SYBOOTH...A Zombie stole my PANTS !! ________________Jorras Thri v lvl 31 Imperial Medic
Virrago - (9/21/2006) [Stating that the subpar smuggling system would be pushed to LIVE] "...and to clarify.... It would require another publish (in other words not chapter 3)" Smugglers History - Written by the DEV'sv Imperial Holo-ReportvMerchant ~ Talus -2310 36 -2164
Thanks for stopping by, come by more often! You've been missed by some of us!
QFE
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - In rememberance of our friend, Luckky Johnson (Toni Sinclair) "Every day I feel like I am opening a present when I double-click the SWG icon"-Vorpaks Thanks bud...now, about the Garment habit of yours. You need an intervention! - Calculus_Entropy /flex - n'Jessi ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hehe, well while most of the posting here has turned from people agreeing or disagreeing about the article, to people hating or loving Holocron/Raph Koster...
Keep in mind that it's titled "Theory of Fun"... like the Theory of Relativity, or some economic theory. Not a law, just a way of thinking about things.
And for the most part I thought it was bang on and presented very well (we are gamers, we like the visuals!). Whether or not SWG adheres to this theory (I'm going to go out on a limb and say it doesn't) doesn't mean that the game is never fun. I mean, there are so many things I love about the game- unfortunately, none of them have anything to do with Jedi (tailoring, politician, questing), and so they are mostly ignored.
Like a previous poster said: so many of us are now addicted to saying what would make the game better. Now if only we, the player base, was listened to a bit. I would really hope that the people clamouring for more content outweigh those clamouring for more Jedi "things".
But back to the Theory... in any game, it's obvious to see that game design isn't just about making a pretty landscape to run around in. There has got to be a depth that the player can feel once they enter it, like you're seeing "reality" for the first time... you've got to feel immersed. And I think that every game should be aspiring to do this.
Sayda Eol Sh'ria Tyen ---------------------------------------- Style By Design Clothing -200 4934, Tyrannia II, Naboo ~Like an angel from the underworld or a devil from paradise. (Formerly ~ Fortune's Lady)
Hehe, well while most of the posting here has turned from people agreeing or disagreeing about the article, to people hating or loving Holocron/Raph Koster...
Keep in mind that it's titled "Theory of Fun"... like the Theory of Relativity, or some economic theory. Not a law, just a way of thinking about things.
And for the most part I thought it was bang on and presented very well (we are gamers, we like the visuals!). Whether or not SWG adheres to this theory (I'm going to go out on a limb and say it doesn't) doesn't mean that the game is never fun. I mean, there are so many things I love about the game- unfortunately, none of them have anything to do with Jedi (tailoring, politician, questing), and so they are mostly ignored.
Like a previous poster said: so many of us are now addicted to saying what would make the game better. Now if only we, the player base, was listened to a bit. I would really hope that the people clamouring for more content outweigh those clamouring for more Jedi "things".
But back to the Theory... in any game, it's obvious to see that game design isn't just about making a pretty landscape to run around in. There has got to be a depth that the player can feel once they enter it, like you're seeing "reality" for the first time... you've got to feel immersed. And I think that every game should be aspiring to do this.
Actually, if he means me, and I think he might, what I said was:
I am addicted to thinking of ways to make my personal addiction more addictive. I also have an addiction to thinking of ways to make other people's addictions more addictive.
I'm a bit like those back room chemists that keep coming up with new designer drugs. The only difference is, SOE doesn't really listen to me that much, so I have little affect on anything.
Honestly though, it's not that different than a singer whom wants to take the time to come up with a new album that will get people addicted to listening to their music for hours and/or days at a time.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Read my fan fiction prequel prequel, here's a clicky: Star Wars Episode 0 Masks of Darkness The Sith mantle is passed to the next generation, the jedi make contact and discover this remnant of the ancient order of dark-side users. R2-D2 is born!
I will agree that there are alot of things that would make this game better (fixing all the bugs), but I still enjoy it and I have 2 accounts on shadowfire (Vidron being my other toon). IMHO I would say that its up to us to make this game fun, look past the bugs, the onslaught of Jedi's, and whatnot, and just enjoy playing online with your friends, trying to take down a Jedi by yourself, or trying to run a quest by yourself. (bragging rights if you can do this)
Raph, I do hope you're reading this, if so read all the way please, as this is not meant as a flame, just an observation.
He is correct that a game, and game design is all about communication, and the pleasure that exorcising one's brain gives (biologically this is true, exersising the brain actually stimulates the pleasure center of the brain).
Where Raph's insight failed is in his social skills. Having a well developed social dynamic teaches a scientist that when creating a model for any given social subject, one cannot assume that the entire populace os the model studied will be of the lowest common denominator.
