[MUD-Dev] Expected value and standard deviation.

[Katie Lukas]

<EdNote: Quote fixed>

And Raph Koster wrote:
> Jeff Cole wrote:

>> Yeah.  I don't think it matters much if your advancement is broad
>> or narrow, tall or short, subtle, obvious or even reversed, as
>> long as the feedback to the player is absolutely obvious and
>> unmistakable.

>> I think you can get away with anything so long as you tell the
>> player that he is, in no uncertain terms, doing very well, and is
>> now mightier than he was before.

> I don't think it's in the Laws, but I've always treated it as a
> Law:

>     Players will do the boring thing rather than the fun thing, if
>     they advance faster that way.

> As a corollary:

>     There's no way to get rid of the "boring" way to play your
>     game. Players can always choose to play conservatively to
>     maximize return while minimizing risk.

I'm not sure that this doesn't move us into Elephant Territory - as
in the Elephant in the Room.  Personally, I think that the above
statements reflect some central assumptions about what constitutes
good (or fun) gameplay that I'm not so sure are accurate, or at
least not accurate for enough people.

As for the corollary to Raph's initial statement, I absolutely could
not disagree more.  The boring way(s) is/are a function of
traditional game design, and the statement implies that it is
impossible to design a game that does not feature at least one
"boring" method of advancement.  IMHO, if this is the way we are
going to think as game designers, what on earth is the point?  Why
would we begin designing a game around a central assumption that at
a minimum part of advancement has to be boring?

Players constantly and consistently generate feedback (a LOT of it)
about what is interesting and what is boring.  While definitions of
interesting vary a great deal, definitions of boring remain fairly
consistent - mostly repetitive activities and obvious outcomes.

And yet, the foundation of most games - released and in development
- feature huge quantities of repetitive activities.  Is it more
difficult to create variation and complexity? Of course.  But at
this point in game development, all the MUDs/MMORPGs out there are
starting to look remarkably the same.  Players will tell you this as
quickly as game designers, and it is easy to see just by looking at
the few points that gamers focus on - PvP, death, balance.  Those
questions are not very conceptual, they are not very interesting,
and they are certainly not issues that ought to be central to the
question of whether or not to play a game.  They are more
technicalities than actual, interesting, philosophical questions.

When the players themselves focus solely on the details, game
designers have failed.  When the players are unable to see the game
as a holistic idea, one that either appeals or does not, the
designers have failed.  When the questions and answers involve
mathematical equations rather than what is honestly interesting
about a game, the designers have *especially* failed.  Are most
current games derived from D&D-style play? Yes, of course.  But why
do we not use the technology and the talent at hand to abstract
those concepts? Why do we have gamers behaving as if the game is
actually rolling dice rather than immersing themselves in the world?

"No way to get rid of the 'boring' way."  If I believed that, I
would be neither playing nor designing games - what could the reason
to do so possibly be?

-k
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