quote:Original post by deClavier
Massively Multiplayer Online Dance Choreography could be a new and worthwhile direction.

I do believe solidsharkey.com just made fun of this concept using everquest or something to demonstrate.

Anyways, I would like to catch all of the those that believe in linear story-driven games, and remind them that story is not a replacement for the gameplay, but a complement to it. Same goes for the religion discussion also going on. With that in mind, 30 minute long cinemas are probably not a great idea. Be careful how you would incorperate the story into the game.

-> Will Bubel
-> Machine wash cold, tumble dry.

I just think the majority of players focus too much on the end result of a game and not enough on the actual play. I''m not making a blanket statement that ALL players do this, nor am I saying you can''t have a game that is enjoyable about both the means or the end. what I''m saying is that, at least from my own personal experience and observations, players focus too much on the end and not enough on the means.

As designers, I think we should come up with more novel ways to get the players immersed into the actual gameplay and story, rather than the end results of "winning". In some game genres...what really is "winning" anyways? I think these are the points that need to be addressed.

To engage the players and make the experience more rewarding, you have to offer a few more goals than just "Save the world from the badguy." To give an example, ChronoTrigger (SNES) offered you the blank "Save the world" goal from more or less the get go. If thats all you really wanted to do, they didn''t stop you, the bucket was there, jump into the time portal and be done with it. However, for those of you that played it, do you remember the fight with Magus? Difficult. Just getting there was a job and a half. How rewarding did it feel when you beat him? I personally enjoyed it. Then hunting down that dinosaur? And then that whole biblical parallel scenario at 11000BC. A set of interconnected goals that in each were challenging and gave the players drive to accomplish each. I don''t think you can change the player''s desire just to get to the goal, but you can make the process such that the player remembers some of the details from the middle.

-> Will Bubel
-> Machine wash cold, tumble dry.

Part of the reason we don''t have an "experience" in many online games is that they''re designed such that the entire idea is to attain the goal - to make money, reach a higher level, beat the other team/players etc..

If you look to MU* games, which are the easiest way to implement new multiplayer ideas today, many continue to work on the "combat and killing" aspect. Others refuse to have any gameplay except the satisfaction of building new areas/objects, using those of other people, and chatting with others. A number of them serve as a backdrop to role-play in, but these often end up using a host of helpers to serve the same need as GMs in a pen-and-paper game. Some of them attempt to mesh these things together, with varying results.

Fighting and killing, as always, is easiest to implement and easiest for a player to understand. It also easily allows all players, bad and good, to follow the same path. I can''t think of a way to solve the problem of bad players, except to hope that the world gets smarter or something(fat chance of that happening.)

Massively multiplayer games, I think, will always remain a competitive affair in the end(well, you could have one that''s a 24 hour invasion of AI monsters or somesuch and force cooperation, but you can only force them to cooperate so much.)

There is hope for multiplayer in general to overcome this, though. If small groups of people who are already friends play a game that is "minimally multiplayer" - one that follows the same sorts of paths as a single player game, but allows you to work with your friends, then we''ll end up with the desired effect - the experience, shared and improved by the inclusion of multiple players. Early arcade games often allowed a second, third or fourth player in this fashion - though they were always effectively cooperative killing games like Contra or Final Fight or Gauntlet.

I''m not sure I can find the right words to describe it, but basically what I''m thinking is that if you shrink the scale of players, you end up with more control over how the game works. With zero players, you have a movie, while with a million, you have utter chaos(and probably lag too.)

Oh well. This post feels like a mess to me.

Making the world furry one post at a time

In the book Game Architecture and Design , the authors express their opinion that a game should not be a vehicle for telling the writer''s story, but should be a framework which enables the player to create their own unique story. Now, that''s just one opinion, and I wouldn''t treat it as gospel, but I think it''s a very good point. I remember playing Elite on the old C64 (way back when), and despite it''s simplicity, I found myself inspired to write stories based on what happened in the game. I have since played many single player games with rich pre-written stories, yet I have never felt quite as involved in any of those stories as I did with my own experiences in Elite.