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

[Caliban Darklock]

On 5/23/07, Sean Howard <squidi at squidi.net> wrote:
>
> Your geek is showing :)

Was it ever hidden? ;)

> Context clues allow people to understand dialogue
> which contain vocabulary they don't understand.

Or, indeed, ANYTHING containing vocabulary they don't understand. The
FPS genre has a nonverbal vocabulary of gameplay which rapidly becomes
well-known to those who play the genre, as do most largely-similar
genres.

I think there are two different *extreme* approaches people take to
the problem of a large vocabulary (verbal or otherwise), and each
appeals to a whole different kind of player. Some people will create
an extensive tutorial mode (or use expository plot devices), while
others will just dump you in the middle of everything and expect you
to sink or swim.

> that's why WoW works. Because the gibberish isn't functional.

Not for gameplay, no. But the gibberish is very much functional to
certain types of player - so while the gibberish must not have
critical importance to the task, it must have a high degree of
internal and external consistency.

> You are talking about dilithium crystals, when I think the worst offender
> has been graphics.

I just think of graphics as being a slightly different vocabulary. If
the picture next to subdirectories in a file explorer were changed to
a Russian matrushka doll instead of a folder, the vocabulary may be
patently obvious to me, but it will be a little odd to most people,
and a significant portion of the audience may find it troubling simply
because they associate change with fixing a problem and they can't
figure out what was wrong with the folder icon.

> Gameplay is absolutely universal. The thing which
> separates the casuals from the hardcores is the wrappings.

While I agree with this statement, I think there's an associated
concept which people forget: complicated gameplay isn't necessarily
the goal. What we really want, in many cases, is games that both
casual and hardcore players can play and enjoy side by side.

> I think you are close, but I think games become more hardcore over time.

I don't think that's a foregone conclusion. I think what happens is
you start out with a large group of players, the casual start dropping
off, and the game starts catering to the hardcore because that's where
their subscription revenue is RIGHT NOW. They effectively destroy the
ability of new players to succeed AT ALL, so the new players simply
never arrive for that third stage.

Essentially, the market wants to go "mixed -> hardcore -> casual", but
the providers have been going "casual -> mixed -> hardcore". They've
copped to the idea that they shouldn't start out at "casual", but
they've responded by dropping it altogether when what they really need
is to maintain a consistent experience that caters to a mixed
population. Right now, games are tending to go "mixed -> hardcore ->
just plain crazy". The long tail isn't there. You start with a big
high wall and you just keep piling more and more bricks onto it -
until if you're not over the wall already, you can't get over it at
all. We need to be building pyramids, where we don't destroy the
earlier wall to build the next.

Most game designs are shortsighted.

> I don't think the learning curve is nearly as important as people think it
> is.

Your early gameplay's design is so tightly coupled to the learning
curve, it may as well be the same thing.

> I don't think having goals is what makes you a hardcore gamer.

It's the kind of goal that matters, but whenever I try to describe
what kind of goals hardcore gamers set, people yell at me. Sort of
like when I talk about toys and games being different things. ;)