[MUD-Dev] Psychology and game design (Was Geometric content generation)

[Matt Mihaly]

On Mon, 15 Oct 2001, Ola Fosheim [iso-8859-1] Gr=F8stad wrote:
> Matt Mihaly wrote:
>> On Thu, 4 Oct 2001, Ola Fosheim Gr=F8stad wrote:
 
>>> No, that's not my main gripe.  The main point is that now we'll
>>> have upcoming self-taught game designers (with no knowledge of
>>> the various directions in the field of psychology)
  
>> Um, how many game designers do you know that aren't self-taught? 
 
> I know of some that are not self-taught in psychology.

Indeed, but they are still self-taught game designers. 

>> Why are you so offended by that idea? It's only a bad thing if
>> you think there's something wrong with being a rat.
 
> THANK YOU FOR PROVING MY POINT!!!

Shrug. It's just a matter of avoiding all the value judgements. Rat,
human, whatever. I'm me, regardless of what you call me or liken me
to.

>> Fair enough, but I think that any practical discussion on the
>> matter needs to keep at the forefront of your mind that most of
>> the MUDs that people play are there to make money, and thus
>> making money is the goal, not making people happy. In fact, I'd
>> argue that in almost every MUD I've played, whether free or not,
>> the happiness of the players was a secondary concern to money and
>> size of active playerbase.
 
> And that is most unfortunate.

Perhaps. Personally, given that almost all completed MUD projects
are driven by these concerns, I think it's a good thing, as I don't
think there'd be many completed projects without those
motivations. That's only going to become more true.
 
--matt

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