To use his Alexandiran solution to the gordian problem, not ALL players will resort to cutting the knot in two with their sword. While it's true that many many players WILL resort to the esiest fascilitation to a given problem, these player do not form the backbone of the community. These 'Alexandrian' players are the players that cheat and exploit their way to the top, get bored and find a different game to play.
The backbone of the player base, IE, the players that will be relyable customers, or sticky eyeballs to use a marketing term, would rather work out the most satisfying or proper way to solve a problem (we'll call them promethean players to continue the greek mythos terminology). To use the above analogy, they will unravel the gordian knot rather than use the sword. While this type of player is sometimes in minority, this type of player will be the most long term customer, and is the type of customer that will draw others by word of mouth, IF they've had a satisfying game experience. This type of player is also the type of player that writes the game reviews.
Therefore, appealing to the lowest common denominator amongst the player base is a poor marketting decision as well as a poor game deign decision. From a puzzel standpoint, it elliminates all the challenge of the game by providing the deired pattern, but not encouraging mental stimulation, at the same time it eliminates the art of the game by resorting to comercialistic formulae in order to satify the most base and easily amused player (again, the type of player that will play for a short time, get bored and leave).
A textbook example of this is the old Jedi path. What was at first intended to be a mystery for each player to solve individually turned out to be nothing more than repitition meant to satisfy the 'Alexandrian' player type with an obvious pattern easily exploited for maximum effect. This had the result of encouraging the Alexandrian player types to achieve the end game content quickly and easily, while the Promethian player was left bored of the game due to the mindless repetition. This caused many Promethian players to lose intrest in the game due to lack of mental stimulation, while the Alexandrian players left the game due to boredom from completion of the endgame.
To put it in layman's terms, Raph had really great intuition. And it would have served him well if he had not let his lack of respect for his fellow game players cloud his judgement. The proof of this is in the sales Vs. subscription ratio. More than 2 million copies of SWG sold, less than 300k subscribers according to the last report I read.
Yes SWG is on the rise, and I am gratefull for that, but it is only on the rise after the gme started to appeal to the Promethian players as well as the Alexandrian.
Message Edited by Ihareo on 09-11-200510:05 AM
Ihareo Imtame--Adept of the Force 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Ihareo Imtame--Adept of the Force 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
I have to admit that I didn't expect a thread like this. The love and hate is overwhelming. I figured that four words wouldn't be much of a big deal. I guess I was wrong.
It's interesting to see the mix of perspectives, and sort of
uncomfortable to see how personal this all gets. I neither sit over all
the designers, as Panthu put it, nor have I "abandoned any interest" as
Jaspor puts it. The fact is, I am not really involved in SWG day to day
or even month to month despite the fact that of course I still check up
on it obsessively.
In general, the teams are going to know FAR better than I about the
game that they run. That leaves me without very much that I can say on
a game forum, if you think about it. It does no good to you or the team
for me to come in and make pronouncements without knowing any facts.
Because of that, I feel pretty uncomfortable even being in this thread
at all at this point. I'm happy (as always) to listen to whatever
everyone has to say, and pass along comments to the team, but hopefully
you can see why I feel that way. FWIW, I think the team truly does care
deeply about SWG and its community, regardless of what the unhappy
among you might think.
As to what I DO do--I mostly work on new games these days, plus run an
R&D group, and do some other stuff. I work very closely with any
teams that are working on new pitches, early stages of development, and
so on.
I do very much miss talking with all you guys, though.
On specific things:
Qui-Gonzalez wrote: Why does it seem like
many of things I have read that you have written seem contrary to what
SOE in general does?
Well, as several in the
thread pointed out, there's theory and then there's practice. A lot of
things may sound great on paper and be hard to do in practice. I am
unsure what specific things you are referencing beyond the two items
you mention (communication and treadmills).
I can tell you that no games developer sets out to make unfun games or
game systems. And yet it happens all the time, all over the industry.
These are all passionate, hardworking people who do their best to
entertain people, and yet arguably they all fail more often than not.
If fun were clearly understood, I wouldn't have written a book about
it.
On communication, I can tell you that SOE has made a major concerted
effort over the last two years to improve communications with players.
SWG was the first title of ours to go with the formal In Concept->In
Development->In Testing->Latest Update model, but we've been
rolling it out to every title. It hasn't been without bumps on the
road, but (I'm trying to avoid the corp-speak here, but I'm gonna fail)
we remain committed to making it standard policy followed 100% of the
time on all our titles. In plain language, we believe that letting you
know of possible changes so that you can affect them, letting you know
exactly what is going to change and why, giving you details so you can
try out changes in testing and make sure they go smoothly, and making
sure that all changes are well-documented is critical to good service.
