[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN} Who to design for?

[Sean Howard]

"Raph Koster" <rkoster at san.rr.com> wrote:
> It was an expensive, large, highly detailed, and quite rigorous study.
> Give EA some credit -- they were sitting on a truly shocking market
> response, and they felt they needed to understand it. And they splurged
> on trying to understand it.

I give them credit for trying. It's just that after reading something like
Freakonomics, I've come to appreciate that things which are obviously
measured aren't always the most important factor in things. The result of
this report seems so complimentary to common wisdom that I have a hard
time trusting it. Frequently, if you have a bias going in, you'll find
what you are looking for and ignore what you aren't. Expensive, large,
highly detailed, and quite rigorous are things that describe how much
effort was put into it, not whether or not that effort was focused
appropriately.

Obviously, I've never read this report or know what their methods are, so
I'll have to bow to your superior experience in this instance. But I treat
it with suspicion based on my own experiences with casual gamers and the
Sims, and I fear that the answer they arrived at is ultimately worthless.
If you can't use that answer to predict the next big Sims game or to
design it, what good does it do to have it? Great, you've explained
yesterday, but what about tomorrow?

-- 
Sean Howard