[MUD-Dev] Expected value and standard deviation.

[David Loving]

--- "Dr. Cat" <cat at realtime.net> wrote:
> From: "Koster, Raph" <rkoster at soe.sony.com>

>> 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).

> Cooperative interaction between humans can fall into the
> "infinite" category just as surely as competition can.  All it
> needs is a rich enough set of things to cooperate on.

While human reactions can easily become infinite, the current
problem is that humans are restricted to comming up with infinite
reactions to a finite environment. Two very large MMORPG's that are
being played today are Everquest (emphasising cooperative
interations) and Dark Age of Camelot (emphasizing cooperative and
hostile interations) and in both of them the players very quickly
found the most effective reactions in the static environment, and
now almsot everyone reacts the same general way. While reactions
vary, it's on a very small scale. No matter how large the world, as
long as it's mostly static the players will eventually start to all
look alike. The human resources required per player to create a
dynamic world full of new experiences for every player is far too
great for the players to afford the monthly fee's that would be
required to support all of the people involved. The only way to
really provide a possibility space large enough to satisfy the vast
majority of players (or perhaps just us devs) long-term is to allow
player-created situations. So how do we go about doing that? Well I
sure as hell don't know yet, but knowing the question is the first
part of finding the answer.
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