[MUD-Dev] Metrics for assessing game design

[Ron Gabbard]

From: "Matt Mihaly" <the_logos at achaea.com>
> On Fri, 18 Jul 2003 hart.s at comcast.net wrote:
>> Matt Mihaly wrote:

>>> 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.

>> If games are a craft, there must be something to say about what
>> works and what doesn't. This is what I took Adam to be doing in
>> working toward a metric, anyway.

> There is. Profit. =) I assume you're talking about a metric to
> achieve profit though.

While I'm normally one espousing the use of profit as the ultimate
measure of success or failure in any business enterprise, it doesn't
tell the whole story with regards to product design.  Profits (or
losses) are often outside the scope of the designer's ability to
influence as the marketing people may have mis-priced the game, the
game could get knocked off the retailer shelves early due to a
plethora of new competing games, the vendor who you had contracted
to provide bandwidth and hosting services goes out of business and
you're forced to use a more-expensive replacement.  An incredibly
fun game could fail to be profitable for any number of reasons.

If you're looking for a good metric for evaluating anticipated
acceptance of a product by a specific market (very important as Matt
pointed out above), do some reading on factor analysis and conjoint
analysis.  While this is about the best tool used by marketing
people in planning product development, it's still going to have
some shortfalls in dealing with MMOGs as it doesn't handle
subjective/qualitative (artsy) features well, e.g.., is the
gameworld dark and gloomy or oompa-loompa-land?  (Focus groups are
typically used for these types of features.)  However, if you're
looking for a tool to help determine the acceptance of a game based
on PK+ vs. PK- , number of playable races, skill-based
vs. class-based character progression, etc. in your target market,
these tools could be extremely helpful if used properly.

Cheers,

Ron
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