Out of Pod Experience

It's an old article, but well circulated the past decade among developers. Worth a discussion thread.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3085/behavioral_game_design.php

I bet that at least a dozen games came to mind as you read that. I especially liked the example given of the pigeons, explains a lot when being assaulted by bored themepark players (especially WoW players). You can also see how a sandbox game works within it, and using one as an example in the article which has/had a lot of similarities to EVE.


Of course though, since this article, RMT has become a major factor within behavioral game design for the majority of game projects. So such games, imo, are not simply designed around fun factor any longer, not directly, but I'm sure volumes written on how to draw the player-base to the in-game shop to spend as much money as they can condition the customer to spend without loosing them. Then certainly retaining the addictive nature as best they can, at least to the sort of players that are motivated to the constant flow of rewards to keep them engaged.

But for the article itself, it is quite relevant to our past decades history of game design; what we have seen rise and fall among the huge onslaught of released mmo's. Not only that, but how they try so hard at developing a single clone-style formula appeasing a more targeted type of player, one that tends to fall into the best results for addiction and compulsion as to the "kind of player we want".

And you know what you get when you use a real CC# rather than a time-code card?
TV game show host: "show them what they'll win!!"
Announcer: "Well today's contestants will have a RND chance through the RMT shop of winning either bacon, ice-cream, or bacon flavored ice-cream!!"
"Winning!"

There's nothing wrong with it being a money-making scheme. The problem is that the majority of the money comes from the minority of the complexity demand. Or should I say the VAST majority of the money comes from the VAST minority of the complexity demand.

While scientists are feeding rat-like humans on a per-level basis in linear fashion and learning fascinating things about the human species, real game designers are and already have been making games that challenge players from multiple angles at once, delivering gameplay that remains fun for a long time even for a person who likes video/computer games.

Sometimes it is difficult to find this stuff. Back in the early years of the new millenium, the good game designers started to get rich, and around the same time, gaming became the great new way to get rich. We saw gaming giants rise up and fall again as they learned how to suck money from the ignorant masses, abandoning all sense of trying to make games actually be any good. But the real game designers pressed on. They left their companies and started new ones. They struggled to gain popularity, but as more and more true gamers got fed up with the status quo, it became easier and easier for these good game designers to gain popularity. They still produce under much smaller budgets than the big "gaming" companies, but it doesn't take much of a budget to make a great game, especially with today's programming technology.

I predict that within 50 years, video/computer game design will streamline itself into two distinct avenues:
1.) boring games for boring people who don't spend much time playing games, nor studying the sciences, academics, or current events, for that matter
2.) fun games for interesting people, many of which play a lot of games, but also many of which lead dynamic and intriguing lives outside of the games

And over time more avenues of gaming will probably evolve, but at least for a rather substantial amount of time, there will be a large divide between those two. That is my prediction.

They'll want to take some of those anti-social players from some of the big FPS games. They wouldn't get what they want out of EVE players. We're too social. We might be some of the most social and socially advanced gamers in the world.

I used to love that in SWOTL. They had a War mode where you planned the entire campaign. This was well before Falcon 4.0... which I found my original CD-ROM for! Got to download the latest player conversion for that at some point.