[MUD-Dev] Finding What a Gamer Lacks in Their Day

[John Buehler]

Sasha Hart writes:
> [John Buehler]

>>  Entertainment is chosen because it provides a stimulus that is
>>  otherwise missing or lacking in the person's life.

> Let me try a few:

>   - Choice of entertainment follows novelty.

A sense of exploration is lacking in the person's life.  Frequently,
this is simply dissatisfaction with their situation in life and
they're looking for something, anything, to change the status quo.

>   - Choice of entertainment follows what's worked before and what
>   is familiar.

So they have a desire for a prior stimulus.  I see this as pretty
much a non sequitor.

>   - Choice of entertainment is driven by systematic cost/benefit
>   analysis of some kind (e.g. a weighing of pros and cons to
>   playing.)

Those 'pros' and 'cons' involve the enjoyment of playing versus the
cost.  The enjoyment of playing is the issue of which stimulus the
individual is seeking.

>   - Choice of entertainment is driven by perceived prospect.

Hmm?

>   - Choice of entertainment is impulsive and unpredictable.

Lack of introspection such that the person doesn't know why they're
doing what they're doing doesn't constitute a distinct motivation
from a desire for a given stimulus.

>> So I need to find somebody who doesn't play computer games, get
>> to know them really well and then predict what games they will
>> play when exposed to a broad range of them?  That seems to be the
>> requirement for you to begin to believe my assertion.  I don't
>> see that happening anytime soon.

> The standard I was trying to convey was that, if you want a
> strongly stated theory like that to pass muster, *even as a
> thought experiment*, it ought to be potentially testable (a
> different proposition from actually being tested, or even
> practically-doable-by-you.) In other words, I'm not satisfied by a
> post-hoc explanatory device, but you are welcome to be.

Okay.

> Although, with a running game it isn't too hard to find out a lot
> of useful things about what does motivate play.  Change
> areas/systems in a way you have a hunch about and watch the
> difference and change in their traffic.

I would want to present a questionairre to find out exactly what
they enjoyed or disliked about a specific game feature.

>> Perhaps all I'm really after is the goal of game designers paying
>> more attention to the psychological profile of their target
>> market.  At a deeper level than just 'they like to blow things
>> up'.

> This makes sense, even if the target market isn't any different
> from the market being served by "blow things up"!  In other words,
> I wonder to what extent we don't even have a satisfying
> one-size-fits-all, let alone games which are well tailored to
> types of people, whatever they are. To be terribly critical, many
> entertainments are hardly worth anyone's time, let alone worthy of
> worrying about whether they're worth some specific kind of
> person's time.

If the inspection of target markets proceeds to greater and greater
depth, we start to consider the impact that the games have on the
players.  When that happens, we have to start asking a question
anew: are the publishers of games responsible for what they publish,
or is it entirely the responsibility of those who consume the games?

> This stuff is at least superficially already addressed with things
> like surveys, and of course a keen eye on the bottom line - what
> people actually buy and play gives the most directly useful
> information for "profiling" the market.

I couldn't disagree more.  If drugs such as cocaine were made legal,
I suspect that an entire generation would be destroyed by them.
That would be our means of learning about the true dangers of legal,
highly addictive drugs.  We already have a similar treatment in the
case of nicotine, but the damage is so engrained in our culture that
we don't even see it for what it is.

> But I think that non-commercial entertainment (and art for that
> matter) often shows us how the selective processes there are in
> some ways less permissive than we would like, and in other ways
> more permissive.

I didn't understand this part.

> User-programmable games seem to plumb the design-space a little.
> For example, I think you'll find that MUSH as a platform gets
> taken in a number of directions which have more or less
> differentiated and developed themselves highly over time to
> functions which serve distinct populations. Is this kind of
> self-managing approach to design an efficient way of getting at
> the same problem you are talking about, John?

Nope, because the people who are coming up with the features are
just as ignorant about human psychology as the folks who are
currently cranking out the games.  Less so, in fact.

Perhaps the best analogy that I can come up with for what I'm
talking about is a planned city versus an unplanned city.  The
infrastructure in an unplanned city is usually an absolute nightmare
and has all sorts of pain involved for the inhabitants.  Because of
the investment in the city, nobody wants to move away and they
endure the pain.  On the other hand, the infrastructure in a planned
city is, well, planned.  There are no guarantees that the planners
have any idea of what they're doing, but they're applying themselves
to the planning process.  As they gain in experience, the cities
that they plan will be more and more idyllic places.  At least until
some basic supposition is changed.

This is an analogy for game design because right now we're making
unplanned games from a psychological standpoint.  We're just doing
whatever we need to do in order to get customers entertained (get
water from one point to another, by analogy).  But that's missing
out on a larger issue of whether or not that entertainment has a
positive net effect on those who are being 'entertained' by it.

Hopefully, that gives a little better sense of what I'm concerned
about.  Analogies around here tend to get picked to pieces.  I hope
you'll see the forest despite some of the trees being a little bit
blighted (yet another analogy :)

JB

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