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Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Aenovae on January 19, 2005, 01:23:03 AM This post is not so much a proper critique of the book, but a "review" to would-be buyers.
I found it to be woefully short and lacking in anything new that professional designers (or educated would-be designers) wouldn't already know. The cartoons are cute, but they mostly serve as padding to make the book seem longer than it really is. The first half of the book is just a long-winded way of saying, "People like solving patterns, games are patterns, so people like games." Along the way, it mentions shockers like, "different people are better at learning different patterns," and "some people cheat, which is self-defeating." The second half of the book goes off-topic occasionally with ideas like, "the graphics and setting of a game are different from its gameplay." Worse, the second half is dominated by a "games are art, or will be some day, they're important, they're part of human nature just like other media, MY JOB BENEFITS HUMANITY, TAKE THAT GRANDPA!" diatribe. No, I did not make up that grandpa bit. Maybe the book was written for people who know squat about games, or for those who hate the medium (like Grandpa). I don't think either of those groups is going to pick up a book called “A Theory of Fun” that analyzes the reasons we play games. Maybe the book was written for experienced designers, in which case they will be very disappointed to know that it offers no explanation on how to apply whatever it is trying to teach. As an example, the book briefly suggests that one could categorize all games into atomic units of gameplay (i.e. fun). These atoms would be things like aiming, moving to all locations on a map, defensive reflex response, etc. Unfortunately for the reader, the book does not provide a well thought-out list in defense of this idea. I guess that's an exercise left up to the reader. Maybe the book is just harmless mental masturbation, like Terra Nova? That's my vote. It's clear that Raph has a lot of great ideas swirling around in his head. Unfortunately, this book does not present them (or does not present them well) to the reader. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: geldonyetich on January 19, 2005, 11:55:30 AM Well, if knowing your audience is good to set a tone of argument, then you've certainly nailed that review posted here. It's just what a jaded cynic wants to hear.
My own rather long winded review (http://www.grimwell.com/index.php?action=fullnews&id=223) has probably missed the point as well. Raph's Theory argues that games need to innovate in order to present new patterns for players to Grok (learn in entirety), as it's the process of successfully groking that generates fun. This is of vital importance if you actually have tried to program fun into a computer because the question of, "What is supposed to make this fun?" comes up constantly. Here Raph hands you "what's fun" (or at least his Theory about that) on a silver platter. Then attempts to fully explain how people like to have fun presented due to the way people's brains seem to work. There's a few other ideas about here why certain things do or don't work that many in the industry had to learn the hard way. The book ends on some interesting notes as to what all this means to all of humanity if people could develop games with the proper perspective of being learning exercises at heart. Yeah, he's proud to say that when he signed up as a game designer he ended up as a cutting edge teacher, so what? I respectfully disagree with your shooting it down as not having a point or not being useful to developers. Though you've good reason to be disappointed if you were hoping he would be outlining specific game designs instead of general game theory. Personally, I can take what he's talking about and use it in the construction of new game designs by asking myself questions such as, "Is this really anything the player hasn't already grokked before?". It help me realize what I felt was missing from my NWN mods: new patterns, new ways to play through a scenario that can exhilerate the player. This, along with the outlined specifics of how it works exactly, is where you can pull practicality from the book. Title: Re: A Theory of Fun Post by: Pineapple on January 19, 2005, 12:42:05 PM Quote from: Aenovae I found it to be woefully short and lacking in anything new that professional designers (or educated would-be designers) wouldn't already know. Common sense. That's all it is. And yet SWG still sucked. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HRose on January 19, 2005, 12:44:00 PM I'm still trying to find the time to read it but I've been foced to read Don DeLillo's "Underworld" and it has "just" 900 pages ...
My first quick glance is still here. I'll probably wrote more about it when noone will be interested. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Margalis on January 19, 2005, 01:01:29 PM Quote from: geldonyetich Raph's Theory argues that games need to innovate in order to present new patterns for players to Grok (learn in entirety), as it's the process of successfully groking that generates fun. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah... So...let me get this straight. Things that are interesting and novel are interesting and novel, and that's a good thing? Raph, from what I have seen, pays no attention to detail. It shows up in his games, it's not surprising it would show up in his books as well. The problem with grand theories of this and that is that if you botch all the details you have nothing. I don't think you need an entire book to explain to people that new things are interesting and old, tired things are not. What would be nice is some actual breakdown: Here are some games that tried to do something new but really didn't. Here are some games that did something new, but it wasn't good and here's why. Here are some games that didn't do anything new but were still good, and here's the explanation. Here are some ways you could morph some existing mechanics to make them newish. Etc etc. IMO the vast majority of overly vague noodling is just nonsense. Illustration through example and details shows that someone has really thought about what they are saying. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Pineapple on January 19, 2005, 01:42:08 PM Quote from: Margalis Etc etc. IMO the vast majority of overly vague noodling is just nonsense. Agreed. But it makes the fanbois swoon, and feeds the ego of the red name. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Samwise on January 19, 2005, 01:52:24 PM I rather liked Raph's "heuristic of fun" (my words, not his):
Quote Do you have to prepare before taking on the challenge? Can you prepare in different ways and still succeed? Does the environment in which the challenge takes place affect the challenge? Are there solid rules defined for the challenge you undertake? Can the rule set support multiple types of challenges? Can the player bring multiple abilities to bear on the challenge? At high levels of difficulty, does the player have to bring multiple abilities to bear on the challenge? Is there skill involved in using an ability? (If not, is this a fundamental "move" in the game, like moving one checker piece? Are there multiple success states to overcoming the challenge? (In other words, success should not have a single guaranteed result.) Do advanced players get no benefit from tackling very easy challenges? Does failing at the challenge at the very least make you have to try again? Taken individually, each thing seems like obvious common sense, but it was neat to have that list laid out in front of me. It gives me something new to think about when writing adventures and encounters for PnP games. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Aenovae on January 19, 2005, 02:37:21 PM That is a good list.
MMORPGs are massive games with lots of features, so if you were to apply a list like the above, I think you have to apply it to a specific feature or activity. It's interesting to note that EverQuest (2) satisfies most of those questions about combat. Do you have to prepare before taking on the challenge? Yes, you need to buff up, organize the group, determine roles (main tank, main assist, mezzer, etc), and declare strategy ("kill the three casters before fighting the boss") Can you prepare in different ways and still succeed? Not really, the game encourages everyone to wear the best equipment they have at all times, and buff up fully before 99% of the battles. Only 1% of the battles require use of emergency items or abilities. Does the environment in which the challenge takes place affect the challenge? No, the terrain does not significantly affect encounters. (besides pulling around trees, and the fact that different areas have different mobs) Are there solid rules defined for the challenge you undertake? Yes, combat is predictable and deterministic to a degree. Players know what they can do and what to expect from the game. Can the rule set support multiple types of challenges? Yes, you basically quest, fight, and explore. Combat is against different types of foes (melee, caster, group, spawner) in different configurations. Can the player bring multiple abilities to bear on the challenge? Yes, players have lots of combat arts and spells. At high levels of difficulty, does the player have to bring multiple abilities to bear on the challenge? Yes. You have to use most of them in normal fights, and boss fights require all of them (especially the emergency ones on 30-minute timers) Is there skill involved in using an ability? (If not, is this a fundamental "move" in the game, like moving one checker piece? Yes, you need to know when to mez and when not to mez. You need to know which buffs stack with others and which do not. You need to know which abilities break mez, you need to know your AoE range, etc. Are there multiple success states to overcoming the challenge? (In other words, success should not have a single guaranteed result.) No, every battle has one success condition: you kill all the mobs in the encounter. Some quests have multiple ways of completing them, but these are very rare. Do advanced players get no benefit from tackling very easy challenges? Yes, killing low level mobs nets very little or zero exp. Does failing at the challenge at the very least make you have to try again? Yes, but the player can pick from tons of different challenges at any time. A few quests are required and must be completed eventually. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Xilren's Twin on January 19, 2005, 02:49:44 PM Quote from: Samwise I rather liked Raph's "heuristic of fun" (my words, not his): Quote Do you have to prepare before taking on the challenge? Can you prepare in different ways and still succeed? Does the environment in which the challenge takes place affect the challenge? Are there solid rules defined for the challenge you undertake? Can the rule set support multiple types of challenges? Can the player bring multiple abilities to bear on the challenge? At high levels of difficulty, does the player have to bring multiple abilities to bear on the challenge? Is there skill involved in using an ability? (If not, is this a fundamental "move" in the game, like moving one checker piece? Are there multiple success states to overcoming the challenge? (In other words, success should not have a single guaranteed result.) Do advanced players get no benefit from tackling very easy challenges? Does failing at the challenge at the very least make you have to try again? Taken individually, each thing seems like obvious common sense, but it was neat to have that list laid out in front of me. It gives me something new to think about when writing adventures and encounters for PnP games. Ok, it's a decent set of questions to ask, but you still can't say "if 80% of the answers to these questions are Yes. congratulations, your game is Fun!" I tend to agree with what some others have said; you can be spot on in your theory of what is fun from a design point of view, but the rubber meets the road at the implementation of the concept. This is tangentially related to my thread on NWN's SP game vs Kotor. You can take the same underlying engine and gameplay elements and end up with two totally different experiences based on nothing more than how one group implemented their design compaed to the other. I guess that's where the creative/artistic part of game design comes in :) Xilren Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Samwise on January 19, 2005, 03:10:34 PM I may have misrepresented Raph a bit, so I apologize - reading over the context again, Raph warns that the checklist is "not an algorithm for fun, it's a recipe for checking for the absence of fun". Which is what I had mentally shorthanded into "heuristic of fun" before copying the list out for my own reference.
So no, you wouldn't say "My game hits 80% of these, it's fun." You'd say "My game missed 20% of these, I screwed up somewhere." If you were to try to redesign EQ2 according to the standards Raph set out on that page of his book, you'd have to fix all three of those "no"s without compromising any of your existing "yes"es. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Xilren's Twin on January 19, 2005, 05:00:07 PM Quote from: Samwise I may have misrepresented Raph a bit, so I apologize - reading over the context again, Raph warns that the checklist is "not an algorithm for fun, it's a recipe for checking for the absence of fun". Which is what I had mentally shorthanded into "heuristic of fun" before copying the list out for my own reference. So no, you wouldn't say "My game hits 80% of these, it's fun." You'd say "My game missed 20% of these, I screwed up somewhere." If you were to try to redesign EQ2 according to the standards Raph set out on that page of his book, you'd have to fix all three of those "no"s without compromising any of your existing "yes"es. That I can agree with. Xilren Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: rscott on January 19, 2005, 05:37:26 PM Do they make the claim that the ONLY way to have fun is through solving patterns/puzzles? I'm sure i've had fun in other circumstances...
It seems to me that things can be fun without having to solve puzzles. Games even. Especially RPG games. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Samwise on January 19, 2005, 05:51:14 PM Quote from: rscott Do they make the claim that the ONLY way to have fun is through solving patterns/puzzles? No. Far from it, in fact. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Raph on January 19, 2005, 06:10:49 PM I learned a while ago that responding to reviews is generally a waste of time. If this were a detailed critique, maybe. :)
The atomic units of gameplay thing is my GDC design talk this year, so expect more on that. A lot of the people who have picked up the book are in fact not game designers. I also disagree that there's no parts that provide help with formal application, but YMMV. Quote from: Aenovae Can you prepare in different ways and still succeed? Not really, the game encourages everyone to wear the best equipment they have at all times, and buff up fully before 99% of the battles. Only 1% of the battles require use of emergency items or abilities. I would say "yes," because you can bring a different character to the combat and still succeed. A different character is by definition different preparation. Quote Does the environment in which the challenge takes place affect the challenge? No, the terrain does not significantly affect encounters. (besides pulling around trees, and the fact that different areas have different mobs) The latter is enough to meet the conditions. Also, I would say that fighting in a dungeon versus fighting in open space does matter. Quote Are there multiple success states to overcoming the challenge? (In other words, success should not have a single guaranteed result.) No, every battle has one success condition: you kill all the mobs in the encounter. Some quests have multiple ways of completing them, but these are very rare. Having been hurt not at all or brought to death's door is an example of multiple success states. A better example to try is to dissect crafting systems. • Preparation is required. Ever since the days of Ultima Online, we’ve relied on “getting the right pieces” to provide the fun in crafting. So we’ve done well on the “preparation is required” aspect of things as far as crafting goes. BUT: Preparation in itself ideally follows all of these rules recursively (eg, we should regard the harvesting mechanic as needing to follow all of these rules in and of itself). By and large, we have not done that. We also have usually failed to take full advantage of the “preparation should be able to take multiple forms” part of this—we have by and large gone with static ingredients for static results. • A sense of place is required. This is highly underexploited in crafting systems today. Different locales providing different advantages and disadvantages to crafting was explored a bit in Star Wars Galaxies, but has not been addressed much by and large. • A solid core mechanic. By and large, we’ve relied on simple combination. That’s not an interesting ruleset in and of itself—it shifts all the burden of fun onto the preparation. We need a mechanic that “fights back” as AIs do in combat. This is the core of the issue with crafting. It is currently on the order of moving a single checker piece, as opposed to playing checkers. • A range of challenges. This is, simply put, the range of possible craftables. However, it’s worth noting that since the solid core mechanic is missing, the range of challenges is not generally significantly interesting. The different items (as “opponents”) do not have different abilities or skill to use against you except for perhaps a variable failure rate. • A range of abilities required to solve the encounter. This is usually true to a degree, but currently, most crafting systems do not require interdependence between players at the actual crafting step. Instead, they put all of that in the resource gathering step. The abilities needed are part of the preparatory step, since there’s no explicit use of ability during crafting itself. Requiring multiple individuals working together to create something has best been expressed by pizza-making in Sims Online, and has hardly been used anywhere else. • Skill in using the abilities is required. This is missing altogether in most cases. There’s a minor amount of gambling in SWG’s crafting system, but that’s about it. Lacking a core, there’s no way to use abilities. A good core mechanic is going to provide scope for use of abilities, and for skillful application of those abilities. • A variable feedback system should be in place. In most cases, we do not do this. Currently, success almost always gives you exactly what you want. This means that crafting an item is actually simpler than moving a checker piece, which has multiple possible outcomes. • The Mastery Problem must be dealt with. This problem crushes most online game crafting systems, as high level crafters completely block the market to lower levels players. • Failure has a cost. This, we usually do. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: rscott on January 19, 2005, 07:12:07 PM Quote from: Samwise Quote from: rscott Do they make the claim that the ONLY way to have fun is through solving patterns/puzzles? No. Far from it, in fact. Well, judging from this list of 'heuristic of fun', it would seem to be the opposite. It must follow his list or its not fun. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Raph on January 19, 2005, 07:15:36 PM The book spends a lot of pages on pinning down what "fun" is, so your question isn't easy to answer.
Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Samwise on January 19, 2005, 07:20:01 PM Quote from: rscott Quote from: Samwise Quote from: rscott Do they make the claim that the ONLY way to have fun is through solving patterns/puzzles? No. Far from it, in fact. Well, judging from this list of 'heuristic of fun', it would seem to be the opposite. It must follow his list or its not fun. The list applies to a certain subset of game design and fun; it's not the whole thing, or the book would be pretty short, wouldn't it? I'm not going to sit here and paraphrase the whole book for you, so here. (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1932111972/qid=1106191176/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/103-8396900-1382253?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: schild on January 19, 2005, 07:25:23 PM Quote from: Raph \ • A solid core mechanic. By and large, we’ve relied on simple combination. That’s not an interesting ruleset in and of itself—it shifts all the burden of fun onto the preparation. We need a mechanic that “fights back” as AIs do in combat. This is the core of the issue with crafting. It is currently on the order of moving a single checker piece, as opposed to playing checkers. No, you really don't. In fact, the horrendous system in EQ2 is testament to this - I don't want to die or have harm caused to me by crafting. Generally, the nonviolent type will play the crafter. If they have to worry about getting hurt while participating in one of the more social aspects of the game, I would wager they are more likely to just walk away and find something else. I would be far more interested in a treasure hunting system in an interesting game world. Or gardening. I'd like a garden where I can make herbs for alchemy. Hopefully this will be an option on the floating islands of Tabula Rasa. As a crafter: • I do not want drops off mobs to be useful to combat-types immediately. • I want crafting to be my lifestyle in the game. I do not and should not expect to be good at combat. • As per the above, I do not want 'jack of all trades" to be a possibility like it was in SW:G. Example (before nerfs): near Master Merchant, Master Smuggler, Pistoleer, and Medic. I was the [un]holy trinity all wrapped into one. That shouldn't be possible. • I don't want to rely on combat types to bring me crafting goods. I'd rather be good at evasio and find my herbs, ore, oil, etc - On My Own. • I don't want crafting to be a chore...a second-thought...the Other System - particularly when a child can come up with the combat systems that most suits pitch as "inventive." There's nothing inventive about shit that was in MUDs 20 years ago. • I don't expect everything I make to be even remotely useful to me. • I want to open shop somewhere in a game and call it home. I don't want there to be merchants. SW:G was very, VERY good about this. It was probably the most inspired idea in the game UNTIL urban sprawl hit. Which unfortunately did not take long. • I want to be self-sufficient. • I want to have the ability to work in a mall-type area, like a player-city, or be a loner selling stuff out of a suitcase in a dungeon - like potions. Much like the merchant in Resident Evil 4 - but he only sells overpriced potions. That's horribly annoying and a topic for another story. • I don't ever want to have to participate in PvP and I'd like a flag that doesn't put me on either side of the fence. If I want to hawk my goods to Imperials, Rebels, the Alliance or Horde - it should be an option. America does it. I should be able to in a game. • I don't want to deal with cycling resources. It was cute at first in SW:G. Then it became a job. Stupid, stupid idea. • I want to deal with hunting down resources. If I need to wander out to a tree in the middle of Yavin 4 for a seed, when I bring it back home, I should be able to plant the seed and be self-sufficient. No one else should be able to rob my tree as well - since I won't be good at combat. • If making merchants a part of PvP - in a Fable sort of way - is necessary, I want the ability to hire armed guards from either faction who can protect me in enemy territory. As for home, I want the ability to put down something akin to bear traps around my seedling, or whatever. Basically - crafting is ass, ATiTD is the only game going in the right direction - but it gets boring. It's time to go back to the drawing board on it. At the same time, I hope the drawing board for a skill-based combat system is making progress. I can guarantee you, no game is going to be able to do it as fun as City of Heroes does. They've won that race. Next. Edit: To add - I'm not a crafter most of the time. Though I always try it out hoping for something interesting. The best places to look for good crafting are character types already in games. The merchants in Planescape or RE4. The games in Animal Crossing. ATiTD. There's a wealth of resources out there - and not a single one fo the MMOG designers today seem to be paying attention. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: schild on January 19, 2005, 07:31:17 PM Ooooh, I missed the last 2 bullet points, scrolled too fast:
Quote • The Mastery Problem must be dealt with. This problem crushes most online game crafting systems, as high level crafters completely block the market to lower levels players. • Failure has a cost. This, we usually do. 1. Guilds need to be of limited size. I don't mean should - NEED. And there should be no alliances. Also, raids and required grouping - EQ2 is the extreme and WoW is the minimum. All the bases have been covered. Time for a new mechanic. 2. Failure should do nothing more than lose a small percentage of the resources. It adds up over time. People hate salt in fresh wounds. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Samwise on January 19, 2005, 07:41:42 PM Quote from: schild Quote from: Raph We need a mechanic that “fights back” as AIs do in combat. This is the core of the issue with crafting. It is currently on the order of moving a single checker piece, as opposed to playing checkers. No, you really don't. In fact, the horrendous system in EQ2 is testament to this - I don't want to die or have harm caused to me by crafting. I don't think "fighting back" necessarily means that you take damage if you lose. It just means that the act of crafting should involve some sort of interactive challenge. In SWG, the act of crafting an item, given a big stack of resources to start with, could be completely scripted because the crafting process never offered any sort of variety or challenge. I heard that EQ2 has some sort of crafting minigame (along with the chance of incinerating yourself in your forge or something silly like that, which I assume is a separate beast entirely, and the one that you take issue with, schild), but not having played it, I can't comment on whether the minigame is successful to any degree in making crafting more engaging. Quote Or gardening. I'd like a garden where I can make herbs for alchemy. That sounds immensely fun to me for some reason. Maybe because the thing I liked most in SWG was decorating my shop. Combine that small potential for artistic expression with some nicely rendered plants, maybe some artificial life underpinnings to make it behave like a real garden, then add a goal to it in the form of crafting.... *drool* Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: rscott on January 19, 2005, 07:57:34 PM But even involving some 'intereactive challenge' is what i asked. Only if you want the game to be fun in a 'certain' way. It can certainly be fun without having that challenge. Fun<>challenge. Nor does it require it.
Though perhaps I am reading too much into it. Perhaps he isn't saying it must have a challenge, or it isn't fun. Maybe putting challenge in is the poor mans way of making something fun. Easy to do if you can't think of anything else. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: schild on January 19, 2005, 07:59:45 PM Quote from: Samwise That sounds immensely fun to me for some reason. Maybe because the thing I liked most in SWG was decorating my shop. Combine that small potential for artistic expression with some nicely rendered plants, maybe some artificial life underpinnings to make it behave like a real garden, then add a goal to it in the form of crafting.... *drool* I've laid out a lot of design mechanisms for shit like that. I've thought it through and made sure it sounds fun when I talk about it. I could go into more - but No One Is Paying Me to Give Them Good Ideas. I'll just keep laughing when they make me place harvesters - or whatever replacement the next game might have. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Margalis on January 19, 2005, 08:12:23 PM IMO, the key to all *lasting* fun is interactive decision making. Tic tac toe isn't fun once you figure out that you will always draw. There is zero decision making process at that point. Decision making in crafting is typically non-existent. There is no strategy or tactics or any sort of real decision making involved. You just decide what to craft, then craft it.
From what I understand SWG crafting is at least a bit different in that you have some room to experiment. People want choices non-trivial choices. That's what defines fun games to a large degree. I have at least two things I can do, and it isn't brain-dead obvious which one is best. Challenge is related to that, but it's not the same thing. It doesn't have to be hard. It can be creative or personal expression. But you have to be actively involved. Most crafting systems, and most combat systems, either have no choices, or have a set of choices that easily reduce to one. (In game theory terms you could talk about having a single Nash equilibrium or something like that - all your supposed decisions are strictly less than the one best set) Not having any choices is bad, and having only trivially easy choices is not a huge step up. Wack-a-mole is not true interaction. Decisions are interaction. Edit: There is one question you have to ask yourself always, just one: At every step in the process, is the player making non-trivial decisions? And, if you are making a MMORPG, the second most important question: How are players going to abuse this? Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Samwise on January 19, 2005, 09:30:18 PM Quote from: Margalis From what I understand SWG crafting is at least a bit different in that you have some room to experiment. Pssch. "Experiment" was the most horribly deceptive word they could have used to describe that process. It consists of clicking a couple of buttons to roll dice to see if your item's stats improve. The dice are weighted by how much XP you've ground out (if you're a master you get 10 dice, if not you get 1, or something like that... I vividly remember being unable to make even half-decent weapons until I bit the bullet and ground to master weaponsmith) and how good your resources are. There isn't a single iota of player skill, creativity, or "experimentation" involved in the actual process of crafting (even without sites like SWGcraft, it'd take a braindead lemur to miss the correlation between resource stats and crafted item stats). Sorry, I'm parenthetically ranting again. Schild, I can't pay you, but I am tremendously curious to hear what sort of stuff a really fun MMOG might have. I'm just sayin', in case you ever feel like letting a few of those Good Ideas leak on this site. ;) Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: schild on January 19, 2005, 09:37:34 PM Quote from: Samwise Schild, I can't pay you, but I am tremendously curious to hear what sort of stuff a really fun MMOG might have. I'm just sayin', in case you ever feel like letting a few of those Good Ideas leak on this site. ;) I've been told - by people in position of gaming authority - that no one cares about my ideas. I know them and my real-life friends know some of them. I mean, it's all just evolution of the genre. I'm not a big fan of revolution. But, for the last 5-6 years or so, my brain has been poured into the whole online gaming concept. Basically, it's the future, whether we like it or not. As such, they need to evolve past this fantasy swords, elves, and dragons shit that they're stuck in. And slight evasion (the half-assed sci-fi theme of Tabula Rasa [what we've seen thus far, I could be, and hope to be wrong] - isn't evolution. It's just what I said, half-ass. Auto Assault, City of Heroes, MxO (for better or worse...) is at least an escape from the norm. I don't know about Auto Assault - but beyond the skins, I can tell you CoH and MxO are nothing more than clever skins and some timer changes. I'm a big fan of the converting single-player immersion to an online-format. I mean how cool would it be to watch a multi-branched set of scenarios unfold in a conspiracy story a la deus ex - but online with friends. Even if it's on tracks - it would be much more fun than EQ #whatever. I have a good deal of time devoted to the concept of a multi-branched online games based on single player mechanics. And I think it would work - and well. The gardening thing was just part of an idea (as of this moment, partially incomplete) for a 'new world' scenario. Post-apocalyptic for sure - but more based in rebuilding (very very lightly indebted to ATiTD for the inspiration of a non-combat MMOG) rather than trying to patchwork the old world back together (read: Fallout style). Of course, the idea is much more streamlined than ATiTD and doesn't force tedium down your throat. There's no excuse for elves. They're overplayed, and if someone else doesn't stop this fantasy shit, If they don't change the genre of MMORPGs, I'm at least going to put my ideas down on paper. Maybe in the next few months I'll open a development section on the site devoted to re-written mechanics. Game Designer Fan Fiction if you would. Only without furries and Captain Kirk. Edit: Clarity. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Calantus on January 19, 2005, 10:09:07 PM Quote from: schild Game Designer Fan Fiction if you would. This is why people who say that "people aren't interested in your ideas" are wrong. I like hearing ideas even if they suck. And I like hearing them regardless of whether they will ever, or could ever be adopted into an actual game. As long as they are well thought out of course. I liked reading Musashi's design theory for the same reason (and have read it multiple times over the years) even though I know it's entirely irrelevant in changing the industry. I'm also reading Hrose's blog now as his ideas are interesting because they are well thought out (to a degree, I'm not implying he's spent years mulling over the nuances of an idea), even if his writing style is quite disorientating. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Velorath on January 19, 2005, 10:47:54 PM Quote from: schild I'm a big fan of the converting single-player immersion to an online-format. I mean how cool would it be to watch a multi-branched set of scenarios unfold in a conspiracy story a la deus ex - but online with friends. Even if it's on tracks - it would be much more fun than EQ #whatever. I have a good deal of time devoted to the concept of a multi-branched online games based on single player mechanics. And I think it would work - and well. That's more or less what I had hoped Resident Evil: Outbreak would have ended up as, but it was way too short and had a lot of gameplay and communicaton issues (and of course wasn't multi-branched). I'm hoping Outbreak File #2 isn't just more of the same. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Raph on January 19, 2005, 11:18:20 PM "Fight back" was a metaphor; it basically means interactive choices and decisions that have consequences.
In a lot of ways, Puzzle Pirates is the one to get it right--everything important is a complete game. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: schild on January 19, 2005, 11:19:53 PM Quote from: Raph In a lot of ways, Puzzle Pirates is the one to get it right--everything important is a complete game. You saying that, it brings a tear to a big man's eye. Thank you. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: MahrinSkel on January 20, 2005, 05:25:50 AM FWIW, I'm finding it a useful book. Even where I don't agree with it, or think it is incomplete, it does an excellent job of structuring the debate and helping me organize my thinking on the subject. I think that's probably what Raph hoped to create, rather than an authoritive and final text on what "fun" is.
--Dave Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: rscott on January 20, 2005, 09:16:23 AM Well, that is an interesting question. Is watching TV fun? i would say it is, assuming i like the show. Trying to pin down what fun is seems a bit of chore by itself.
I have fun exploring/sight seeing. Even if its trivial to do. For example, i have fun exploring the edges of the madelbrot set. Perhaps someone else doesn't. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Merusk on January 20, 2005, 09:33:15 AM Quote • The Mastery Problem must be dealt with. This problem crushes most online game crafting systems, as high level crafters completely block the market to lower levels players. You had this in SWG beta. You wussed out of it and didn't develop the idea enough. Force players to choose what plans/ schematics/ parts/ items they want to craft. There should be a limited number of these patterns they'll know how to make. That way they can be self-sufficient and create a very small pool of items on their own from parts through to complex items. Alternatly you can have a crafter who doesn't know how to make the parts, but have a broad range of advanced items they can craft while relying on different crafters to provide the parts. The reason players disliked the system was the way it was sold and designed. You fell into the whole advancement trap and so that's the way the professions (and heck, the whole skill system) were approached. Since system was sold as a hierarchy and called items 'basic' and "advanced" everyone wanted to rush to the end and be advanced. Why? Only Noobz "basic" parts, and MMO psychology says we all want to be uber. To be uber you have to be advanced. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Glazius on January 20, 2005, 10:43:16 AM Quote from: Merusk Quote • The Mastery Problem must be dealt with. This problem crushes most online game crafting systems, as high level crafters completely block the market to lower levels players. You had this in SWG beta. You wussed out of it and didn't develop the idea enough. Force players to choose what plans/ schematics/ parts/ items they want to craft. There should be a limited number of these patterns they'll know how to make. That way they can be self-sufficient and create a very small pool of items on their own from parts through to complex items. Alternatly you can have a crafter who doesn't know how to make the parts, but have a broad range of advanced items they can craft while relying on different crafters to provide the parts. Hmm. So, a crafter starts out knowing how to craft parts, but at some point has to forget that? Or they start out being unable to craft anything without help from other players? What about something like: There's a discipline called BioPharmaChem which takes biological matter and turns it into useful pharmaceuticals. Taking a chunk of animal flesh and running it through the basic trade tool results in a basic blood-and-protein health stim with roughly the same quality as the original flesh. It heals damage, preferably with some crash-like aftereffect that doesn't make higher-end stims universally better than lower ones. After just a little work in BioPharmaChem you can make basic stims out of any sort of flesh, from rodent up to dragon. When you get to the higher end you can run that same chunk of flesh through a distillation coupler, pull out, concentrate, and amplify the hormones, and wind up with a metabolic booster of a much greater potency than the original flesh. Rodent boosters are great for people with the constitution to handle them, but a dragon booster is going to result in a brief period of power followed by a long period of being dead. Their primary use is in the construction of "boost frames" by another discipline - rough organic exoskeletons that need that sort of raw power to even register. (Similarly, the required degree of distillation couple, from a ChemEng discipline, would turn a weak explosive into a solid nugget of unreactive compound while a much lower degree would amplify the damage nicely.) The higher-end tradeskills amplify their base components' value much more than the lower-end tradeskills, but the lower-end tradeskills still produce usable items. A higher-end player could craft lower-end items is if he were deprived of most of the tools of the trade, or as a favor for someone else - but they can jack the value of the component up a greater amount in the same time when well-equipped. Though even as I type it I wonder if that would be enough of a barrier. --GF Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Samwise on January 20, 2005, 12:16:00 PM I had an idea at one point for each crafter simply choosing a subset of items that they "specialized" in making. Say, for example, you get to pick a total of 6 items as you progress through your skill tree (one at novice, one at each of the levels in a particular branch, one at master). Those six items might be finished products, or subcomponents, or a mix.
The idea is that any item that you specialize in will be one notch better than the same item made by a master who doesn't specialize in it. Even if you're a novice. So if a master is making a rifle and he doesn't have a specialization in one of that rifle's subcomponents, it's in his best interests to seek out an apprentice who can help him by focusing on that subcomponent. If he doesn't want to deal with an apprentice, he could make a deal with a parts manufacturer and buy those uber rifle barrels in bulk (or buy a schematic, or whatever). The antisocial crafter who doesn't want interdependence and still wants to make uber items can do that; he'll just be limited in how many uber items he can make. The main goal of this system, as I saw it, was to make it so that novice crafters could make something that would be useful in the economy. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HRose on January 20, 2005, 03:08:48 PM Quote from: MahrinSkel it does an excellent job of structuring the debate and helping me organize my thinking on the subject. That's definitely what Raph does, book or not. I guess it's not a case that he is a creative director and he says that his work is about helping designers to create the game they have in their minds. Even in the introduction to the book Will Wright underlines that this is what he does better. (About the topic of this thread and the "fun": I still believe that Raph's approach is good but partial, as written in the comment I linked. He just looks at the "fun" from a "formal system" perspective but he doesn't consider the cultural weight. This makes sense because his theory is for "game design" but even in the game design the cultural aspect is extremely strong. The archetypes, the genres, the influences, the feeling of the space and the body, the visual awe etc...) Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Pineapple on January 20, 2005, 03:44:34 PM The game industry has plenty of idea guys.
Show me with examples. Show me through action. Many an idea that sounded great on paper didnt work when implimented. Fancy books an eloquent philosophical discussion sometimes completely miss the mark. So lets see these ideas in action, because so far we havent. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Margalis on January 20, 2005, 03:54:48 PM Quote from: Samwise I had an idea at one point for each crafter simply choosing a subset of items that they "specialized" in making. ... The main goal of this system, as I saw it, was to make it so that novice crafters could make something that would be useful in the economy. I don't think that works. The problem with novice crafting is supply and demand. A lot of people are novices. They produce goods that are not as good as higher tier items, AND they produce a lot of them. If 10% of those are better than the rest, there are STILL a lot of them, and they still aren't as good as higher level items. If these items are components for better items, I guess it does address the issue somewhat. If novices can choose 5 specializations out of 20 possible, and all of those can be used for higher tier items, you've effectively decreased the supply by 75%. (I'm assuming higher tier people will greatly favor the specialized items to the point that nobody gets the non-specialized versions unless they have to) Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Samwise on January 20, 2005, 04:18:03 PM Supply and demand is exactly what I figure the "specialization" system would address. I'll use weaponsmith as an example, since it's the one I have the most personal experience with.
In the current state of the game, absolutely no weapon a novice weaponsmith produces is worthwhile to anyone. Ditto for the subcomponents, so a novice weaponsmith can't sell subcomponents either. Hence, a novice can't supply anything that there's any demand for. Now, suppose this specialization system goes in, and a novice can make rifle barrels that are better than what a master without that specialization can make. A master who wants to make the most uber rifles will most likely take specializations in a bunch of the upper-level rifle schematics, but he won't have any left over for the high-quality low-level subcomponents that he needs to eke out those extra few points of damage. Presto - demand. And since a novice needs experience that a master doesn't, they'll price their goods lower, making it more profitable for a master to exploit a novice than to partner with another master. Just like a real-world apprentice system. ;) Of course, you'd also have to fix the XP system - for example, give usage experience for manufactured subcomponents, such that an apprentice who's helping run a business would get more experience than one who ground rifle barrels in isolation. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Aenovae on January 20, 2005, 04:49:19 PM Quote from: Pineapple The game industry has plenty of idea guys. Show me with examples. Show me through action. Many an idea that sounded great on paper didnt work when implimented. Fancy books an eloquent philosophical discussion sometimes completely miss the mark. So lets see these ideas in action, because so far we havent. Exactly. I hear so many well-meaning amateurs mention their genius ideas – “if only someone would listen to me!” Yeah right. Every Jack and Jill who makes, plays, or has even heard of games has their own "brilliant" ideas. It doesn't matter if the idea comes from an experienced Creative Grand High Poobah or just some college student wishing for a tester position. Ideas and theories are a dime a dozen in the game indistry, and pretty much anyone can come up with something that will be the BESTEST GAEM EVER! What developers need the most is not abstract bullshit, but actual work. Not noodling, not some vague design written in Word and printed out. Fancy philosophies don’t make games, actual applied work does. In this context, the idea isn’t very useful unless its author shows precisely how it can be made into a reality. This rule applies when writing a book on game theory or design, when making a design doc, and even when Creative Director types explain their idea to the rest of the dev team. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Aenovae on January 20, 2005, 05:06:38 PM I just realized that my previous posts (and other communications with Raph) were all negative.
Raph, I love your ideas. It's just that I have a hard time seeing how they can actually assist people in making better games. Ok, back to the censure. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Xilren's Twin on January 21, 2005, 07:29:56 AM Quote from: Aenovae Fancy philosophies don’t make games, actual applied work does. In this context, the idea isn’t very useful unless its author shows precisely how it can be made into a reality. This rule applies when writing a book on game theory or design, when making a design doc, and even when Creative Director types explain their idea to the rest of the dev team. But ideas are easy; coding, not so much. :) Seriously, one of the biggest hurdles I see to designing fun mmorpg game systems is the difficulty of implementation. You really dont know until after a lot of work has been done whether a given implementation of an idea is "fun" or not. And by the time you have a working framework to one of these beasts it's very hard to rip and replace any given system if it turns out to suck. You really only get 1, maybe 2 attempts before you're shit outta luck. For good example see the recently cancelled wish...or the SWG Ham system. Sounds like you would need decent alpha test to smoke out these poor implementations. Xilren Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HaemishM on January 21, 2005, 08:50:07 AM For the crafting discussion going on in this thread, you must always remember one important principle of the psychology of MMOG players, whether they be crafters or adventurers.
If the knob goes to 11, no one will be satisfied with anything less than 11 for long. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: sidereal on January 21, 2005, 12:48:33 PM Quote from: Xilren's Twin You really dont know until after a lot of work has been done whether a given implementation of an idea is "fun" or not. And by the time you have a working framework to one of these beasts it's very hard to rip and replace any given system if it turns out to suck. That's because they do massive amounts of work (concept, art, sound, scripting, collision detection, etc, etc) for any given system before they figure out whether it's balanced or fun. I've discussed this before, but one of the great things about MU* development was that art/sound/physics/etc were non-existent, so you jumped into a pure simulation environment instantly. Modern MMOG's really need non-graphical simulation environments for all of their new systems. And then add jackass and griefer simulators. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HRose on January 21, 2005, 03:47:25 PM Quote from: sidereal Modern MMOG's really need non-graphical simulation environments for all of their new systems. No, they need the graphical layer to really become a relevant element in the simulation. And leave the MUD concepts behind. The graphic is the game (http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/462). Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: sidereal on January 21, 2005, 04:27:10 PM There is no graphical representation of SWG's economy that would be fun. There is no graphical representation of forced-grouped slaughtering 1000 centaurs that would not be tedious. There is no graphical representation of corpse-camping that would be fun.
Chess is fun, and is fun in any of 800 different graphical and/or textual representations. You could easily build a text-mode version of Civ III or Final Fantasy VII or Starcraft that would retain all of the complexity of the originals without the immersion or the shiny. For something to be fun you need both an underlying mechanic that is fun and a pleasant way to render it. Pleasantly rendered unbalanced tedious garbage is garbage. And the rendering takes considerably more time and work than the mechanic development, so it seems pretty obvious that you should make sure your mechanics work first. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HRose on January 21, 2005, 04:36:43 PM Quote from: sidereal There is no graphical representation of SWG's economy that would be fun. There is no graphical representation of forced-grouped slaughtering 1000 centaurs that would not be tedious. There is no graphical representation of corpse-camping that would be fun. Yes, because the concrete weight of the graphical elements in these examples is zero. Let's take an FPS like Unreal Tournament. Here you'll see how the interactivity with the scenery and the various graphical elements become the main part of the system. Along with the line of sight, the field of view etc... Using the lightning gun for example allows you to zoom in and do an head shot, but at the same time prevents you to see what happens around you. This is a perfect example of how the graphic can become a relevant element in the system. MMORPGs need to evolve to include more and more the graphical perception as an active element of the gameplay. One of the main feature that made the players hate WISH was because of the point and click movement. This because the control of your character and the perception of the space around you are important elements for the players and human beings in general. SWG also feels odd because you move like "on rails". You can see a rock but you cannot jump on it. The space is divided and organized in a completely artificial way that betrays DIRECTLY the normal perceptions. One of the many reasons why it sucks. This will work if you test the formal system and will be broken when you'll have actual human beings to interface with it. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Riggswolfe on January 21, 2005, 05:21:42 PM [quote="HRoseSWG also feels odd because you move like "on rails". You can see a rock but you cannot jump on it. The space is divided and organized in a completely artificial way that betrays DIRECTLY the normal perceptions.
.[/quote] Because of SWG I will never again touch an MMOG without a Z-axis of some kind. If I can't jump that fence then it makes me feel like I'm not in a real world. I like this concept currently under discussion of simulating at a low level the various subsystems of an MMO. I don't know if it'd work in theory but it's an interesting idea. Just out of curiousity, how far would you guys say it is into the development cycle of a game before it's too late? Let's say you have an Alpha and the subsystems aren't fun. Is it to late to change things at that point? Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Samwise on January 21, 2005, 05:39:13 PM It seems to me that it depends on how much money you have in your budget, and how much you've spent up to this point. If you blew most of your budget on getting the game to Alpha, then yes, it's probably too late, unless the changes you need to make will be really cheap.
Hence the attractiveness of cheap prototyping. If you can spend $100 to come up with a prototype that will show you 50% of the problems in your design, it's a much better investment than spending $1,000,000 on a shinier prototype that will show you 75% of the problems in your design. HRose and sidereal are both right. A low-fidelity prototype (e.g. a MUDlike version of your new graphic MMORPG) won't show you everything that's wrong with your design. If it shows you a few things that are wrong, though, it's a very worthwhile investment, since it means that your first high-fidelity prototype will have that many fewer things wrong with it. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HRose on January 21, 2005, 07:37:47 PM Quote from: Samwise HRose and sidereal are both right. A low-fidelity prototype (e.g. a MUDlike version of your new graphic MMORPG) won't show you everything that's wrong with your design. No, we aren't both right. What he says can be true and useful, I didn't go against that. Instead I was simply stating my point of view when he marked that as something that "modern MMORPGs really need". I underlined that from my point of view these games should aim to *differentiate* themselves from MUDs, exactly because it's in the graphic layer that they have the *most* potential. So use that potential. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Samwise on January 21, 2005, 07:48:52 PM Quote from: HRose Quote from: Samwise HRose and sidereal are both right. No, we aren't both right. Okay, you can be wrong if you want to be. ;) Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Margalis on January 22, 2005, 12:24:33 PM I really do not think you could make a text-mode Starcraft, that's just silly. But, you could make a Starcrat with placeholder graphics and tons of bugs that would still help you determine if it was fun or not.
Alpha is far too late to change major systems. During Aplha you can fix bugs and tweak things, and maybe address the 1 or 2 most dire issues. Alpha isn't the point where you can figure out your combat sucks and still have time to fix it. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: blindy on January 24, 2005, 07:33:23 AM Quote from: sidereal There is no graphical representation of SWG's economy that would be fun. There is no graphical representation of forced-grouped slaughtering 1000 centaurs that would not be tedious. There is no graphical representation of corpse-camping that would be fun. But fun isn't an objective quality. Supposedly people have fun with SWG's economy. I've never played the game, but I often hear its economy touted as one of its best features, for what it's worth. I've had fun killing 1000s of crabs in FFXI in a forced group situation (not centaurs, but close enough). And I've certainly had fun corpse camping people. (Yeah, yeah, you probaby meant being corpse camped, but I've even had fun with that, when I've been able to overcome it and beat the campers.) I never liked EQ's regular servers, but it was a very successful game. But then I did like FFXI for a time (up to about level 50 or 55, when it just slowed down too much for me), and that was a very similar game. Why did I find one fun but not the other? Hell if I know, but I did. And judging from the Wish thread, apparently some people found even that fun. So, if players can't decide what is fun (and clearly we can't), how are developers supposed to? Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Pineapple on January 24, 2005, 08:13:06 AM Quote from: blindy So, if players can't decide what is fun (and clearly we can't), how are developers supposed to? SWGs tradeskills are perhaps the worst grind I have seen in an online game. It is presented as a grind boldly and clearly, with little to no attempts to cover up the grind factor. Anyone can tell you that grinds suck. So developers should at least have that basic rule solidified in their process. WoW does a good job of sugar coating their grinds. CoH does too. SWG doesnt. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Samwise on January 24, 2005, 12:20:29 PM Quote from: blindy So, if players can't decide what is fun (and clearly we can't), how are developers supposed to? I hear Raph Koster wrote a book called "A Theory of Fun" that discusses that topic in great length, and attempts to get at some of the underpinnings of what "fun" is and how developers can try to pursue it. Have you read it? It might be a good starting point for a discussion on that topic. ;) Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Dark Vengeance on January 24, 2005, 02:07:22 PM Is it just me, or does every conversation about Raph's book get fagged up by people talking about the games he's worked on, or the state of the industry?
Has it ever occurred to anyone that perhaps Raph has not had the creative freedom to make the game he wants? In theory, he could have unlimited funding, no deadline pressure, complete creative freedom, and the most talented team available. In reality, there are publishers to consider, folks like Lucas and Garriott to appease, enormous fan expectations, deadlines, budgets, and countless other issues. Judging the man's book, or his theories on game design because you hated SWG's tradeskills is akin to someone in Biblical times rejecting the teachings of Jesus because they thought he was a shitty carpenter. Bring the noise. Cheers............ Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Xilren's Twin on January 24, 2005, 02:17:19 PM Quote from: Dark Vengeance Is it just me, or does every conversation about Raph's book get fagged up by people talking about the games he's worked on, or the state of the industry? Has it ever occurred to anyone that perhaps Raph has not had the creative freedom to make the game he wants? In theory, he could have unlimited funding, no deadline pressure, complete creative freedom, and the most talented team available. In reality, there are publishers to consider, folks like Lucas and Garriott to appease, enormous fan expectations, deadlines, budgets, and countless other issues. Judging the man's book, or his theories on game design because you hated SWG's tradeskills is akin to someone in Biblical times rejecting the teachings of Jesus because they thought he was a shitty carpenter All i have to that is "By his works you shall know him" :-p Ironically enough, if you type that into google with the quote, you get 3 links, one of which goes somewhere strangely familar (http://www.brokentoys.org/index.php?p=5295). I for one appreciate Raph willingness to talk about this sort of stuff, but there's no question people rag on him b/c his past projects have so much potential that when it goes bad, the dashed hope and dreams bring on the angry mob. Besides, it's not like Brad will show up and talk about games design. Fame brings criticism, rightly or wrongly. Xilren Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Pineapple on January 24, 2005, 02:35:57 PM Quote from: Dark Vengeance Is it just me, or does every conversation about Raph's book get fagged up by people talking about the games he's worked on, or the state of the industry? Has it ever occurred to anyone that perhaps Raph has not had the creative freedom to make the game he wants? In theory, he could have unlimited funding, no deadline pressure, complete creative freedom, and the most talented team available. In reality, there are publishers to consider, folks like Lucas and Garriott to appease, enormous fan expectations, deadlines, budgets, and countless other issues. Judging the man's book, or his theories on game design because you hated SWG's tradeskills is akin to someone in Biblical times rejecting the teachings of Jesus because they thought he was a shitty carpenter. Bring the noise. Cheers............ No. If someone decides to be the face of a project and pimp themselves in the limelight, then they will take a certain amount of heat for that game sucking. Especially on design aspects that they should have had some influence over. Considering how much from SWG is obviously ripped from UO, I would say that those former UO guys on SWG had a great deal of influence on the design. I'm sure Raph catches more heat than he should. The price of fame, I suppose, and perhaps unfair to a degree. I do not believe Raph is to blame for everything that sucks in SWG, nor do I believe that he is responsible for all that is good in UO or SWG. However there are large grinds and other unfriendly aspects of the last game he directly worked on. Imagine it like movie stars. They get judged by the last movie they worked on. Unfair? Sure. It's the price of fame. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Dark Vengeance on January 24, 2005, 03:09:55 PM Quote from: Pineapple No. If someone decides to be the face of a project and pimp themselves in the limelight, then they will take a certain amount of heat for that game sucking. Especially on design aspects that they should have had some influence over. That's all well and good, if this were a thread on UO or SWG. It's not. Quote Imagine it like movie stars. They get judged by the last movie they worked on. Unfair? Sure. It's the price of fame. The last thing he worked on that you've seen is this book. Of course, I'm presuming you've read it, and aren't just prattling on like a disgruntled former SWG fanboy. The subject is the book, not Raph and the totality of his career. Yet for some reason, a few selected fuckwits can't seem to grasp that anytime Raph's name is brought up in the context of design theory. Bring the noise. Cheers............. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: schild on January 24, 2005, 03:15:39 PM Quote from: Dark Vengeance The subject is the book, not Raph and the totality of his career. Yet for some reason, a few selected fuckwits can't seem to grasp that anytime Raph's name is brought up in the context of design theory. Get off the soapbox. Whenever someone brings up a book, the author is always the topic of discussion. It takes incredible balls to write something authoritative on a subject. Particularly when it's about gaming and the last thing your name was publically attached to was an abortion at arrival. That said - no matter how much I respect Raph, I think someone would have to create something *truly* fun before coming up with a theory of fun. He hasn't shown us something fun, YET. And we'll find out if Garriot did the heavy lifting on UO when Tabula Rasa comes out. But that's a rant for somewhere else. Design documents are easy. They're a dime a dozen. Making games is hard. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Margalis on January 24, 2005, 03:20:18 PM Quote from: Dark Vengeance Has it ever occurred to anyone that perhaps Raph has not had the creative freedom to make the game he wants? ... Judging the man's book, or his theories on game design because you hated SWG's tradeskills is akin to someone in Biblical times rejecting the teachings of Jesus because they thought he was a shitty carpenter. Has it occured to you that NOBODY ever has the creative freedom to do exactly what they want? I would read a book my Miyamoto about fun, because the guy clearly knows how to make fun games. He always has - even when he didn't have the creative freedom he might have no. You may not like his games, but he has shown he can tackle a wide variety of games and make them all enjoyable. We're talking about a guy who makes things from Mario to Pikmin to F-Zero to overseeing Starfox and Metroid Prime. So that's platformer, RTS, racing game, 3d flight game and FPS. The guy clearly isn't a one-hit-wonder who repeats the same formula over and over. He gets something most people don't get. Compare that to someone who may or have may not made a couple of fun games in a single genre, all of which follow the same basic pattern. --- I'm not trying to be dismissive of Raph. There are very few people on earth who I would really say "wow, this guy just plain KNOWS how to make fun games!" Especially if you are talking about repeating success across different genres. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Pineapple on January 24, 2005, 03:23:17 PM Quote from: Dark Vengeance The subject is the book, not Raph and the totality of his career. Yet for some reason, a few selected fuckwits can't seem to grasp that anytime Raph's name is brought up in the context of design theory. Bring the noise. Cheers............. Pretend I am a movie writer/director/creator. So if I write a book on movie making, then none of my actual movies are factored in at all? People should ignore the movies, and just buy the book? No I'm sorry, but a writer's credibility comes from their work in the subject. Anyone can ramble off common sense notions. Words are cheap, but action speaks for itself. Now true, I am just a lowly gamer slacker. But if someone is going to claim they know what makes a great game, then I want them to show me. Not just tell me. Otherwise, it is just a 3:00am Info-mercial trying to tell me how to become filthy rich. I would much rather hear from the nameless people that make the truly awesome games. They are too busy, however. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Arnold on January 24, 2005, 03:44:51 PM Quote from: Riggswolfe Because of SWG I will never again touch an MMOG without a Z-axis of some kind. If I can't jump that fence then it makes me feel like I'm not in a real world. That was one of the great strengths of AC. Sure, things looked a bit blocky, but they felt great! Movement was smooth and responsive to the controls. The camera was smooth and had a superior range of motion. You could pump up your run skill (or buff it) and run very fast - none of that molasses feeling that EQ or DAOC gave me. You could raise your jump skill and jump onto rocks, buildings, whatever. You could climb mountians! I still vividly remember one of my early AC battles, where a low 20s archer, and former member of the allegiance, was raiding our town. Most of us were in the 10-15 level range, and I hadn't experienced a character with enhanced physical attributes and skills yet. The archer got swarmed and then proceeded to ninja-jump onto the roof of a building and rain death upon us. I thought that was so fucking cool. Eventually, some of our higher levels got up there and chased him down, but he eventually won the fight. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Arnold on January 24, 2005, 03:55:54 PM On the subject of crafting, I'd like to see someone explore it from a formula system, akin to AC's original spell system, but more randomized so that someone wouldn't be able to get a universal formula, like they did in AC.
So in this system, there would be a lot of different items and varying charactersistcs for each kind. The combinations of materials to create each item is different for everyone. Just because some guy mixed iron, copper, and shale to create a widget doesn't mean you will be able to do the same. You need to figure out that it's aluminum, wax, and obsidian. Of course, you'd want there to be some logic to the sytem, so there is something to "figure out" and not a total grind of randomly combining things and attempting to construct items. I was kind of sad AC did away with the spell learning system. On Darktide, using Splitpea (the program used to figure out component combos) was a necessity. But there was a time after they switched the system that I wished I could go back and play a mage on a non-pvp shard and do it legit: figure out the spells myself. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Calantus on January 24, 2005, 04:06:56 PM Quote from: Arnold On the subject of crafting, I'd like to see someone explore it from a formula system, akin to AC's original spell system, but more randomized so that someone wouldn't be able to get a universal formula, like they did in AC. [...] Of course, you'd want there to be some logic to the sytem, so there is something to "figure out" and not a total grind of randomly combining things and attempting to construct items. Those two ideas cannot work together. Either you have a system that is random, or you have a system that is logical and thus makes it possible to crack the system. If the average human brain can recognize a pattern within data, it is easy enough to code a software solution to the problem. The closest thing you can have is for there to be a range of either specific materials to choose from, or specific quantities of set materials that narrow down the search for the right combination. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Arnold on January 24, 2005, 04:16:28 PM Quote from: Calantus Those two ideas cannot work together. Either you have a system that is random, or you have a system that is logical and thus makes it possible to crack the system. If the average human brain can recognize a pattern within data, it is easy enough to code a software solution to the problem. The closest thing you can have is for there to be a range of either specific materials to choose from, or specific quantities of set materials that narrow down the search for the right combination. Cracking is ok, as long as the system cracked pretains to only one character. The problem with the AC spell system was that the encryption applied to the entire account, and IIRC, there was only one encryption scheme. Also, the randomized components only included tapers(colored candels). The other spell components were the same to all characters in the game. This allowed characters to figure out the low level versions of the spells, and to share the information on how to cast them. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Lum on January 24, 2005, 05:22:05 PM Quote from: schild Design documents are easy. They're a dime a dozen. No, actually, they aren't. Making games is the art of the possible. Even if, like Psychochild or Teppy, you are blessed with complete freedom artistically to do what you want (something most people who have to justify budgets don't have) you still have many other things to consider - the people who already play your game who want more of the same, the people who don't, who expect you to do something different so that they will be interested, etc. etc. So the art (and it is one) of designing in an MMO environment is to be able to, with all of those often wildly divergent strictures and many other technical ones besides, come up with something that is fun to play. It's not easy, at all. It's far easier to snipe from the sidelines. Trust me, I've done both! Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: schild on January 24, 2005, 05:24:31 PM I didn't say Good design documents were easy. I mean, someone has to be buying up all the shitty ones. 10% (or less) of what's on shelves is actually worth buying.
Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Lum on January 24, 2005, 05:28:11 PM Quote from: schild I didn't say Good design documents were easy. No, you actually said "I didn't like the last game the author of this book wrote, so I'm going to assert that he doesn't actually have any business writing about the field he works in." Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: schild on January 24, 2005, 05:29:24 PM Quote from: Lum Quote from: schild I didn't say Good design documents were easy. No, you actually said "I didn't like the last game the author of this book wrote, so I'm going to assert that he doesn't actually have any business writing about the field he works in." Working in the "field of game design" does not mean "working in the field of fun." Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Lum on January 24, 2005, 05:32:36 PM So if the title was "A Theory of Game Design", and page 1 was "Hey! Make it fun!" and the rest of the book was unchanged, would that be any better?
I mean, Raph is justly renowned for treating game design with a scholarly discipline that few others can. He would not only be qualified to write the book he did, I dare say he'd be near the top of the list of people who were. Refer back to what I said about the politics of game design. Just because YOU didn't like it? Maybe there were parts he didn't like either. And maybe this is part of his crafting a new baseline to start from. "Hey! Let's make it fun. Well, what is fun? Here's my thought." Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: schild on January 24, 2005, 05:37:18 PM Quote from: Lum So if the title was "A Theory of Game Design", and page 1 was "Hey! Make it fun!" and the rest of the book was unchanged, would that be any better? Yes. Though I would add "Hey! Make it fun, here's what I learned from my mistakes." Quote I mean, Raph is justly renowned for treating game design with a scholarly discipline that few others can. He would not only be qualified to write the book he did, I dare say he'd be near the top of the list of people who were. Agreed. But the title was chosen to sell books. Quote Refer back to what I said about the politics of game design. Just because YOU didn't like it? Maybe there were parts he didn't like either. And maybe this is part of his crafting a new baseline to start from. "Hey! Let's make it fun. Well, what is fun? Here's my thought." Please, the most publically complained about MMORPG that isn't dead or on it's way is SW:G. From day 1, the forums were a rantboard. "Hey! Let's make it fun. I've fucked up a bit in the past, I hope you learn from my mistakes!" Ivory Towers need not apply. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Lum on January 24, 2005, 05:41:09 PM I trust you understand that it would be wholly inappropriate for me to comment on the relative fun of a competitor's product.
That being said. Really, I recommend picking it up and reading it. There's probably a good bit you'll disagree with. There's a lot you'll think "Hey, why didn't he do this in game X?" Good books spark discussion. Raph's is no exception. I certainly don't agree with everything he's written, but to say in a blanket statement he's unqualified to write about fun in game design is silly. That's like saying anyone who hasn't had a hand in crafting Casablanca has no business writing about scriptwriting. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Shockeye on January 24, 2005, 05:46:03 PM Quote from: Lum I certainly don't agree with everything he's written, but to say in a blanket statement he's unqualified to write about fun in game design is silly. That's like saying anyone who hasn't had a hand in crafting Casablanca has no business writing about scriptwriting. Fun is subjective anyways. I'm sure to many people the stuff Raph has done is fun and great and wonderful. If even one person finds something you do fun, then you're qualified to write about fun to at least that one person, yes? Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: schild on January 24, 2005, 05:47:11 PM Quote from: Lum I trust you understand that it would be wholly inappropriate for me to comment on the relative fun of a competitor's product. And I wouldn't ask you to. Quote That being said. Really, I recommend picking it up and reading it. His agent sucks. This - I will harp on repeatedly. Quote There's probably a good bit you'll disagree with. There's a lot you'll think "Hey, why didn't he do this in game X?" Good books spark discussion. Raph's is no exception. I certainly don't agree with everything he's written, but to say in a blanket statement he's unqualified to write about fun in game design is silly. I like reading what he has to say. He's very entitled to talk about game design. More than most. Much more than most. But people judge by previous works. And by doing that, the title of the book should have had "fun" nowhere near it. That was a marketing trick. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Righ on January 24, 2005, 07:23:11 PM Quote from: schild But the title was chosen to sell books. That's amazing! New tricks are created every day. Why didn't somebody come up with that idea in the previous 550 years? Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: schild on January 24, 2005, 07:24:53 PM Quote from: Righ Quote from: schild But the title was chosen to sell books. That's amazing! New tricks are created every day. Why didn't somebody come up with that idea in the previous 550 years? Awwwwww comeon man. I didn't say it was an original idea. You don't have to walk through just because the door is open. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Righ on January 24, 2005, 07:30:15 PM You were over-exposed. It was only a matter of time before somebody laughed at your nads.
Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Raph on January 24, 2005, 10:08:56 PM Agent? I have an agent?
Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Raph on January 24, 2005, 10:10:08 PM OK, to be a little less flippant--a large part of what drove me to research and write the book was the feeling that I needed to go back to basics. You can read that as "I've lost track of the fun and the book was me trying to find it" if you like, though it's an oversimplification.
Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: WindupAtheist on January 24, 2005, 10:42:18 PM You couldn't get a Hutt faction into the game, but you managed to finish the dancing Wookie barbers?! What the f... ahem... *hack cough*
Sorry. I'll have a look at the book next time I'm in Borders, and snag if it grabs my interest. I do hope it has colorful pictures... Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Calantus on January 24, 2005, 11:47:05 PM Quote from: WindupAtheist You couldn't get a Hutt faction into the game, but you managed to finish the dancing Wookie barbers?! What the f... ahem... *hack cough* Sorry. I'll have a look at the book next time I'm in Borders, and snag if it grabs my interest. I do hope it has colorful pictures... You don't get to rag on Raph until you stop playing UO. If a game he worked on still works for you how ever many goddamn years it has been out (what is it, 8 now?), then you can't really criticize now can you? Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Arnold on January 25, 2005, 04:49:49 AM Quote from: schild But people judge by previous works. And by doing that, the title of the book should have had "fun" nowhere near it. That was a marketing trick. IMO, Ultima Online (in its earlier incarnation) is one of the greatest games of all time. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Arnold on January 25, 2005, 04:52:46 AM Quote from: Calantus Quote from: WindupAtheist You couldn't get a Hutt faction into the game, but you managed to finish the dancing Wookie barbers?! What the f... ahem... *hack cough* Sorry. I'll have a look at the book next time I'm in Borders, and snag if it grabs my interest. I do hope it has colorful pictures... You don't get to rag on Raph until you stop playing UO. If a game he worked on still works for you how ever many goddamn years it has been out (what is it, 8 now?), then you can't really criticize now can you? No shit. I quit playing UO years ago, after other people managed to fuck it up, but I still consider it to be one of the greatest games of all time. Raph could go on to create a 50 year career's worth of shitty games, and it would all be redeemed by UO. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: blindy on January 25, 2005, 07:24:07 AM Quote from: Arnold IMO, Ultima Online (in its earlier incarnation) is one of the greatest games of all time. I'm thinking that one of the greatest games of all time wouldn't have been beset by horrendous server lag, game crippling bugs, and general all-around instability. IMO, Super Metroid is one of the greatest games of all time, but if it had locked up and I had to reset my SNES everytime I had played it, then I probably wouldn't feel that way. But maybe that's just me. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Pineapple on January 25, 2005, 08:27:57 AM Quote from: Raph OK, to be a little less flippant--a large part of what drove me to research and write the book was the feeling that I needed to go back to basics. You can read that as "I've lost track of the fun and the book was me trying to find it" if you like, though it's an oversimplification. Well on that note, I applaud you for that. Now I await to see how this can be applied to the next game SOE puts out. You are in an influential position, so lets see the fun put back in future games and the mind numbing grind taken out. I dont want crafting grinds. I dont want XP grinds. I dont want to grind on stuff that really has nothing to do with being a Jedi or a Hero or an EpicMeister. By grind, I mean agonizing repetition that is such that it makes me focus on that instead of enjoying the game. WoW certainly has grinds. But they are so well covered that they do not distract from the fun at all. I do not have to macro anything AFK. I do not feel that I am working on a totally unrelated skillset just to reach a goal. I do not feel ANY need to XP grind. I do not have to make a bazillion widgets to reach the next crafting level. Even Katamari Damacy has a grind you could say, but it's all in the presentation. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Pineapple on January 25, 2005, 08:32:13 AM Quote from: Arnold No shit. I quit playing UO years ago, after other people managed to fuck it up, but I still consider it to be one of the greatest games of all time. Raph could go on to create a 50 year career's worth of shitty games, and it would all be redeemed by UO. UO was great. However it didnt start out as great as it became. Remember archers? Remember the first energy bolts? Ever had your house in UO completely looted because someone ran in the door behind you? For a time, that would happen. And lets give credit to the many other unmentioned people that worked on UO and contributed greatly to it. Raph didnt make the game himself. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Azaroth on January 31, 2005, 09:30:49 PM Quote However it didnt start out as great as it became. Remember archers? Remember the first energy bolts? Ever had your house in UO completely looted because someone ran in the door behind you? For a time, that would happen. Some of that is referred to as fun by certain people, some of that is attributed simply to not having the experience to, obviously, fine tune good features right off the bat. Those situations were rectified in an appropriate manner, and then everything was screwed up after he left. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HRose on January 31, 2005, 11:55:27 PM Quote from: Pineapple Well on that note, I applaud you for that. Now I await to see how this can be applied to the next game SOE puts out. You want to see Yet Another MMORPG from Sony? No, really? Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Yegolev on February 01, 2005, 07:20:28 AM Quote from: Pineapple UO was great. However it didnt start out as great as it became. Remember archers? Remember the first energy bolts? Ever had your house in UO completely looted because someone ran in the door behind you? For a time, that would happen. I remember being ganked repeatedly and having any sort of fun sucked out of the game by grammatically-challenged assholes in bone armor. I never made it long enough to buy a house and the scars of that griefing remain today. Especially since I was so excited about the concept of such a game, not just the game itself, and got it as a Christmas present. It's like a kid getting that toy truck he has always wanted and within a week the neighborhood kids set it on fire and shit on the ashes. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Jeff Kelly on February 01, 2005, 08:03:00 AM Quote from: Pineapple UO was great. However it didnt start out as great as it became. Remember archers? Remember the first energy bolts? Ever had your house in UO completely looted because someone ran in the door behind you? For a time, that would happen. /rant Well when I logged into UO for the first time (One Month after release because I had to import it from the US) about five minutes after arriving in britain my character had been robbed completely of all possessions , everyone was talking in some kind of unintelligible dewdspeak while vendors were spamming the screen with their announcements. For a moment I thought that I had accidentally travelled to rome instead. During the first month of play I had been grief killed many times over had died many times over while hunting rabbits or squirrels all the while losing my precious possessions to grief killers, corpse campers and thiefs. And I still got killed fairly often while hunting rabbits and squirrels. Communication was still impossible because my skills in leet-speak hadn't improved significantly. Then there was lag, lag and even more lag and every time I would log in there were another two megabytes worth of patches waiting to be downloaded while I was on a 28.8 kBit/s line which was billed by the minute. Yeah, great times indeed. I actually played UO for four months because three friends of mine also played but then I decided WTF and spent my time doing something worthwhile. Jeff Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Pineapple on February 01, 2005, 08:15:40 AM Quote from: HRose You want to see Yet Another MMORPG from Sony? No, really? I didnt say I would buy it. :) I just want to see if all this "getting back to the basics" actually materializes. Show me proof. Show me a fun game. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Dark Vengeance on February 01, 2005, 08:25:31 AM Quote I actually played UO for four months because three friends of mine also played but then I decided WTF and spent my time doing something worthwhile. And other people who played it longer, and figured out how to achieve some success enjoyed the game, and continued to do so for much longer. My God, man, it's 7 years later and people are still bitching about "OMG I GOT GANKED BY DEWDS IN UO, IT SUCKED". Nevermind that they made change after change trying to appease the folks who didn't like non-consentual PvP, enough so that eventually chased away even the players who were able to adapt and thrive in that environment. What amazed me the most back in those days were people who would go out alone to bunny bash, get PKed, and then just re-equip and do the same thing again....and then complain about having the same result. Bring the noise. Cheers............. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Bunk on February 01, 2005, 09:12:37 AM First time I was ganked in UO after having finally aquired some usable equipment and gold - I pulled a full-blown hairy conniption. Stomping around the room, face bright red, this close to throwing the keyboard through the window...
Then I got over it, learned the ins and outs of the game, and had a great time playing UO for another two years. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Raph on February 01, 2005, 12:34:41 PM Since you're all discussing the book without having read it, I thought you might like to see some of the things people who actually read it have said:
http://walloworld.com/index.php?p=267 http://www.gamedev.net/features/reviews/productreview.asp?productid=513 http://mfeldstein.com/index.php/weblog/permalink/book_recommendation_a_theory_of_fun_for_game_design/ http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/2005/01/25/a-theory-of-fun-reviewed/ Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: plummerx on February 01, 2005, 02:26:09 PM Quote from: Raph Since you're all discussing the book without having read it, I thought you might like to see some of the things people who actually read it have said: http://walloworld.com/index.php?p=267 http://www.gamedev.net/features/reviews/productreview.asp?productid=513 http://mfeldstein.com/index.php/weblog/permalink/book_recommendation_a_theory_of_fun_for_game_design/ http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/2005/01/25/a-theory-of-fun-reviewed/ Actual first hand experience with anything seem of little value here. I suggest stop asking for silly things like reason and logic, and simply heat up your rhetoric. "You R teh suck" will be placed upon you any time now. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: schild on February 01, 2005, 02:33:35 PM PlummerX is just upset that we don't want to talk about WWIIOL. He's also dangerously close to being hit with women's deoderant.
Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: plummerx on February 01, 2005, 02:41:32 PM Quote from: schild PlummerX is just upset that we don't want to talk about WWIIOL. He's also dangerously close to being hit with women's deoderant. I don't want to talk about it either. You brought it up. You R now teh suck for having mentioned it. Take a Midol. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HaemishM on February 01, 2005, 02:55:04 PM Quote from: plummerx Actual first hand experience with anything seem of little value here. I suggest stop asking for silly things like reason and logic, and simply heat up your rhetoric. "You R teh suck" will be placed upon you any time now. You know, there are at least 4 or 5 other places on the Interweb that you could vent your spleen about the game that shall not be mentioned. If you think our discussions are more rhetoric than is worthwhile, I suggest you bugger the fuck off and go somewhere else. Start Here (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Bitter+Jaded+Gamer). Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: plummerx on February 01, 2005, 03:12:46 PM Quote from: HaemishM Quote from: plummerx Actual first hand experience with anything seem of little value here. I suggest stop asking for silly things like reason and logic, and simply heat up your rhetoric. "You R teh suck" will be placed upon you any time now. You know, there are at least 4 or 5 other places on the Interweb that you could vent your spleen about the game that shall not be mentioned. If you think our discussions are more rhetoric than is worthwhile, I suggest you bugger the fuck off and go somewhere else. Start Here (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Bitter+Jaded+Gamer). For fuck's sake, you guy's keep bringing it up. I was focusing on the guy's book, which many seem fully qualified to comment on without ever having read. It was a view on the quality of the commentary lately, and NOTHING more. I think the reactionary lable you apply to me is better applied to yourselves. Start Here (http://www.domin8air.com/alo3/weblog/rebuke.swf) Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: SirBruce on February 01, 2005, 03:25:28 PM Are you accusing the reviewers of not actually having read the book? Or are accusing a poster here of not actually having read the book? If so, who are you accusing?
Bruce Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: plummerx on February 01, 2005, 03:40:20 PM Well, I could accuse you of being a jerk, but that's already been established.
EDIT *** The above is a technical response to an attempt at "SirBruceing" the thread*** Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Shockeye on February 01, 2005, 04:10:43 PM Quote from: plummerx Well, I could accuse you of being a jerk, but that's already been established. EDIT *** The above is a technical response to an attempt at "SirBruceing" the thread*** One day timeout for being a repeated jackass. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Raph on February 01, 2005, 05:17:48 PM I think he meant me accusing. But maybe I am wrong,
In any case, I wasn't accusing with any sort of acrimony--it seemed evident from several of the posts debating whether it was worth reading in the first place. Just a statement of fact. Please do go read it though ;) Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Jain Zar on February 01, 2005, 06:07:19 PM Quote from: Yegolev Quote from: Pineapple UO was great. However it didnt start out as great as it became. Remember archers? Remember the first energy bolts? Ever had your house in UO completely looted because someone ran in the door behind you? For a time, that would happen. I remember being ganked repeatedly and having any sort of fun sucked out of the game by grammatically-challenged assholes in bone armor. I never made it long enough to buy a house and the scars of that griefing remain today. Especially since I was so excited about the concept of such a game, not just the game itself, and got it as a Christmas present. It's like a kid getting that toy truck he has always wanted and within a week the neighborhood kids set it on fire and shit on the ashes. My sentiments exactly. UO, just like SWG looks bloody BRILLIANT on paper. In reality they sucked. HARD. Reminds me of Games Workshop games. Well meaning gentlemen that are clearly intelligent made them. But with a naievity that sees the game fall apart when other people actually start playing it. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Calantus on February 01, 2005, 06:35:34 PM Quote from: Jain Zar Reminds me of Games Workshop games. Well meaning gentlemen that are clearly intelligent made them. But with a naievity that sees the game fall apart when other people actually start playing it. Please explain. Not having a dig at you, I just want to know where you think it failed. Personally the only things I didn't like about the games were with gaming communities in general, and the cost. Plus them ditching necromunda and everyone dropping it as a result. Damn that game was fun (and the new EPIC, the old one was complicated sure, but it was a great way to piss away an entire day with massive battles). Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Jeff Kelly on February 02, 2005, 02:08:55 AM Quote from: Calantus Please explain. Not having a dig at you, I just want to know where you think it failed. Personally the only things I didn't like about the games were with gaming communities in general, and the cost. The balance is shit. If you play the newest editions of Warhammer playing Empire equals teh win. Every time they release an revised edition they kill nearly every model released for the previous edition and replace it by something even more sub-par and forcing everybody to stick with the old edition or buy most of their armys new. In the newest edition for example they have split chaos into three different armies, thereby forcing every chaos player to completely buy new models if they want to be current. They take too long to release supplements and army books. The last army book (usually skaven or wood elves) for edition x will be released only three months before edition y comes out (And they are working on a two year cycle between major revisions) The ruleset is lacking essential rules and is too dumbed down to be of any worth whatsoever. They have for example air units but no real ruleset regarding air combat. The best edition of Warhammer has been the second edition. The rules were a bit complicated but worked really good. Troop balance was all right and you didn't have to pimp your sister in order to afford an army to play. But nowadays models cost a fortune. The dragon I bought in 1996 has cost 40 Marks (20 Euro or 26 Dollars at the current exchange rate) and it was made out of metal. The very same model now costs 60 Euro (79 Dollars) and is no longer made from metal but plastic. I liked warhammer very much but the game has become a caricature of itself over the years by people who wanted to make everything better in the next release but only fucked up even more. Quote Plus them ditching necromunda and everyone dropping it as a result. Damn that game was fun (and the new EPIC, the old one was complicated sure, but it was a great way to piss away an entire day with massive battles). Standard Citadel/Games Workshop release cycle. Release a new system, wait till its popular then can it. I play GW games since 1990. Between then and now they have released and killed Bloodbowl three times, Epic two times, Epic 40K, Necromunda, War Dogs (Ship battles), that Ork Game with Cars (I cannot recallthe name) and several other games. Some of these games were so popular that third party game companies have picked up the licence to the game and the miniatures. On the other hand GW is completely overworked with Lord of the Rings, Warhammer and Warhammer 40K already. It already takes them to long to release announced material e.g. during third ed. they released the last Warhammer army book one month before release of the fourth edition making it obsolete on release. GW have nice ideas but the implementation sucks. Jeff Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HaemishM on February 02, 2005, 08:06:27 AM Quote from: plummerx I was focusing on the guy's book, which many seem fully qualified to comment on without ever having read. It was a view on the quality of the commentary lately, and NOTHING more. If you return from your one-day timeout, you might read back through this thread and notice that just like every other thread involving Raph which he may or may not read, a lot of this thread wasn't even discussing the book, it was discussing his previously-released games. Since everyone has personal agendas when discussing games, especially those they left bitterly, a lot of rhetoric bled in. And again, if you find the quality of commentary on this site lacking, SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GO ELSEWHERE. No one is forcing you to read us. If you want to stay, you can be a dick, just vary the subject of your dickishness. So far, 90% of your post have been either about that game or about SirBruce. You sound like Blair. Sorry to piss in a thread about your book, Raph. I will comment on it when I've read it, which should hopefully be in a few weeks. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Signe on February 02, 2005, 09:19:13 AM I hope that Haemish or someone here does do a good write up. I enjoy reading the reviews quite a bit and how often do we get to review a book written by someone in our own little community?
Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: plummerx on February 02, 2005, 01:47:27 PM Quote from: HaemishM Quote from: plummerx I was focusing on the guy's book, which many seem fully qualified to comment on without ever having read. It was a view on the quality of the commentary lately, and NOTHING more. If you return from your one-day timeout, you might read back through this thread and notice that just like every other thread involving Raph which he may or may not read, a lot of this thread wasn't even discussing the book, it was discussing his previously-released games. Since everyone has personal agendas when discussing games, especially those they left bitterly, a lot of rhetoric bled in. And again, if you find the quality of commentary on this site lacking, SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GO ELSEWHERE. No one is forcing you to read us. If you want to stay, you can be a dick, just vary the subject of your dickishness. So far, 90% of your post have been either about that game or about SirBruce. You sound like Blair. Sorry to piss in a thread about your book, Raph. I will comment on it when I've read it, which should hopefully be in a few weeks. You really amaze me. If there was a more bitter and vociferous post it would have to compete with yours. I posted on the foolishness of commenting on the guys book when the posters haven't read it. Your total paranoia that command you to think anything I post MUST in some remote way we realted to SirBruce or his steaming pile of shit of a game is your very own pathology. As commentary, that IS pure shit. For dickeheadedness YOU are right up there. I doubt you even know who the hell Blair is, in your reactionary knee jerk fuge state, you use the name as a verb and not a noun, or worse yet, as a punctuation mark. I didn't piss in this thread, you did, remember that. And I highly doubt you are sorry for it either. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Miasma on February 02, 2005, 01:53:55 PM If your avatar is Michael Douglas from the movie falling down it is very apt.
Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: plummerx on February 02, 2005, 01:57:49 PM Quote from: Miasma If your avatar is Michael Douglas from the movie falling down it is very apt. Main Entry: mi·as·ma Pronunciation: mI-'az-m&, mE- Function: noun Inflected Form(s): plural -mas also mi·as·ma·ta /-m&-t&/ Etymology: New Latin, from Greek, defilement, from miainein to pollute 1 : a vaporous exhalation formerly believed to cause disease; also : a heavy vaporous emanation or atmosphere 2 : an influence or atmosphere that tends to deplete or corrupt <freed from the miasma of poverty -- Sir Arthur Bryant>; also : an atmosphere that obscures : FOG <retreated into an asexual mental miasma -- Times Literary Supplement> Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Rasix on February 02, 2005, 02:00:54 PM So, do you want to post here or not? You're not making a good case for us keeping you around.
Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: stray on February 02, 2005, 02:10:57 PM plummerx, even if some of us haven't read Raph's book (which I'm sure most of us eventually will), you need to understand that it's still possible for us to be acquainted with Raph's ideas, if not the book itself.
How can we not? It's not like it's the first time he's spoken about the "theory of fun" or that none of us have read the articles on his website...Hell, some people here have been discussing it with him for years. Before you butt in and start bitching at people, how about finding out a bit more about the circumstances? Raph was sorta joking when he pointed all that out. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: plummerx on February 02, 2005, 02:11:24 PM Quote from: Rasix So, do you want to post here or not? You're not making a good case for us keeping you around. Well, That begs the question. Can I post here without some sort of stupid, irrelevant, one line cheapshot from another poster after every post I put up? I posted ON TOPIC. With no mention of what apparantly nobody wants mentioned. And I've been having crap tossed at me even then. Thas ok by me, I can defend myself. The real question is, will anybody allow me to post about any subject without having a hissy fit? Apologies to the author. we now return to the thread topic, and the next guy to take it off topic is a total buttwinkle. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Miasma on February 02, 2005, 02:13:00 PM I like the name miasma entirely because of that definition.
Back on topic: I'm going to buy this book today and look forward to reading it. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Shockeye on February 02, 2005, 02:13:59 PM I'll be receiving the book within the next couple days and will start looking it over this weekend. I hear there's illustrations which is nice because words don't really do it for me.
Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Calantus on February 02, 2005, 02:19:59 PM Quote from: Jeff Kelly Bad stuff about GW Ah, I got out when I could no longer justify the cost. That was around episode 210 of White Dwarf I think. The last WHFB we played is the one that introducted the french knight guys and the lizard men. I guess I was at the beginning of the end then since they had already dumbed down WH40k and EPIC when I left, and the magic system of WHFB had its guts ripped out at that point. So I still have fairly good memories of GW and their games. (Not a derail, just an aside :P) Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HaemishM on February 02, 2005, 02:41:50 PM Quote from: plummerx I posted on the foolishness of commenting on the guys book when the posters haven't read it. Your total paranoia that command you to think anything I post MUST in some remote way we realted to SirBruce or his steaming pile of shit of a game is your very own pathology. Actually, I didn't think your original stupidity was about WWIIOnline or SirBruce, but more saying that this site was full of rhetoric and people talking out of their asses. You connected dots that I didn't. You have also made yourself out to be a complete tool in a short time here. If you'd like to continue on, do so, but don't be surprised when and if you get banned. Quote As commentary, that IS pure shit. For dickeheadedness YOU are right up there. I doubt you even know who the hell Blair is, in your reactionary knee jerk fuge state, you use the name as a verb and not a noun, or worse yet, as a punctuation mark. FYI, I'm the guy who banned Blair from Waterthread, which probably just freed him up to spew his insane love for CRS elsewhere on the Internet. If you're going to spout, please be informed of who and what you are spouting about. Which is exactly what you were bitching about this site and this thread doing when I responded to you. As for my dickishness, I try. Really hard, as I'm sure most of the site's readers could attest. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Righ on February 02, 2005, 02:55:09 PM Quote from: plummerx Well, That begs the question. Can I post here without some sort of stupid, irrelevant, one line cheapshot from another poster after every post I put up? I posted ON TOPIC. Let me quote in full your first response under this topic, which is "A Theory of Fun" and presumed by original context to be about Raph's book of the same name. Quote Actual first hand experience with anything seem of little value here. I suggest stop asking for silly things like reason and logic, and simply heat up your rhetoric. "You R teh suck" will be placed upon you any time now. Three snide comments, demeaning the site and its other respondants. What the motherfuck are the drugs that you're on? Can you not see the fucking disconnect between your original post and your latest defense? Well bugger me. Monkeys can use typewriters. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Pineapple on February 02, 2005, 03:49:37 PM Quote from: plummerx The real question is, will anybody allow me to post about any subject without having a hissy fit? Plummer, when you first posted here I replied with a welcome. I know debating can be tough, so I mentioned sticking to your guns. I wasnt meaning you should turn your fingers into 50 caliber chainguns and open fire at everyone. You are in fact the one having the hissy fit, by bringing all attention onto yourself and generally being abrasive. You are not dumb, as I can tell by your posts. You are good at debating. But perhaps you are upset at your life or something, because you seem to vent when you post here. Word to the wise: dont be so abrasive. Once you have said your say, let it go. Stick to the topics. That is, if you havent been banned by now. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: plummerx on February 02, 2005, 04:09:10 PM I note with good humor some of the comments directed at me, and some points are well taken.
Others i find dubous at best, but I think you guys can handle that. That comments on sombody's writing, without actually having read it, seems to me prima facie evidence of the the inability to comment with authority. I think that is pretty much a recognized standard just about anywhere else Note this is yet again another good faith attempt to steer the thread back on topic. I suggest some start a rip plummerx a new one thread is thats what the desire really is. Quote from: HaemishM As for my dickishness, I try. Really hard, as I'm sure most of the site's readers could attest. Actually, I respect that. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: SirBruce on February 02, 2005, 05:23:46 PM Well, I think a lot of us have read it -- I know I have -- and I think it's perfectly okay for others to comment on our reviews/retransmissions of the material and on Raph's previous game history.
I think there is some frustration among gamers with the fact that Raph, as much as he has become a face of the industry, has been unable to make a better game. Now, I am not saying his work on UO and SWG was not great, but I think if had then gone on to make, say, WoW, which is currently seen as one of the best, some people would value his opinions more highly. Again, I'm not one of those people, but I can certainly see that such people exist. I'm sure this fact frustrates Raph a bit, too. :) Bruce Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Raph on February 02, 2005, 06:06:22 PM Quote from: SirBruce Well, I think a lot of us have read it -- I know I have -- and I think it's perfectly okay for others to comment on our reviews/retransmissions of the material and on Raph's previous game history. I think there is some frustration among gamers with the fact that Raph, as much as he has become a face of the industry, has been unable to make a better game. Now, I am not saying his work on UO and SWG was not great, but I think if had then gone on to make, say, WoW, which is currently seen as one of the best, some people would value his opinions more highly. Again, I'm not one of those people, but I can certainly see that such people exist. I'm sure this fact frustrates Raph a bit, too. :) Bruce Of course it does. On the other hand: 1997: UO 2003: SWG Bit of a gap there. One dead title in between, of course, which resulted in ~1 year of wasted effort. Still, you have to assume that following SWG with WoW or indeed ANYTHING would be an unlikely event just given the amount of time elapsed. Of course, at the current rate, you'll see my next game in 2009. Given that I don't actually have a game of my own that I am working on (MMO at any rate), you may wait longer. :) I take comfort in the fact that I see plenty of things in WoW that are derived in one way or another from stuff that I worked on. *shrug* It may also be that I am better at talking about how the games can be than actually pulling it off myself. When I'm feeling down (which some forum threads are guaranteed to accomplish!) I certainly often feel that way, and I know many gamers have said so. ;) Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: plummerx on February 02, 2005, 06:07:19 PM Quote from: SirBruce Well, I think a lot of us have read it -- I know I have -- and I think it's perfectly okay for others to comment on our reviews/retransmissions of the material and on Raph's previous game history. I think there is some frustration among gamers with the fact that Raph, as much as he has become a face of the industry, has been unable to make a better game. Now, I am not saying his work on UO and SWG was not great, but I think if had then gone on to make, say, WoW, which is currently seen as one of the best, some people would value his opinions more highly. Again, I'm not one of those people, but I can certainly see that such people exist. I'm sure this fact frustrates Raph a bit, too. :) Bruce That's akin to you explaining how much you hated a movie and for me to dispute the view without having seen it myself. That makes no sense. Didn't make WoW? So what. He's on the fray and had some sucesses. WoW's time will come and go, then it will be "but what have you done lately". Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: SirBruce on February 02, 2005, 06:54:37 PM Quote from: Raph Of course it does. On the other hand: 1997: UO 2003: SWG Bit of a gap there. One dead title in between, of course, which resulted in ~1 year of wasted effort. Still, you have to assume that following SWG with WoW or indeed ANYTHING would be an unlikely event just given the amount of time elapsed. An excellent point. Pity about Privateer Online, though. Quote from: Raph Of course, at the current rate, you'll see my next game in 2009. Given that I don't actually have a game of my own that I am working on (MMO at any rate), you may wait longer. :) This thought makes me sad. Hopefully people won't forget how big UO really was by then. Anyway, thanks for taking my post in the spirit in which it was given. Bruce Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: SirBruce on February 02, 2005, 06:57:07 PM Quote from: plummerx That's akin to you explaining how much you hated a movie and for me to dispute the view without having seen it myself. That makes no sense. I think it's more like M. Night Shyamalan writing a book about making movies, and people discussing people posting about what he said in the book, even though they've only seen some of his movies. Bruce Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: schmoo on February 02, 2005, 07:19:14 PM Quote from: Raph It may also be that I am better at talking about how the games can be than actually pulling it off myself. When I'm feeling down (which some forum threads are guaranteed to accomplish!) I certainly often feel that way, and I know many gamers have said so. ;) It may be that your written work on games may inspire some future game designer(s) to create something better than has been done up to now, which seems to me to be of more value in the long run than making Yet Another Game. In any case, one doesn't design and create something like a modern computer game by oneself; any failures can always be blamed on someone else. ;) Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Jain Zar on February 02, 2005, 08:50:04 PM Quote from: Raph It may also be that I am better at talking about how the games can be than actually pulling it off myself. When I'm feeling down (which some forum threads are guaranteed to accomplish!) I certainly often feel that way, and I know many gamers have said so. ;) Nothing wrong with that sir. Everyone learns as they go and makes mistakes along the way. Learning from them is something not everyone does quite so much. Its clear you kinda have, and actually are willing to admit so, and with a sense of humor about it all. I can respect that. It actually makes me more interested in your book actually. Its just at least for me its been like the previously mentioned GW stuff which on its own I would be happy to chat about in a more appropriate thread, you came up with all these interesting ideas and stuff packed with... STUFF, yet didn't fully think about how it would work in an actual game. Like open PvP. Not only did it turn most of us into sheep for Bobby the Catass who gets a swirly at high school every day, dying while trying to do anything, your bounty system just encouraged ganking guilds to kill each other for lots of cash! Or your no NPC economy in SWG. It just caused items that with NPCs would have sold for around 10K to sell for 100K or more. And the training system? Sure I think the CONCEPT was for it to save younger players money by having veterans train newbies for free, making new pals in the process, but it ended up having people begging to train other people so they could master their class to the point of paying to train people! The road to hell was paved with good intentions. And yeah, WoW has concepts from your games. Its got concepts from almost the entire genre in it. Blizzard is much like Squaresoft in their rabid.. ahh... "borrowing" of other gameplay and world elements in making their software. About the same level of rabid fanbase too.. To fans of innovation its a little bit disappointing, but there you go.. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Margalis on February 02, 2005, 09:11:26 PM Quote from: Raph It may also be that I am better at talking about how the games can be than actually pulling it off myself. When I'm feeling down (which some forum threads are guaranteed to accomplish!) I certainly often feel that way, and I know many gamers have said so. ;) You just need to team up with the right person. A very pragmatic, minimalist, aim-low asshole type. When you work by yourself on something like a painting, it's very different from working on something with is a complex collaboration like software. You may have the "vision guy" and they may be great, but that's not enough. For a painter or a composer the "vision guy" can also be the nuts and bolts guy, and that works fine. But for something like a MMORPG I don't think that's possible. With any large-scale software project you need someone is very realistic and honest about what can be delivered and when. The kind of person who, when you describe a new feature, will say "your last two new features didn't pan out, how is this one any different?" Someone who can honestly judge the talent everyone has and figure out if they are biting off more than they can chew. This is true in any software development effort, but I think it's more true in games because there is a more creative aspect. People are thinking about cool features and new systems and backstory and what-have-you, rather than the real nuts and bolts. I don't mean a suit, or someone that makes a MS Project list of milestones. I mean someone who understands the engineering and the product but errs on the side of caution. It's like good cop/bad cop. Edit: SquareSoft is far more innovative than Blizzard. They produced, let's see: the Final Fantasy job system, the FF active time battle system, the entire Romancing Saga series (that has a lot of wacky stuff in it, including being able to start as a lot of different characters), Secret of Mana (3 player simultaneous adventure/RPG), etc etc. The Romancing Saga series in particular gets pretty out there. Blizzard hasn't really ever done anything other than provide a minor evolution in gameplay or simply better deliver something that has already been done. The delivery is clearly their strength. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HRose on February 02, 2005, 09:12:33 PM Quote from: Raph It may also be that I am better at talking about how the games can be than actually pulling it off myself. When I'm feeling down (which some forum threads are guaranteed to accomplish!) I certainly often feel that way, and I know many gamers have said so. ;) Oh come on, where's the challenge so? Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Pineapple on February 02, 2005, 10:02:12 PM Quote from: plummerx That comments on sombody's writing, without actually having read it, seems to me prima facie evidence of the the inability to comment with authority. I wasnt commenting on what is within Raph's book. As someone else said, my attitudes come from past experience. Actions speak louder than words, and so I will await to see of SOE produces another grind-fest or a fun game. So I wont buy the book. Sorry Raph, I wont give you more money until I see the theories in action. And as I noted on the upside, Raph says he wants to get back to certain basics and examine what worked and what didnt. Bravo to that and bravo to him. Let's see it in action, and then I will respond with my wallet. Until then, words are just words. I think Raph can greatly impact online gaming, either positively or negatively. If what he says is true, I think he will probably find the fun. Great, fun games are possible. Somehow someone is doing it. Maybe a back to the basics approach is the way to go next. I wont keep rehashing this, because it has already been said. There is no point in continuing to go on about it. But if you say that I have been commenting on a book I never read, I say that I am not commenting on the book itself. I am commenting on past game experiences that relate to the author, due to his creative direction influence on those games. Ok? I dont want to keep bashing Raph, so stop making me re-explain my posts. What he said lately has given me optimism for Sony's future games. But I'm not ready to pay yet. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Riggswolfe on February 02, 2005, 10:08:21 PM What I would love to see Raph, would be to take some of your more interesting ideas (economy and social aspects of games mostly) paired with somebody who has a good handle on engaging content.
I believe if you also threw in somebody with a bit more understanding of the gamer mentality you could make an amazing game. This isn't a dig. What I mean by this is I've noticed both UO and SWG seem to have a lack of understanding of common gamer mentalities, at least in their original states. UO was an amazing game totally destroyed by a naive belief that players could and would police themselves. Couple this with the fact that most players don't WANT to have to police each other and you have a huge problem. It was heaven for griefers and huge PvP fans. Hell for everyone else. SWG has been discussed enough here. Way too much grinding. Way to much afk macroing. Awesome social aspects. The city stuff was cool. Horrible combat mechanics. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the ideas look awesome on paper, and some aspect so of them are, but they seem to fail to take into account the way gamers behave in the real world. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Pineapple on February 02, 2005, 10:25:30 PM Edited: many words removed.
Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Pineapple on February 03, 2005, 08:07:50 AM Quote from: Raph It may also be that I am better at talking about how the games can be than actually pulling it off myself. I do not believe this. I think you CAN do it. I just think it is as you said, a getting back to certain basics is needed. Perhaps it is easy to get caught up in the process of it all. Perhaps more focus groups are needed, and early on not just in beta. We have been bitching about grind for years, but these games arent produced very rapidly so maybe the next one will reflect the changing attitudes. Just avoid agonizing grinds in the next one. Avoid tools that have very little actual use once the game gets going. Avoid overcomplication. You have more knowledge than the rest of us on the subject of online gaming. This book is a start down a new direction, so I think you can do it. I'll pay cash money when I see it materialize. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Raph on February 03, 2005, 05:36:55 PM We go into every game with the goal of avoiding grinds. :) Really, it surprises me how many people think developers are willfully ignoring everyone--it's really not that so much as how easy it is to lose sight of what you're trying to do.
Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HRose on February 03, 2005, 05:47:59 PM Quote from: Raph We go into every game with the goal of avoiding grinds. :) Really, it surprises me how many people think developers are willfully ignoring everyone--it's really not that so much as how easy it is to lose sight of what you're trying to do. So what exactly was the concept of 'jedi' if not the purest form of grind EVER created? Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Samwise on February 03, 2005, 06:00:18 PM I think the original concept of the Jedi system was spot on - make it a secret set of criteria that people will "naturally" stumble into after they've explored a large amount of the game world.
The implementation problems were threefold: 1) They weren't able to track as many variables as they wanted to, so they made profession mastery the sole determiner. 2) The professions themselves were for the most part huge grinds, so natural exploration never entered into it - nobody wanted to master a bunch of professions because mastering one was tedious enough. 3) Once the holocrons leaked the secret, the system was beaten - anyone willing to catass through all the profs at high speed could get his Jedi, and everyone knew it. If more than profession mastery entered into it and/or the professions weren't just grinds and/or it had stayed a secret, getting a Jedi wouldn't have been a grind. Unfortunately, the otherwise fairly decent Jedi system was built upon other systems that had some pretty deep flaws. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Riggswolfe on February 03, 2005, 06:20:18 PM I used to read the Jedi forums and people had all these crackpot theories.
"Go talk to the hermit who spanws once every 6 hours on Tatooine. Do this quest series on Naboo. Go into the temple on Yavin. Seek the towers." God I wish they'd been right. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Samwise on February 03, 2005, 06:34:03 PM The beauty of keeping it a secret was that nobody would have ever known the difference. The actual criteria could be completely braindead, but as long as the players couldn't figure out the criteria, they'd keep doing wacky shit, and some of them would be utterly convinced that the wacky shit was what did it.
Once the secret was leaked, it was all over. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Margalis on February 03, 2005, 06:41:00 PM Quote from: Riggswolfe UO was an amazing game totally destroyed by a naive belief that players could and would police themselves. Couple this with the fact that most players don't WANT to have to police each other and you have a huge problem. The funny thing is, lots of people STILL believe this! How many times have you heard people talk about "player justice." Player justice and player-created content are both pervasive myths. There's never been a game where either was worth a darn. I think people cling to them because they represent less effort and less cost. Hey, why create content when players can do it for free! (I'm not saying players creating content is bad, I'm saying it's no substitute for developer content. It's icing, you need the cake first) Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Jain Zar on February 03, 2005, 07:09:08 PM Quote from: Margalis Edit: SquareSoft is far more innovative than Blizzard. They produced, let's see: the Final Fantasy job system, the FF active time battle system, the entire Romancing Saga series (that has a lot of wacky stuff in it, including being able to start as a lot of different characters), Secret of Mana (3 player simultaneous adventure/RPG), etc etc. The Romancing Saga series in particular gets pretty out there. Blizzard hasn't really ever done anything other than provide a minor evolution in gameplay or simply better deliver something that has already been done. The delivery is clearly their strength. Job switching first appeared in Wizardry 1, 1980-81 release date. And more popular in Japan than it was in the US where it originated. Active Time Battle is just an intitative/action system lifted from tons of tabletop RPGs and the odd computer RPG. Stuart Smith had 8 bit RPGs that allowed 15 people to play simultaneously. Again. Squaresoft is about as innovative as Blizzard. Its not innovation, its taking pre existing ideas, making them slick, and knowing how to market them. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Pineapple on February 03, 2005, 07:28:39 PM Quote from: Raph We go into every game with the goal of avoiding grinds. :) Really, it surprises me how many people think developers are willfully ignoring everyone--it's really not that so much as how easy it is to lose sight of what you're trying to do. I dont think you were ignoring everyone. I think it was very misguided designing. Whoever designed the crafting and Jedi systems probably thought it was going to be loved and be the coolest thing ever. Next time, get some outside opinions when it's early enough to make changes. And not from catass hardcores only, but regular gamers. So yes, losing sight. I would say so. From the first pen to paper, it was that. I have a hard time believing that the goal is to avoid grinding, after SWG's skills and Jedi system. It sems like that was the core point of those systems. A fun timesink I can handle, but not those. And then it hurt the social aspect by encouraging people to sit in their house all day and grind on it. People tried hard to macro it, and if they didnt they were really an insane one. Didn't you say something long ago about people trying to macro out the boring parts of a game? But I think the need for timesinks and longevity were the top goals. We have to keep them subscribed until our first expansion! Summon the grinds! Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Margalis on February 03, 2005, 07:43:53 PM Quote from: Jain Zar Job switching first appeared in Wizardry 1, 1980-81 release date. And more popular in Japan than it was in the US where it originated. Active Time Battle is just an intitative/action system lifted from tons of tabletop RPGs and the odd computer RPG. Stuart Smith had 8 bit RPGs that allowed 15 people to play simultaneously. Again. Squaresoft is about as innovative as Blizzard. Its not innovation, its taking pre existing ideas, making them slick, and knowing how to market them. For any system in any game, someone else can mention an earlier game or system that was somewhat similar. The point is in Blizzard games it's all recent history and immediately obvious. Active Time Battle is not just an initiative/action system. The fundamental tenants are this: 1: Characters you control can act at variable speeds, EVEN when performing the same tasks. 2: Enemies also act at variable speeds. 3: Enemies can act while you are issuing commands. (The game doesn't pause while you futz around) No, it's not the most amazing thing since sliced bread, but it is somewhat novel. Secret of Mana was somewhat novel. You glossed over the Romancing Saga series, which is the best example - I'll just assume you don't know much about the series. Name any system of any game made in the last 5 years and I'll name an earlier game that does something somewhat similar. That doesn't show anything. Hell, even the FFX "sphere grid" is pretty different from most level-up systems. With a typical Blizzard game there's basically nothing that isn't readily available in games still being sold in stores. Not 8-bit RPGs, TODAYS RPGs. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Raph on February 03, 2005, 11:06:52 PM Quote from: Margalis Player justice and player-created content are both pervasive myths. There's never been a game where either was worth a darn. There is, fortunately, evidence that you are wrong, because there are such games out there. I do agree that they are rare and difficult to create, however, abd once made, they don't appeal to everyone. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Margalis on February 03, 2005, 11:45:00 PM Quote from: Raph Quote from: Margalis Player justice and player-created content are both pervasive myths. There's never been a game where either was worth a darn. There is, fortunately, evidence that you are wrong, because there are such games out there. I do agree that they are rare and difficult to create, however, abd once made, they don't appeal to everyone. Ok, name one. (Logical response) I would not count the Sims or There as examples of player created content in the MMORPG sense. Nor would I count mods, skin packs, or those sorts of things. When I say player created content I mean in a MMORPG setting. (There are plenty of genres where player created content adds a lot of course) A lot of devs seem to think they can create games where players will give other players missions and that can be part of the "storyline" of the game or something to do. Of course, they miss a couple fundamental problems: 1: If I create a mission, how do I pay for it? Especially given that the most important loot, XP, is non-transferable. 2: Why don't I just do the mission myself? 3: Is the mission fun at all? On paper it sounds great. I'm a mage and I need some magical basilisk eyeball but I'm frail and basilisks only live on some remote island so I'll send you, hearty fighter, out to get it and pay you with some riches or something. In reality, most player-created missions are "pay me 300 gold and I'll teleport you." I can't think of any MMORPG that allows for a real variety of player-created content - models, textures, dungeons or anything like that. I guess there are technical concerns, legal concerns, etc. How about, I can use any .jpg I want as the skin for my cape? I can't think of a game that even does that. I think that's because models and textures are concrete but missions are abstract. If you are going to allow people to create textures you have to give the a way to upload them, a way to distribute them to other players, etc. Player created missions don't take any work. Hey, player A will naturally just ask Player B to do something for him! Free content! Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Ironwood on February 04, 2005, 02:14:03 AM Quote from: Raph We go into every game with the goal of avoiding grinds. :) Really, it surprises me how many people think developers are willfully ignoring everyone--it's really not that so much as how easy it is to lose sight of what you're trying to do. See, this is one of the problems with the internet. There's no way of telling if you said this with a straight face, or, as I imagine, laughing aloud like Ming the Merciless. Developers ARE willfully ignoring everyone. You have this incredible view that we should judge you guys on what you say, not what you do. A five year old child knows not to do this. My suggestion ? If it's really as bad as you say, then there NEEDS to be a department of 'Keeping Sight Of What We Need To Do'. A bunch of guys that walk around the cubicles of the rest and wield hammers. Really big fucking hammers. "Watcha doin', Ted ?" "Well, I thought it would be really keen if the way to Jedi was catassing our way through all the professions, rather than all those good ideas Raph had in the Development, Bob !" "Ok. Ted ? Look over there." WHAM. Or, you could actually come clean with the truth and just admit that at the bottom line, companies like money and we, as consumers, have proven that we'll buy the same load of grindy shit you put out as long as it has a 'new' feature. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: SirBruce on February 04, 2005, 02:14:47 AM I would mention two games offhand that are heavy with player-created content:
Furcadia Second Life It's also important to note that A Tale In The Desert also allows a different form of player-created control in the form of passing laws. Bruce Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Ironwood on February 04, 2005, 02:24:12 AM Quote from: Margalis I can't think of any MMORPG that allows for a real variety of player-created content - models, textures, dungeons or anything like that. I guess there are technical concerns, legal concerns, etc. How about, I can use any .jpg I want as the skin for my cape? I can't think of a game that even does that. Please. Exactly how many nanoseconds before some guy was wearing a cape with two hands roughly pulling apart a rectum ? Don't. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: schmoo on February 04, 2005, 03:14:22 AM Quote from: Ironwood Quote from: Margalis I can't think of any MMORPG that allows for a real variety of player-created content - models, textures, dungeons or anything like that. I guess there are technical concerns, legal concerns, etc. How about, I can use any .jpg I want as the skin for my cape? I can't think of a game that even does that. Please. Exactly how many nanoseconds before some guy was wearing a cape with two hands roughly pulling apart a rectum ? Don't. Not to mention the logistics problem of ,say, 100,000 players, each of which has his own cape texture file, which has to be distributed to the other 99,999 players. You do the math. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Pineapple on February 04, 2005, 08:14:36 AM Quote from: Raph There is, fortunately, evidence that you are wrong, because there are such games out there. I do agree that they are rare and difficult to create, however, abd once made, they don't appeal to everyone. True, but lets stay on the subject of MMOGs please. Bruce mentioned Furcadia, but I wouldnt really consider that a serious attempt at a game. It is more of a place for Furry pervs to meet online. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Margalis on February 04, 2005, 08:34:47 AM Quote from: SirBruce Furcadia Second Life It's also important to note that A Tale In The Desert also allows a different form of player-created control in the form of passing laws. ATITD does succeed in having players create abstract content, which is a very hard thing to do. Furcadia and Second Life...whatever. Z-list MMORPGs. I'm not saying players creating textures is a good thing. (Actually, I do think it is a good thing if you can administer it) My point was simply that player-justic and player-created-content sound great on paper but haven't been shown to work in real life. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: d4rkj3di on February 04, 2005, 09:54:11 AM Quote from: Ironwood Please. Exactly how many nanoseconds before some guy was wearing a cape with two hands roughly pulling apart a rectum ? Don't. You've never been to Goon Town in Second Life, have you? As to player justice, it breaks down into "Witch Hunt" followed by "Lynch Mob" followed by "This game is boring, there's nobody playing" (See: JumpGate) ATITD attempts to take care of this by making the Player Justice more Non-Violent, but remeber violence is not necessary to violate. Politics can be more vicious than Warfare in terms of damage done. And, two things to close with: 1) I'm buying the book this weekend, after reading the .PDF from Raph's site 2) It's amazing that in two threads where Raph talks, someone has been ejected from f13. ^^ Now that's fun! Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HaemishM on February 04, 2005, 10:24:35 AM Quote from: Raph Quote from: Margalis Player justice and player-created content are both pervasive myths. There's never been a game where either was worth a darn. There is, fortunately, evidence that you are wrong, because there are such games out there. I do agree that they are rare and difficult to create, however, abd once made, they don't appeal to everyone. And I believe that such games are VERY LOW POPULATION games, because those kind of things only work when the press of general insipid humanity is not knocking down the proverbial door. Also, I just got the book last night and started reading it. So far, I like it. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Raph on February 04, 2005, 10:57:16 AM Quote from: Margalis ATITD does succeed in having players create abstract content, which is a very hard thing to do. Furcadia and Second Life...whatever. Z-list MMORPGs. Interesting--they're both significantly larger than ATITD--order of magnitude larger. Why do you write them off? I did say that the audience appears to be limited--there's countless muds based on player content, and that make use of player justice, but none of them are huge. Dundee managed to make a UO gray shard where player justice worked. In terms of games in general there are of course zillions, ranging from Sims to NWN. Part of the reason to be a believer, though, is that the web is built in large measure on "player content," as are many individual popular websites. Or this website. :) Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Margalis on February 04, 2005, 11:17:19 AM Quote from: Raph Quote from: Margalis ATITD does succeed in having players create abstract content, which is a very hard thing to do. Furcadia and Second Life...whatever. Z-list MMORPGs. Interesting--they're both significantly larger than ATITD--order of magnitude larger. Why do you write them off? Because I don't care about them, and nobody else here does either. I don't think it's impossible to get player justice and player content to work. But it takes a lot of work. You have to orient your game the right way, provide the right tools, etc. Again, you see a lot of people saying things like "players will send other players on missions" without thinking it through or providing any real incentive or reason to do so. Sure, you COULD send some players on some missions, but why would you? Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Toast on February 04, 2005, 11:23:25 AM There's player justice (and arguably content) in World of Warcraft on the PvP servers.
