[MUD-Dev] The changing nature of fun

[John Buehler]

Brian Hook writes:
> On Behalf Of John Buehler

>> I know this isn't the point you're trying to make, but I'm
>> hesitant to accept that the silver lining in the cloud is
>> justification for the cloud :)

> Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to justify a lot of these
> boneheaded frustrating aspects of modern MMOG game play, my point
> was primarily stating that if you get rid of the cloud, SOMETIMES
> you get rid of the rain, which gets rid of the crops, etc.

> Minor changes that fix something obviously broken may end up
> breaking lots of things that previously were not broken, and these
> effects are often second or third order and hard to predict
> initially.

The statistics at Microsoft (as I recall) are that one in four bug
fixes produces one or more new bugs.  While I like to think that my
own restructuring and recoding efforts are less dangerous, certainly
perturbing an existing system in a carefully defined way can produce
unexpected results.  In my opinion, this stems from the fact that
the designers of that system really don't understand it completely.
Given the fact that these games are as much a sociology experiment
as a technology problem, it's not surprising that the designers
don't understand their own creations from soup to nuts.  The debates
on this list are an indication of that :)

JB


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