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Apr 12, 2005

Comments

1.

I wonder if there is a difference between game design and other fields. Prof Bartle mentions film but what immediately came to my mind was the famous physicist Richard Feynman's comment about Descartes's mathematical analysis of rainbows perhaps being inspired simply by their beauty. I’ve heard the story told in a similar way that non-scientist imagines that all a scientist can see is the maths of things whereas (on the whole) they can see both the visual and structural beauty.

My gut feel is that we can’t generalise. Some MMO designers will not be able to play theirs other others as a player, some will, depends on the person and the MMO I would imagine. Though I envy those that can do both as they get to see and see inside the rainbow.

Does this lead to better worlds? I’d hope so, the experience of other MMOs should improve design, but having said that so could a nice walk in the park – I guess diversity of input is as valuable as depth in the field.

2.

Designers can obviously never experience their own design in a representative manner. When it comes to other designs, then I don't think this is has anything to do with designers being designers or skills and knowledge. It has to do with amount of practice and modes of thinking.

E.g. It can be painful for an experienced driver to sit in the passanger seat. Or: very experienced DJs may have trouble enjoying a less than perfect mix done by others. They are so used to tracking the beat so tiny glitches that nobody else notice stand out as errors.

3.

If you don't have fun playing the game you're building perhaps you should reconsider the design.

MMO differs from single player development in that your residents will likely (certainly?) end up spending more time in your world than the developers and designers will. With, say, Road Rash, my team and I definitely spent more time driving the courses than just about any customer would have and it is certainly true that this level of expertise can lead to design choices that aren't the correct ones for customers. For example, most designers will a tune a game to be much harder than players will want it to be because the developers, designers, artists and testers are the world experts on the game they are creating.

But MMOs are different. In MMOs, your residents end up becoming the experts. Much like Microsoft leverages end user expertise to teach their Office teams how to really use Word and Excel, MMO residents will end up being far more knowledgeable about the world than the developers, since few developers can spend the 20 or 40 hours a week in-world that residents can.

Of course, mere familiarity isn't what Richard's post was getting at. His question was more focused on whether expertise impedes or interferes with fun. If we buy into any of the explanations of why fun is linked to pattern matching (and, again, read Hawkins if you really want an interesting explanation for why this is true) then I don't see why experts would have any less fun, unless you buy into the nonsense about old people not being able to learn.

Experts have a far greater breadth and depth of patterns to match already, which means that the new patterns they generate are going to be very different from a tyro's. The expert's patterns are based on an existing hierarchy, not just immediate observation. But they're still creating patterns and, for me at least, still having a hell of a lot of fun.

4.

Cory Ondrejka>The expert's patterns are based on an existing hierarchy, not just immediate observation. But they're still creating patterns and, for me at least, still having a hell of a lot of fun.

Oh, it is fun to play virtual worlds even for me, but it's not the same kind of fun that it is for regular players. I've seen and experienced that kind of fun every which way for 20 years, and its enchantment has worn off. My fun comes from creating, and experiencing the creations of other people (assuming that said creations are well designed; much player-created content is unsophisticated and can be painful to understand).

I'm not sold on your opening sentence ("If you don't have fun playing the game you're building perhaps you should reconsider the design."). I think it's enough to enjoy building the game; for me to enjoy playing it, it would have to reveal to me things I hadn't been expecting, but I am expecting them - and if I'm not, then I should be!

Richard

5.

As we've discussed here before, Richard, you're pro-auteur in the case of virtual world design because you see them as enabling certain types of player progression, and my hunch is that, as a result, you probably think that player-centered spaces like Second Life, where expert users create the new content, kind of miss the boat (or at least have a tough time managing to fit into your notion of the ideal form). Which is fine, but I think it means that you & Corey are talking past each other.

My two cents: I think artists always have less fun with art, because they're always in an attitude of criticism, not enjoyment. A passive consumer sees the film, or the game, and says, in essence, "thumbs up" or "thumbs down." An artist sees the film or the game and says, "pretty good, but it needs work here, here, and here -- and while I think this is an interesting experiement here, you might want to reconsider it -- if *I* were doing this, I would have..." On the flip side, a VW designer, like any artist, is going to appreciate all the clever hacks, techniques, & references that the ordinary person doesn't see. The artist cares much more.

