[MUD-Dev] DGN: Reasons for play [was: EmergentBehaviorsspawnedfrom...]

[Michael Sellers]

Sean Howard wrote:
> "Michael Sellers" <mike at onlinealchemy.com> wrote:

>> Others would disagree - Caillois, Huizinga, LeBlanc, etc.

> If you wanted to argue why they would disagree, well, that's a
> discussion.  Name dropping is just an appeal to authority, and if
> there was anyone who that didn't work on, it's me.

It's not an appeal to authority; just a few examples of others who
have written thoughtfully about the nature of gameplay and
interactivity.  It's worth making yourself familiar with what they
have to say.

A complete discussion of these authors, interactivity, conflict,
etc., is beyond the scope of this mailing list, however Robin
Hunicke and Mark LeBlanc's paper is brief, available online, and
*highly* worth reading
(http://algorithmancy.8kindsoffun.com/MDA.pdf) -- IMO this is
required reading for any designer.  The others would require more
space and time than I have to devote here.  (Though if you'll permit
me a plug, there's a fair amount of discussion about them in my
chapter in the upcoming book "Playing Video Games: Motives,
Responses, and Consequences" edited by Vorderer and Bryant.)

>> Single-point anecdote explains nothing.  Look at the population;
>> look at what they buy.  You can't generalize from what one person
>> likes.

> To quote Rupert Murdoch, er... Citizen Kane, "People think what I
> tell them to think". And likewise, people buy what you tell them
> to buy.

That theory hasn't worked very well so far for any game that I know
about.  Marketing games is still one of the least understood areas
of the business -- by anyone.  Figuring out what games will sell is
the furthest thing from an exact science, but what many people
finally seem to have grasped is that reasoning from personal or
anecdotal experience is not a good way to increase your chances of
success.

If you haven't done so already, I recommend reading Silverman's
"Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing."  Others have written similar
books of course (Seth Godin is worth reading) but this is the best
and most concise packaging of concepts I've seen.  If nothing else,
it'll show you how incredibly wrong you can be by reasoning from one
experience, especially that of someone close to you.

>>> Other than the obvious (and, I dare say, arousing) physical
>>> differences between males and females, they aren't mentally
>>> different in ANY WAY.

>> That's not the case.  There is abundant data that men and women
>> vary...

> Yes, yes, yes. Men are different from women. Blacks have bigger
> penises.  Asians are smarter. Gay people have extra something or
> others in their brain. Obese people have the fat gene. Midgets
> aren't the same as dwarfs.  Andy Milonakis is 29 years old but
> looks 14. Some people are born with genius IQs and some are
> clinically retarded. We are all different in ways that could be
> considered significant, and yet somehow, we aren't THAT
> different. Black guys may have larger penises, but they still have
> penises.

You appear to be arguing from absurdity, attempting to put the
research I mentioned into the same class as the above statements.
Doing so neither strengthens your original (and mistaken) point nor
refutes what I said.  As I said before, there is abundant cultural,
psychological, and neurological research in this area that's worth
understanding.

The point remains: saying that men and women are the same (or at
most trivially different) is not a path that leads to increasing
sales beyond the current core demographic.  It's another version of
"it's not my problem - something must be wrong with them." The first
step toward broadening the audience is to understand that maybe
there are some relevant differences (in men and women, also in young
and old, Western and Asian, etc.) which, if attended to in the
market, could lead to increased sales.

>> This went beyond the "Tamagotchi" effect on which the game was
>> first pitched to distributors; for many players,
>> disproportionately women, the difference between caring for a
>> single interactive 'creature' and several with family and friends
>> was profound.

> Why didn't "Creatures" do better then?

An excellent question.  I first saw "Creatures" in 1996 when
Millennium pitched the game to 3DO (who passed on the game).
Personally I was blown away, especially given the deep neurological
and physiological modeling these guys were doing behind the scenes.
The game went on to be a bona fide hit (selling well over 1M units I
believe), though it didn't sell anywhere near as many boxes as The
Sims.

I don't have a complete answer as to why Creatures didn't become a
breakout hit on the order of The Sims, but I suspect that it was
largely due to two reasons: First, it hit the market before there
was a sufficiently broad base of potential users (and in particular,
the ratio of women players was lower in the mid-1990s than in 2000);
and second, the Creatures were *too* cute -- players observed them
and even empathized with them, but didn't tell stories about them as
they would with dolls or TV characters.  The Sims hit the market at
the right time, built significant buzz by making user-evangelists
(we haven't talked about The Sims Exchange, but it was instrumental
too), had unique gameplay that was deep enough but not too complex,
and which allowed for a great deal of anthropomorphization and thus
effective story-projection.

Mike Sellers
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