We've also been working to upgrade our newsletters, get more community
involvement via things like Tigg's Toons, and so on. We hold guild
summits where we gather together key community leaders to get their
input. We now have a director of community relations across all our
titles to make sure that policies are followed. There's a manual that
describes how to interact with players, and its emphasis is on honesty,
forthrightness, and timeliness. I am sure that this is the point at
which many people pull out the old link from the GDC presentation I did
years back, and try to twist it into something negative, but all I can
say is that the intent is not negative. We've even worked hard to stop
calling it "community management" and instead call it "community
relations" because we think that the word "management" implies the
wrong things about the relationship there.
On the treadmill--nobody likes treadmills. I do happen to believe that
there's powerful drivers in human psychology that push towards
treadmilling EVERYTHING, and I think that in life, it's an ongoing
challenge to work to make everyday things seem fresh and fun. That
doesn't diminish one iota of the responsibility of designers to work
towards making every moment of gameplay fun. People often seem to take
my observation of how treadmilling seeps into everything as an
ENDORSEMENT of treadmilling, but it's not. I HAVE commented that
getting on a treadmill (trading time for advancement) is a
democratizing tool compared to making a game purely based on skill, but
I don't think that's a bad thing. Having only the true hardcore
powergamers be at the top isn't necessarily a recipe for fun for
everyone either.
Getting away from treadmills is hard, though. I am sure someone will
cite some other game at this point and say "what about them, they did
it!" But all the MMOs consist just as much of repetitive activities
(kill 5 things, kill 10 things, etc). What changes is really the moment
to moment experience, whether people feel like there's a fresh take on
the activity. There's a lot more about this in the book, but suffice to
say, it's a tough problem. But not one that I think anyone is giving up
on.
SonGouki wrote:
He purposely tries to get into your psyche to make you think that that
you're having "fun", when in fact it's a not-so-subtle form of mental
addiction and manipulation being purposely applied.
Yeah,
right. We purposely create a product intended for entertainment, and
shape it instead to controool your braaaaaaain! Heh. :0 Sorry, I
couldn't help it.
No, seriously. You say we intentionally implement game systems to TRICK
people into THINKING they are having fun, when in practice we're just
trying to addict people. You seriously think this?
Since you likely won't believe any altruistic reasons why this is
silly, how about you just look at the business case? Does it make good
business sense to thus alienate and betray your customers? Why on earth
would someone approach it that way? The best way to keep people paying,
after all, is to deliver the entertainment that they are expecting.
Overdeliver it, actually.
I honestly don't know what to say to this, SonGouki, other than noting
that people seem to consistently overestimate how Machiavellian we all
are. Somehow we end up being clueless idiot scheming geniuses, when the
answer is generally going to be more mundane.
Almagill wrote:
Paraphrasing 'slightly' here... Players who detect a pattern of actions
which leads to a reward will carry out the actions over and over again
to get the reward. This is 'fun'. However when players run up against
'noise', ie an apparently random or otherwise incomprehensible mess of
options/outcomes/actions/chipmunks, they rapidly become frustrated and
stop trying.
No,
running a repetitive set of actions over and over again in order to get
a reward is not fun. Fun comes from the challenge of new problems to
solve, and solving them right at the limit of your ability.
The problem is that people in general (not always, as Ihareo noted!)
tend to get more focused on the end goal than the process, and the
second a game designer makes the mistake of providing a low-risk
repetitive process that gets the player to the end goal, the player
will generally (not always!) choose to take it. It's bottomfeeding,
it's grinding, it's boring.
It is a design mistake, don't get me wrong. But I do think it's an
understandable one. No game can be of perfect difficulty for every
possible player. All games are built out of repetitive mechanics and
then ringing changes on the mechanics. Both of those facts make it very
easy for a designer to fall into that trap. It's still something that
you need to try to avoid.
-Raph Koster Chief Creative Officer, Sony Online Entertainment
What an ironic read. It really underscores that which many SWG players from the early years realized back then: "Fun" is a theory that Mr. Koster just doesn't fully comprehend.
Playing games designed by him feel more like a therapy session, rather than a truly "fun" experience. He purposely tries to get into your psyche to make you think that that you're having "fun", when in fact it's a not-so-subtle form of mental addiction and manipulation being purposely applied. Yes, you could argue that "fun" in itself is highly addicting. However, there is a huge difference between something BEING fun and something TRYING to be fun.
To those that need a reminder, just use his handle, "Holocron", as a painful reminder of the system he designed to originally unlock a Jedi character in this game. That's just one of MANY examples of the sort of demented game designs implemented that are intended to make people think they are having "fun", when in fact it's just a thinly veiled attempt to psychologically addict and manipulate people to continue playing the game... even if they aren't really having "fun".