When a low level guild member is getting "ganked" and/or camped by higher level players, he/she often calls in high level friends to help out. The high level players mount up and come to the rescue. There's a component of revenge, personal protection, and protecting other players on your team from the gankers. This high level cavalry gets no reward outside of the gratitude and the +reputation that comes from helping out team members. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Pineapple on February 04, 2005, 11:45:46 AM Quote from: Raph I did say that the audience appears to be limited--there's countless muds based on player content, and that make use of player justice, but none of them are huge. Dundee managed to make a UO gray shard where player justice worked. Those MUDs are irrevelant to the vast majority of today's online gamers. Anyone that fails to fully understand this is to be out of touch with the MMOG gaming community that exists today. I am glad to hear that you recognize that the audience appears to be limited. And also, I am sure that there was some form of moderation going on Dundee's shard. Whether it be invitation only, or bannings/silencing, some form of moderation outside of the gameplay has to occur. Even /ignore tools and banning from a residence are not "player justice", they are merely tools that replace having a GM standing right there next to you as you play. So I'm not sure what type of player justice the Sims could possibly have. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Raph on February 04, 2005, 11:52:35 AM Quote from: Pineapple Those MUDs are irrevelant to the vast majority of today's online gamers. Anyone that fails to fully understand this is to be out of touch with the MMOG gaming community that exists today. Given that most of you are still playing the same game as on those muds, I question this statement. Yes, they're irrelevant in that you're not playing them and few people are relatviely spoekaing, but they aren't irrelevant in that there's a lot of learning and possible direction to be taken from them, just as there is from the indie MMO scene. Quote And also, I am sure that there was some form of moderation going on Dundee's shard. Whether it be invitation only, or bannings/silencing, some form of moderation outside of the gameplay has to occur. Even /ignore tools and banning from a residence are not "player justice", they are merely tools that replace having a GM standing right there next to you as you play. So I'm not sure what type of player justice the Sims could possibly have. "Player justice" doesn't mean the absence of moderation. It just means empowering players to take actions without a moderator. I do count tools like house ejection as a form of it, for example. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HaemishM on February 04, 2005, 11:56:05 AM Quote from: Toast There's player justice (and arguably content) in World of Warcraft on the PvP servers. When a low level guild member is getting "ganked" and/or camped by higher level players, he/she often calls in high level friends to help out. The high level players mount up and come to the rescue. There's a component of revenge, personal protection, and protecting other players on your team from the gankers. This high level cavalry gets no reward outside of the gratitude and the +reputation that comes from helping out team members. All of which really means jack and shit to the lowbies that got ganked, at least to most of the MMOG population's viewpoint. The reason Trammel developed and flourished is because people didn't want to be avenged, they didn't want to be bothered in any way, shape or form. Of course, if you are on a PVP server, you have accepted that you will get ganked at some point. Thus, player justice on a PVP server isn't the same as on a server where PVP is not assumed to be non-consensual. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Pineapple on February 04, 2005, 11:56:27 AM Quote from: Toast When a low level guild member is getting "ganked" and/or camped by higher level players, he/she often calls in high level friends to help out. The high level players mount up and come to the rescue. That is an aspect of PVP, and an illusion of player justice. But it doesnt replace having some sort of Support or gameplay guidelines that are enforced by Blizzard. You cant ban me from the area. I can wait until you and your friends leave the area, and return to my newbie ganking very easily. So lets say you return to deal with me again. Are you going to waste the whole night doing this? You have no way to prevent me from coming back. All you can do is send me to the graveyard that is 30 seconds away, but I dont mind. Eventually you get tired of me coming back, because I have done it 200+ times. You have wasted a whole evening dealing with me, and either you leave or call a GM. Calling a GM isnt player justice. If I kill newbies and leave before you and your friends get there, what justice can you possibly serve on me? I'm gone. The likelihood that you will ever actually pay me back for that incident is slim to none. The likelihood that I have learned not to do it again would be zero. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Pineapple on February 04, 2005, 12:08:13 PM Quote from: Raph Given that most of you are still playing the same game as on those muds, I question this statement. Yes, they're irrelevant in that you're not playing them and few people are relatviely spoekaing, but they aren't irrelevant in that there's a lot of learning and possible direction to be taken from them, just as there is from the indie MMO scene. Not quite. Just because EQ and others were born from earlier MUDs doesnt mean they are the same thing. For one, the society size is much different. That in itself is a huge difference. The support departments are different, and need to be to handle an MMOG. The gameplay has been changed and evolved to accomodate the larger playerbase. Shall I even go through all of the changes EQ did to corral or guide player behavior, simply because of the large amount of people playing? You shouldnt be looking to MUDs for guidance on your next games. You should be looking at today's games, to elevate up to tomorrow's games. I fear for your next game more than ever now. Comparing it to indie films is completely apples to oranges. A better comparison would be comparing a small colonial town in the 1700's to Los Angeles today. You decide which you want to study for inspiration for the next large city. I'll be over playing WoW k thx. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Pineapple on February 04, 2005, 12:29:41 PM Quote from: Raph "Player justice" doesn't mean the absence of moderation. It just means empowering players to take actions without a moderator. I do count tools like house ejection as a form of it, for example. Now be careful there, in the way that you are defining player justice. Because I feel they are actually two seperate things, a house banning and what players think when they hear the term "player justice". You do not want to empower people with tools that would allow them to grief others. For example, throwing another player in some sort of jail. so just how powerful do you make these tools? Only power enough to keep you from messaging me, or getting into my residence. This I equate to an email filter. So does an email filter empower me to prevent the problem? Sure. Should it be thought of in ANY way as a justice measurement? Not really. No "justice" of any sort took place. Perhaps another term is needed for ignore features or house bannings. Added: Doing things to get ready for my trip. No more replies from me now. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: d4rkj3di on February 04, 2005, 12:32:26 PM Player Justice on WoW PvP servers isn't possible for another reason. What happens when that lowbie is being griefed by members of his own Faction? What recourse does he have then?
Player Justice is something that will probably never be fully realized in any large MMO, for the simple fact that people will resort to Extreme Justice and Vigilantism everytime. If not, they will just abuse the game mechanics in order to make life online as unbearable as possible for others. This is the part where Raph explains why /citywarn had to be removed from SWG, hehe. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Margalis on February 04, 2005, 01:49:53 PM Quote from: Raph Given that most of you are still playing the same game as on those muds, I question this statement. No, we aren't. I really don't understand how people don't get this. Do you also see TV as another form of radio, which is another form of books, which are another form of sign language? MMORPGS = Mud + graphics is as true as TV = book + image & sound It's a foolish comparison that totally relegates sound, graphics and user input to mere window dressing. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: sidereal on February 04, 2005, 02:11:57 PM Half Life2 = Zork + graphics
Anybody can play! Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: stray on February 04, 2005, 02:13:27 PM Quote from: Margalis Quote from: Raph Given that most of you are still playing the same game as on those muds, I question this statement. No, we aren't. I really don't understand how people don't get this. Do you also see TV as another form of radio, which is another form of books, which are another form of sign language? MMORPGS = Mud + graphics is as true as TV = book + image & sound It's a foolish comparison that totally relegates sound, graphics and user input to mere window dressing. The sad thing is that what Raph says is true. At the moment, they're basically no better than MUD's. Graphics and sound are still mere window dressing. Where I do agree with you and not with Raph is that this isn't where they should be. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: d4rkj3di on February 04, 2005, 02:13:52 PM Quote from: Margalis Quote from: Raph Given that most of you are still playing the same game as on those muds, I question this statement. No, we aren't. I really don't understand how people don't get this. Do you also see TV as another form of radio, which is another form of books, which are another form of sign language? MMORPGS = Mud + graphics is as true as TV = book + image & sound It's a foolish comparison that totally relegates sound, graphics and user input to mere window dressing. But, TV is nothing more than a book + image and sound. And yes, sound, graphics and user input are mere window dressing. How a game plays, and how much fun you have playing it, have nothing to do with how shiny, sparkly, or "immersive" you try to make it. I've had more fun in games where I read "You hit the bad thing for 6 hps of damage!" than in a game where my million polygon uber graphically detailed character swung a particle effect at a creature and a little red "6" jumped off its head. At the base level, MMORPG's are nothing more than Text MUDs + Shiny. And Shiny is all most people need before they start in like Pavlov's Dogs. It's the same old song and dance, they just made the orchestra bigger, and gave the dancers sequined outfits. Time to get ready for my D&D session tonight, hehe. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Raph on February 04, 2005, 02:24:52 PM Quote Just because EQ and others were born from earlier MUDs doesnt mean they are the same thing. For one, the society size is much different. That in itself is a huge difference. You hardly need to tell me that size makes a difference. :) Quote The gameplay has been changed and evolved to accomodate the larger playerbase. Shall I even go through all of the changes EQ did to corral or guide player behavior, simply because of the large amount of people playing? We're talking at cross-purposes here. Pretty much everything you cite is going to be at one level of granularity, and I am talking about features at a different level of granularity altogether. Quote You shouldnt be looking to MUDs for guidance on your next games. You should be looking at today's games, to elevate up to tomorrow's games. I think a better way to think of it is that you look at everything that might apply. Today's games, for better or worse, have taken a pretty small subset of what was available from muds. It doesn't mean that everything they left behind is not worth pursuing. That doesn't mean you ignore today's games, not at all. Quote Comparing it to indie films is completely apples to oranges. A better comparison would be comparing a small colonial town in the 1700's to Los Angeles today. You decide which you want to study for inspiration for the next large city. I'll be over playing WoW k thx. I didn't compare to indie films, I compared to indie MMOs, such as Puzzle Pirates, ATITD, Second Life, and so on. And your example is poorly chosen--using village-sized models is a HUGE trend in urban planning and has been for a while now. It doesn't mean you ignore the lessons of Los Angeles. It does mean that there are worthwhile things in the smaller scale that can help a project like Los Angeles. Quote Now be careful there, in the way that you are defining player justice. Because I feel they are actually two seperate things, a house banning and what players think when they hear the term "player justice". To me, it's about invididuals or groups being able to take action against other individuals or groups. Whether or not a given action is defined as punitive very much depends on circumstance. A house banning and a banning from a city based on player vote are on a spectrum, in my mind. Denial of service is punitive, after all. Quote This is the part where Raph explains why /citywarn had to be removed from SWG, hehe. Because cities were placed where they blocked access to content that the city was not ever intended to control. That is not an issue with /citywarn, but with city placement rules, however. Quote I really don't understand how people don't get this. Do you also see TV as another form of radio, which is another form of books, which are another form of sign language? MMORPGS = Mud + graphics is as true as TV = book + image & sound It's a foolish comparison that totally relegates sound, graphics and user input to mere window dressing. It comes down to whether the graphics are significant in your moment to moment play of the game. If you could successfully play the game solely by reading the text putput, then yeah, the graphics ARE window dressing. In MMORPGs, the main things that graphics have added are - scenery - discrete movement (which led to some behaviors like pulling and kiting, and greater awareness of proximity of enemies) - ranged attacks The feedback given you by the game in almost all of this is still mostly in the form of text, and when it's not, it's easily represented in text. The few cases where it is not are mostly the instances where the combat action in question has a lot to do with the spatial relationship between the mobs and the player. But few of the games exploit this that much. A game which clearly could NOT be done in text is Planetside. But most of the others, you could certainly get 95% of the way there in terms of raw mechanics. The aesthetic experience is a whole other issue. Not to re-rail the topic or anything, but if you read the book, it does discuss this. Basically, muds to mmorpgs *right now* (not forever, I hope) is mostly like comparing chess on a board to a nice 3d chess on a computer. The pieces might grunt and swing, but the action is still mostly representable on the traditional board. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: stray on February 04, 2005, 02:38:37 PM Quote But, TV is nothing more than a book + image and sound. And yes, sound, graphics and user input are mere window dressing. Screenplay writing is completely different than novels. Novels are full of pages of material describing character thoughts, feelings, contemplation, internal conflict, etc. Films scripts are constructed in a way tell stories by being visual. They're meant to be acted out, not read. Words are substituted with actions and imagery, and as a general rule, they "show" rather than "tell". Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: d4rkj3di on February 04, 2005, 03:06:00 PM Quote from: Stray Quote But, TV is nothing more than a book + image and sound. And yes, sound, graphics and user input are mere window dressing. Screenplay writing is completely different than novels. Novels are full of pages of material describing character thoughts, feelings, contemplation, internal conflict, etc. Films scripts are constructed in a way tell stories by being visual. They're meant to be acted out, not read. Words are substituted with actions and events, and as a general rule, they "show" rather than "tell". But if I read the book, and you saw the movie, would we not have both been exposed to the same story? The facts of the story do not change, regardless of the medium used to tell it. We would both be able to relate elements of that story to one another and others who did not read or watch, and no one would be able to tell who read or who watched. Except you would have to say "The book was better", heh. Edit - Perhaps a more fair assessment would have been TV = Written Word + image and sound. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Murgos on February 04, 2005, 03:11:06 PM Quote from: d4rkj3di But if I read the book, and you saw the movie, would we not have both been exposed to the same story? ...and no one would be able to tell who read or who watched.... I can't think of one movie & book combo off the top of my head where this is true. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Xilren's Twin on February 04, 2005, 03:22:15 PM Quote from: Raph Quote I really don't understand how people don't get this. Do you also see TV as another form of radio, which is another form of books, which are another form of sign language? MMORPGS = Mud + graphics is as true as TV = book + image & sound It's a foolish comparison that totally relegates sound, graphics and user input to mere window dressing. It comes down to whether the graphics are significant in your moment to moment play of the game. If you could successfully play the game solely by reading the text putput, then yeah, the graphics ARE window dressing. But, it seems like it's more than just a scale and shiny issue. The players who participated in and enjoy text mud's seem to be a small subset of the groups of folks playing all these mmorpgs. A lot of people just don't "get" text games, not matter what the game in question is supposed to be about. In other words, if EQ was basically a graphical version of the mud Sojourn (iirc), why weren't their tons more people playing the latter before the former was made? It can't be just market awareness and boxes on shelves. I think their is a huge gap in expectations between mud players and todays mmorpg players, just like there is between pen and paper D&D players and computer rpg players. Sure, the mechanics and underlying game system might beging with the same rules, but in reality the two are very very different experiences. And the players of each have very different expectations accordingly. In other words, what do you think player expectation were of something like the jedi system in SWG compared to what they actually got? The further i go in life the more I beleive success or failure is about understanding and managing expectations. Xilren Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HRose on February 04, 2005, 03:23:35 PM Quote from: Raph Quote I really don't understand how people don't get this. Do you also see TV as another form of radio, which is another form of books, which are another form of sign language? MMORPGS = Mud + graphics is as true as TV = book + image & sound It's a foolish comparison that totally relegates sound, graphics and user input to mere window dressing. It comes down to whether the graphics are significant in your moment to moment play of the game. If you could successfully play the game solely by reading the text putput, then yeah, the graphics ARE window dressing. In MMORPGs, the main things that graphics have added are - scenery - discrete movement (which led to some behaviors like pulling and kiting, and greater awareness of proximity of enemies) - ranged attacks This was my main argument when I commented Richard Bartle's article (http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/376) and recently wrote how I'd like to see the genre improve and evolve (http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/462). I'd like to know your opinion because for me the evidence is how obsolete is the development of this genre. It's the evidence of a glaring mistake, not an argument to confirm that the graphic is just a dress. I hope you know who's Marshall McLuhan, also. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Murgos on February 04, 2005, 08:00:27 PM Raph Koster, the man most directly associated with shitting out Star Wars Galaxies from between his Goatse-like buttcheeks, is lecturing us on what makes a fun game. (http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/04/202228&tid=6&tid=10)
You made /. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: SirBruce on February 04, 2005, 08:51:05 PM He probably knows that, since he posted in the thread.
Clearly people wanted SWG to be a better game. I don't think it can be fixed now, though; a game's reputation becomes fixed. SOE would be better advised to spend its resources on a completely different Star Wars game. Bruce Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HRose on February 05, 2005, 12:03:08 AM Quote from: Raph Quote from: Margalis Player justice and player-created content are both pervasive myths. There's never been a game where either was worth a darn. There is, fortunately, evidence that you are wrong, because there are such games out there. Isn't every form of PvP already player-made content? A guild event isn't player-made content? A raid against an enemy town in WoW isn't another form of player driven experience? I still believe that you cannot expect the players to become writer and artist to replace the work that the real devs are supposed to deliver. But ALWAYS, when you put players within a structure that is well planned to offer various possibilities of interaction (forced interaction in a way or another) the possibilities are endless. I believe Lum wrote the same on his blog recently (but around December, so I cannot link) with the example of the miner who goes out of the town at risk and can ask friends to secure the area. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Murgos on February 05, 2005, 06:40:52 AM Quote from: SirBruce He probably knows that, since he posted in the thread. Bruce Sorry, I had to drop all the way down to +3 to see anything he wrote. I can't read /. at that level it gets too full of noise. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Margalis on February 05, 2005, 11:07:56 AM Quote from: Raph Not to re-rail the topic or anything, but if you read the book, it does discuss this. Basically, muds to mmorpgs *right now* (not forever, I hope) is mostly like comparing chess on a board to a nice 3d chess on a computer. The pieces might grunt and swing, but the action is still mostly representable on the traditional board. OK, but as long as you keep saying "MMORPGS are just MUDS" that will always be the case. As long as the nomenclature is MUD nomenclature and the "thoughtful" papers are all MUD-centric, that will always be the case. Most of the writings that focus on MMORPG theory immediately boil down to talking about MUDs, so it's no surprise that many of todays games are basically MUDs + graphics. Then again, it's also no surprise that people will say things like "I will never play a game without a Z-axis again" or "man, movement in COH is cool!" You aren't doing the world any favors by interchanging "MUD" and "MMORPG", and I don't see any attempt to actually differentiate them in the games you make. If you think of a MMORPG as just a MUD, and you go about creating it as "hey I'll make a MUD with graphics" that's what you'll end up with, and that seems to be your approach. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HRose on February 05, 2005, 01:49:09 PM Quote from: Margalis OK, but as long as you keep saying "MMORPGS are just MUDS" that will always be the case. As long as the nomenclature is MUD nomenclature and the "thoughtful" papers are all MUD-centric, that will always be the case. Most of the writings that focus on MMORPG theory immediately boil down to talking about MUDs, so it's no surprise that many of todays games are basically MUDs + graphics. Then again, it's also no surprise that people will say things like "I will never play a game without a Z-axis again" or "man, movement in COH is cool!" You aren't doing the world any favors by interchanging "MUD" and "MMORPG", and I don't see any attempt to actually differentiate them in the games you make. If you think of a MMORPG as just a MUD, and you go about creating it as "hey I'll make a MUD with graphics" that's what you'll end up with, and that seems to be your approach. Wonderful, precise and concise comment :) Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Raph on February 05, 2005, 07:21:40 PM The converse is just as true, that as long as you focus on the graphics, you can lose sight of what makes MMORPGs and MUDs different and special.
