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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8635302" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Not at all. I'm saying that trying to make a framework which analyzes all the possible wants a player might have is much too ambitious, at least for me. Others are perfectly welcome (heck, encouraged!) to work toward such a model. I am choosing not to, for several reasons:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There seem to be to be a GREAT deal more player motives than game-(design-)purposes. As in, [USER=71699]@clearstream[/USER] seems to have identified at least four or five different player motives that are all plausibly satisfied by Score-and-Achievement alone. My stuff is already quite long despite being only four. To have the potential of 16 or more different player motives...that's just too much for me to grapple with as a casual analytic effort.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">As noted, the relationship between what engages players (both individually and collectively) and what game design elements a game contains is...complicated, to say the least. Generally, game designers on the other hand find value in having a clear purpose toward which their designs tend; there also only a small number of designers for any given game, but an unbounded potential set of players.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Others have mentioned that it is possible to do things line bringing a game into a direction different from its base or intended one through careful advice, "best practices" info, and elective player choice. This indicates some amount of separation between what a game is "made for" and what a game may be "played for," even without actually changing its design at all. This makes an already complicated relationship (between how/why one makes games and how/why one plays games) even more fraught.</li> </ul>I recognize 100% that player motives need to be accounted for in design, that's why you should do things like avoiding dominant strategies (and especially avoid leaving in dominant strategies with the hope that players will choose not to use them for the good/health of the game.) I'm just not really seeing a lot of value, for the amount of effort I would expect it to take, in trying to analyze player motives.But engineering in this sense is generally bespoke, yes? You are making one product to satisfy one specific customer or one specific group. TTRPGs don't seem to be designed that way. They seem to be designed to capture a certain focus or intent, with the hope that there are lots of people out there who will find that focus or intent fun and engaging. In the video gaming space, for example, one does not generally spend a long time figuring out what motivates people to play MMOs and only then begin asking what steps one should take to make one. Instead, one generally feels driven to make an MMO, chooses a design focus for it, and then attempts to use tools and techniques that will (it is hoped) be liked and appreciated by a large audience. The project begins from a design purpose, and then seeks to find out how to make that purpose work. That's what my analysis is focused on.Well...that's what I'm hoping to do? We aren't saying "players are motivated by praise, so let's design a game where players will receive praise." Instead, we tend to see it as...well, there are both competitive and cooperative reasons to play a game that expects performance and skill. If we design a game that offers this, there are almost certain to be players who will find value in it. We should understand what kind of purpose this is, in terms of design, so that it can fulfill that purpose the best it can. Should that design prove effective, it will (hopefully) be popular among players whose motivations align with what our game offers.Surely there are many, many, MANY more reasons why players might wish to play games? Clearstream brought up Tempo/Flow, Collection/Perfection, Merit/Praise, and I think some others besides, and I offered some of my own also in that space. And that is just S&A! Groundedness-and-Simulation might have some of those (Collection/Perfection, for instance), but it would also seem to satisfy Cleverness/Prediction (the motive of being sufficiently well-versed in the process that you can predict its operations well in advance--possibly also shared with S&A), Parsimony/Budgeting (the motive of doing much with few tools, efficiency in personal play), or Information/Learning (the world exists and is full of concrete facts, so the player is motivated to learn what those facts are). And those are just off the top of my head, as someone not actually gunning for that type of analysis. I'm sure Clearstream could come up with even more!Agreed. Player motives can and do propagate back to the designers. Ignoring such things is foolish. But I have no confidence at all in my ability to grapple with such questions of player psychology and the like, given I have like three psych courses under my belt. I choose to leave those questions to others who are more motivated, trained, or funded than I am.By choosing not to analyze player motives, I am not saying it is valueless to do so. I am saying I am not up to the task, and don't personally see the reward for doing so as being worth the effort it would take on my part. Others can do so, and absolutely should if it tickles their fancy, but their critiques of my efforts specifically in the area of player motive are...just not what I'm aiming for. Like telling a physical chemist that her work should be accounting for the biomedical applications or potential risks of these materials. It isn't that there aren't such applications or potential risks; it's that her training may not be adequate to the analysis, and her intent doesn't really intersect with those things. If others wish to ask those questions, awesome, they should! But if they then criticize her work because it didn't ask those questions, it is (or at least it seems to me) perfectly valid for her to say, "I wasn't trying to ask those questions in the first place."</blockquote>

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