Michael Chui:
Here, I kinda stole something from you, so feel free to steal it back or whatever. Public domain and fun-ness.

Oh yes, I will:

(ref link)
“All things can be automated except creative output.”

This could work as a good principle (here we are discussing again the idea to use NPCs to automate some parts of the game).

I believe it’s wrong to codify everything in all the smallest details because again I feel that you lose more than what you understand. But I could say here that the “boring” activities are felt so exactly because the “creative output” is pretty much null.

The repetition, the grind. These signify a lack of interest of the player. The game is boring because it isn’t offering or suggesting me anything that I value. So the need to have to go through a part of the game just because of an external reason that motivates it. I’m going to harvest resources for hours because I need to and I’m interest in the outcome. But the activity itself doesn’t require any “creative output”, it’s just a timesink that I have to suffer.

It’s like reverting that quote: an activity without a “creative output” is probably going to feel rather boring, so it makes sense to automate it.

From this point of view my idea of the PvP sandbox is a way to offer the players an accessible “toolset” that they can use as “designers” themselves. Not “game designers”, but players immersed in a consistent virtual world where they have a role and purpose. The conquest system and the emergent strategic level are “means” to allow the players to add their creativity to the game. Their desires, their *presence* in the game world. The game becomes less codified and enforced, and more subject to the interpretation. The players aren’t anymore trapped in a labyrinth with just one exit, but they are free to creatively move within the game world, live within it, create their own stories. A degree of freedom.

From an interview with David Braben:

Story-telling in games in most cases is little different to the stories of those Harold Lloyd films of the 1920s.

The player is stuck on pre-defined railway lines, forced to follow their character’s pre-determined adventures, much as in a book or a film.

In story-telling terms at least, games have not yet broken free of their non-interactive roots.

The Holy Grail we are looking for in fifth generation gaming is the ability to have freedom, and to have truly open ended stories.

Our golden age has not yet started but the door is open, and somewhere are the Welles and Hitchcocks of the future. They may even be reading this piece right now.

I’m sure the great majority of us could agree with these claims, it would be more than enough to set a goal and chase it. But what if we are Raph Koster and we aren’t satisfied with a superficial claim that isn’t backed up with facts?

Here comes the theory, that level that I always find pretty much useless because it leads to the exact same conclusions I arrived before. So I use Raph to answer to himself (or that version of himself I evoked here):

(ref link)
– We talk so much about emergent gameplay, non-linear storytelling, or about player-centered content. They’re all ways of increasing the possibility space, making self-refreshing puzzles.

– We also often discuss the desire for games to be art – for them to be puzzles with more than one right answer, puzzles that lend themselves to interpretation.

– That may be the best definition of when something ceases to be craft and when it turns into art – the point at which it becomes subject to interpretation.

– Games will never be mature as long as the designers create them with complete answers to their own puzzles in mind.

That’s pretty much it. “Fun” in games implies a degree of freedom.

The possibility to experience. Here the immersion becomes a mean to creatively manipulate an object, observe it without filters. Interact with it directly. This is why open-ended games are much more fun and satisfying. They allow you to have different points of view and become the subject of the experience instead of just an object.

From my point of view this is what ties all the elements together:
– the sandbox as a way to put the players at the center and give them a degree of freedom
– the immersion in the game world and “myth” as the true “interface” with the experience (also the obligatory tie between “mechanics” and “metaphors”)
– the need to make all these parts easily accessible to everyone, including without excluding – remove the prejudices

I see the first two levels as closely tied together. Freedom and immersivity are two faces of the same medal. They are the hook to bring the player on another level and make him the protagonist of the story, instead of a passive executor.