Of course this is exactly the sort of the thing that SOE wants, because this will keep people paying to play, and in the end, as a company that's in the business to make money, that's all they really care about. It doesn't matter if you're having "fun", as long you remain 'addicted' that's all that matters.
To, Mr. Koster, I have this to say:
You can analyze "fun" all you want, but the ablily to actually craft "fun" is not something that can simply be broken up into its 'components' and packaged together. The ability to truly entertain others is an art, not a formula. You can try to simulate it, and it sure can appear to be "fun" on the surface, but it will always come up shallow upon scrutiny. I have a feeling that many players of SWG will attest to that.
I do not know mr. koster, but I am deeply impressed at these words SonG. Reading your post is very accurate of how I feel about logging into my jedi now and then.
On a friendly note, its great to hear from you! /deepbow
Holocron wrote: Because of that, I feel pretty uncomfortable even being in this thread at all at this point. I'm happy (as always) to listen to whatever everyone has to say, and pass along comments to the team, but hopefully you can see why I feel that way. FWIW, I think the team truly does care deeply about SWG and its community, regardless of what the unhappy among you might think.
I think that if people that are either working on the game or people at a higher level opened more communication or just simply read threads like this and replied (not even huge replies, but small ones), you'd see a different tone emerge. The problem is that we feel like we're talking into a void, and very rarely do we get responses back. I understand the one argument that if the CR team responded to all sorts of threads, it could cause more issues (especially in the cases of "when" things are going to occur), but i still think that it's a little wash. As it stands, what you're seeing in this thread is opinions in concentrate, because it is rare that people see an outlet for their thoughts. Bottom line: we need further communication and more of it, and we certainly don't need you to say "well, gotta go!"
I can tell you that no games developer sets out to make unfun games or game systems. And yet it happens all the time, all over the industry. These are all passionate, hardworking people who do their best to entertain people, and yet arguably they all fail more often than not. If fun were clearly understood, I wouldn't have written a book about it.
I can totally accept that. I know that we all (myself included) like to think of "where" SWG should go and what should be added, but I suppose that there's other factors at work. It still doesn't help when we say things about upcoming systems, then the system gets launched, then the team has to later acknowledge that we were right. Sometimes players do understand what is best for the game, and sometimes not.
The mechanic of SWG is not the real problem in how "boring" the grind is, or how there isn't anything to do. The real problem is that the main content is missions, and we need something else to do besides missions. On one hand, we've been getting that, through ROTW and the upcoming ToOW (and yes, by mentioning that i expect flamage). It still doesn't change the fact that what is seen to be the core of the game (running missions) is not particularly exciting. To touch on your "treadmill" comments. The problem is that the game is still being adjusted to the new CL system and as such mission grinding is the way to go. We need the game world to accomidate the players who are getting to the higher levels, and since SWG is different in that it is a game where most of your time is spent at a double elite mastery, we need the game world to reflect the fact that most of the game is the "end" game.
SWG isn't completely unfun. If it was, we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't be so upset at times. The reason we are upset is that SWG is a game that is truly revolutionary in terms of how MMOs are designed. It's a living world, whereas every other game just has you going through competely static environments. It's our gameworld and is Star Wars at the same time (again: open to flames), and it gets people upset because it really isn't meeting it's full potential.
On communication, I can tell you that SOE has made a major concerted effort over the last two years to improve communications with players. SWG was the first title of ours to go with the formal In Concept->In Development->In Testing->Latest Update model, but we've been rolling it out to every title. It hasn't been without bumps on the road, but (I'm trying to avoid the corp-speak here, but I'm gonna fail) we remain committed to making it standard policy followed 100% of the time on all our titles. In plain language, we believe that letting you know of possible changes so that you can affect them, letting you know exactly what is going to change and why, giving you details so you can try out changes in testing and make sure they go smoothly, and making sure that all changes are well-documented is critical to good service.
Except these new communication methods have in many cases completely broken down. Go look at the In Dev/In Testing pages on the main site. I do realize that SWG is an except compared to the other games because everything has to run through LA first and i understand how that can cause holdups. However, many of our FFs have been rehashes of information compiled by the players.
Simply put, we don't know what's going on until it hits TC. All we're asking for in many cases is some heads up on what they might be working on.
It gets better, it gets worse. It really varies. I can't say for certain why this occurs, but it's frustrating to a lot of us.
Message Edited by Firesped on 09-11-200503:51 PM
Shadoa Tetsuyoko
Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down Therefore shall her plagues come in one day Death and mourning and famine And the light of the candle shall shine no more at all in thee
/deepbow