I'm interested in your analogy, Richard, between virtual worlds and film. One major difference between the VWs and film, I think, is that you see the level of temporal reader vs. author engagement, if not inverted, at least challenged. Meaning that while the standard viewing time for a painting in an art museum will probably be less than thirty seconds and most people don't watch movies more than once, an artist will spend a long time with a painting, and a director studying a film may watch it many times in order to catch all the details. In the case of film, the shallow consumer experience is quick, the deeper artistic appreciation takes time. With VWs, I wonder how many designers can claim they've *played* deeply in a variety of virtual worlds? I'm sure some can, but I wonder, given the workplace dynamics of the industry, how they find the time?

(I think Raph does, btw. And while we're on the topic of Raph, I don't want to go down the Raph-inspired "fun is/is not pattern matching" path again, though Corey has me sorely tempted here!)

6.

ren reynolds >>My gut feel is that we can’t generalise. Some MMO designers will not be able to play theirs other others as a player, some will, depends on the person and the MMO I would imagine.

I tend to fall closer to this camp on the subject. I would equate VW design to other creative disciplines, like music.

I know some musicians who spend every waking moment listening to all the music they can, exposing themselves to new forms, dissecting what makes the music great, and then trying to create new or interesting music based on what they've learned or experienced. Some of those people are great musicians when they perform. Some of them aren't, despite the focus.

I also know some musicians who spend almost no time "diversifying their musical palette" or trying to find out "what makes things tick" with certain musical sounds. Those folks approach making music with passion and child-like glee. Some of those people are great musicians when they perform. Some of them aren't.

Some artists are harsh critics of art. Some still approach their work with almost naieve enthusiasm. I'm not yet convinced that you can forge a rule about which approach is right, or even which is better for the medium.

I think every person is unique in their ability to separate, to a degree. Some designers can never separate themselves from their work of dissecting and designing. I think some can. I'm not sure which side is better--the one that can contrast and debate the details or the one who can find that player's glee (even to a small degree) of enjoying parts of a VW. If I were building a core design team, I think I'd want one of each personality type working with me, simply for the depth of perspective you'd get from the mix.

7.

I'm of two minds on this issue.

One the one hand, as a former stage technician and set designer, I've yet to be so completely sucked into a play that I haven't worked on that I don't spend at least part of, if not a good portion of the time analyzing the lighting, stage setup, prop construction etc. And, to me, my background does detract from the experience of enjoying the play.

I imagine its this same reason why, not too long ago, when discussing the movie "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" the majority of the engineers in my office had a lot more criticism for the film than I did because they couldn't divorce themselves from the rendering. And, as with my theater experience, if you can't suspend your disbelief, the majority of "Sky Captain" isn't that fantastic.

However, I also had the experience of helping design and write Cyberpunk the RPG more than 15 years ago. And, I must admit, I love going to conventions, sitting down with complete strangers and playing a session with them. Why? Because I love to see how they've interpreted the world I helped create as well as just how they play with the world.

I guess my ultimate point of this post is: If you can divorce yourself from the "designer" part of the virtual world, I suspect you'll still enjoy what you've created. If you can't, try experiencing the world through someone elses eyes. Sometimes, it takes the wonder of someone else seeing what you've created to help you rediscover the magic of it.

Colin

8.

I recently saw a joint interview with both JK Rowling (Harry Potter) and the screenwriter for one of the Harry Potter films. Their interview relationship was cordial, but was also clear that there were tensions underlying the shared banter - each was working within different sets of creative constraints. Both seemed to fully appreciate where the other "was coming from", but that still didn't make it easier...

I somehow feel there is an analogy here with MMO space in particular: the devs and players share creative responsibilities. And when one is able to bridge the two camps, I feel new tensions must lurk beneath the surface.

9.

Similarly, I feel that as a journo I don't enjoy games in the same way as someone who might pick up a game on a lark.

Everything being equal, I probably would never have played Chaos Theory or Mechassault 2. Given that my interest isn't as high as it might be otherwise to exceed the buy-me-now threshold, my experience is already going to be different from someone who spent the previous six months obsessively replaying Pandora Tomorrow in order to prepare for the next Sam Fisher game.

Above and beyond that, when I play a game I'm paying a lot more attention to crap that I (often) wish I could ignore. How do the controls feel? How do the graphics look? What's the actual gameplay here? Is the story well written? Do the voice actors sound like A Movie, B Movie, or Porn Starlets?

