[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Rewards

[Mike Sellers]

Raph wrote:
> BTW, I regard it as very very hard to get away from extrinsic rewards
> altogether. Social metrics in particular arise spontaneously whether we
> want them to or not.

This is a good point, but it's a question of which is the driver.  People
will externalize and formalize (i.e., make extrinsic) social experiences and
relations on their own -- that's a given.  But that doesn't mean that we
need to drive gameplay from the external and hope it somehow becomes
internally, intrinsically meaningful.  In effect, in current games we've
taken the recognition of the journey and boiled down into a badge that
people can wave around when they get to the destination.  The reward can be
the badge, but that misses a much greater opportunity for making the journey
itself rewarding -- even if you never finish and get the badge.

To use a game example, I know a guy who could get any two Sims to be married
inside of five minutes, or to the top of their career ladder in about
fifteen.  He really didn't see the point of the game or why people found it
fun.  He was so focused on the destination that the journey went right over
his head.  This is not an isolated response, even within the games
industry... and yet as I've pointed out, many millions of people (about
double the number currently playing MMOGs) would disagree with his
assessment.  

Yes, some people will race to the end of any achievement-oriented gameplay
as fast as possible and get the badge, not knowing or caring that they
missed the journey itself.  Most of them will be young and male too --
gaming's generally assumed customer.  But more and more people who are not
young, male, achievement-oriented, and focused on formal recognition are
playing online games.  The *majority* of online players, who happen to be
enjoying games that provide little in the way of extrinsic rewards or formal
achievement recognition, also mostly stay away from MMOGs.  

My thesis is that if we want to attract these many millions of players to
MMOGs, we have a better chance of doing so by changing the game and reward
structure than by trying to convince them that repeatedly pressing a key to
kill a virtual rat makes for a really good time.  

Mike Sellers