TED talks are some of the most inspirational pieces of video I have witnessed throughout my travels on the Internet. Dan Pink’s talk tickled me a couple of days ago because it articulated exactly what I thought were the design principles that will steer the next generation of MMOs. He presented three words as the keys to higher knowledge worker productivity and happiness: Autonomy, Master, and Purpose. It turns out these three words crystallize the design guidelines I have been thinking about and working on for at least a year.
Autonomy
Let players enjoy what they want to enjoy. Give them the ticket to a place where they want to be and let them have a ball. Barriers like long vertical advancement may make more money, but they lead to less fun. But if we harness Autonomy well, we don’t need long vertical advancement because the well-designed game engages the player in a happy cycle of finding goals that the player thinks are fun and interesting to solve—and this goal-renewal will happen organically.
Mastery
Give players the tools they need to learn to accomplish goals that they want to accomplish. Learning is crucial. Players get excited when they master a difficult task or encounter a unique challenge and complete it. Without sufficient mastery being possible, games become boring and trivial.
Yes, this does echo Raph Koster’s Theory of Fun. I agree with him that learning is what makes games fun. Mastery is all about learning.
Purpose
Tie together player actions with broader purposes. Allow players to create social structures that are purpose-driven and suited to do what players want to do. The game tasks need to be tied together by larger goals shared among players. A success or failure shared with others can become a great memory and a reason to keep playing.
Posts
3 comments:
A few days ago Toldain had the same video and wrote about it in an MMO context.
Hivemind? ;)
I have never heard of Toldain before. Thanks for the link.
Seems like we're saying something similar, but I'm not specifically (though I am implicitly talking about it--games should almost never involve extrinsic motivation because they are primarily how people spend their free time voluntarily) talking about intrinsic motivators--I'm just using the triad that Pink outlines as a good way of articulating the kind of design I'm advocating.
Mainstream MMOs don't do any of these three things particularly well at the moment. I'm not sure even EvE does.
The video was great. I'm going to have some great talks with a few friends about various politically-related things now. =D
I would just like to point out that in order to have a game, you need some sort of structure, and extrinsic rewards are one of the most effective ways around to create a structured world. If you don't have any structure at all, few things have any meaning in the game.
Not that I don't think there are other ways to create purpose, just that it's harder if you rule out that method.
Post a Comment