As it is, I usually form an opinion that's the basis of a full on review within 5 hours of playing a game. Over that span of time I usually gather enough data to come to my own conclusions about the strengths and merits of the game. Playing out to the end of the game then becomes more of a chore than a pleasure. You'll never see a review of Blinx 2 (yeah, the time traveling cat game) simply because I couldn't make myself play through to anywhere near the end. I just couldn't justify writing a review on a game I couldn't play.

That's one of the reasons I still derive so much pleasure from table-top gaming. Endless variation leads to new patterns to digest. Yum.

10.

When City of Heroes came out, every designer at Wolfpack was playing it. When WoW came out, every designer was playing it again. Hell, when Puzzle Pirates came out, the entire design team was playing it. Often we'd play together. We all stopped playing sooner than most of the rest of the population on the server - I think to some degree this has more to do with being busy at work than the nature of our work, but who knows.

This isn't terribly unusual. It is almost impossible to build an MMO team if the team doesn't have a passion for MMOs, at least on some level. People who are used to the nice, predictable world of, say, console programming are freaked out at the level of complexity that MMOs require. So for the most part, we're all MMO fans here. And we have a desire to try them all out.

That's not to say we don't look at them differently. We're definitely critiquing the nuances of these games. Sometimes, we're actually delighted by the brilliant solution a competitor has come up with to a problem that has vexed us for a while. Other times, we sit and wonder what they were thinking. Does it mean we're not having fun? No. It just changes the texture of that fun, the way that knowing a little something about Jazz can affect how you listen to it.

11.

Damion> No. It just changes the texture of that fun, the way that knowing a little something about Jazz can affect how you listen to it.

I agree. On one hand we can appreciate different levels of complexity and nuance.

But, on the other hand we also can develop strong opinions at the expense of wider perspective, which I view as a symptom of designeritis. We get stuck in our zone unable to move beyond the perimeter.

One thing that I have learned from the film industry and the current crop of blockbuster animations is that you can create a work that touches people at different level and perspective. There’s something for everyone in the family!

The level of artistry and craftsmanship need to produce the seemingly simple, yet complex, film is inspiring.

12.

I don't think I've ever played any game without keeping one eye on the design, but I still play-for-fun the types of games that I want to design.

I could see where a person might enjoy making a different type of game than they most enjoy playing. I guess. I'm not one of those people.

Mostly I see this sort of argument coming from people who shouldn't be making design decisions to justify why they should be making the design decisions, instead of letting the game designers design games.

So I don't much like that.

13.

While some people may be more susceptible to "designeritis" than others, I suspect this effect is inherent in designing.

Observation #1: I remember watching the DVD of _Dark City_. "Nice," I thought. "Interesting movie." Then I watched it again, but this time I listened to the audio commentary track provided by Roger Ebert, and it made a world of difference.

Ebert, with his knowledge of film history and technique, his understanding of tools and processes, and his ability to communicate how those things matter to telling a story, was able to greatly increase my appreciation for the craft that went into making _Dark City_ -- it was a little like having a Spielberg sitting next to me in the theater.

The additional insight into the nuts and bolts of making that movie greatly improved my understanding and appreciation of it... but I was no longer "in" the story.

Observatiopn #2: There was a time a few years back when I was deeply immersed in the craft of writing novels. I read everything I could that made sense, and I practiced writing myself.

Before long I noticed that I was having trouble reading novels -- I kept being knocked out of the story by sudden, uncontrollable observations of craft. Sometimes it was negative; I'd find myself thinking, "How could this have gotten past the editor?" But sometimes it was positive; I'd perceive some clever stylistic or technical point that would make the story better... if only I'd been able to enjoy it as a story!

Which leads me to wonder whether maybe we're talking about two different kinds of aesthetic experiences of art. On the one hand, there's Enjoyment -- you don't catch everything, and you don't know how it's done, but it's a fun ride. And on the other hand, there's Appreciation -- you're able to perceive the nuances and value the craftsmanship, but doing so prevents you from suspending belief long enough to be fully in the story.

Both Enjoyment and Appreciation are valid ways to experience art, but to some degree they're mutually exclusive. In the same way that wisdom requires a loss of innocence, a refined appreciation of art appears to require a loss of simple enjoyment of art.

