murf
06-15-2003, 07:35 PM
Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES! I call this consequences, and see them as the heart of any game. Whether its the path you take in Candyland, or how you build your Magic deck, or if you open with a knight or move up a pawn to make way for your other pieces, games are all about choices made, and consequences that must be lived with.
Except in online RPGs. Suddenly, consequences are a bad thing. The conventional wisdom holds that nothing must disturb the player’s steady progress on the leveling treadmill. Areas do not change their spawns. "Death" is a minor annoyance at best. Plots must be conserved over all servers, in spite of local player activity, and must never affect players who do not get actively involved. Players of computer games have been spoiled by being able to re-roll every statistic, load from saved games, or avoid anything like a major setback. But who would Cyrano be without his nose? What are we to make of Hamlet’s indecision if he can just jump back in time and try again? What would be the meaning of Boromir’s sacrifice if both he and the orcs simply came back to life five minutes later?
In his "I Have No Words & I Must Design" (http://www.costik.com/nowords.html#Deciding), Greg Costikyan points out that decision making is central to game play. If players cannot make choices involving limited resources based on a reasonable amount of information about the game state, then you really aren’t playing a game. You’re reading a book or watching a play. Costikyan says "…interaction has no value in itself. Interaction must have purpose."
By insulating players from consequences, designers are rendering all decision making moot. By denying players the right to royally screw up now and then, they are also denying them the chance to achieve any sort of meaningful victory. In short, by stealing from players the powers of choice, they rob context of its power to bring meaning to actions in the game. And so long as this remains the status-quo, you really have to wonder at the value of playing such a game. Especially one that purports to be an RPG.
- Brian
Except in online RPGs. Suddenly, consequences are a bad thing. The conventional wisdom holds that nothing must disturb the player’s steady progress on the leveling treadmill. Areas do not change their spawns. "Death" is a minor annoyance at best. Plots must be conserved over all servers, in spite of local player activity, and must never affect players who do not get actively involved. Players of computer games have been spoiled by being able to re-roll every statistic, load from saved games, or avoid anything like a major setback. But who would Cyrano be without his nose? What are we to make of Hamlet’s indecision if he can just jump back in time and try again? What would be the meaning of Boromir’s sacrifice if both he and the orcs simply came back to life five minutes later?
In his "I Have No Words & I Must Design" (http://www.costik.com/nowords.html#Deciding), Greg Costikyan points out that decision making is central to game play. If players cannot make choices involving limited resources based on a reasonable amount of information about the game state, then you really aren’t playing a game. You’re reading a book or watching a play. Costikyan says "…interaction has no value in itself. Interaction must have purpose."
By insulating players from consequences, designers are rendering all decision making moot. By denying players the right to royally screw up now and then, they are also denying them the chance to achieve any sort of meaningful victory. In short, by stealing from players the powers of choice, they rob context of its power to bring meaning to actions in the game. And so long as this remains the status-quo, you really have to wonder at the value of playing such a game. Especially one that purports to be an RPG.
- Brian