[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Rewards

[John Buehler]

cruise writes:

> Thus spake Sean Howard...
> > "Mike Sellers" <mike at onlinealchemy.com> wrote:
> >> As above, the question is do we reward them extrinsically for
> >> fundamentally un-fun behaviors ("oooh, watch me press the 1
> key over and
> >> over to 'attack' this thing"), or do we find ways to create situations
> >> and player behaviors that are intrinsically rewarding?
> >
> > There's that word again... "fun". Is that the only kind of rewarding you
> > know? Because I've felt plenty rewarded for simply hanging out with my
> > friends watching bad movies and eating pizza, exploring my
> neighborhood on
> > foot, or writing an email. Give me a wall and I'll paint on it.
> Give me a
> > mountain and I'll climb it. Give me a door, and I'll go through it. Give
> > me a friend...
> >
> > The designer doesn't have to make these things "fun". In fact,
> any effort
> > to do so will fundamentally unbalance the nature of what makes these
> > things rewarding in the first place.
>
> Ironically, "fun" is one of those words that I'm not going to try and
> argue semantics with - for me, "fun" includes all those activities
> listed. It's getting damn close to "nice" as so overused as to be
> meaningless.
>
> Mike's original question still stands: how do we create situations that
> players find intrinsically rewarding, rather than having to bribe
> players with extrinsic rewards?

Pick the activity and figure out why people like doing that activity.

When an intrinsic reward is involved, people do activities because they like
it.

When an extrinsic reward is involved, people do activities because they want
what it brings when they're done with it.

So literally, let's pick an activity and dissect it.  Combat?  Crafting?
Stamp collecting?  Sneaking around?  Deer hunting?  Politics?  Running a
business?  Fashion shows?

One clue to intrinsic rewards is single player games.  They don't rely on
the multiplayer intrinsic of the social bond, so they must have a way of
calling to players through the activity that they present.  I think that the
big reason that multiplayer games can't do what single player games do is
because of the fragile structure of a single player game.  Any depth of
experience requires a carefully sculpted setting.  It would be kinda
difficult to carry off Deus Ex while a swarm of players is zerging the
facility, wiping out the NPC guards.

Or playing Deer Hunter with the Silly Dance guild doing a conga line through
the middle of the woods, scaring off all wildlife within a half mile.

Or Need for Speed with heavy PC cross traffic.  We could call it Need for
Traffic Jam.

JB