[MUD-Dev] Evolutionary Design

[Damion Schubert]

From: danc at anark.com

> Two critical factors are necessary however to replicate the
> success of the Sims through evolutionary design:
 
>   1) You need a play test group that is in sync with the same
>   population as those people who play Sims...
 
>   2) You need a designer who has an understanding for incremental
>   changes that will make the sim game more enjoyable...

The third thing for an iterative design is time.  The Sims were in
development for more than seven years, from the time that Will
Wright first had the idea in the glimmer in his eye, and the time it
shipped.  Seven years- in a game where a design iteration happens
quickly.

Unfortunately, MMPs are less forgiving to the 'iteration' process,
especially if you are talking about large-scale features like
economies, natural ecologies, or nation-vs-nation politics.  It can
take weeks (or months!) to discover that your current iteration is
flawed.  Often you can't see the flaws until you move the feature
into the production environment, as 100 people can't expose
everything the way that 100,000 people can.  And if the feature is
too generous to the players at that point, good luck removing or
nerfing the feature without causing a virtual riot.

That being said, I think that more MMPs could benefit from more
focus grouping of their game systems, especially the smaller, more
focused experiences.  For example, combat in ALL of the current
slate of games would probably be more fun if they got people off the
street to experience them in more detail.  Unfortunately, the race
to get an MMP over the finish line is so pell mell that at both 3DO
and Origin, the focus groups on their products weren't done until
the project was out the door, at which point its hard to change core
game mechanics to correct such issues.

--d
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