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

[John Buehler]

cruise writes:

> Can "entertainment" be seperated from reward, or the seeking
> behaviour? The presence of non-game forms of entertainment
> suggests it can - but should it be in games? Isn't the fundemental
> definition of a game something that involves competition (against
> others, or the "environment" of the game rules)? As such, victory,
> however it is defined, is inherently a reward. And the game is the
> process of obtaining, or seeking, that reward.

For starters, the purpose of these pieces of software is not to
function as a game but rather to delight players.  To entertain
them.  If they are perceived as games, in the spirit of basketball
or chess, then competition and achievement will dominate the
experience - gaining a victory condition.  Discard that notion and a
whole world or entertaining experiences come in view.  Learning,
teaching, exploring, building, socializing, etc.  There are many
experiences that people can take great delight in, and MMOs ignore
them due to a myopia in the system.  I don't know if that myopia is
in the designers, the capitalists or the managers, but it sure seems
to be there.

Do all such activities overcome some challenge?  Yeah, sure.  They
all accomplish a state change in the universe, and that inherently
means that something else had to give in to the change.  So much for
the academic analysis.  The important point here is not to focus on
overcoming a challenge, but to delivering the delightful experience.

Is the most important thing about teaching and learning that the
student gains the lesson?  If so, then teaching could be broken down
to handing a token over from teacher to student, and the student has
'learned'.  The achievement has been made.  If we want a better
learning challenge, we make it so that the teaching and student have
to kill 100 orcs.  Then the student can receive the token and
'learn'.

Sounds silly, right?  Well the crafting systems of the MMOs that
I've played are structured in much that way.  They're not about
building anything, but rather about overcoming challenges.
Primarily patience.

So I don't want focus to fall on reaching a victory condition as a
reward.  I want to focus on 'delight'.  It may sound
touchy-feely-abstract, but it ensures that nobody is going to try to
quantify how the MMO is going to achieve the end of player delight.
In teaching, the ability of the teacher to instill 'aha' moments in
the student is the main point of delight.  But their bonding as two
people is perhaps just as important.

> It seems that mainstream MMO's have lost sight of what the reward
> should be.  Reaching the highest level (or just the next level)
> has become the goal.

I'll certainly agree with the latter.  MMOs present the illusion of
being a world, while they retain the game ethic of checkers in what
players can actually do.

> Yggdrasil spake thusly...

>>   players behaving as described below are behaving as they have
>>   been trained to behave by the games themselves.

> Damien Neil spake thusly...

>> The problem, as I see it, lies not in the players but in poor
>> game designers.  It's absurd to reward players for doing
>> something and then criticize them for doing it.

> So again, the onus is us as game designers to provide different
> rewards. The distinction between this, and John Buehler's (and my
> own thoughts) above is that players should be free to pursue "the
> goal" /however they like/. The game designers, however, provide
> "the goal" itself, and the context in which it is acheived. We
> provide the tools and materials, the players make what they want.
> However, if what the players make is always shoddy and falls
> apart, then it is time to take a look at the tools and materials
> we're giving them (not simply banning said shoddy items from being
> made, which seems to be the usual response in many MMO's to
> "exploits").

Hopefully I'm just repeating what you just said when I say:

Players should look at an MMO and have things that they want to do
in the environment.  Further, they should be able to pursue them in
ways that they come up with, as opposed to being restricted to doing
them the way that the designers planned.

That has to be tempered with concerns over exploits and so on, but
that basic ethic is one that I can agree with.  Especially when it
means that players can experience learning, teaching, exploring,
building, socializing, etc. in addition to achieving a victory
condition.

JB
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