So the question is, as always: Is the tradeoff worth it?

--Flatfingers

14.

It's high time now for a humanities PhD to ride to the rescue and tell us if there's an anologous concept/literature in relation to other forms of aesthetic appreciation and creation.

15.

Humanities PhD I can't do you, but I've taken a lot of creative writing classes, and those certainly inform my reading - it's not that I enjoy it more than I would otherwise, but differently, more focused I think. One of the most important consequences of having learned something about how to write is that I know more about why I enjoy what I'm reading.

The classic literary example, though, I'd say, is Blake's concept of Innocence and Experience. Different ways of looking, both to be treasured, but there's an irrevocable step that has to be taken when you move from experiencing the world/dimension/modality/whatever to messing around with it and taking an active part in its creation/modification/maintenance.

(I'm oversimplifying, of course, but then that's traditional.)

Spielberg may know more about films than I do, but films are not about film, McLuhan aside. Although there might be a good case for saying stories are about narrative. Cf. Richard's perennial theme of the Hero's Journey - as I understand the theory, your experience in the virtual world is about you, more than anything else.

16.

It's possible that designeritis is just a function of the fact that most designers have likely been playing MMOs longer than most players. I know that I couldn't stand WoW primarily because playing it just had me thinking, "What, this, again? I did this 10 years ago." So perhaps it's not designeritis at all, but more that designers tend to skew towards the "been there already" side of things.

--matt

17.

greglas>my hunch is that, as a result, you probably think that player-centered spaces like Second Life, where expert users create the new content, kind of miss the boat

Not at all. I see the expert users as being designers themselves, albeit ones with a lot of interference from other design work going on in adjacent spaces. Second Life is a host world: you can use it either to build your own world or as an extension of the real world. People who do the former can be anywhere along the trail to designing a world; people who do the latter can be anywhere along the trail to designing themselves.

>On the flip side, a VW designer, like any artist, is going to appreciate all the clever hacks, techniques, & references that the ordinary person doesn't see. The artist cares much more.

This is what I like about virtual worlds, and it's one of the more selfish reasons I have for wanting to see more of them. In the same way that a seasoned legislator can look at the way a piece of law is framed and think it's beautiful, so designers (well, this one, anyway!) get enjoyment from virtual worlds.

>With VWs, I wonder how many designers can claim they've *played* deeply in a variety of virtual worlds? I'm sure some can, but I wonder, given the workplace dynamics of the industry, how they find the time?

I played deeply in the olde days, but then they stopped being fun. Now, I don't play deeply, but then I don't have to: most of what I'm going to see I can see in the first couple of hours, and then it's following up interesting things I've read other people say about it. I don't have a WoW account, for example, and it'll probably be months before I get around to getting one, and then when I do have one I'll play for a few days until I have to grind, and then I'll stop playing. During those few days, I probably won't communicate with more than a handful of other players, and if you followed me around you probably wouldn't think I was doing much at all. I would be doing something, though: I'd be observing, thinking, recognising, appreciating and (occasionally) probing. I just wouldn't be playing.

Richard

18.

Colin Fisk>I love to see how they've interpreted the world I helped create as well as just how they play with the world.

I very much like this too, although not if they know who I am. If they know who I am, they don't play naturally; come to that, I don't, either.

I think for this to work, there has to be some deliberate open-endedness built into the framework, so that as a designer you can see how your plans panned out. Cory doesn't design the objects in SL, but he designed the object-designing features, so I can see how there would be some honest pleasure in his seeing players using what he created to create their own things that he didn't expect but nevertheless anticipated.

There isn't the same kind of "author's pride" reaction when seeing players joining the dots in a puzzle game (or at least I don't get any kind of thrill when I see them do it for the puzzle games I've designed).

Richard

19.

Sam Kelly>as I understand the theory, your experience in the virtual world is about you, more than anything else.

That's the theory, yes. I'm fairly confident that it's sound at the "enjoyment" level (as Flatfingers calls it); I'm hopeful that it's also true at the "appreciation" level. I say "hopeful" because I don't have so much observational experience to draw on in that realm, so may well be very wide of the mark. Anyway, the gist of it is that players use their avatars to come to understand their own identity, whereas designers use their virtual worlds to do the same thing.

