then I would
> probably enjoy eating broccoli more than I do. You never have
> exactly the same experience when eating something, after all.

I don't believe I was suggesting 'mere' variations.

> I'm not sure that just walking constitutes a game. A simulation
> maybe, but not a game. Where are the game aspects to walking around?

Somebody define 'game' for me.  I want to be able to find entertaining
things to do.  If that is more expansive than 'game', so be it.

> I also feel pretty certain of myself when I say that a simulation
> where all you did was walk around would not prove to be too popular,
> at least not until we have some more immersive graphical technology.

S'okay by me.  I'm a patient man.

JB

_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev