John Buehler said:
Heh. When I go through design exercises, I don't even consider the
emotional angle. I assume that any emotional involvement that players have
will be with each other's antics, not that of the game itself. As you say,
it's a mess trying to ensure that a given player is presented with just the
right experiences to walk him or her to an emotional destination of the
designer's choosing.
It strikes me that the above indicates a distinction between "design during
development" and "design during production". Working on the post-launch,
production end of an existing MMO that is around 6 years old now, the
stories in the game when it was created have become so, well, old that they
are no longer relevant. The stories and characters have completely become
tools in their emotional connection with players. What is left are the more
fundamental mechanics and game systems that allow for players to generate
their own specific reasons to play - in our case, it's the PvP and emergent
politics.
I think it brings up the topic of what is really happening in the
pre-release development phase of a game and the ongoing post-launch
development. In my opinion, the initial development really creates an
engine that allows post-release staff to observe how players actually bahave
in the game and be able to effectively respond with story development and
quest arcs. To me, the post-launch phase of the game seems to present the
real meaty opportunities to grab the player by their emotional heart
strings; and more and more it seems to be a very distinct, almost
independent aspect of MMO design.