Thus, as a designer, when I experience a virtual world I do so as a designer, because that's what I am. Experiencing it is about me, but me as someone who seeks self-actualisation through the process of creating these worlds, not me as someone who seeks it through the process of creating a level 65 beastlord.

Richard

20.

Richard> I think it's enough to enjoy building the game; for me to enjoy playing it, it would have to reveal to me things I hadn't been expecting, but I am expecting them - and if I'm not, then I should be!

I, in turn, am not sold on your sentence :-)! Admittedly, I'm spoiled because all of my games have had enough complexity for emergence to be a significant aspect of the gameplay. So, while I certainly anticipated emergence, I couldn't anticipate exactly what that would be.

I agree with Nate's comment regarding joint creation as well, of course.

21.

The great thing about working on virtual worlds is that they are forever surprising me, both those I've helped designed and those I just play. Of course this is true of all creative endeavor. The magic of creation is that it is not all intellect-driven. There are portions of the brain we can't visit at will adding to the final product without us even noticing. Where did that idea come from, we wonder?

I took a course in graduate school taught by my mentor, a film director named Alexander MacKendrick. Sandy was a linchpin of Ealing Studios, providers of some of the best of British comedy in the 1950s. They had their filmmaking down to a science as well as an art. Sandy screened a handful of wildly different films for us over the course of a semester. Among them: On the Waterfront, North by Northwest and Sandy's own The Ladykillers (the Ealing original). We watched each film over and over again. The end titles would roll and the opening titles would start up. We saw each an average of 10-12 times over a period of a few days.

The point was to begin to see beyond the entertainment; to reveal the seams; to see how each film was crafted moment by moment. We watched a probably-harried film editor trying to cut Marlon Brando's performance together in On the Waterfront when each take was so different. Watch what he does with Eva Marie Saint's gloves as they walk through the park! Step through the biplane crashing into the tanker truck in North by Northwest on your DVD player to see how the action is created in the editing.

It was an amazing experience, but it was also saddening. We thought we were participating in our own ritual suicide as insouciant moviegoers. How glad and surprised we were when we realized we could still enjoy these films as if we were still just sitting with a rapt audience clustered around us in the dark.

For even though we learned the moves, the movies were so artfully crafted they could still sneak up on us and entertain us all over again. They continue to do so years later. Somehow we split into two: creator and audience. The creator learned while the audience half stayed somehow protected.

Coleridge called this of course the "willing suspension of disbelief." All too often that all-important word "willing" gets dropped. It may be more difficult to willingly suspend our disbelief when we design similar product, or even in a product we've helped create. But I would argue that if the craft is there we can still enjoy the experience without slapping on our critical caps. We will allow ourselves to be awed and startled and frightened and amused and entertained. I think this ability explains why good stories continue to move us, even if we have the ability to dissect them down to their marrow. Thank God we've got it.

I agree that anyone can become burnt out if they experience something too much. Sometimes it can be a binge over days or weeks. Sometimes it can be a slow erosion of years of our interest and passion. When it occurs, as it did for me in Hollywood, it's time to take a deep breath and move on; find something new to recapture that joy of creation and that thrill of discovery even in something we have crafted ourselves.

22.

Knowledge changes how you appreciate things. Knowledge doesn't necessarily decrease your enjoyment. In some cases, it can even increase your enjoyment. When I heard the learned astronomer, the stars became even more fantastic. YMMV.

I think this has alot to do with the quality of the game. Two examples:

1) Low Quality. A game requires you to sneak past a guard. The guard says "Halt" or something, but he can't reach me. The average player thinks, "Hey, cool. I'm sneaking past the guard." The designer thinks, "Worst. A*. Ever."

2) High Quality. A game requires you to sneak past a guard. The guard's movements and "senses" are well modelled. The average player thinks, "Hey, cool. I'm sneaking past the guard." The designer thinks, "Best. AI. Ever."

I appreciate some games more and some games less.

I can pretend to be a player, but it doesn't always work. I can suspend designeritis, but I'm probably "reminded" that I'm playing a game more often than the average player. I enjoy playing other people's games (more than making games, certainly), but I can't enjoy any games I worked on.

23.

Richard-

I agree that, when interacting with people who know you're "The Designer" that things can get warped to a certain degree. However, in my experience there are always enough people who can divorce themselves from their inner fanboy and just play. Those are the really fun moments.