Look, as you can tell, I AGREE with you that MMORPGs need to actually make use of the distinctive elements they bring to the table. However, both MMORPGs and MUDs are clearly varying instances of the same thing, which I tend to prefer to call "virtual world." And seen on that level, a truly massive percentage of the design work is identical, whether you are approaching things from a user-experience point of view or not. To say that you don't see any effort to differentiate the two variants in the games I've made seems silly... is the way housing and object placement worked in UO something that would have worked in text? My preoccupation with allowing players visual customization--I coded colored metals into UO, remember? Dancing? Would the debate with HRose over freeform housing placement even APPLY in a text setting? Of course there are massive distinctions in the experience between MUDs and MMORPGs. The graphics are far far more accessible (though there are losses as well in going to a graphical representation). If you read the book, you know that I spend a fair amount of time emphasizing how important the experience design is. And yet, in both cases, the experience design is the layer on top of quite a lot of stuff. I'm all for starting with the experience design, don't get me wrong. But ignoring the huge huge commonalities behind the scenes is folly. Trust me, I've actually done both, and there is far far more held in common than held separately--far MORE than in designing a pen and paper RPG and designing a CRPG (I've also done both). The battle isn't that. The real battle is between MMORPGs as single-player games and MMORPGs as multiplayer games. In that battle, MMORPGs and MUDs are brother and sister. I claim as cousins games like Planetside and WW2Online as well as games like ATITD and Second Life. This is a far trickier discussion because frankly large-scale worlds haven't proven their fun. Much of the virtue of EQ2 and WoW and CoH cames from their intentional limiting of scale. As it happens, I remain convinced that large scale has a lot to offer, and that lies at the root of my dislike of stuff like excessive use of instancing. But I'd be stupid to deny the advantages of small scale for craftng user experiences. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HRose on February 05, 2005, 07:55:16 PM All you write in undoubtedly true and correct. Again the point isn't wipe off what's behind (the MUDs and what they still have to teach), the point is to discard those observations used as models.
The genre needs new models that focus on new aspects (the z-axis is a valid example) more than everything else. The point isn't to borrow a few elements of the graphic layer, the point is to build *directly* a product focused and ready for the new medium. It's about a switch of balance. Adding 'physics' to a game world is probably the next, slow, step. I believe this is the only element that Garriott 'got'. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: SirBruce on February 05, 2005, 08:23:14 PM I admit I was disappointed that CoH didn't have any destructible world elements. I reaalize that's a lot of overhead to do in a MMOG, and to prevent the world from becoming a wasteland you'd have to regenerate light poles and mailboxes and barrels and parked cars fairly quickly. But such a big part of superhero fare is picking up stuff and tossing it around, and Freedom Force had trained me to come to expect this in a superhero game.
Bruce Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Raph on February 05, 2005, 09:57:08 PM Quote from: HRose All you write in undoubtedly true and correct. Again the point isn't wipe off what's behind (the MUDs and what they still have to teach), the point is to discard those observations used as models. Say rather, don't use those observations as models in the cases where they are not applicable given the user experience you want to design. There are plenty of things from text that aren't in the MMOs now AND are applicable to MMORPGs. Ignoring those seems... dumb, basically. Quote The genre needs new models that focus on new aspects (the z-axis is a valid example) more than everything else. The point isn't to borrow a few elements of the graphic layer, the point is to build *directly* a product focused and ready for the new medium. It's about a switch of balance. Adding 'physics' to a game world is probably the next, slow, step. I believe this is the only element that Garriott 'got'. I'd say that for example, Second Life is both aware of the lessons of MOOs and clearly building something that is graphics-centered. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: MahrinSkel on February 06, 2005, 10:17:40 AM Quote from: Raph This is a far trickier discussion because frankly large-scale worlds haven't proven their fun. Much of the virtue of EQ2 and WoW and CoH cames from their intentional limiting of scale. As it happens, I remain convinced that large scale has a lot to offer, and that lies at the root of my dislike of stuff like excessive use of instancing. But I'd be stupid to deny the advantages of small scale for craftng user experiences. I think that large scale worlds *have* proven their fun. They just aren't quite large enough. By this, I mean that what we have is a boundaries problem, our hand-crafted static content, our dynamic generated content, and our player sandboxes are stepping all over each other. Think of it in terms of "footprints". The footprint of an avatar is the maximum impact it can make upon the world. In an EQ-like game, the active footprint is limited to the range of its longest-range attack, and its passive footprint is limited to the distance it (or any corpses or inventory objects it leaves behind) can be seen. In UO or SWG, your footprint (both active and passive) is much larger, you can have pets, vendors, houses, and so on. The balancing act is between the scale of the world, the size of the footprint, and the ways that these footprints can interfere with each other and with the functioning of the world. In a small-scale world of an EQ-like game, where certain pieces of real estate contain highly desirable static content, then even the minimal footprint of an avatar and its abilities can be too large, and the players bump up against each other in various unfun ways. Hence the attraction (to the players) of instanced content, as this effectively shrinks the footprint of the player by sealing it away from others (note that this is both strength and weakness). Its attraction to the designer is that it removes the first M from MMOG for design purposes, and allows them to more directly apply single-player game design experience to the problem. But it's making lemonade when circumstances hand you lemons, not really a solution. UO wasn't that large in scale, and the various elements stepped all over each other. Players found nasty things spawning inside their houses, when that was fixed the variety of spawns and hunting grounds was reduced, that was an example of the sandbox stepping on dynamic content. When PK's planted houses near the entrances to dungeons, the sandbox was stepping on the static content. And when NPC's tried to wander and emulate social activities, the players couldn't find them to buy things, which was an example of dynamic content stepping on static content. SWG had a larger scale world, and a much better scheme for separating the dynamic and sandbox content from the static (and not really much static content), but it didn't do so well at separating the sandbox from dynamic. Probably the sandbox and dynamic content will always be in opposition to some degree, and the design problem there is to allow them to coexist peacefully. A big part of that is almost going to have to be just plain *bigger* worlds, where the avatar footprint in the sandbox can easily be absorbed by the sheer scale without choking out the dynamic content. And not just larger in scale, but larger in detail as well, or else we have either Horizons (lots of world and nothing happening) or ATITD/Second Life (lots of world and lots you can do with it, but nothing there to draw in players *except* the possibilities of what they can do there). Which brings us smack up against two problems: Emergent content, and system architecture. Emergent content generation methods offer the possibility of getting out a lot more meaningful detail than we put in, which is neccessary if we are to get such worlds without our budgets hitting *9* figures. And the current server-side architectures cannot scale to running worlds of such complexity of such sizes with any cost-effective amount of hardware. We can't count on Moore's Law to bail us out for two reasons: Moore's Law doesn't seem to hold very well these days (the best PC I can buy today is only about 25% more powerful than what I could have gotten two years ago, and most of the increase is in faster memory, not CPU); And the current architectures haven't been tracking well with Moore's Law anyway, they are actually running into the 4GB memory limit (which theoretically we can bust with 64bit systems, but then we'll hit memory *bandwidth* limitations). So, any way you slice it, those of us who want to create worlds rather than theme park rides have a big job to do first. We've got to go back to basics and solve some fundamental problems: 1) What is fun, where does it come from, and why does it go away? (You have started that process, but your Theory of Fun is definitely not comprehensive) 2) How can we tame emergent systems so that they'll do what we *want* (create fun, see #1), while still doing more than we expect (so we can get get more productivity from our word-building budget without creating monotony)? 3) How can we run worlds large enough for the player footprints to play nicely with #2? --Dave Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HRose on February 06, 2005, 10:20:11 AM Quote from: Raph Say rather, don't use those observations as models in the cases where they are not applicable given the user experience you want to design. There are plenty of things from text that aren't in the MMOs now AND are applicable to MMORPGs. Ignoring those seems... dumb, basically. But I'm not saying that, nor I'm trying to criticize your work. I just say that if you take an "x" game and look at it from this point of view you'll probably finish to conclude that it's really a MUD dressed with graphic. On this same forum you wrote a concept that can be extended to this topic: Quote Does your game NEED it? No. But given that it is one of the axes of gameplay that makes use of persistence, and persistence is one of the key things these games offer that other games cannot , well, leaving it out may be considered to be at least underutilizing the genre. In the same way the graphic, the sound, the perception of the body, the environment etc... These are all elements that need to be used or you are just again underutilizing the medium. The type of language is still too eradicated in just another wrap of a MUD model. What is needed is to fully utilize what's available, develop a new language that doesn't forget what was behind but that is also able to advance on its own qualities. And this without fancy projects like Second-life. The use and 'feel' of the graphic is still way behind on the standard gameplay, how you move the avatar (another glaring weak spot of SWG and not a case that it was overlooked), how you interact with the environment, the practice of story-telling etc... All this just begs to be fully utilized and I'm sure that the players will reward this approach because this type of evolution is based directly on the needs of the body. Something that lies in the human nature and so is one of those elements that can be shared directly between *everyone*, no matter of playstyles in this case. The vastest audience possible and the direct opposite of the niche of a MUD. The fact of the very difference of success between EverQuest and the average Diku is the direct demonstration of how the market itself ASKS for a different approach. And I find again limited to read Richard Bartle melting these genres without even remotely considering the difference of MEDIUM. This is another type of trivialization that does no good. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HRose on February 06, 2005, 10:26:44 AM Quote from: MahrinSkel 1) What is fun, where does it come from, and why does it go away? (You have started that process, but your Theory of Fun is definitely not comprehensive) I wouldn't go further. The type of the argument defines the fact you'll never 'get it' completely. It's like an hadful of sand, the more you tighten your first the more there's nothing within. The best way to 'get it' is about defining a wrap. The idea of patterns and the implication of the learning process at the base of the fun is already enough to define it without losing everywhere the various implications. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: MahrinSkel on February 06, 2005, 10:38:33 AM Quote from: HRose It's like an hadful of sand, the more you tighten your first the more there's nothing within. The best way to 'get it' is about defining a wrap. The idea of patterns and the implication of the learning process at the base of the fun is already enough to define it without losing everywhere the various implications. No offense, but no it *isn't*. If "pattern identification" and learning brain rewards were enough to to be a complete theory of fun, then there would be no "fun" activities that did not involve pattern identification and learning. For example, many people find MMOG fishing fun, yet there is no pattern, no puzzle, no learning. Many people find performing an activity they have *completely* mastered (bike riding, playing the same FPS map for the 300th time) to be fun, but they aren't learning anything and they've mastered all the patterns. Raph's theory is a landmark, because it's the first solid place to stand, a fixed point to use as a reference in our search for "fun". But it is not a "theory of everything fun". --Dave Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HRose on February 06, 2005, 10:51:35 AM Quote from: MahrinSkel No offense, but no it *isn't*. If "pattern identification" and learning brain rewards were enough to to be a complete theory of fun, then there would be no "fun" activities that did not involve pattern identification and learning. For example, many people find MMOG fishing fun, yet there is no pattern, no puzzle, no learning. Many people find performing an activity they have *completely* mastered (bike riding, playing the same FPS map for the 300th time) to be fun, but they aren't learning anything and they've mastered all the patterns. Raph's theory is a landmark, because it's the first solid place to stand, a fixed point to use as a reference in our search for "fun". But it is not a "theory of everything fun". I'm sure Raph can defend himself on this :) My opinion remains the same, I criticized his point of view, more than his considerations. I always considered his theories as half the medal, the other half is about a cultural aspect that cannot be converted into a formal system. So the heroic sense, the archetypes, the goals etc... These are all about a cultural substance that cannot be tied directly by a theory of fun. It's all about the myth and its weight on our lifes. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: MahrinSkel on February 06, 2005, 11:10:54 AM Quote from: HRose I'm sure Raph can defend himself on this :) I don't think he needs defending, because I'm not attacking. For the first time we have a definition of "fun" that is useful in an engineering sense. We can use it to direct our planning and evaluate our results, we can agree on methodologies for achieving and measuring it, and so on. I'm just saying it can't be complete, because there are forms of fun that it can't account for. But it may point the way towards others, for example what he describes is ultimately an argument that the feeling we describe as "fun" is our brain's way of rewarding itself for figuring something out. So maybe other forms of fun are other brain rewards for other behaviours that evolution has found useful in helping shape our minds. Is a physicist who points out that Einstein's theories of relativity are not a "Theory of Everything", but only of specific portions of the universe that we didn't understand the relations between before, criticizing Einstein for not being smart enough or knowing enough to go the whole way? Game design theory is not religion, we don't stone the heretics. --Dave Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: Lum on February 06, 2005, 01:25:49 PM Quote Game design theory is not religion, we don't stone the heretics. Has it been that long since your last design meeting? Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: AOFanboi on February 06, 2005, 01:38:44 PM Quote from: SirBruce Clearly people wanted SWG to be a better game. I don't think it can be fixed now, though; a game's reputation becomes fixed. SOE would be better advised to spend its resources on a completely different Star Wars game. People want Massive KOTOR Online, and they aren't going to get it. That series is now the yardstick for Star Wars games to measure up to. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HRose on February 06, 2005, 01:58:48 PM Quote from: AOFanboi People want Massive KOTOR Online, and they aren't going to get it. That series is now the yardstick for Star Wars games to measure up to. Peoples want what you offer. They didn't want KOTOR before the game was out. Standards are set by quality, not by expectations. It's just a matter of order, first comes the quality, then come the expectations. Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: SirBruce on February 06, 2005, 06:28:59 PM What I wanted was X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter Online. And I still think they should make that game, and no amount of "But you can play Jump To Lightspeed and get all that and more!" is going to get people who want X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter Online to play Star Wars Galaxies again.
Bruce Title: A Theory of Fun Post by: HRose on February 06, 2005, 07:26:03 PM Quote from: SirBruce What I wanted was X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter Online. And I still think they should make that game, and no amount of "But you can play Jump To Lightspeed and get all that and more!" is going to get people who want X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter Online to play Star Wars Galaxies again. Bruce I agree, if I was leading the project back at that time I would have developed the space part to a great extent, then add planet activity as an expansion. Title: Re: A Theory of Fun Post by: HaemishM on February 07, 2005, 09:21:56 AM Quote from: AOFanboi People want Massive KOTOR Online, and they aren't going to get it. That series is now the yardstick for Star Wars games to measure up to. Peoples want what you offer. They didn't want KOTOR before the game was out. Bullshit. They DID want KOTOR, they just didn't know to call it that. But many generations of Star Wars fans wanted some kind of role-playing game set in the Star Wars universe. They might not have known that they'd like an Old Republic game, but that's what designers are for, to dream up shit they think will hit the joy spots of their particular audience. Quote Standards are set by quality, not by expectations. It's just a matter of order, first comes the quality, then come the expectations. No, if you want to make a profit, first you decide who your audience is. Then you figure out what that audience expects. Then you build a product that is supposed to satisfy those expectations, or at least some of those expectations. Quality is a part of the production process, not the design process. No one starts out to create a shitty game. They just don't bother to dot the I's and cross the T's enough, and they end up with a shitty game. Quality is a part of the production phase, not the design phase. Title: Re: A Theory of Fun Post by: Fargull on February 07, 2005, 11:22:23 AM Think of it in terms of "footprints". The footprint of an avatar is the maximum impact it can make upon the world. In an EQ-like game, the active footprint is limited to the range of its longest-range attack, and its passive footprint is limited to the distance it (or any corpses or inventory objects it leaves behind) can be seen. Dave, I like the way your thinking. UO presented such huge potential, mainly because it was so open. EQ closed a lot of the openness, but it also provided a more streamlined path. I still think the worlds created are two small, both in physical space, but in closed streamlined power focus by the avatar. Vanilla flavoring is becoming way to common. I am talking beyond the tank/mage/healer triad, but the power selections are more and more the fireball, fireball 2, fireball 3 generisism... SWG did a few things right, one of them was the variety of classes that did not have a focus even near the triad. It is nice to hear that people in the seats of power are at least entertaining or directly looking over the thoughts you have expressed. Title: Re: A Theory of Fun Post by: HaemishM on February 07, 2005, 01:05:02 PM I believe that not only are the worlds too small, but more importantly the populations are TOO BIG. The latter can make the former even more obvious.
Of course, being a complete dick, I'm not going to elaborate because my explanation is enough to make an article out of that I've been meaning to write for weeks now. Title: Re: A Theory of Fun Post by: Raph on October 24, 2012, 10:48:22 AM Giant necro!
At GDC Online in Austin, i did a "ten years later" on the original talk. Video is posted here: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/179928/Video_Raph_Koster_revisits_his_Theory_of_Fun_10_years_later.php Title: Re: A Theory of Fun Post by: Slayerik on October 24, 2012, 11:05:37 AM Legendary necro.
Title: Re: A Theory of Fun Post by: Sky on October 24, 2012, 11:23:06 AM I think the highlight was when Raph pointed out the typo in the title of the book 'A Theory of Funk'. Then he put on star shades and rocked out some Bootsy basslines.
Title: Re: A Theory of Fun Post by: Ingmar on October 24, 2012, 11:25:35 AM So how's that article coming along, Haemish?
Title: Re: A Theory of Fun Post by: HaemishM on October 24, 2012, 11:28:39 AM I don't even remember what I was trying to say then. :oh_i_see:
Title: Re: A Theory of Fun Post by: Nebu on October 24, 2012, 11:43:23 AM Giant necro! At GDC Online in Austin, i did a "ten years later" on the original talk. Video is posted here: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/179928/Video_Raph_Koster_revisits_his_Theory_of_Fun_10_years_later.php Really enjoyed the talk. Thanks for posting the link. You are an excellent speaker (and teacher). Title: Re: A Theory of Fun Post by: UnSub on October 24, 2012, 06:53:02 PM Quote from: SirBruce Clearly people wanted SWG to be a better game. I don't think it can be fixed now, though; a game's reputation becomes fixed. SOE would be better advised to spend its resources on a completely different Star Wars game. People want Massive KOTOR Online, and they aren't going to get it. That series is now the yardstick for Star Wars games to measure up to.HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA etc. Title: Re: A Theory of Fun Post by: lamaros on October 24, 2012, 11:30:59 PM I thought the talk was really great Raph. Engaging and stimulating. Even entertaining, in parts!
Title: Re: A Theory of Fun Post by: Samprimary on October 29, 2012, 12:11:58 PM (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=219;type=avatar)(http://forums.f13.net/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=219;type=avatar)(http://forums.f13.net/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=219;type=avatar)(http://forums.f13.net/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=219;type=avatar)
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