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

[Sean Howard]

"Max Battcher" <me at worldmaker.net>

> Back to the original point, no designer is perfect or infallible.
> The one hit wonder isn't a bad thing, it just shows that either
> someone was content with their earlier burst of passion or never
> took the time to learn from any following failures.

My issue is not with one hit wonders - just that the game industry
has far too few repeat successes. In absence of true genius, we tend
to put the one hit wonders on a pedestal. When I was in college,
there was this PC Gamer magazine with the top 20 game designers -
nearly all of them didn't make games anymore and had multiple
successes 10 years before the article was ever printed. There were a
few more designers in there that have never been heard from
again. We don't have any superstars (at least none deserving of the
title) anymore. Maybe Will Wright and.... um...

> I also think that it shows some of the fickleness of "the Crowd".
> Why does one project succeed and another fail?

There's this little bit on "public image" which I don't quite fully
grasp, but other than that, I can answer your question exactly. "the
Crowd" can be controlled rather easily, assuming you have no
opponents trying to control them as well. Barring competitions, it
is quite an elementary matter to create something that has both
integrity, high quality, and generally well liked.

> I also find it interesting that you, Sean, deride passion and yet
> say that we need more dedicated game designers.  Are you claiming
> (as it reads) that Frank Lloyd Wright had no passion for what he
> did?

I claim that passion is not the thing which makes a design
great. Most great games are created by passionate people, but I
argue that focusing on that is misleading. There are plenty of
passionate people who make really crappy games. It's a smoke screen
designed to draw attention from any actual talent a designer should
have - because it is very rare, and when it is found in any
significant quantity, tends to come in a rather nasty package.

> The key here is that the major publishers need to risk just as
> much on the one hit wonders as on the veterans, and be able to
> recognize good talent and real passion/vision when they see it.

I agree. I don't mean to imply that one hit wonders aren't designing
a good game, and any risk which has the possibility of enriching the
market and the creativity beats the crap out of Rugrats Go to
Hollywood 4.  However, I think the only thing that we currently
judge designing talent by is passion, and that is a woefully easy
thing to fake or misread. I'm going to be honest, and I'm not going
to look very good, so bear with me for a sec...

If you sat me in a room with a piece of paper, I would design
something that would blow your mind. Twice. You'd have to sit down
for a second after looking at it. I'm that good. You cannot find a
person more passionate about games and designing games than me if
you tried (I'm talking passion, not mere excitement). I'm also
confidently arrogant, full of myself, painfully asocial, I HATE
social gatherings, I have absolutely no tact or empathy, and I have
so many ideas that you'd be hard pressed to get me to stick on a
single project for more than 15 minutes. In the right situation, I'm
a hard worker dedicated to my craft with a strong will and
personality - in the wrong situation, you'd likely wish you never
met me.  The question becomes, is it worth putting up with ME to get
to the innate talent that (possibly) lies therein?

That game industry says no (quite loudly too). The reason for this
is because A) I'm a bastard and nobody wants to work with me, B) new
game ideas aren't worth a whole lot (it's cheaper and less risky to
make shovelware based on popular licenses), and C) they have
absolutely no way to tell whether or not I really do have the magic
touch, or I'm just full of myself (or both). Good ideas are
MEANINGLESS to the game industry, and ... uh... "special needs"
employees are worth even less. Even if someone like me really could
create something with broad appeal, influential design ripples, and
uniquely interesting gameplay - there's less value in that than my
capabilities as an employee. It doesn't matter whether I could
design my way out of a paper bag, because quite frankly, that's the
LEAST important attribute to any employee in the game industry,
especially the designers.

> The easiest role model here is Hollywood.  Some of my favorite
> movies have become the ones from auteurs that have "failed" in box
> offices... such as "Brazil" and "The Hudsucker Proxy".  Studios
> didn't cut the auteurs behind these "failed" proejcts...  they
> gave them more money to try again.  "12 Monkeys" and "O Brother,
> Where Art Thou", with respect to each autuer, are two more
> "successful" films filmed after said "failures".

Let's be honest, in the game industry, it is nearly impossible to
get even a failed project in the first place. It's gotten to the
point where you practically have to jump ship every other project
and start your own game company to even get the opportunity to make
the game you want to make.  Brazil and Hudsucker were essentially
independant movies - they weren't expected to be
successes. Hollywood sets aside a little money here and there to
bring in new talent at the creative level they operate best at.  You
aren't going to hire a game designer off the street to be in charge
of even a modest game design project, but Hollywood frequently will
put completely untested unknowns in charge of movies. Until we get
some actual publishers who take these kinds of risks on nobodies,
the game industry only wishes it were Hollywood.

Of course, I'd really like to see some sort of creative think tank
like Xerox PARC, where people with the most active imaginations are
capable of running free with wild abandon in an environment which
most compliments them. But maybe that's just me.

- Sean
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