[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Rewards

[Sean Howard]

"John Buehler" <johnbue at msn.com> wrote:
> I knew we'd get around to semantics.

When have we ever not?

> I use "reward" to cover the same area that "rewarding" does.  "Reward" is
> pretty much a synonym for "entertainment".  I don't limit myself to using
> it in the sense of a pellet dispenser returning a material reward.

I find my relationship with my wife and daughter extremely rewarding - in
fact, the most rewarding thing in my life from start to now. Surely, you
aren't suggesting that they are rewards?

No, no. A reward is something that is given in exchange for something. Do
this, get that. It is not simply a positive note. If we go around
measuring life by the positive and negative impact everything makes on us,
we start approaching ourselves as little more than products of our
environment. Our environment didn't produce philosophy, art, religion, or
government.

> The phrase I used for pellet-dispensing is "recognizeable personal
> achievement".  Perhaps just "recognizeable achievement" would be better.

I'm not sure that "reward" and "achievement" are interchangable.
Certainly, you can reward achievement and your achievement can be the
aquisition of a particular reward, but certainly you can reward
non-achievements (like not talking during class) or achieve something that
is not innately rewarding.

> Current games promote this recognition of achievement by assigning points
> to everything and then running an accumulator on them.

Promote achievement, possibly. If you can measure it, we Americans will
compete by it. But a measure of one's success is not innately a reward.
One may be rewarded through it, but it is not a reward itself. Likewise,
it is not innately an achievement - not unless you factor in your previous
scores or a high score list you are attempting to dominate. If you ignore
the effects of score, it becomes meaningless.

> So if someone is prone to seeking recognizeable achievement, the idea of
> moving that accumulator jumps out at them.

Yes, yes, there are people out there who make games into some sort of sick
self esteem factory, sure. But not every player does and therefore you
cannot make generalizations about something based on the adoption
philosophy of limited portion of the population. If someone is NOT seeking
recognizeable achievement, what then? How does that affect your definition
of reward?

-- 
Sean Howard