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

[Sean Howard]

"cruise" <cruise at casual-tempest.net> wrote:
> I think we're still trying to find a theme "everyone" gets - I'd argue
> the Sims came the closest, and it's one reason it's so popular.
> Alternatively, something that's so abstract/different, like Tetris, that
> again no one starts with preconceptions.

I don't know. I think everyone can get all sorts of themes. The Lord of
the Rings movies didn't exactly bomb at the box office, nor did Star Wars
or even Star Trek. Heck, Dr. Who has been on television longer than most
of us have been alive.

Sure, there's this nerd core that seems to "own" fanship of these
franchises, but as we've seen with things like Studio 60, Veronica Mars,
Firefly, Farscape, and to some extent, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the
nerdcore isn't enough to support a show by itself (and most of these shows
have erred on the side of playing to the fanboy).

I think it's easy to forget that normal people watch Star Trek. We see
something LIKE Star Trek come out and bomb, and then we jump to this
conclusion that normal people just don't "get it". But I think they do, or
at least can. WoW is a really, really good example of that. Normal people
can get WoW because the things don't need to get aren't really that
important. If you actually had to read through that Tolkien/Warhammer
cloned lore to do the quests, that game wouldn't have been nearly as
popular.


> So, by not saying, "There's tonnes of stuff you'll have to understand
> before you can hope to enjoy this game" we'll get more casual gamers?

That's not exactly what I meant. I was more talking about how there are
certain buzzwords that people already know that they don't understand or
don't want to understand. Once my parents, for example, have gotten it
into their head that they'll never under how a spreadsheet works, they
will avoid it like the plague. So, if you advertise your game because it
is just like a spreadsheet, then of course they'll avoid it.

I don't think the casual gamer is against learning something new. They
don't mind complex rules or deep thought. We don't have to avoid designing
towards that. But there are genres and buzzwords that they've already
developed an aversion to. It's not uncommon for somebody to try a new
genre just because of a license and finding out that the genre wasn't
quite as stupid or slow as they once thought (Final Fantasy Tactics has
done more for strategy games in the US that should be legal, for example).

> While it may not go directly from hardcore to casual, but remember
> that's not an either/or proposition - it's a continuum, and it can flow
> along it with relative ease. The further along that continuum it reaches
> before someone says, "I have to learn too much to play this" the greater
> the market. The threshold of "too much" obviously will vary depending on
> how much hype is being pushed their way. WoW had enormous amounts of
> hype, and is remarkably easy to pick up for an MMOG. Hence it went
> further down that line than before.

Again, I don't think complexity has anything to do with it. Blizzard games
are generally on the upper end of complexity for your average game. I
mean, Diablo had numerical stats that you had to add points to that would
affect other derived stats. Starcraft had three different factions,
requiring completely different tactics to battle against and a new set of
abilities and units to learn, making it perhaps the longest learning curve
of any RTS on the market. Conventional wisdom says that the casual gamer
would avoid that kind of stuff like the plague... except they didn't.

I don't think there is such a thing as too much complexity, but I do think
that there is a level at which complexity can become a hinderance. In a
competitive game, not being able to learn at your own speed can make a
huge difference in the attractiveness of a game. Like wise, if the
complexity isn't transparent enough, like creating a character up front
for an RPG and not being able to predict how those decisions will affect
you 20 hours later.

> Of course you can make casuals into hardcore players. That's /how/ you
> get hardcore players. It's just faster for teenagers and younger people
> generally as they're quicker to assimilate change and adapt.

I don't think it works that way. Being a hardcore gamer isn't something
you can learn to do. It's like being an alcoholic or an obsessive gambler.
There's a propensity there and all you have to do is introduce the drug.
It's your temperment, and if you have a hardcore temperment, either you
are a hardcore gamer or you just haven't played enough games to be.

On the other side of the coin are people like me. I own thousands of
games, have played thousands upon thousands more, and despite all that, I
wouldn't describe myself as a hardcore gamer because I rarely play a game
more than a few hours. There isn't a game in the world that will turn me
into a hardcore gamer. The same could be said for my wife (though her
interests in gaming are much more restrained and responsible than my own).

-- 
Sean Howard