[MUD-Dev] Re: Laws of Online World Design

["Koster, Raph" <rkoster#origin,ea.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ola Fosheim Grøstad [mailto:olag#ifi,uio.no]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 1998 6:05 AM
> To: mud-dev#kanga,nu
> Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: Laws of Online World Design
> 
> 
> "Koster, Raph" wrote:
> > BTW, I have noticed nobody has quarreled with any of the 
> laws yet. Are
> > they all that acceptable? And is this endeavor useful? (I 
> am finding it
> > so, but wonder about everyone else).
> 
> This is probably shocking news, but... Quite a few of the 
> laws could be
> dismissed by counterexamples, more of them could be dismissed as a
> consequence of "bad" design decisions.  Yet most of them can 
> be read as a
> result of the visions of the contributors.

Not shocking at all. Getting counterexamples posted is a large part of
the point of generating the laws and posting them to the list. Remember,
most of the laws were extracted by reading through the list archives and
extracting flat statements about how online worlds work. Whether or not
they are all true is certainly a matter of much debate. I'd prefer to
see specifics than a blanket dismissal though. :)

> You probably don't like this law, but:
> 
> Ola's law about laws: Any general law about virtual worlds 
> should be read as
> a challenge rather than as a guideline.  You'll learn more 
> from attacking it
> than you will by accepting it.

Are you kidding? I like it enough to put it at the top of the list. :)

> Some other laws:
> 
> The designer will never be able to experience his own design 
> the way a user
> does. How the designer sees his own design will never be 
> representative. The
> designer's view of his own system is likely to be more skewed 
> and distorted
> than that of the average user.  While the user is likely to 
> experience the
> system top-down, the designer can hardly avoid thinking bottom-up.
> 
> While the vision of the designer seems to be an all important 
> motivation in
> the process of designing and implementing a system... Don't 
> expect the users
> to bring life to it.  The vision is dead or altered the 
> moment you open the
> system to a larger population.  The designer's vision is a 
> dream, users
> having fun by doing-what-seems-to-be-a-good-idea-here-and-now 
> is reality.

These seems more like a general design truths than ones specific to
online worlds... they both certainly seem to qualify as laws as far as I
am concerned...

> I am personally more in favour of slogans than laws. Here are 
> some slogans
> (from memory):

Well, many of the laws actually are slogans, and a lot of them I
specifically labeled as postulates because who knows if they're true or
not. (Admittedly, I didn't get very far in labelling).

> * It's the people STUPID!  - R. Farmer

This one seems to be stated the same but differently in there already.
:) I'll add this statement of it once I find the original statement of
it... I presume this is in the Habitat materials.

> * Users want to get away with something out-of-the-ordinary.  
> - Bumgardner

Where's this one from?

> * It isn't a game if you cannot die. - Bartle?

Richard, do you stand by this? Seems rather broad :)

> I view Bartle's "bad ideas" (http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/tcsf98.htm)
in
> much the same way as your laws. Some are related to my own
conclusions, yet
> most of them could probably be solved by design.

I had not seen these before, but glancing down them, most of them seem
to qualify as basic enough lessons that I'd include them in the Laws.
Yes, I can think of ways to design around some of these obstacles, but
awareness that they are obstacles is the important point that I think
Richard was getting at by calling them "bad ideas" in the first place...

-Raph