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

[Arnau Josep Rosselló Castelló]

12/10/2005 10:17 -0500, D. Fuller wrote:

> Now, we can often make broad statement that we call "true".  A
> screwdriver has an obvious purpose; it drives in (and, if you're
> lucky, removes) screws.  If it does that well, you would call it
> "good"; if it did it poorly, it would be "bad".  Of course, we're
> all different; a given screwdriver might work really well for me,
> and really poorly for you, and so we'd disagree heavily on whether
> it was "good" or "bad".  And we would BOTH be right.

[...]

> Whenever you hear "good" or "bad", the first thought through your
> mind should be "for who, and for what purpose?"  It'll even vary
> for one person for one purpose over time; a screwdriver that works
> well when you're 20 might be useless when you're 60 and arthritic.
> A good game is one that serves its purpose.  But what's the
> purpose?

Probably when you're 60 and arthritic, you won't say the screwdriver
is bad, you'll say "I'm arthritic and can't use it well" or "It's
good but i haven't enough strength to use it" or even "This one is
better, but i use that one because it's bigger handle helps with my
arthritis".

There you have another way we use the word good or bad, not judging
the usefulness of an item, but comparing it to an ideal item(of
course "ideal" here is still different for every person, but not
everyone notices this), thus the first screwdriver is better, not
because it's useful for us, not with the arthritis, but because it
has qualities that we find inherent to a good screwdriver(it's made
of superior quality steel, doesn't rust, doesn't bend,
whatever). The other screwdriver can be good *for the use we want to
give it* but not intrinsically.

This mode of judgement is what we use if we compare a
titanium-strontium-whatever triple tempered screwdriver with a
high-grip silicone handle, with a 0.50€ egg slicer from
china. They don't have any common use, but we find the screwdriver
is closer to the ideal when we say it's better.

So add another thought to your list "which ideal item is this guy
comparing to"? Often critics use various ideal standards to compare
a film.
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