Asking the right questions (Score 4, Interesting)

Disclosure: I work for Skotos where Rickey's column is published.

As someone from a hard science background, I sympathize with Rickey's desire for testable hypotheses, but I also wonder if this will prohibitively limit the scope of inquiry. It is one thing to know that there is a natural limit on the population density of a PvP server. It is quite another thing to combine that fact, perhaps with numerous other facts gleaned from testable hypotheses, into a cohesive theory of game design that allows you to answer the one million user question: "Is it fun?"