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

[Caliban Darklock]

On 5/30/07, Sean Howard <squidi at squidi.net> wrote:
>
>  "Caliban Darklock" <cdarklock at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
> > Of course it does. Complexity is one of the many ways we select a game
> > from the vast array of possibilities. It's not that the average
> > airplane passenger CAN'T learn to fly the plane, but that he doesn't
> > WANT to.
>
> Funny you should mention that, because Microsoft Flight Simulator is
> pretty popular with the casual crowd.

And yet, "Falcon 4.0" is NOT. However, the realism and complexity of
this fighter jet simulation undoubtedly played a massive part in the
gamer's decision to buy it.

I would suggest the popularity of MFS is not because people want to
learn how to fly a plane, but because people want to fly a plane
without learning how.

> The average person is more than capable of playing a very complex game,
> if it is presented properly.

Specifically, they are more than capable of playing a very complex
game, if the game does not RELY ON the complexity.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is very easy to learn at a basic level.
When I got it with my first 386 PC, it took me only a few minutes to
learn how to get a plane into the air. The instrument panel was full
of things I didn't understand. I said "ooh, look at all the pretty
dials". And I just flew around for an hour or two looking at the cool
terrain model. Then I quit the game.

That certainly doesn't detract from the ability of MFS to substitute
for actual flight training. I knew two people in Virginia who invested
thousands of dollars outfitting virtual cockpits around their PCs, and
saved a lot of money on pilot lessons by doing it - both of them
eventually getting their licenses. So yes, MFS can be an immensely
complex game.

But the determining factor is not how complex the game CAN be, it is
how complex the game MUST be.

> > Isn't the complexity of a game artificial by nature? I don't see how
> > any game has a "natural" level of complexity. The level of complexity
> > may be implied by the rules, but the rules are still artificial.
>
> I believe that when you design something, there is a destination that you
> must strive for, in which all parts work in absolute harmony.

But it's still artificial. There's no natural requirement that a
knight must move the way it does, someone just made it up. There are
many ways a knight could move, and while some of them would unbalance
the game, there are many that would not. The harmony you describe is
not a natural harmony. It is, at best, an imitation of natural
harmony.

> On a side note, I still can't figure out why games give an xp bonus to
> groups.

Because they want players to play together. They give players
something desirable - XP - in exchange for doing what they think they
want. The problem is that being in a group is not the same as playing
together.

>From a suspension of disbelief standpoint, you do learn more fighting
alongside others than you do fighting alone. Every combat veteran
knows this.

> Maybe, but I think that collections with increasingly retarded goals is
> pretty hardcore too. I think the whole Xbox 360 achievement system really
> goes after people who will do anything for a cookie.

Depends on the game. Oblivion has good achievement goals, but most
games just have a bunch of stupid crap the developers made up.
Nobody's really sure what gamer points are supposed to be yet, and I'm
not one to accuse the average game development team of originality.
They're making bad decisions because they don't see enough examples of
how to make good ones. Once they do, they'll just copy those.

> I think the fact that he sees not continually going through a repetitive
> time trial over and over and over again for increasingly smaller returns
> as "that desire to give up" is what makes him hardcore :)

But the question isn't what makes him hardcore, it's how hardcore
response to a time limit differs from normal response to a time limit,
and the answer is "it doesn't". Both types of player will continue
trying to beat the time limit as long as they see a realistic
opportunity to achieve a valuable return. They simply have different
definitions of "realistic" and "valuable".