Now, granted, a lot of computer puzzle based games are more restrictive than pen and paper RPG's (obviously this is dependant on how good the GM is etc) because, ultimately in code, there is the restriction of what is coded. When you exceed those boundries, most code fails. Whether it's with a crash of the application or programmed with everyone's favorite "I don't know how to do that," computer code isn't as flexible as the human mind.

Some of my best gaming moments in demoing Cyberpunk came when I'd take everyone to a bus stop in the middle of the city and let them loose.

But, back to your original supposition, do I think virtual worlds are, ultimately, a proposition where the reward through enjoyment of the game is on a negative return curve for designers? For me, my answer would be no.

Part of this may very well be my mind set. I'm one for finding the boundries and pushing them (yes, my night elf was one of those bodies at the bottom of the temple tree in WoW after I successfully found a way to jump the fence on the top of the tree.) So, if the basics of the game have gotten stale for me, I change the game.

Another example would be Knights of the Old Republic. I loved the game, played it through and, honestly didn't think I'd play through a second time. Then one of my coworkers mentioned the latest "challenge" which was to get through the opening "pre-Jedi" parts of the game without leveling up (the "end game" being that, when you do become a Jedi, you'll be much more powerful since you can use all the leveling up you didn't do on Jedi powers instead of the "normal" skillsets.) Now I'm playing the game again, both with the eye of maximizing my experience, but to see if I can get through it all with just that first level up that's mandatory.

Maybe the "designeritis" you speak of (BTW, that literally translates to "inflamation of the designer" which really isn't what you mean,) is one of thinking too much "in the box" because you've become so focused on the end game you've created. Perhaps, as Damion mentioned, by playing other games, or just looking at your games from a different direction, you can find the cure.

24.

Or: very experienced DJs may have trouble enjoying a less than perfect mix done by others. They are so used to tracking the beat so tiny glitches that nobody else notice stand out as errors.

Ola Fosheim Grøstad nailed it...

=darwin

25.

> Richard wrote:

"And what proportion of regular moviegoers who sat next to Stephen Spielberg would feel that they knew more about what constitutes a good movie than he does?"

Slightly derailing: Is there anyone who could claim to know even half as much about 'what constitutes a good MMOG' as S.Spielberg knows about 'what constitutes a good movie' ?

Richard's implicit jab at the right to critique hobbyists and lurkers of the MMOG business scene grant themselves would hold, were there Steven Spielbergs to look up to, but without the wealth of history (as in amount and variety of products released over the years) to raise Coppolas, I suspect there are none yet, and we're more at the Melies age, where everyone is an outsider/newcomer.

The striking unwillingness of MMOG makers to learn from history makes things even worse, in this regard.

To put it shortly: you can't be both a first-generation settler and a native.

[Disclaimer: I posit online worlds are a platform and not a genre, i.e. are only distant evolutionary relatives of video games, and an entirely different species of electronic entertainment from those, just as they are linked by history yet not similar to interactive writing, social software, telepresence and PnP RPG.]

Back to the movie analogy: what about the trend of 'making of', behind-the-scene material that are lavishly dispensed with every other DVD release ?

It seems the audience enjoys those goodies, and while one can wonder to which extent the additional knowledge about the process gained by watching behind the curtain affects the viewers' experience of the feature film, it's striking how the supposedly passive movies audience seems able to enjoy both the experience and the deconstruction thereof.

I propose this is a classic case of understimating the end users' sophistication, because they are not educated in the same ways artists and insiders are.

Would you call moviegoers metagamers ?
Do you think it spoils the fun ?
Should one write (movies or MMOGs) accordingly ?

/devils' advocate mode.

ttfn,
-- Yaka.

26.

Yaka said, To put it shortly: you can't be both a first-generation settler and a native.

Interesting idea. So how would you define a "native" to MMOGs? There have been MUDs for over 20 years and modern MMOGs for nearly 10. How long do we need to wait before we'll start seeing MMOG natives, theoretically?

27.

> Samantha LeCraft wrote:


Interesting idea. So how would you define a "native" to MMOGs? There have been MUDs for over 20 years and modern MMOGs for nearly 10. How long do we need to wait before we'll start seeing MMOG natives, theoretically?

/me enters wild guesses area.

