Comment Social Design of Games (Score 1) 21
If they incent cut-throat destruction and murder, ruthless efficiency and theft, that is what they will get more often than not.
If they incent community building, cooperation, relaxation, and generosity, they might get that more often than not.
However, just because you incent something does not mean you will get it. Nor does it mean you can change public and player attitudes automagically. That requires social analysis, proper marketing, and more metagame social design.
If you incent your players to "play nice," but you attract a bunch of jackass PK'ers, they might need to have really powerful sociological 2x4's applied to their foreheads repeatedly before they decide to get with the program and play well with others. Those types of social changes happen slowly, or not at all. Sometimes those not interested in your welfare might take such exception to the game rules and metagame structure you want to inculcate that they will do everything in their power to trash your vision.
In such a case -- where some portion of the demographic just will not adhere to the metagame requirements for the proper community -- you might do best be policing people out of your game and towards other games in order to let your game thrive. You might find that if you kick some people out of your game, suddenly others might come flocking. Yet if you kick people out in the wrong way, even one ouster of an annoying player can lead to a defection of otherwise happy players.
So even metagame community policing can have game theory applied to it to model distruptive customers, disciplinary actions or non-actions, and best payoffs for all players involved.
More I think about it, the more I take exception to the idea people do not play Art or Experimental games. I believe something Experimental and Artistic can also be a hell of a lot of fun, and thus wildly popular and commercially successful. There's no reason something that has great aesthetic values and pushes the envelope of the expected must, by its design, suck as a game or fail as a business. You're sort of saying "HEART OR LUNGS! CHOOSE ONE!" I'd think you need true art (game as art, not just graphics), experimentalism (novelty), solid game science (mechanics, equilibriums, payoffs, etc.), a good sense of fun, and a good business plan to succeed.
The game design community does need to consider what gamer culture is, yet also the kind of culture it is breeding amongst gamers. Take into account what gamers are looking for, but realize context switches are possible. What a gamer thought they wanted from a game might change if a newer, funner game came along that was not part of their schema beforehand.
Pendragon Online bucking the trend of games that reward, like Pavlov with fresh meat paste, that mindless syndrome of kill-things, collect-things, levelling, monster-camping and goblin bonking.
While that is fun perhaps for a while, it is highly hypnotic and mind-numbing. Pendragon Online is going to postulate many gamers would actually like a little more human drama, a little more intellectual interesting possibilities. Romance. Heroism. Narrative. Combat? Sure! But why are you fighting in the first place? Death? You bet. And it might be permanent. (They didn't have thousands of people re-incarnating in the Arthurian literature. You might have to face your own mortality.)
We'll put a lot less sugar-coated pellets in their food dish. "Ding! You've got monster!" If you kill 50 dragons, what's the dramatic value of a dragon? It leads to a dramatic inflation of expectations and a devaluing of heroic adventure. Munchkinism.
Our game turns the challenge around to the players to be actively part of the in-character and out-of-character world-building and world-running teams. We're getting people designing chainmail hauberks and jousting lances, the Round Table, the length and color of Merlin's beard, and the kind of foods and flowers you'd find in King Arthur's Britain. To learn how to build a virtual world is fun. To learn how to code objects -- and watch people use them or interact with them in a game -- breeds a tremendous pride and joy.
We're going to cast "interesting" parts, like the Knights of the Round Table and the Ladies of the Lake. Remember those old legends about King Arthur? Oh, never quite read 'em? Or it's been a while you say? Maybe now's your chance to do some deep diving into a real 1,500 year old myth cycle. Seek ye the Holy Grail!
Yes. It's an Art game, and an Experimental game community -- and it is an experience that people really enjoy!
Pendragon Online is not alone. There are a lot of games that are fun and artsy and experimental and are taking off right now.
We only have dozens of staffers today. We're not Ultima Online or Dark Ages of Camelot or EverQuest. Yet people hear what we're up to, and they say "That's just SO COOL!"
And then they sign up!
You're right, people have a new technology and new sector in the game industry, but the market is here today. I'd just amend your statement by saying Art, Experiment, and Fun/Playable requires a logical AND operation to equate Profitable to TRUE. And once there are dollars involved, they are more than "just games." They become livelihoods.
-Peter Corless.
Green Knight Publishing
