Koster's Laws Of Online Gaming Revisited

Thanks to F13.net for its article attempting a re-appraisal of the original 'laws of online gaming' document, as first posted by Raph Koster and others starting on October 9, 1998. The curmudgeonly analysis includes rebuttals of original laws such as "No matter what you do, someone is going to automate the process of playing your world" ("There's a very simple fix for this. Dump the treadmill, dump the numbers, and make gameplay fun"), and there's an equally tetchy rebuttal of the rebuttal at F13, suggesting: "Any amount of development time spent making the game more realistic or lifelike is wasted development time, stolen from useful tasks like making the game fun."

Comments

City of Heroes

[Winterblink]

There's a very simple fix for this. Dump the treadmill, dump the numbers, and make gameplay fun

City of Heroes is an interesting case for MMOs, because it literally is nothing but a treadmill. There's no other style of gameplay in the game other than combat for levels, yet somehow it's ridiculous fun and addictive, moreso than many other MMOs on the market today.

Personally, I think this can be attributed to the fact that they focused on this singular gameplay element and refined it so well that you never really notice that you're only ever doing one thing during your entire time playing. With a good group of strangers or good friends the hours can fly by like nothing, all the while everyone's having a pretty darn good time of things. I think that the level treadmill, when done right, can be a respectable tool for advancement in the game if the situations involved are balanced and challenging.