Sticking to the movies business analogy, and seeing how the trade evolved over the last few years from boutique/one-of-a-kind projects into something closer to a standard entertainment industry, I'll offer that kids now growing on the current crop of MMOG, and especially those whose parents are themselves MMOG'ers could be considered "natives".

Which is not to imply they are the single best hope of the platform to grow and move to interesting places, obviously, as the fresh eye of the stranger oftentimes brings valuable insights.

/me hangs mad oracle's hat at the lounge entrance.

Merely, I tried to point at the obvious: no MMO designer at this point can claim to have grown on MMOGs.

'Old-school' MU*s have been to 'modern' ORPG what stage theater was to early movies: a close relative, and it showed.
Yet the millennial tradition of western stage theater was not the sole driving force that led moviemaking where it was at the time lil' Steven started watching movies.


Everyone so far came to this platform from another background.


***


Most online worlds designers come from computer games, or boardgames, or writing, all very valuable experiences and skills that can be reused in a different medium such as world design and operation, and it would be just as myopic or disingenuous to ignore what can be learnt from other media as it would be to not acknowledge the fact online worlds are not just bigger video games, or MU*s with graphics.

A few years ago, during the convergence frenzy, I remember how some guy from a big AV Media company lectured me on how internet was "just TV with a keyboard attached".

Well, apparently the attached thingy makes a difference.

fwiw,
-- Yaka.

28.

"It's high time now for a humanities PhD to ride to the rescue and tell us if there's an anologous concept/literature in relation to other forms of aesthetic appreciation and creation."

Well, in art forms with a longer history there is a much better-established distinction between the critical approach and the creative approach to a work. Neither of these is going to be exactly the same thing as the layman's pleasure in the work, but you can see many virtuoso artists/authors/etc as essentially savants or craftsmen rather than critics. They approach a work with a far different set of concerns for craft and technique from those of a critic looking for an aesthetic judgment or a complete interpretation. Looking at the established art forms, the role of the informed but nonpartisan, involved but unabsorbed, intellectual looking at a work has been completely conceptually separate from that of the hands-on creator for at least the last couple of centuries.

As a sidenote, all this discussion of film would be greatly enhanced if we substituted the name of an actual good director in place of all those "Steven Spielberg" references. Seriously, the guy is a studio hack -- not an artist, but a talented salesman. At least say Truffaut or something.

29.

Thanks, anon -- I'm printing out this essay by Mencken. Richard, I think the point is, you may have a problem here, but it might not really stem from a true understanding of what you're doing or what an MMORPG is. ;-)

And I guess anon is right that Steven Spielberg is responsible for "Goonies", and Truffaut is guilty of nothing remotely analogous.

Off-T: In other news, in case you missed it on Boing Boing, the 1337 Star Wars trailer r0x0rz.

Also off-T: I'm excited about the new Star Wars film,btw -- is it possible that this one, unlike, say, Episodes 6, 1, and 2, will not leave me strangely disappointed and wondering why I was ever excited? In any event, this will be the last time George Lucas preys on my childhood fantasies this way.

Maybe On-T, but Off-thread: Is SWG building hype for the new movie? Do players care?

30.

Spielberg vs. Truffaut = movies that the public enjoy (and some that even the critics appreciate) vs. movies that only critics can appreciate.

Must art be accessible only to refined palates to have value?

***

SW Eps. 6, 1 & 2: Agreed wholeheartedly. It all started going downhill the instant the decision was made to include Ewoks. That said, Ep. 2 toned down the Cutesy Factor considerably; it is within the realm of possibility that Ep. 3 could approach the depth of Ep. 5.

Not that I'm holding my breath on that one.

***

SWG hyping Ep. 3: Yes, SWG is hyping the movie with in-game content -- an expansion entitled "Rage of the Wookiees" is scheduled to be released a couple of weeks before the premiere, and is slated to include movie references such as a version of Anakin's Jedi Starfighter as a playable ship.

Do SWG players care about this? Obviously any response is subjective, but here's one data point: If there's any enthusiasm for the movie being generated by the new game features, I haven't seen it expressed anywhere yet. So far what people are talking about on the official forum is strictly from the gameplay POV: "what new content will I get?"

It's possible that this might change once the expansion is released, and that the new game content might include features that gin up excitement for seeing the movie.

