[MUD-Dev2] Risk vs Reward [was: Value]

[Sean Howard]

"cruise" <cruise at casual-tempest.net> wrote:
> In "Rules of Play" Salen and Zimmerman use the term "meaningful choices"
> - which is much more descriptive to my mind. It's a choice where the
> effect of the outcomes is obvious to the player at the time they make
> the choice, and they care about those effects.

I prefer "interesting choices". Meaningful implies something that I just
don't think is true for all games. I mean, if I select the flower
wallpaper over the polkadot wallpaper, that's not even meaningful to
myself. I don't really care, so I'll just select one until such time that
I might care (ie I get tired of wallpaper A or it suddenly becomes an
eyesore next to my neon green couch). However, the choice is interesting
because the options are quite different. I'm not choosing between three
barely different granite patterns. The options have been selected by the
designer (or the player through mods) to be different enough that the
decision is not dominated or confusing or insignificant.

I wouldn't call it meaningful, though I guess you could say that if a
choice were interesting, that would be meaningful. I just prefer a
different implication other than it means something to the player, because
that's not always true - I mean, if you can play through Mortal Kombat by
just jump kicking in a corner, does that make all the other available
options to you meaningful?

-- 
Sean Howard