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

[Travis Casey]

Justin Hooper wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, Travis Casey wrote:
> 
> > Thursday, February 22, 2001, 2:29:52 PM, Justin Hooper
> > <jhooper at uiuc.edu> wrote:
> >> On Tue, 20 Feb 2001, John Buehler wrote:
> 
> >> Realism != entertainment.  Sustainable disbelief of reality (IMO)
> >> == entertainment.  If I want realism, I'll shut the computer off
> >> and go pay my bills.
> 
> > I should know better than to comment, but:
> >
> >   realism != reality
> >
> > I have to agree with John that uncertainty adds to entertainment --
> > a game where everything is predictable will very quickly become
> > boring.
> 
> Well, a lot of this is a semantics argument.  Realism obviously
> implies to me something different than it does to you.  What it
> seems to me you're implying is something I would call "logical
> consistency".

In this case, I am using realism to mean "being like reality".  Note
that is *not* "being exactly the same as reality" -- a van is *like* a
truck, but is not *exactly the same as* a truck.

Logical consistency is, IMHO, a type of realism.  Why?  Because the
real world *is* logically consistent much more often than it is not.
The logical consistency of the real world enables us to make
statements such as "identical actions taken under identical conditions
should yield identical results."  Indeed, the scientific method,
improvement through evolution, the instincts of animals, formal logic,
and many other things rely on the fact that the real world is normally
logically consistent.

Thus, having logical consistency is a way to make a fantasy world more
like the real world -- and since realism means "being like reality", a
world that has logical consistency is has more realism (i.e., is more
like reality) than a world which lacks logical consistency, all alse
being equal.  (Of course, it's rarely the case that all else is equal,
but, IMHO, logical consistency is such a basic part of the real world
that a lack of it is likely to overwhelm other factors.)

> And I too agree that uncertainty adds to entertainment, but there's
> a fine line between uncertainty and frustration.  If you teach a
> player that pursuing a quest line will often lead to no palpable
> reward (or, more importantly, will not lead to the expected/promised
> reward), many will eventually lose interest.

That's true, too.  However, it should be noted that veering too far in
*either* direction is unrealistic -- in the real world, actions
generally have the results we expect, but sometimes do not.  A world
in which actions never have the results we expect is therefore
unrealistic -- and so is one in which actions always have the results
we expect.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_     Travis S. Casey  <efindel at earthlink.net>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-' 
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)
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