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

[the_logos at www.achaea.com]

On Tue, 20 Feb 2001, John Buehler wrote:

> 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.

Listen, I quote: "All activities in the world must be inherently
entertaining." I just find that to be bollocks. Changing my password
should be inherently entertaining? Breaking up with my lover in the
game should be inherently entertaining? I'm assuming you don't think
that either of these should be inherently entertaining (or if you do,
then good luck ever turning out a product).

I suppose ideally I'd like my players to be entertained every minute
they are online, as that would lead to them being online more and
spending more money. How do you reconcile it though? If a player found
a game that was _always_ without fail entertaining, I suspect that
game or world would quickly begin to take up all of his or her free
time. I know I'd spend all my time playing it, as nothing else I've
ever found in life is 100% entertaining.

--matt

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