[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Rewards

[John Buehler]

cruise writes:

> Thus spake John Buehler...
>  > I'm an advocate of the disruption theory.  The theory that "available
>  > enjoyable activities" increases with more players would only make
>  > sense to a socializer.
>
> Not necessarily - as a simple example, the many sub-games created by
> players offer more opportunity for you to find something enjoyable,
> which would not exist without many creative minds coming together.
>
> Socialisation is involved /at some stage/ but you don't have to be
> involved in that stage if you don't want to.

I understand your point and I agree that the effect exists.  The only
argument would be over semantics, which isn't worth pursuing.

> Thus spake John Buehler...
>  > Right now, games seem to focus on one type of "reward": recognizeable
>  > personal achievement.  That is a viable "inherently enjoyable" form of
>  > entertainment for a lot of people.  The population of current games
>  > demonstrates that.  So people ARE involved in an inherently enjoyable
>  > experience right now.  Unfortunately, what designers have done is to
>  > make every variation of gameplay the same thing; they're all focused
>  > on recognizeable personal achievement.
>
>  > Much of the griping about the treadmill and so on is that players who
>  > are hoping for other "inherently enjoyable" activities are finding the
>  > trappings of what they are hoping for (crafting, questing, exploring),
>  > only to find that the activities themselves are rooted in
>  > "recognizeable personal achievement".  The challenge to the gaming
>  > industry is to figure out what is "inherently enjoyable" about stamp
>  > collecting and work that into the game. Or juggling, or making beer -
>  > or even engaging in medieval combat.
>
> It is ironic, is it not, that all the achiever/killer ends up getting is
> a social reward - personal recognition.

There's clearly an element of that there, which tells us why soloers play
multiplayer games.  But I was aiming at a slightly broader field, which is
the achievement that can be spotted, marked, noticed, etc.  By the player,
not just by his peers.  Single player games operate on this.  A player works
the controls, sees successes.  Those are "recognizeable personal
achievements".  That's the player's reward.  Little pulses of entertainment
for the player.

> If we cannot make a game without rewards, we at least need a more
> diverse set of rewards. The "group" reward has been suggested before
> (apologies, I cannot remember who): all players are fighting a common
> enemy, and progress is only measured by the position of the front line
> of the war - no personal levels, or powerful loot.
>
> Any other suggestions?

I know that the front lines thing is a favorite of mine.  I have no idea if
I was first with it.  Paul Schwanz was always pursuing game mechanisms that
encouraged group activity.

To figure out rewards, look at the psychology of those that you want to
entertain.  Look at the people, not the entertainment.  As they say, having
customers is the most important business principle.  If the customers you
want to attract are Star Wars enthusiasts, what is it that they find
entertaining about Star Wars?  Fighting the empire?  Flying in space?
Seeing new and strange things?  Seeing their favorite characters?  Providing
rewards for those experiences is going to decide what kind of a game should
be created.

Imagine someone entertained by seeing new and strange things in a current
game.  There's only so much static content that can be created by hand.

Imagine someone entertained by seeing their favorite characters.  Won't the
behavior of those characters be important?  Is that going to work in a
multiplayer setting, where a crowd follows Chewbaca around everywhere he
goes?

Start with the people.

JB