[MUD-Dev] Homogeneity and choice

[Mike Rozak]

Paolo Piselli wrote:

> Just to add some analogies to this post: I do recall having seen
> good movies and read good books with low-points and tragedy.
> However, I don't recall ever having read a good book with some
> uninteresting filler chapters in there that serve no other purpose
> but to make the experience of reading the book take longer and
> therefore be more satisfying to finish.  I don't recall watching
> any good movies with intentionally uninteresting scenes that you
> just have to sit-through and bear in order to get to the really
> interesting parts.

A few months ago I would have completely agreed with this statement,
but now I'm not so sure:

Interactivity is all about choices. For a choice to matter to the
player, the alternatives must have different consequences, not all
of them good. To create a "bad consequence", designers have several
options:

  - Loss of time - Have the player lose a hard-one item or even a
  level. Death in many MMORPGs causes a loss of equipment or XP. (In
  school terms, this amounts to making a student re-do a class or
  year of school.)

  - Delay in playing - The player can't get to the stuff he wants
  for an extra 5 minutes. Example: Waiting for his/her character to
  heal up. (In school terms, this is detention.)

  - Loss of an enjoyable experience - Or the imposition of an
  unenjoyable one, like spending 20 minutes travelling. (In school
  terms, this is writing lines in detention. In parental rules, this
  is "You won't get any desert unless you eat what's on your
  plate.")

  - Loss of content - If you become a fighter you can't use
  magic-user spells. If you're a magic-user you can't use
  weapons. In WoW, members of the Horde cannot experience the
  Alliance continent in quite the same way as the Alliance players
  can. If you join the "Order of the Golden Sphere" you cannot
  partake in quests written for "The Silver Brotherhood". Etc. (In
  school terms, this is not being able to play a sport unless you
  have a C+ GPA.)

  - Loss of friendships - Designers shouldn't design for this, but
  players' actions towards other players can have this consequence.

(If anyone can think of any other negative-consequence tools, I'd be
interested to hear them... A mouse with an embedded electroshock
device would provide negative consequences to bad choices, but very
few users own one. Just imagine getting a shock every time your PC
took damage; I still have vivid memories of my older brother chasing
me around the house with a shocking-device he made from a
transformer and batteries. ;-) )

It could be argued that the consequences of even a bad choice should
be short-term enjoyable for the player. Doing so eliminates all the
negative-consequence tools except for "loss of content". As someone
just posted, people don't like losing content either. If you also
eliminate loss of content, then all choices merely result in a
reordering of the experience, like hyperfiction or a CYOA that you
re-read as often as you like. Personally, I don't find this much
different than linear fiction. (It may still be enjoyable, just not
very interactive.)

Linear fiction doesn't need to provide negative consequences to
viewers because viewers never make any choices about what happens in
the fiction. However, there are always consequences for the
protagonists. Braveheart was disembowelled because of one of the
negative consequences to his choices.

Am I making sense? (I suspect not.)

Consequently, I'd claim that making the user spend 20 minutes riding
to their destination is a useful device if it's the consequence of a
bad choice the player made. This, of course, means that the right
choice allowed the player to avoid the trip, or at least have fun on
the trip. (There are other reasons why a 20-minute horseback ride
might be good, such as a way to make the destination more valuable.)

Mike Rozak
http://www.mxac.com.au
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