[MUD-Dev] Metrics for assessing game design [was: When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original with the gameplay?]

[Paul Schwanz]

Matt Mihaly wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Jul 2003, ceo wrote:
>> On Wed, 09 Jul 2003 09:55:00 +0100 ceo  <ceo at grexengine.com> wrote:

>>   P.S. About 50% of those who've dismissed this out of hand have
>>   been professional games developers who felt that "of course
>>   it's not possible to rate fun, and never will be; it's
>>   something you feel in your gut, not something you can
>>   analyse...[subtext: how dare you imply that my job as a games
>>   designer can be pared down to a few simple rules; it's much
>>   more complex than that]". I only really mean this as the
>>   combination of a metric, plus that the act of evaluating
>>   against it generates guidelines for how you can improve a
>>   game's score.

> Well, I don't think it's a matter of not being able to analyse. I
> think it's a matter of there being no such thing as an "ultimately
> fun" game.  The very idea of paradise misses the point. There can
> be no paradise, no ultimate game, without specifying who the
> paradise is for or who will be playing the game. The ultimately
> fun game for me is almost surely not the same as for you or for
> Nancy Reagan. In the end, I don't think it can be measured simply
> because there is no common measuring stick.

And thakfully so for those such as yourself or Daniel James who are
courting the niche markets with original gameplay.  (Beware thread
convergence.)  However, I suspect that those who dismiss Adam's
proposed metrics out of hand on such a basis might simpy deny
themselves the use of a tool that could be quite effective and
valuable once its limitations are understood.  Perhaps it might be
more accurate to state that this set of metrics helps rate a certain
kind of fun, but this is reason to employ it wisely, not to dismiss
it out of hand.

--Phin
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