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

[John Buehler]

Cruise wrote [accidentally off-list, I'm assuming]:
> John Buehler spake thusly...

>> I think that our disconnect is that you view these 'things' as
>> games (fundamentally about competition) while I view them as
>> experiences (fundamentally about entertainment).  Given that, you
>> will continue to design and build games in the spirit of chess
>> and checkers, while I will continue to push for a Holodeck.

>>   [Not intended as a technology comparison, only one of user
>>   experience]

>> It is not important to me that these 'things' be "games"
>> (fundamentally about competition) - despite the moniker of
>> MMORP-G.  And I wish that current designers would let go of the
>> "game" ethic and expand the horizons of the sorts of
>> entertainment that their products could provide.  Not everyone
>> cares about virtual achievements.

> Anything requiring decisions falls under the heading of game. For
> me, therefore, anything that isn't a "game" is basically a purely
> passive form of entertainment. At which point we're in the book or
> movie business. Now, I count myself as much an author as a game
> designer (as per the second link in my sig), but that might be why
> I feel so strongly about the distinction.

> Once you include interaction, it is a game. It might be a game
> with a story to add context, meaning and emotional hooks, but it
> is a game, and game-theory is applicable. That doesn't mean it has
> to be about virtual achievement. That's where we differ, I think -
> I see a game as including a lot more than you seem to. I agree
> entirely that what is currently produced as a game is a very
> narrow, strict set. But that doesn't mean we have to stop making
> games. Just have to come up with new forms of game.

It's time to define "game", because that word is used axiomatically
all through this exchange, and I have no idea what is meant by it.

  "Anything requiring decisions falls under the heading of game."

  "Once you include interaction, it is a game."

  "You don't need competition if you don't want it - but it's not a
  game without it."

  "That doesn't mean it has to be about virtual achievement."

These three seem to equate to the logical statement that

  game == decision-making == interaction == competition

But that achievement is not part and parcel of the definition of a
game.

Amanda Walker just quoted a URL that very much supports what I've
been trying to say, and I'm curious as to your read:

  http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001299.php?page=2

Is the data on that page consistent with your view of how games
entertain us?

I'd like to add that pure observation as the sum total of
experiencing a game (or finding entertainment) was never a point I
was trying to make.  I was using observation-as-entertainment as a
means of describing a contrasting way of players finding
entertainment.  Contrasting with competition, specifically.  A woman
can be highly entertained by observing something with somebody else.
That's called "sharing".  And that is why eight times more women
were interested in relationships than were interested in competition
(per the information in the link).

JB
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev