f13.net forums - Raph Koster's _A Theory of Fun

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July 23, 2025, 10:06:21 AM

we're back, baby

Well, the mug is available, at any rate. You'll have to order it, then ship it to me (along with lipstick). :)

oooh errr! This seems to be getting a bit pervy. Now I really am getting excited!

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I thought I'd say that Amazon is now finally shipping this title. Still says 11-12 days on their web page but they sent me an email saying they shipped mine yesterday, so I should have it Tuesday or so.

Bruce

I know many folks who pre-ordered it now have it. I am actually wondering if Amazon sold out and that's why they have such long delays (they only ordered 250, and almost 50 have sold thru my website link alone).

Raph, the press bunny assigned to the book through O'relly/TheOtherCompany hasn't returned my emails. I'm assuming there's been quite the interest in it. If so, congrats.

So now that it has gone past the speculative stage, is the book any good?

Heh, you just linked to something by Geldon. That's cute.

Who, me? I'm just blatantly self-promoting. :)

I'm about halfway through reading it myself, so I was thinking of writing up a review of my own. But, I've also got Return of the King extended edition DVD to watch.

Bruce

Okay, let me give this a shot.

Raph Koster's _A Theory of Fun for Game Design_ is certainly a book worthy of a place on any game designer's shelf. For those who attended the original lecture that spawned the book, there isn't a whole lot that is new, but it's great to have it in book form. For those who did not, the book can be quite revealing, particularly for those who have struggled to adequately define just what games and game design is all about.

Perhaps more importantly, though, is that Raph has written a light, frequently humorous, and sometimes touching book that should make a great gift to those of us who have parents or spouses who DON'T understand why we're wasting all of our time with games. Rather than try to explain it to them, you can simply hand them this book, and they can come to appreciate the scope and depth of the subject without being overwhelmed.

And at times the book is quite poignant on a human level. You can see Raph's genuine pride and love for his children nearly pour off the page when he talks about them, and his mention of his grandfather passing away while he was at GDC is particularly touching to me since my own father died while I was at GDC in 2000.

The book can essentially be read in two ways. The first, simply by reading all the illustrations in sequence, is great fun all by itself. Nearly every drawing does its job in illustrating the point it tries to make, and quite a few have charming little extra details that a gamer will readily appreciate.

The second, and perhaps more proper way, is to read the text and the illustrations together. (I suppose one could also read the text by itself, but where's the fun in that?) To summarize very crudely, the book makes the following assertions:

1. The human mind enjoys processing information from the world around it into patterns, procedures, schema, etc. that it can later apply with less thought in identical or similar situations.

2. Games primarily feature a core pattern(s) and mechanic(s) which players learn via playing the game. This is fun for the mind.

3. If the pattern is too hard to discern, or the mechanic of learning the pattern too difficult, players get frustrated and stop playing. On the other hand, if players understand the pattern and master the mechanic too easily, they'll quickly become bored and stop playing. There are other issues as well (relevancy, matching expectations, presentation, etc.) that come into play.

4. Most games have traditionally taught very basic life skills. As children become adults, they've learned these skills, these patterns, and no longer play games since they are now out in the real world playing "for real".

5. Many of these skills, while useful when we were a primative people, are becoming less relevant, and even dangerous, in a modern society, where change is increasingly more and more rapid.

6. Game designers need to broaden their game designs, not only to encompass a larger range of patterns/skills/mechanics/lessons, but also ones which are relevant and helpful to modern society.

7. Game designers have an ETHICAL DUTY to do so.

(I've skipped over many other points of the book, which although unfair and regrettable, is necessary for the sake of length.)

Now, enough of the praise, on with a few (minor) criticisms.

I found the book paradoxically both too long and too short. The layout of the work is to fill (nearly) every right hand page with an illustration, with the text on the left hand page. This is great, because their are so many illustrations, but it means that the text on the left of many of the pages is often quite limited: 2 - 5 paragraphs, and usually short ones at that. However, I am not saying that there should have been more text; often it conveys just the right depth and meaning for the particular point it is trying to make on that page. But at times it does get a bit distracting; you get the feeling that these pages are only there because there are so many illustrations.

Yet at the same time, I felt the text sometimes got too repetitive, and should have gone deeper. But the problem is you couldn't really dwell on one thing too deeply, because it was on to the next page and on to the next point (and the next illustration). Really, the format constrains the book to a particular level, and I think part of this also comes from the fact that the book was largely original a presentation, where it is quite common for points to be made simply, and repeatedly, without a lot of additional exposition. And I think if you accept the book in that context, you won't be disappointed.

One point that I thought the book did not give enough attention to was the element of chance in games. Nearly every game features the element of random chance, yet the book explores this mechanic very little in relation to other core game mechanics. When it does -- all of 2 paragraphs on page 56 -- it's almost dismissive of it as little more than a way to teach people about odds.

I would contend there's a lot more to it than that. Introducing a random element into a game helps enhance the learning experience by prolonging the appeal of the game. Consider a game mechanic which, if mastered, allows a player to win 100% of the time. If the game is fairly deterministic, then once they've learned this mechanic, they'll quickly become bored with the game. Now, consider what happens when you add the element of chance. The player, even if they've mastered the mechanic, can still lose. This forces them to re-evaluate their mechanic -- do they REALLY have the best one, or were they mistaken? What additional patterns can they learn to help eliminate the effect of chance? Does this teach us that in life, even the best laid plans can fail due to unknown and unpredictable factors? And so on.

I would also add that the addition of chance helps ameliorate the problem of players playing the same game at different skill levels -- the inferior player still has a chance to win, even if it is by luck, but by winning is encouraged to keep playing the game and, perhaps, learning what the superior player already knows.

The other point of the book that I take issue with is at the end, where there is a rather sudden appeal to a variation Pascal's Wager. This forms the basis of an appeal to ethical game design. I find the whole insertion rather jarring, partly because I feel Pascal's Wager is thoroughly debunked (particular when you consider the wager fails to mention any costs relating to belief), and partly because it doesn't seem to make much of a difference. If game's don't matter, than it doesn't matter if a game explores a particular behavior that is "bad". On the other hand, if game's do matter, then surely it is important to have games that explore such mechanics as a way of learning about ourselves, just as more "ethical" games may explore other mechanics. As Sister Wendy admitted, Serrano's _Christ in Urine_ was still valid art; it just wasn't particularly good (in the non-moral sense) art.

I also think it is difficult to expect games to illuminate the human condition and teach lessons at the same level as other forms as art for precisely the reasons cited earlier in the book. Games are about a core mechanic/pattern that is learned, and the very nature of gaming compells one to look past the story and other contextual trappings to focus on the central gameplay. Consider the moral of _Moby Dick_, which is about the dangers of letting one's obsession overtake them, or the destructiveness of the desire for revenge to others around you, or perhaps, according to some interpretations, the futility and hubris of denying God and trying to confront evil itself on one's own. But a game _Moby Dick_, even if it contained such themes, would ultimately teach you instead about optimal strategies for hunting whales, or perhaps a formula for determing the true costs of obsession in lives lost. And neither of which may be models that realistically describe reality, which calls into question their ultimate utility beyond the scope of the game itself.

But despite these lengthy criticisms, I can certainly recommend this book. As I said before, I think it's particularly useful as a gift to non-gamers who want to know more about what we do and why we do it.

Bruce

Thanks for the review!

As regards Pascal's Wager, it's more illustrative than really intended to be the actual argument as to why we should act ethically in the process of game design. It's supposed to be the clincher on top of everything else said in the book, so to speak. Perhaps it's overemphasized. :(

Yeah, the format offers constraints. But on the other hand, it's also what a lot of folks seem to like most, so... tradeoffs!

Lastly, on

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I also think it is difficult to expect games to illuminate the human condition and teach lessons at the same level as other forms as art for precisely the reasons cited earlier in the book.

Hence pages 186-188. :)

I think partially it's just me. Pascal's Wager turns me off, and I found it quite jarring as I wasn't expecting it at all. For most readers, I do not believe it will be a big issue. Whether or not those readers will accept it as a basis for their ethical game design remains to be seen. :)

Bruce

PS, post this on Amazon. :) I need more reviews!

To join the "Why don't we have better games" argument, Richard Bartle nailed that one, in my opinion: We're victims of our own success. In the last year, the market has added nearly 1 million subscriptions to a base of about 1.5M, roughly 60% annual growth. That means that around 40% of the market is on their first MMO (and therefore this is all new to them), another 25% or so is on their second (and just wants the new one to not have the sucky parts of their first). 2/3 of our market is newbies, so new games are designed for newbies.

There are a lot of things we *could* do besides keep elaborating and refining the EQ/UO mechanics. But as designers and jaded MMO veterans, we are fond of subtleties that are wasted on the newbes, we long for depth and engagement on levels the newbie is not yet aware exist.

Is WoW anything more than a very well polished version of EQ? Nope, and it doesn't need to be. It's ridiculously successful being what it is, simply because that's what the bulk of the market is ready for.

In the long run, as these players get educated and familiarized with the formula, they will want something more.

--Dave

Quote from: MahrinSkel

Is WoW anything more than a very well polished version of EQ? Nope, and it doesn't need to be. It's ridiculously successful being what it is, simply because that's what the bulk of the market is ready for.

I get your overall point and agree. As far as WoW I'd have based launch success on the previous ten years of brand awareness, and consider it far too early to judge WoW an absolute success. The expectations of that brand awareness may yet end up clashing with a MOG implementation.

OTOH had you used CoH instead if WoW I'd agree completely.

I am looking forward to this book showing up on my doorstep. I will write a review for Amazon, and I promise to be nicer than that SWG player's review on Amazon right now (it is worth a giggle though).

Quote from: MahrinSkel

Is WoW anything more than a very well polished version of EQ? Nope, and it doesn't need to be.

Yes

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In the long run, as these players get educated and familiarized with the formula, they will want something more.

No. Note the hordes of EQ vets flocking to WoW. Because WoW is the first major western mmog since EQ was released that isn't even shittier than EQ.

The reason Blizzard kicked everyone else's ass is because they treated their game as entertainment. They asked themselves what was fun about prior games, what wasn't fun about prior games, and made a game that was actually better than the games that came before it. Give the customers what they have already told you they want. Evolution: it works!

Meanwhile, everyone else listens to the ~75 or so professional kvetchers here and elsewhere who are begging for some vague and undefined paradigm shift in gaming. So they try and reinvent the wheel, and come up with some horrible abortion of a game. Creation ex nihlo works well, if you are God. Sadly, MMOG designer's ain't, so get that Jesus fish off the top of your design documents.

In short:
Blizzard's design process: I want to do what customers want.
Everyone else's design process: I want to do what will get me mad props on the MUD-DEV mailing list.

Parable version:
When a competitor rolls in and pounds you into near-irrelevance, you can (a) learn from them or you can (b) sulk in the corner and cry yourself to sleep while chanting "the customers are wrong, they'll come back when they grow up and really, really understand." PROTIP: try "a".

Quote from: El Gallo

In short:
Blizzard's design process: I want to do what customers want.
Everyone else's design process: I want to do what will get me mad props on the MUD-DEV mailing list.

I'd revise it to this:

Everyone's (including Blizzard) design process: I do what the suits tell me I can do.

Quote from: MahrinSkel

Hmmm, I have 500,000 - 700,000 in the past year, but it depends on what numbers one wants to use for WoW and EQII, which distort the yearly growth since they came at year's end. That's still very impressive growth, though, and doesn't change the thrust of your point. (Asian MMOG's not included).

Quote from: MahrinSkel

In the long run, as these players get educated and familiarized with the formula, they will want something more.

Let us try to avoid the word "more"; that's the sort of snobbery that leads to the people who think Mozart is "better" than Motley Crue and Monet is better than Mapplethorpe. Let us instead say "different" and leave it at that. :)

Bruce

Quote from: MahrinSkel

Just like everyone said for COH, let's reasses that statement in 6 months. Hell, Shadowbane was wildly successful during the first month (when you consider what it was expected to do), and where is it now?

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In short:
Blizzard's design process: I want to do what customers want.
Everyone else's design process: I want to do what will get me mad props on the MUD-DEV mailing list.

It's not that simple. Markets that have nothing but increasingly refined versions of what came before become commodified, and tend to suffer cannibalization of customers, lack of growth, and centralization of market share into a few hands.

As a case in point, I'd mention that the launches of WoW and EQ2 are the first time that we have really seen cannibalization hit the Western MMO market in any significant way.

You're also implying that what customers want is simply a fun version of what they had before, and that isn't accurate either. To start with, what customers want evolves over time; second, there's the principle of satisficing--customers will take what is good enough. If there were a game with the depth AND the polish, I do believe customers would choose it.

I’m only up to about chapter 6 or 7 now. I’m giving this book the slow dissection reading pace in order to grok as much as I can from it. (I have to say I haven't used the term grok nearly as much before reading the book.) So I've gone back and reread chapters a few times to re-examine the ideas in the book, which partially explains why I'm taking so long. (World of Warcraft and Neverwinter NIghts module dabbling have been the other reasons.)

Blizzard does have a fairly consistent tendency in development which would coincide with Raph’s Theory of Fun in that they attempt to implement a number of different patterns of gameplay in their games, as well as a level of unpredictability or emergent gameplay to keep things pretty fresh. It’s tough to get bored of a Blizzard game when they keep redefining the pattern as you play. (Just about every one of their games do this, except for Blackthorn, but interestingly enough I didn’t find that game all that compelling.)

In the overall shape of the underlying game mechanic, the average MMORPG does not seem to possess a game pattern that requires nearly as much time to learn as would justify the time they try to get you to spend playing them. WoW’s fairly interesting in that Blizzard has implemented some entirely different game mechanics for the different classes. EQ2, on the other hand, seems to have actually reduced the number of differences from it’s predecessor in that everybody has a health and power bar and executes hotkeys from it. Still, neither game would really possess adequate time investment potential in terms of game mechanic. Perhaps the real thing that keeps MMORPGs interesting might be the emergent gameplay that comes from having other people play, a reasonably infinite ever changing pattern that isn’t over the head of most people (Although in both of those games, the gigantic quest selection helps.. at least until you’ve grokked the basic quest patterns down fully.) That and possibly the massive volume of content. Around chapter 7 Raph gets into different reasons why somebody may enjoy a game, and MMORPGs do attempt to meet many of them.

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To start with, what customers want evolves over time; second, there's the principle of satisficing--customers will take what is good enough.

I certainly agree that satisficing is alive and well in this market (and many others). Tastes do change over time, but customers are not always looking for revolutionary change. I love my plasma TV, and I am glad that the guy who made it said "how do I make a better TV" rather than "how can I undermine the TV paradigm and replace those needs with a superior alternate product." Note: I am also glad that there are people in academia and R&D departments asking the latter question as well; however, I am not interested in paying them money for their brainstorm projects.

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If there were a game with the depth AND the polish, I do believe customers would choose it.

If wishes were horses and all that. Pulling that off appears to be orders of magnitude harder or more expensive than people think it is, because every attempt to pull that off has utterly failed. Also, no offense intended here, but Skehl in this thread and you to a lesser extent here and elsewhere seem to really sneer at aiming for "polish" as some sort of lesser calling.

What makes WoW polished isn't just that most things in the game actually work and entire core systems and player classes weren't left undone until long after release. A lot of the polish is the devotion to constructing an appealing and immersive atmosphere. Before they got hooked on the community in EQ1, people got hooked on the atmosphere. They got hooked on Everfrost and Neriak, and on Sol B and Sebilis. The zones screamed out that they were lovingly handcrafted, and that really matters.

I think that's a big part of why WoW is doing so well, and why it has poachd so many EQ'ers. Coming from EQ, most of the other worlds seemed amateurish, soulless or both. SWG, for example, felt like miles and miles of empty, random-generated landscapes and a few cool POIs. WoW took the time to handcraft the great majority of their content (they cut-and pasted some cave systems, which is one of my biggest annoyances with the game). That matters.

I don't think I am alone in believing you can't randomly generate a world worth playing in. Until WoW came out, the only person who had shown they could make a word like that was McQuaid, who was purged/decided to leave SoE. And I think the relative lack of atmosphere in SWG and EQ2 (disclaimer: I only played eq2 for 2 weeks in its beta, and really wanted to like the world since I am somewhat turned off by Blizaard's art style) has demonstrated that this is a rare and valuable skill, or at least a n almost-lost craft that most people don't spend money on anymore. I think that's a mistake.

Anyway, don't diss "polish" in your quest for "depth." Environments are crucially important, even if they aren't as sexy from a theory perspective. They also take a LOT of time to create I assume, and to create a game like this you need to sacrifice a lot of breadth. I think the results so far demonstrate that the customers are willing to make that sacrifice.

There's also an important distinction between breadth and depth, but I think that you may have been using depth as an umbrealla term here so I won't derail except to observe that while SWG had impressive breadth, it was not deep. No single aspect of SWG was as deep as, say, EQ1's combat was. I am not so sure that people would rather have a broad combat/economy/doll house/exploration/whatever game where each element of the game is much shallower than you could find in agame devoted to one or two of those areas.

Quote from: El Gallo

Pulling that off appears to be orders of magnitude harder or more expensive than people think it is

Tell me about it. Of course, when I trot out that justification, people usually lambast me, usually to the conclusion of "don't try."

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Also, no offense intended here, but Skehl in this thread and you to a lesser extent here and elsewhere seem to really sneer at aiming for "polish" as some sort of lesser calling.

I can't speak for Dave. But something I very well know about myself as a person is that I am more interested in new problems than in polishing. Focusing on polishing for me is difficult--just part of my personality.

I do not, however, regard it as a lesser calling. It's incredibly hard. When I focus on it, I feel like I do an OK job at it, but I am far from being the right person to manage that process.

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A lot of the polish is the devotion to constructing an appealing and immersive atmosphere.

And THAT is something that I do know how to do, and do fairly well; but have never gotten to demonstrate in my professional life. (Alas, whine whine, whine). I do think it's a competency that all the current MMOs need to improve on a lot.

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They also take a LOT of time to create I assume, and to create a game like this you need to sacrifice a lot of breadth. I think the results so far demonstrate that the customers are willing to make that sacrifice.

Yes, of course, just as in all forms of entertainment. All forms of entertainment would also be impoverished if people weren't pursuing something more... it's always a a balancing act.

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There's also an important distinction between breadth and depth, but I think that you may have been using depth as an umbrealla term here

Yes, that's correct; I agree with your definition of breadth versus depth, and I have posted recently on that very subject on the recent blog discussions (I think my comment went up at Zen of Design, but I could be misremembering).

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I am not so sure that people would rather have a broad combat/economy/doll house/exploration/whatever game where each element of the game is much shallower than you could find in agame devoted to one or two of those areas.

It depends on the person, honestly. There will never again be a hack n slash-only game that will capture me for longer than around 10 hours of play. But I know that I am not like everyone else in that respect, or even representative of the majority.

On the subject of polish vs. novelty: Like Raph, I find it difficult to work on polish directly, not because I have anything against polish, but because I personally am an extreme neophile. I want to work on the "interesting" problems, the ones nobody knows how to solve yet, the ones that offer the opportunity for teaching me something new about my craft. Following through with the execution of the minutiae of a solution I have already figured out is tedious and frustrating. This is a deep character flaw that has caused me endless problems in life far beyond my career in games.

Polish is important, the problem is that it is also expensive and enforces a kind of creative conservatism that leads to stagnation. You can create something new but rough, or you can polish and refine well-established mechanics. Blizzard does the latter, they do it very well, and they make a lot of money from it. When I say "WoW is an extremely polished version of EQ", I am not running down WoW, or it's developers, I'm simply calling a spade a spade.

The problem with the current formula is that it doesn't have anywhere to go, and it won't scale. WoW is prettier than EQ, it's more polished in gameplay, interface, and theme, but it's not going to give anyone who played EQ for a couple of years anything really new for an experience. And it was accomplished by putting over 100 content creators to work for over 2 years and had a price tag of over $25M, how do you scale that? Put 200 to work, spend $50M? At the end, would you have anything other than an even prettier, more polished, version of the same thing?

What it comes down to is this: I think we have only scratched the surface of the potential of these games, yet we're already seeing signs of creative stagnation. That's partly because they cost so damned much to make, but mostly because the market is not providing any incentives not to stagnate. There may not be anything new in WoW, but since most of the market *is* new to these games, it's all new to them.

It's in the nature of business to be conservative, to pursue stability at all costs. It's the nature of creativity to be radical, to pursue change at all costs. Where the creative side of my nature sees stagnation, the business side sees predictability, security, safety. Neither side is "wrong", each is simply responding to different imperatives. Progress requires that the radicals occasionally carry the day and turn over the applecarts, but a business cannot survive in a state of permanent revolution. People have rent to pay and families to feed, they don't want to think that some jackass with a vision is going to screw that up.

The problem is that this is an extremely young field, with a lot of growing up to do, and applecarts *are* going to get upset, the paradigm *is* going to get undermined, and "conservative" business strategies are doomed to fail as the assumptions they are built on are eroded beneath them. Is the Diku formula the ultimate expression of MMO potential, and all we have to look forward to are ever more ornate and polished versions?

That's not what I got into this business for. That's not what I started playing these games for. More to the point, it's a dead end, if the industry can't kind a way to break out of the mold, then the MMO's will be only a fad. After everyoe who might play them has burned out, we're done.

--Dave

Some unrelated points:

1) Mozart is better than Motley Crue, umlauted or otherwise. Mözart!

2) A lot of WoW's "polish" isn't in design (there's some design innovations, but they mainly revolve around making the DikuMUD model as painless as possible) but in implementation. It's been under development for a long time, and it shows.

A small example. You can always tell what game systems a designer implemented without much other help, because they involve ASCII art in the interface. If a designer doesn't have coding or art support, they do the best they can with what they have. Sometimes it's pretty good, but it will never appear polished.

Now, given the above, look at fishing in WoW. You "plink" your line in the water, in a random position to defeat macroing, and have to use visual and aural cueues given by the game to know when to reel in your line.

It comes across as very well done. It also took a designer to create the fishing system, possibly a server programmer depending on how much scripting support the designers have, definitely a client programmer to implement the random bobber things, artists to create the various implements, and a sound guy to make the "plink"s and other cueues. That's a lot of people. Multiply that by every other system in WoW, and you have a very polished... and very expensive... game.

3) I really need to order Raph's book.

Quote from: Lum

Some unrelated points:

1) Mozart is better than Motley Crue, umlauted or otherwise. Mözart!

There were far too many notes. I personally would have been happy had he removed some.

Quote from: Raph

Quote from: El Gallo

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A lot of the polish is the devotion to constructing an appealing and immersive atmosphere.

I don't know who is calling the shots on that at Sony, but please tie them down to a chair and force them to walk around some EQ dungeons for a few hours in godmode, and then walk around some randomly generated content for a few hours. Or just shock them with a car battery.

But for the love of all that's holy, do this. The industry needs help here. I'd give EQ an 8/10, WoW a 6 or 7, and the other Western MMOGs get 1s and 2s. Environments are in sad shape. One of the reasons I will try Vanguard no matter what I hear about it is that McQuaid has shown that he knows how to do this. I can't possibly overstate how important the feel of the game world is to me.

Quote from: MahrinSkel

On the subject of polish vs. novelty: Like Raph, I find it difficult to work on polish directly, not because I have anything against polish, but because I personally am an extreme neophile.

I'm that way as well, and I think most developers are. If you look, IT shops are often configured with that paradigm as well; entry level jobs are doing QA/testing work, with senior roles being devoted to developers. It's often the case that you have your designer/architect laying the keel so to speak, and doing the first chunk of code, at which point parts get farmed out to the "grunt coders" or whoever is most junior. Maintenance often winds up in the hands of a junior dev group, with the senior guys having moved on to other projects.

Just as food for thought, I'll throw another design out there, where your senior guys are the QA staff. They're now involved on the front and back ends; laying or at least approving the design, and doing at least the first round of QA. Because face it, the polish part of development is hard/boring, but to get polish right you need the guys with the most experience. There's something a bit backwards about getting the least experienced person(s) to critique the work of the most experienced.

Quote from: MahrinSkel

What it comes down to is this: I think we have only scratched the surface of the potential of these games, yet we're already seeing signs of creative stagnation. That's partly because they cost so damned much to make, but mostly because the market is not providing any incentives not to stagnate. There may not be anything new in WoW, but since most of the market *is* new to these games, it's all new to them.

That's exactly right, but what you see as stagnation is simply consolidation and reloading. What we saw with Shadowbane et al was simply a genre way, way outrunning its supply lines. The industry hadn't even figured out client/server optimization well enough to commoditize it and yet we were already running ahead to player cities and siege warfare. If you're innovating, you're trying to build a spire on a foundation. The MMORPG foundation is still extremely unstable, even at the bottom. WoW is an attempt to consolidate and focus on that foundation, rather than leap off into the ether with grand new visions. And that's great. Out of that will hopefully come 2 or 3 similar efforts, after which the base levels of MMORPG technology. . client/server, crafting, monster behavior, etc, will be totally and completely commoditized and the customer base will be ready for something more. And you can start building the next level. . player cities, deep pvp, multiplayer crafting, etc. . on a solid foundation.

I say this with all due respect because I am also a developer who obsesses on the new and innovative and finds refinement and commoditization tedious, but you have to understand that the value you provide only works as part of a big ant colony, where the refiners and consolidaters are just as valuable, and you have to know when to back off and stop building the spire when it's not the right time.