[MUD-Dev] Geometric content generation

[Adam Martin]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ola Fosheim Grøstad" <olag at ifi.uio.no>

> Now, if this response is perceived as inflammatory, then keep in
> mind that the initial stimulation made me _cringe_.

I'm a bit confused. AFAICS no-one is claiming that the study of rats
is the be-all and end-all to interpreting how people will react to a
game design, but that this iw what you are objecting to; it seemed
to me that the point of the article was that the behaviour of rats
in a specific test environment corellates extremely well to the
behviour of humans along one of their behavioural axes (i.e. the
tendency to seek incremental improvement and reward ), and by
examining many many experiments of one, we can start to understand
and generalise about the other - in a way that is otherwise probably
impossible because of the lack of human test subjects to sit around
for months testing the hypotheses.

I found it particularly interesting because it attempts to explain
(and predict) some of the otherwise bizzare behaviour towards games
like Diablo - which I still consider to be a very dull game, and
yet, like many others, I have experienced the extremely strong lure
of the game once you get playing it - that desire to "just reach the
next level". I also found it particularly interesting to relate the
way that people I know left such games (and I include MUD's like
Avalon to which some friends in the past were similarly addicted) to
what was predicted by the behavioural experiments.

Adam M
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