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

[Sean Howard]

"Lydia Leong" <lwl at black-knight.org>

> While Frank Lloyd Wright probably didn't have any special passion
> for gas stations, he was passionate about his _work_; he had an
> artistic vision for the world, which infused whatever he created,
> even the most mundane of things.

Which was my point - to contradict a statement by somebody who said
that the best way to make the Sims Online was to get somebody who
liked the Sims, liked MMORPGs, and had a whole bunch of luck. I
merely state that great designers require neither luck nor
familiarity. I think it may be a mistake to confuse Wright's
interest in architecture as passion - if it wasn't buildings, I'm
absolutely 100% positive that he would've found something else to
design with equal fevor. He was passionate about designing; I doubt
very much that it mattered what.

> Experience, too, is immensely valuable, no matter how natively
> talented one might be.

I've been down this discussion before when I was trying to get into
the game industry in the first place. Most of the people argued that
experience was more important than knowledge/talent - I guess I
should've known the industry wasn't for me right then and
there. Never much cared for the arrogance of "experience".

Experience is like a science experiment. The scientific theory tells
you what the outcome should be - the experiment merely reinforces
it.  Sometimes, the outcome of the experiment isn't what the theory
suggests, so you need to refine the theory a bit. But the theory
tends to come before the experience and not from it. People with
lots of experience have refined their theories on gaming, but it
won't matter if you started out with something fundamentally unsound
in the first place.

> Experience is what tends to make the little details work, and the
> little details are the difference between a promising game and a
> thoroughly awesome game. (In the MMO context, the devil is
> certainly especially in the details.)

Exactly my point. Experience is about the little details. I disagree
about your assessment though. It makes the difference between a good
game and a better game, but Warcraft is still just a polished
version of Dune 2 with Warhammer setting, Diablo is still just a
polished version of NetHack, and World of Warcraft is still just a
polished Everquest. Sure, the mass market loves polished and
complete, but they get damn tired of it within a single development
cycle, so by the time Everquest 3 comes out, there's absolutely no
way it can succeed by being simply a better Everquest 2.  Heard of
any MMO cancellations recently?

Don't get me wrong, details are important, but only with the grand
design in place to carry those details on its shoulders.

> Broader question: What makes for a great designer?

Historical perspective, I'd wager. A better question would be, what
can the game industry do to spot great designers early?

> I'd say that it's a lot more than just the raw talent to spec a
> great game "on paper", given the multiple people now necessary to
> create games. For instance, being a great designer also involves
> the ability to clearly articulate and communicate one's vision to
> a team, and to follow through design into execution.

I'm showing my contempt for the game industry here, but you are
confusing the act of designing with the process of developing a
game. A good EMPLOYEE works with others and sees projects through to
completion. A good DESIGNER designs brilliant games. They can be
found in the same person, but I'd argue that superiority in either
category precludes superiority in the other. I'd put good money down
that says that the game industry would rather have a halfway decent
employee/crappy designer than a brilliant designer/crappy employee.

But put this in your pipe and smoke it: Frank Lloyd Wright didn't
make gas stations and low cost housing because he wanted the
challenge; he was unemployable. He was arrogant, disagreeable,
impatient with authority, and all around a grumpy gus - but he is
probably the greatest architect in the past 200 years (if not
longer). History's greatest inventors are infamous for being
unemployable - Charles Babbage had dead monkeys flung in his window
while he was on his deathbed.

So, to answer you original question - a great designer is someone
who can design something great that wouldn't exist if he, himself,
didn't design it - something that inspires other creators with new
ideas and courage - and the world would be worse off without his
contributions. He doesn't have to be a model employee, and I dare
say that if he truly wanted to create something unique, there's no
way he COULD BE.

- Sean
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