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

[Justin Hooper]

On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, John Buehler wrote:

> Justin Hooper writes:
 
> They don't get anything out of my caves.  As they shouldn't,
> according to my rules of entertainment.  Fortunately, my world isn't
> just a world of caves.  I have entertainment for the baker.  I don't
> have entertainment for the powerleveller or the loot monger.  I
> don't cater to player entertainment that I believe caters to
> hardcore gamers.

Fair enough, but I do wonder what purpose it serves to throw up EQ as
a counterexample then, since your projected markets are reasonably
disparate.

> Exactly.  What is a viable construct for gameplay for the style of
> entertainment you're trying to provide?  I have been postulating
> 'nice' systems so that players who aren't as hardcore as those on
> this list can find some entertainment.  I may be slanting the
> systems towards exploration, but I'm assuredly getting my teeth
> kicked in here by those who both dislike my approach and wouldn't
> want to play my game anyway.

I think this is a fundamental problem.  For instance, I'm really not
"into" the hardcore kill/cash-in/kill more type style of EQ.  What I'd
love to see is a game with political intrigues, where gods had impacts
over everyday lives, kings ruled and interacted with the populace, and
a skilled player could make a lasting change on the course and history
of events.  Now while any one of these might be doable as the model of
a single player game, how does one go about doing all of these for a
"large" number of people?  Then, how does one go about doing all of
these and whatever OTHERS want for a "massive" number of people?

Personally, I'd consider an exploration system with the features
you've described as MORE hardcore, not less, in that it would seem
very difficult to find something "nifty" without either:

  a) being "first" to the game 

or

  b) CONSTANT content updates 

or

  c) having players who just innately "just get it"

c would seem to be the aim, but then you would I think run into the
"this area is what *I* like, why isn't it deeper" trap.  Of course,
that may be completely unavoidable anyway.

> Yup.  That was an early realization for me.  Sex and violence are
> the way American society produces its popular entertainment because
> it's easy.  The human mind reacts strongly to both, so it draws
> people to it.

Well, they tend to be on the short list of experiences that are
universal to all peoples and cultures.

> Creating entertainment that is more mild - my example is a hobby -
> is possible to do, but the depth of the experience as presented by
> the game itself has to be considerable.  Present a certain shape and
> the human mind says "sex", and the human imagination locks onto it
> and runs with it.  Very satisfying.  Present some clashing noises or
> words and the human mind says "danger", and the human imagination
> locks onto it and runs with it.

I agree, but as you plunge into depth and eliminate breadth, you
effectively segregate your audience with finer and finer sieves.
Accepting finite time/resources, I see little way to plunge depth and
not eliminate breadth (within reason.. certainly I hope that the next
crop of MMOGs do a better job of at least adding apparent depth.. I
can scratch to the base of most of the current crop with a
fingernail.. I'd prefer to at least have to take out a screwdriver)

> hardcore.  Hmmm.  That's a silly statement.  They don't play them
> because they attempt to evoke such strong emotional responses from
> their players.  And they demand so much invovlement to play them.

Again.. this goes back to getting out of a game what YOU (the player)
want to.  If you truly want to attract the casual player, just do
EVERYTHING to an extremely shallow depth.  Unfortunately, you'll find
that casual is a relative definition.  The difficulty comes in that
you want a game to "hook" a player.. certainly you want them to be
able to jump into a game easily.. but once there, you want them to
stay (assumably).  Now, if you cater the game only to the casual
interest, what happens when they've exhausted the depth of your game
in that casual interest, and are still interested in more?

> Lots of imagination, or lots of time, or lots of planning and
> forethought.  Or a high threshhold for PvP.  And so on.  The comment
> of being uninterested in 'pretty pictures' pops up here from time to
> time.  The 'pretty pictures' environments are the ones that I claim
> casual players will visit.

But I can find pretty pictures (one degree of abstraction) browsing
the web.  What's compelling after THAT?

> Next, I have to come up with an argument that will convince people
> that grief players are not a necessary outcome of running an online
> community.  At least, rampant presence of grief players.  It may be
> the only argument that will convince anyone is coming out with an
> experience that works the way I claim it can.  Which is why I'm not
> replying much to grief player arguments.

I agree that it doesn't have to be, no.  But I think it requires a
mechanism to be self-policing, and so far I've seen very few
mechanisms which WORK for this, without creating a priveledged,
"trusted" class of users.  Unless those users are behind the scenes
and have a vested interest in being trusted continually (i.e. Paid
GM's) I don't see a way for a system to prevent grief players from
just considering that another "layer" to the game.

> Weaving near the dangerous place gives you better access to that
> lucrative warrior basket market.

I do believe that was my point. ;) So, to restate it as a more well
formed question: What about those of us who crave the middle ground?

> This is the 'casual' player problem.  A casual player doesn't care
> about being beset or of being a hero.  Only the generally hardcore
> gamers are interested in such things.  I'm of the opinion that, in a
> massively multiplayer game, the best way to tackle things is to
> present a fairly mundane, entertaining experience.  Simutronics is
> talking about a future game called "Hero's Journey".  I'd build
> "Peasant's Journey".

Well, I'm not sure I buy that.  You're basically saying that mundanity
is entertaining.  There are a plethora of movie ticket stubs,
single-player game receipts, and the like out there that argue
differently.  If you accept the basic tenet that entertainment is
escapism (I do), how many people want to escape by being an "average"
person.

