[MUD-Dev] Expected value and standard deviation.

[Koster]

From: Katie Lukas
> And Raph Koster wrote:

>>     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.

I must say that the fact that players prefer to play a boring way
that gives them advancement over a fun way that gives slower
advancement seems to be well-proven over decades of online games.

Here are the assumptions I am operating under: players seeking
advancement will be driving towards optimal advancement. Optimal
advancement will include making the activity as predictable as
possible. Predictable activities become less fun over time.

Generally, any given game has multiple near-optimal paths. One of
these paths will be the one that minimizes risk to the point of it
being non-existent. It's a slow but steady guaranteed return on time
invested.  It's also "boring" in the sense that there is no
challenge to it, no risk, and little variation in the activity.

Most likely, this path is NOT one designed intentionally by the
designer.  It's one that players find by manipulating the system.

> 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?

I'd assert that the above dynamic is intrinsic to PEOPLE, and
therefore what you're saying is "why on earth would we design a game
accounting for human nature?" I'm not presenting it as a defeatist
attitude, but as an acceptance of how players choose to play systems
(not just games). In the real world, the vast majority of people
choose to minimize risk and maximize return with their entire LIVES,
to the point of choosing boring careers. They will also work to get
ahead any time they can do so. Why is it a surprise that they will
choose to do similar things in games?

> 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.

Correct. And yet, a guaranteed return on time invested, when you
regard a return as the most important thing you can be doing, is
what players tend to choose. Do the simple thought experiment: you
can either press a button to get 1 xp, or you can fight a monster
who might kill you, for 1 xp. The majority of players will choose
the button with little hesitation. Those who say it's not fun will
complain that a) you shouldn't have put the button in there (true!)
b) they have to press the button themselves to "keep up" (which they
don't really, but they feel they do, so they do it).

Now, that much just shows the psychology of it. Next, posit cases
where you can kill the monster with no risk. As soon as there is any
way whatsoever to do so, you have the same phenomenon as if you'd
put the button in there.

Eliminating cases where you can kill the monster without any risk is
a dubious proposition. We all try, of course. The fact that we have
the term "bottomfeeding" reflects how widespread the practice of
optimizing advancement is. Players will always drive towards this
point. It is very likely that there will be one optimal strategy per
challenge. Once this strategy is codified, it meets the criteria you
defined: repetitive activity and obvious outcome.

I'll go further and say that it doesn't have to be a guaranteed
return--it just needs to be the highest possible return on the risk
in the possibility space. A 70% chance of return is still enough of
a pattern that people will see it as predictable. Humans are
incredibly good pattern-matching machines.

> And yet, the foundation of most games - released and in
> development - feature huge quantities of repetitive activities.

That's because most games, across cultures and across the ages, are
about teaching players how to solve a specific problem. As Dave
Rickey recently put it in his Skotos column, they are puzzles to be
solved (puzzles of varying degrees of complexity). One of the
reasons why most long-lasting games have been player vs player in
the past is because it allows the puzzle to change constantly and
dynamically.

> When the players themselves focus solely on the details, game
> designers have failed.

That is like saying that the poet is right for looking across a
verdant landscape and seeing Nature's Beauty, but the scientist is
wrong for seeing photosynthesis in action. You are espousing a
worldview, an aesthetic of game design, but not an absolute.

> When the players are unable to see the game as a holistic idea,
> one that either appeals or does not, the designers have failed.

And this one is even an aesthetic that I AGREE with. :)

> When the questions and answers involve mathematical equations
> rather than what is honestly interesting about a game, the
> designers have *especially* failed.

What of the (sizable) portion of people to whom the mathematical
equations ARE what is interesting? There's a good case to be made
that this is the *majority* of game players. In Bartle's typology,
both achievers and explorers will fall into this category, and come
to think of it, every killer I've ever talked to was similarly
focused on the minutia because it gave them an edge.

> 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?

Two answers:

  1) Because they are not stupid, and they know that the game is
  actually rolling dice

  2) Because they prefer to see the game world as a puzzle to be
  solved

> "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?

Because the process of game design always offers new and interesting
puzzles. :) And the process of playing games is the process of
finding new puzzles as well. All forms of play are forms of brain
exercise of one sort of another.

The other day I was playing a typing game on Popcap.com. I am a
six-fingered hunt and peck typist who manages to sometimes get over
100 wpm. I typed, and typed, and eventually got to the point where
the game stopped giving me designed levels and instead randomized
the level challenges. I turned the game off. I was done. It was
boring. I had beaten the challenge in it.

I then started playing Bookworm, a game of wordfinding. Bookworm
randomizes the location of letter tiles. A large vocabulary helps
you eliminate tiles.  But over time, letter frequency distribution
in the English language means that the bottom half of the playfield
fills up with Us and Js and Xs, which you cannot commonly find words
for. Eventually, entropy eliminates you. The challenge lies in being
aware of this fact and surviving as long as you can.  But after a
while, I got bored with it too, because I could see that I was
pushing back the tide. When the puzzle is revealed as insoluble, I
also lose interest.

Why don't I personally design Diku style games anymore? Because I
see the shape of the puzzle, and it's rather boring to me now. I
understand what causes mudflation, what player progression looks
like, and so on. So I look to new features and new ways to play the
game. It's not innovation solely for innovation's sake. It's because
it provides me a new interesting design puzzle, and because
hopefully it provides players with a new interesting puzzle to play
as well.

Notice that this doesn't mean I make any claims whatsoever to be
GOOD at making the Diku-style games. It just means that I see a
pattern in them, just as players see a pattern in them, just as you
say you see a pattern in them. The way the human brain works is that
we puzzle out things until we see patterns. Once we see a pattern,
we view it holistically until we can absorb it as a single iconic
object. Then it fades into the background, becomes a symbol, and we
cease to know it well, because we make assumptions about it based on
the pattern it fits. It becomes boring. It stops being fun.

You can define fun as being the process of discovering new areas in
a possibility space. Once the possibility space is explored, it
ceases to be fun.

I don't think you're going to succeed at rewriting the human brain
and finding game designs that don't have a boring way to play them
unless you design games with infinite possibility spaces. There
aren't many games like that. Some of the ones I can think of:

  - player vs player activities (assuming a playfield of sufficient
  complexity. The human body makes for a nicely complex playfield,
  for example, hence sports--simple games like tennis still having
  big possibility spaces).

  - media. Writing, music, and dare I say it, game design.

-Raph
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