Sensible shoes
“Players seeking to advance in a game will always try to optimize what they are doing.
If they are clever and see an optimal path—an Alexandrine solution to a Gordian problem—they’ll do that instead of the ‘intended gameplay.’
They will try to make the gameplay as as predictable as possible.
Which then means it becomes boring, and not fun.
In the real world, we call this ‘security’ and ‘steady jobs’ and ‘sensible shoes’ and ‘routine.’
Call it a treadmill, if you want.”
Raph Koster (via Kars)
September 24th, 2007 at 10:38 am
Good stuff, isn’t it? One small nitpick: the guy’s name is Raph (no L).
September 26th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Whoops!
October 4th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Interesting piece. I’m guessing Raph is a fan of role playing games, Eve Online et al. Bore me to tears personally. I need rails in my games, even if they’re ones you can leave and join again at a later stage ie the GTA series.
February 27th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Hi Kenobi, you guessed right. Koster was lead designer on Ultima Online. He’s up to some interesting stuff with his latest venture called MetaPlace—’reinventing’ MMOs for the web.