Do you have an example of a popular (Whatever that means) work of
entertainment that successfully demonstrates the ability of people to
really get into associating with the "peasant"?

(The only thing that comes to my mind is sit-coms.. but even then the
situations are pretty unrealistic.  Sure, Roseanne may have dealt with
everyday type problems, but amazingly enough her problems were always
funny and, well, solvable.  I'd argue that the only reason these types
of examples exist is because of the sympathetic response, which I
believe would be completely obliterated by casting the player IN the
role.)

> For *you*, that would be satisfying.  I'm a horse of a different
> color, and I'm simply not interested in having somebody that I don't
> know start beating on me.  I don't have the energy for that this
> week.  Or this month.  I *do* have the energy to do that whittling
> or basket weaving or just hanging out in the tavern and listen to a
> roleplayer tell everyone about their exploits.  How would you like
> it if you were

No roleplayers.  By your previous definitions, they're non-casual
players, and you're explicitly not catering to them.

So, explain to me why you'd go online (possibly paying good money) to
whittle, instead of pulling out a block of wood, a knife, and doing it
there in real life, where you'd eventually have a real product to show
for it?

> sitting in a movie theatre, watching the movie and somebody started
> playing with the focus, or dropped out the sound or pulled a fire
> alarm?  You would get to chase them down and take them to the
> police, right?  Most people aren't interested in going through the
> hassle.  They just wanted to watch the movie?  Why?  Because that's
> what they went out and *did*.  If they wanted to hunt down spoiler
> moviegoers, they'd be doing that instead.

Okay.. fair enough.. but then why go to your virtual world instead of
the movie theater or bookstore, where such un-spoilable avenues of
entertainment already exist.

> This reaction to reality always confuses me.  There's plenty of
> entertainment in reality.  Those things in reality that are not
> entertaining shouldn't be incorporated into an entertainment venu.
> When the entertainment draws very little of its structure from
> reality (seemingly a common pursuit among MUDs from what I've seen),
> it alienates those who don't have the energy to imagine, solve and
> wonder

Again, why would I get online to do something I could do in real life,
instead of just doing it?  I suppose I can see the appeal of something
like virtual vacations or somesuch (which is the closest phrase I can
put to what you seem to be saying), especially if it's to some exotic
destinations that you'd otherwise never be able to visit, but even
these require either imagination (i.e. Mars, Deep Sea Substation
IUB851) or, well, the medium you've chosen seems woefully inadequate
to provide a substantially better experience than other media already
available.  (Hey, if I want to see what india looks like, I can fire
up Internet explorer and get more information than you're likely to
EVER be able to cohesively integrate.)

> I wonder if a pure reality medieval world, or a pure reality
> colonial america world wouldn't be more amenable to large scale use
> than the fantasy genre.

Pure medieval?  So I'm a serf.. I get up.. I hoe for hours (or more
likely, dig with my hands) to get the bugs off the crops.. I eat a
piece of bread and some cheese.. I chop wood.. I collapse exhausted.

Now, I could do so with feathery prose; you could tell me about the
texture of the wood, the callusses building up on my hands, the
particular crunch versus squish of say, beetles versus weevils as I
throw them on the ground and step on them.  But I'm not sure how many
would consider this entertaining, and I'm not sure how you'd build a
game on it.

> How do they collect all the maps?

They spend 10X more time exploring your game than anyone else.
Because, well, they want to be the best.  And if that's what it
takes..

Unless you're generating an infinite number of maps.. which leads back
to content creation (one way or another)

> I'm having difficulty understanding that last sentence, but it's an
> important one.  Could you explain it?

> I *think* you're contrasting
> 
>   A. Having an entertaining way of getting to the treasure, but the
>   treasure isn't much to write home about.
> 
>   B. Having a non-entertaining way of getting to the treasure, but the
>   treasure is well worth the pursuit.
> 
> But I don't want to reply until I'm sure that this is what you're
> saying.

Not precisely.  I'm implicitly assuming that the idea of a "quest"
contains the implication of challenge.  Otherwise it becomes a matter
of getting the map, getting to point X, and looking.  Given some of
your thoughts above, perhaps that is what you had in mind.

If, however, it's not, I can see that doing a few quests might be
entertaining in and of themselves a few times, but if there's a large
proportion of times where, at the end of the quest, there's nothing
there, there's likely to be a type of negative reinforcement response.
Certainly it IS possible to build quests themselves which are
entertaining to large degrees (viz. adventure games, and especially
old infocom adventure games), but then this doesn't mesh with your
idea of a casual gamer too well in my mind.  To make the quest
rewarding regardless of whether or not the big treasure is at the end,
you effectively have to build a reward structure into each step of the
quest instead.  Maybe it's not a big loot, but rest assured, there IS
reward there.  And again, this leads back into the arena of content
creation.

As per a couple of things you mentioned:

I'm certainly not here to beat down your ideas; I am very interested
in whether or not YOU have solutions to the problems I foresee, simply
because these strike me as the glaring counterexamples.  The wider an
audience you want to appeal to (and believe me, the "casual" gamer is
a WIDE audience), the more important these problems become, because
you can no longer realistically afford to suppose that the problems
will be magically solved by attracting only the "right type" of
gamers.

Finally, I understand your point.  There's a reason the single most
played game on my machine is Freecell.  And it's not entirely a
solitaire compulsion. :)

Justin

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