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

[Pandora]

Michael Hartman wrote:

>> 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.

> That is a mischaracterization. "Luck" is your addition to the
> equation.

Yes I agree.  Instead of "luck" he should have said "wealthy
financing" ;)

> I think it matters a great deal. If you do not have a personal
> interest in what you are designing, it will be (as Damien already
> pointed out) soulless. That is the domain of movie-themed schlock
> that is churned out for a cross marketing purpose rather than to
> try and make a game that is fun.

Yes, and most game designers are producing those games.  In fact,
most game designers are producing sports simulation games.  Does
that make what they're doing great?  Not to say it isn't worthy, or
practical, but not likely to impress people like me to say the
least, and probably not going to show up in the annals of history as
groundbreaking work.

>> 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".

> I am not sure how much of a serious discussion is even possible if
> you so casually blow off the importance of experience in making
> good games.

He doesn't "casually" blow off experience.  He gives a detailed and
thought out argument why experience is an arrogant thing to require,
because of his own personal example of getting burned for not having
experience.

> I have been making games for 10 years. Any game I make from this
> point forward will be immensely superior to games I made 10 years
> prior, largely because of invaluable experience. In my current
> work, I frequently notice how much better something I have
> designed turns out specifically because of lessons I learned in
> the past.

Yes, that's entirely true.  Experience is pretty valuable in my
opinion.  It doesn't contribute much to creativity or ideas, but it
shows that you at least had the chance to try some things.  Before
we invented the scientific method, all we had to work with was trial
and error, i.e.  experience, and I don't discount that.

What you should realize though is the influence of reputation (to
get backing and such), connections (to find fellow good designers),
and sheer skill (being able to do it right the first time).  Many
people have tons of "experience" in the above contexts, but haven't
been commercially producing games.  That doesn't make them less
worthy, it just is one metric by which to guess at how useful
they'll be.  If someone approached me with a, by my experience,
killer game idea, then it wouldn't matter they had no experience
because the funny thing about smart people without experience is
they learn quick.

Of course, if they don't learn it flubs.  But pandering to the
safest investment, the experienced and well established developer,
is exactly what churns out all those dumb sports and flight
simulators.  Security is good, but it isn't the panacea, the ideal
investment being a balance of security and innovation.

> No, people with experience have seen things that work and don't
> work. They have, hopefully, also figured out why.

Yeah, people with experience have had plenty of chances to screw up.
Though if they do screw up, usually that worsens their reputation
even if they learned from the lesson.  You can dig a hole as sure as
you can build a tower, and there's nothing unworthy about the person
who's done neither.  We know nothing at all about the person coming
in, neither good nor bad.

>> History's greatest inventors are infamous for being unemployable
>> - Charles Babbage had dead monkeys flung in his window while he
>> was on his deathbed.

> I really think the Frank Lloyd Wright hero-worshipping example is
> not only a bit worn out but also wildly inapplicable. I am willing
> to stipulate that Frank Lloyd Wright was a brilliant architecht if
> you'll promise to stop gushing about him. :)

Nice ad hominem.  Who's Charles Babbage then, chopped liver?  n_n

> Frank Lloyd Wright was not creating consumer entertainment.

> A game developer IS creating consumer entertainment. A game
> developer needs to make a product that will be enjoyed by
> thousands (or millions, depending upon the platform and genre) of
> customers who will each pay a small portion of the cost of its
> creation. With the possible exception of games like America's
> Army, a game developer has to get paid by each individual user of
> his product- an architect does not.

An argument ad populum is not always valid either.  Saying a game
needs to be popular to be great is like saying a song needs to be
popular to be great.  It's the solidification of the game market
into a huge mass industry that makes it seem like you need to make a
game everybody likes, or none at all.

Think about this: once a game is written it can be copied almost
indefinitely.  Game writers truly then are not writing for the
individuals.  They are writing a game, that the individuals then
take a copy of.  You could raise the same argument that oil painters
are measured by how many people buy prints of their work.  But
they're not: they are (hopefully) measured by the quality of the
work they create, not how many copies they can sell.

Perhaps one day we'll have it mostly figured out.  Game developers
will have smaller niche markets, and nobody'll be going on about how
you can't make a game that the holy consumer will not buy in
droves. Frank Lloyd Wright may not have designed his buildings for
individuals, but how many individuals use them every day?  Selling
games is really like charging admission to see Frank Lloyd Wright's
architecture: it's a money maker, but has no part in the creative
worth of the product.

> The world would not be "worse off" without Diablo 2.

Aha, but my elfin nightstalker/ranger would disagree, and you don't
want to mess with him.  BrightMoonRepStein can kill Diablo by
kicking him to death.

> This sounds to me like the theory of an anti-social, non-team
> player trying to justify their behavior by saying "only a jerk
> like me could ever make something great." I am not saying that
> about YOU, I am saying that the above words sound like the
> argument such an individual would make.

That sounds to me like the theory of a managerial, profit oriented,
self starter who always puts the team first and gets the job done.
:9 No offense, but anti-social people have their place too, as do
non-team players.  Wouldn't you want someone to go against the team
if the team is being stupid?  It's attitudes like this, only ever
hiring one single neurotype, that well... keep people like me out of
work.  So sorry if I seem vitriolic, but do take care before you say
that only one kind of thinking will be tolerated in the workplace.
Otherwise it will be double plus good! o.o

> Being anti-social and disagreeable are not requirements for
> greatness or creativity. It is, quite frankly, insulting to say
> so.

If he was saying so, that is.  I think you're both in agreement
actually: that being anti-social and disagreeable are not
requirements for creativity, and that being social and agreeable are
not requirements for creativity, but rather the only requirements
for greatness and creativity are greatness and creativity itself.
Nothing else seems to correlate.

--
Pandora "Starling/Tasci/Antinomy/Figment/???" synx
pgp key at http://synx.dyndns.org/starling.asc
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