[MUD-Dev] Expected value and standard deviation.

[Kwon J. Ekstrom]

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

>> 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.

> I always try to take one step (or more) further back, and ask
> myself what are the unquestioned assumptions that people in a
> field don't even realize they're making?  I see a lot of the word
> "advancement" here.  Certainly I've observed before that MUD-DEV
> seems to be dominated by people who assume a "discussion about
> muds" is the same thing as a "discussion about combat muds"

Perhaps you should step forward and look at your assertions with
those assumptions.

Most muds contain at least 1 combat element, even if it's not the
primary system... Although there are several "non-combat" oriented
muds... the vast majority of them are.  It makes sence that they get
more dicussion.

> Online games don't HAVE to have "advancement", or "numbers players
> strive to maximize".  Furcadia doesn't.  This debate strikes me
> something like scientists who experiment with laboratory mice
> getting together and saying "It doesn't matter what process we
> make the mice do to trigger the food pellet dispenser, they always
> get conditioned to perform that process".  How about the whole
> world of white mice experiments with no food pellet dispensers in
> them that one could conceive?

If you view "advancement" as simply "numbers to maximize" then you
are correct.  Perhaps we're looking at advancement from 2 different
viewpoints.

To me, advancement is improving at a specified task.  If there is a
task, then you can improve at it... otherwise you cannot.  I dunno
how enjoyable a game would be without a "task" to perform.

>From what I've seen of this debate, everyone is talking about their
experiences with games that have multiple players.  Each human being
is different, with different likes, dislikes, habits, and learning
abilities.  As such, most of the responses I've seen are directed at
human nature...

> of areas, different types of games.  Some human play is centered
> around advancement (Monopoly) or score (Scrabble, most team
> sports, etc.)  Other play doesn't involve that at all - the simple
> and ever popular game of "catch", for one example.  One could
> argue similarly for playing house, cowboys and indians, cops and
> robbers, doctor, or post office.  Hide and go seek and tag are
> competitive, but don't really have advancement or scoring in
> points.

Catch is a game that is directly centered around advancement.  I
don't think you find many people who play catch who for
example... fail their skill roll 90% of the time (oops did I just
drop the ball again?)

If you look at cops and robbers, cowboys and indians, etc... you'll
find some way that the players "advance".  Sure, they may not keep
score, but ask a kid who is good at a game, they'll tell you... that
tells me that there is some form of advancement.

In most games, the score has nothing to do with an individual
players advancement... in most organized sports I believe you'll
find this to be true.  How many MVP's are the players who actually
score?  How many are support role players who assist?

Granted, not all forms of entertainment are advancement oriented.
Yet, even those that aren't generally have some form of advancement.

I used to play chess regularly, there are no numbers to describe
your advancement (although there are several organizations that rank
chess players via a rating).  Chess isn't about "advancement" but
there are several axis you can advance along.  My team in particular
was extremely good with tactics and position, with alot of
experience in obscure endgame and openings.  (try the knight and
bishop endgame, it's a rather fun drill).

> The question of whether one could be so terribly clever as to make
> an advancement-oriented game that doesn't make people do the
> "boring" things is a mildly interesting challenge to me, since

Most games don't make the players do "boring" things... the players
choose a "boring" task in order to acheive a desired goal.  Just as
I spend 8 hours a day at work (a "boring" task) to acheive a
paycheck at the end of the week, so will a player perform a "boring"
task for 5 minutes to acheive a reward at the end.  That reward
could possibly be acheived by doing a "fun" task, but take
longer... the decision to perform the task is never-the-less the
players.

> But they do it.  Maybe we should class it amongst the "guilty
> pleasures", like fattening foods, cigarettes, alcohol, or drugs.

Perhaps, but I think that accounts for a small percentage of
players... I'd personally rather not compare my game to any
chemically addictive substance, that's opening a can of worms.

IMHO, it's the responsibility of the player to do what they need to
do. If a small fraction of your playerbase cannot control
themselves, nothing I can do will stop that and more likely than
not, they will find something else to fulfill their "need".

I hardly believe that because a player performs a task they consider
boring is reason to believe my game has addictive properties akin to
the most addictive substances known to man.

> (Though for somewhat different reasons).  Then the question might
> become one of whether you want to try to re-engineer the
> experience to keep most of the pleasure while getting rid of some
> or all of what people feel bad about (the typical goal of the game
> designer), or just convince people to consider the downside of the
> pleasure to be not so bad after all (the typical goal of the
> marketing guy).

There's an old saying:

  You can please everybody some of the time or you can please some
  people all of the time, but you cannot please everybody all of the
  time.

It wasn't meant to describe games, but it does fit...  The fact that
players do play (and yes, generate that feedback about the game)
should be an indication that they find enjoyment in your game.  That
doesn't mean you should discount what they say they dislike, and
quite frankly... I regularly build systems that players dislike some
aspect of.  Ussually it creates a balance of power, or some risk
associated with using the system.  In most cases the complaints are
quickly shelved.  You see, there's an assumption I make with
players: Every player wants to have as much power as possible.

That's phrased as an all encompasing statement, but in reality, only
a few players really fit this behavior, either way it's a large
enough group that you'll always run into it.

> I will note that when we added cookies to Furcadia, we gave people
> a number they could pump up, try to get the highest number, etc.
> We didn't run into much of a problem with it though - I think
> largely because of our game mechanic of having them all vanish at
> 5AM every day.  The kinds of relentless optimization of cookie
> acquisition and "playing in a boring way" one sees in Diku-style
> games didn't happen very much.  (We also made them very easy to
> get, which probably helped on that score as well.)

Yet people tried to get the highest number of cookies... sounds like
advancement... and I'm quite positive that some players didn't
participate in this activity (as it was deemed either boring, or had
no observable reward), while others thought this the funnest thing
you'd ever invented.

Amung those, you likely had players who got "some" cookies, but
didn't actively attempt to have the highest # of them.

The point of this subthread (I don't really consider this part of
Expected value and standard deviation) is that players will decide
on their own metrics to measure advancement.  In any game this is
based upon observable attributes.

In your game of catch, one could be said to advance when they are
able to catch the ball more often than before.  It can also be said
that the player has advanced when they are able to throw the ball
better... half of catching is throwing.

You may not actively look for a metric of advancement, but if you
look at anything you do, your mind does develop a gauge of your
performance.

Even when holding a conversation, I can tell you when I "say too
much" or "not enough" when talking.  There's no formal advancement,
but there are gauges.  Generally it depends on what I'm talking
about and what the goal is for the conversation... if I'm trying to
relay information the gauge is based on how well the listener
understood my comments... in a debate form it's how well I got my
views across...

These are all simply metrics to gauge a performance and that is
simply what advancement is.

-- Kwon J. Ekstrom
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