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

[Sasha Hart]

[John Buehler said]

> If we seek uplifting, altruistic stimuli, then we will seek
> activities that give us those stimuli.

Ever get full and then find you had room for dessert? (Probably
because it is more palatable, but not because you were looking for
more food.) Similarly, rats will eat more if they get one food, then
a different one (than if they were just given the same food twice.) 
How much you eat depends on many more things than how hungry you
are. It isn't precisely homeostatic, which is I think the
connotation and usefulness "need" brings into the picture. Well, if
hunger isn't exactly this way, I can't think that muds are.

The content of games can be attractive at least partly independent
of their ability to fill in "needs." I don't really actively seek
out things like "uplifting, altruistic stimuli", do I? Don't I have
the capacity to like things other than things I'm looking for? 
(Windfall, useless but attractive presents?) Can't I even acquire
needs for things I never needed before (think of heroin)? Yes, yes,
of course...

[Yves]:

> The vision of entertainment fulfilling a lack, like a medicineor
> even an addictive product, is really supplier-consumer oriented
> and I hope the interactive possibilities of the newtechnologies
> also allow for something more constructive, more participative,
> more entertaining...

John's point is more subtle than saying that games should work like
drugs. No one is proposing that mind voodoo be used to make players
play dull and painful games, because such mind voodoo doesn't exist;
if it is really a dull and painful game and you're playing it, it's
either the best thing at hand, or criminal coercion is being
used. That's a different issue :)

I wouldn't mind if game-makers wanted to cater to my desire for
e.g., more constructive, participative, entertaining games. I don't
even mind if they discover a fun and "addictive" (in the benign
sense of: "Tetris is addictive" design that isn't something I was
looking for.

Why should I?

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