[MUD-Dev] Complexity and Accessibility (was: RE: Better Combat (long))

[Sean Kelly]

On Sat, 28 Aug 2004, Will Jennings wrote:
> Raph Koster wrote:

>> We can observe a gradual move towards increased formalism and
>> complexity in the development of almost any art form [...]. It
>> typically is accompanied by a parallel loss of audience, as the
>> general public tends not to want to be challenged in that way.

> I'm skeptical of the teleology here.  Examples: Oral storytelling
> has, in general, stricter form than the novel.  As rap music grew
> its audience and entered the mainstream, it became more complex
> sonically, but less complex verbally.  I'm not so sure the
> middle-of-the-bell-curve of the degree of formalism of Western art
> music has done more than oscillate over the last six hundred
> years, and its audience has fluctuated independent of those
> oscillations.

I agree with Raph that any activity tends to have two sets of
participants: those that view the activity as recreation and those
that view it as a skill.  And the skill folks want to refine the
activity as their skill improves.  But what constitutes an activity
can be confusing, and there are some odd cases like pop music which
tend to attract what I'd consider recreation folks into an area
normally occupied by a skill group.

> Sometimes, perhaps, an art form needs to be around a little while
> before it gets very complex.  There needs to be a critical mass of
> folks making it before good language gets developed to talk about
> it, and then the language helps in coming up with formal tricks.
> But after the first person of a sufficiently scholarly bent starts
> playing formal tricks, I don't see a general trend toward
> increasing formality.[1]

Refinements tend to occur locally rather than globally--Jazz music
is a perfect example of this trend.  Also, as you point out,
something has to be around for a while before it gets very complex.
Or perhaps it has to have skill folks involved for a while before it
gets very complex.  Children's games might be an example of an
activities that change slowly on a global scale because of
localization or rapid participant turnover.

>> The cultural forces behind this are fascinating, because at the
>> same time that the art recedes away from comprehensibility by the
>> average person by demanding an overly high level of insider
>> knowledge of the medium, we also see a rise in "priesthoods" of
>> people who use their knowledge as a social signaling mechanism.

> Yeah, that is cool.

> What's even neater is that when the art becomes less
> comprehensible, not because of demanding lots of insider
> knowledge, but because of being more radical or abstract, the
> "priesthoods" arise regardless and create the insider knowledge
> from thin air.  And then this invented language can become a
> bigger barrier to outsiders than the comprehensibility of the work
> itself -- it's a lot harder for me to parse the text of an average
> modern art book than it is for me to be moved by the works
> themselves.

I would consider these to be two separate activities: the production
of art and the discussion of art.  Though I'll grant that a great
deal of contemporary art production is actually a reaction to
previous art (and thus should almost be grouped in the "discussion"
category).  Still, it's an important distinction.  With pop music,
many of the refinements are in peripheral activities: marketing,
information gathering and icon collection (fanclubs), etc, while the
lyrics and musical complexity remain fairly static because that
isn't what the activity is about for most people.  In fact its low
barrier for entry is practically a defining characteristic.

> (Sometimes I wonder how many MUD players have been lost, not
> because the game is too complicated for them, but because they're
> embarrassed to be unable to tell a rez from a mez, or ltb from
> lfg.)

Excellent question :) Though I'd think that many casual players
probably never read web forums and likely have never heard most of
those terms.  Still, if they come up often enough in game I can see
a player getting turned off.

>> Given that games are fundamentally formal constructs and not,
>> generally, communicative media (unlike other art forms, which are
>> generally communications *mediated* by formal constructs)...

> I may not understand what you mean by communicative in this
> context.  Do you mean the art form communicates some fact or
> opinion?  Are you saying that you view art as a message or moral,
> wrapped up in an art-language?  I recognize that's not a terribly
> far-out idea, but I don't see why looking at games through that
> lens is any stranger than viewing music, sculpture, portraiture,
> architecture, flower arranging, dance, or the culinary arts
> through that lens.

I think Raph was suggesting that games are interactive in a way that
most other art is not.  And that there might be a lower barrier for
entry in appreciating a painting than for playing football--one is
easier to appreciate with no applicable skill or knowledge.  That
isn't to say that the refinement of both might not become
staggeringly complex however.

> More germane: You're likely right that we'll see more shibboleths
> in games, but I'm betting it'll be in reasonable proportion to the
> degree the vocabulary permeates the culture as a whole.  Your
> concern seems to be that hardcore Grand Theft Auto and Everquest
> players will dominate the development of future games and create
> things only those similarly initiated can understand -- why
> wouldn't the ranks of future developers be drawn also from the
> masses of Bejeweled players?

Agreed.  This is part of what I was getting at when I mentioned
localized refinements.  It wouldn't surprise me if certain genres
became increasingly more refined, but this is not representative of
the game community as a whole.  In fact I think the overall
complexity trend is pretty flat.

Sean
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