[MUD-Dev] DGN: Reasons for play [was: Emergent Behaviors spawned from...]

[Damien Neil]

On 7/29/05, Sean Howard <squidi at squidi.net> wrote:

> Frank Lloyd Wright once created a gas station. I doubt very much
> that he'd ever thought about the problem before being presented
> with it, and yet, somehow, he managed to create a magnificent gas
> station. Likewise, when contracted to build a low cost housing
> complex, he managed to make something that was greater than the
> sum of its parts. Each building he designed was unique to the
> needs of the problem.

Do you think Frank Lloyd Wright disliked his gas station?  Or did he
create a gas station that he could be proud of, the best damned gas
station he could imagine, a gas station that he'd be happy to drive
into to refuel his car?  (That's a rhetorical question: He designed
a gas station as a part of Broadacre City, which was a work of love
for him.  It wasn't a commissioned work, and so far as I know he
never earned a penny for it.)

How well do you think Wright would have done designing houses and
gas stations for someone who wanted buildings that looked nothing
like a Frank Lloyd Wright design?  Would Tom Clancy do a good job
writing for fans of Joyce?  Would you expect Jerry Bruckheimer to
produce a good romantic comedy?

*Of course* a designer needs to adapt to different circumstances.
If you're designing a gas station, you don't try to build a
skyscraper.=20 But equally, any artistic endeavor demands that the
artist bring something of himself to the project, that he identify
with it in some way.  Even if he's Charles Dickens, writing serials
and being paid by the word.  Some artists have tremendous breadth
and scope--there are writers out there who can turn out
psychological horror one day, light comedy the next, and serious
drama the third.  And there are some who have little scope, but
tremendous skill in the areas that they specialize in.

But when you lack that connection between artist and work--when you
try to produce something you *don't like*--well, there's a word for
what you end up with: Soulless.

That's a word I've heard quite often in connection with games,
MMORPGs in particular--generally ones that fade from sight almost
immediately.  I don't think that's a coincidence.

              - Damien
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