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

[the_logos at www.achaea.com]

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.

> 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.
 
> Walking: the sounds of the ground the character is on, the sounds
> due to the equipment worn, the sounds of things around the
> character, slipping on treacherous ground, changing gait as the
> terrain changes in angle, presence of snow, presence of vegetation,
> etc.  An entire game could be made out of just walking - and players
> spend a fair amount of time walking, running and riding.  That, or
> they use magical crutches like teleportation because we can't figure
> out how to make the mundane entertaining.

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? 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.

--matt

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