[MUD-Dev] PVP and perma-death

[Koster, Raph]

HRose: wrote:

> It's like making a movie asking the peoples what they want to see
> before going to the cinema. Peoples don't want to be satisified,
> they want to be surprised. Noone should expect something from a
> game before being in it.

Most everything that is made has in mind someone who wants to use
it, see it, etc. Pretty much all movies are made with the assumption
that someone (a specific sort of someone) wants to see them.

And by large, people like small surprises, not big ones. Big ones
are confusing and a turnoff.

Thinking that players have no expectations of a game is a nice
ideal, but completely unrealistic. Players come to games with
expectations, and you violate them carefully and with full
foreknowledge, or you're in big trouble.

> The discovery of something new is way stronger than the discovery
> of what you expect.

This is, alas, untrue. You may want to read up on everything from
the "adoption gap" to the history of art.

>  There was no playstyle or player type before the > first game was
>  created.

Some looking into cognition will disprove this as well.

> Game "genres" didn't exist before the games themselves. We didn't
> have first person shooters before Wolfstein.

No, but the underlying mechanics behind a first person shooter most
certainly did. There is very little difference mechanically between
Missile Command and Doom 3. Both entail clicking on points on a 2d
plane.

> It's the designer that tells the player how to play through the
> game. Not the player that tell the designer what he wants to do.

Anyone who has watched people play a game they made knows this is
manifestly untrue. :)

-Raph
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