Maybe.

--Flatfingers

31.

Thanks for all that.

There's an obvious lud/nar angle on the SWG issue -- if the SWG players seem not to care about the film, it makes me wonder about Janet Murray's years-ago prediction that the SWG MMORPG would be such a great thing because people *love* Star Wars so much that they want to *be in the movie*. The point being that SWG is not something they're watching anymore, it's something they're doing.

32.

Yaka St. Aise wrote:

The striking unwillingness of MMOG makers to learn from history makes things even worse, in this regard.

??? The foundation of the two most successful Western graphical MUDs, Everquest and WoW, are stark counter examples to whatever examples you'd put forward. They learned from the past so well that they basically just copied it, made some minor changes in details, and threw graphics on top!

--matt

33.

"the SWG MMORPG would be such a great thing because people *love* Star Wars so much that they want to *be in the movie*"

It looks like that depends on what "be in the movie" means to people.

Consider the question: "What is the one scene in all the Star Wars movies that you liked the most?"

I'd bet that you'd get two consistent types of answers depending on whether you were asking someone who plays SWG regularly or someone who doesn't play computer games. For the former group, I'd expect the most popular response would be a scene involving the use of a lightsaber -- the "Duel of the Fates" scene in Ep.1, or Yoda vs. Count Dooku in Ep.2. For the latter group, I'd guess the most popular answer would be character-related: Luke gazing at the setting twin suns of Tatooine in Ep.4 and wishing for adventure, or Vader unloading the Awful Truth on Luke in Ep.5.

(Speaking personally, I like both. My favorite scene was Luke fighting Vader at the end of Ep.5. It was neither action for action's sake nor emotional handwaving; it was deep emotion playing out through violence, making both more powerful.)

So to "be in the movie" either means being able to be a Jedi (for the ludo crowd), or being able to establish some kind of relationship with beloved characters (for the narr crowd). With SWG's self-promotion to the former group, if the movie's PR focuses on the relationship side, the gamers won't be interested in going to see it.

I suspect the movie will be successful among SWG fans to the degree that it feeds their action-hunger (i.e., flashy lightsaber battles), and to non-gamers to the degree that it feeds their emotion-hunger (Anakin's relationships with Padme and Obi-Wan).

Lucas pulled accomplished both in Episode 5. I still hope he can do it again in Episode 3.

--Flatfingers

34.

Ack. Sorry, the emotional Luke vs. Vader fight was Ep.6, not Ep.5.

Bad Flatfingers! No SWG for you tonight.

--Flatfingers

35.

I preferred the emotional Luke vs. Vader fight in Ep.5 where clearly Vader was toying and pushing Luke around with the final revelation.

With this already in place, the conclusion of the emotional Luke vs. Vader fight in Ep.6 was expected. And when the Emperor fell down the power conduit (or whatever), very few in my crew expected him to be dead permanently.

Completely off topic now: one thing I like about the more human-guided games was that the GM or Plot (for LARPs) can introduce plotlines or curveballs that engage the relationship aspect of the player: Your long lost brother is in need, the cousin of your 2nd brother's wife is an evil despot, lots of "Luke, I'm your father" or the sacred "holy hand grenade" situations.

The MMO damsel in distress “quest” just doesn’t cut it when it is packaged as a “quest” for everyone. Am I looking with a jaded eye?

36.

Mine is the bit where they take Chubaka down to the cells and mention “1138” which is Ep.4, I think.

Anyways, at the SWG fan fest last year there was some debate between SW fans who were also SWG players and the design team. Basically some players were arguing that this feature or that was inconsistent with something or other in the SW films or mythos generally. The design team ended up saying, on several occasions, that SWG was a game and not a movie thus to allow playability things had to be different.

Which makes me wonder if a really hardcore SW fan can play SWG as it might just be too jarring.

37.

ren reynolds wrote>> Anyways, at the SWG fan fest last year there was some debate between SW fans who were also SWG players and the design team.>>

If by "fan fest" you mean "the entire life of SWG public development" and by "some debate" you mean "wailing and gnashing of teeth", you'd be very right.

One thing that has plagued all of SWG's life is the reconciliation between fan's expectations and designer's efforts. For me, this adds an interesting twist in this talk of "designeritis" because I've heard numerous folks argue that SWG never "felt quite like Star Wars". I wonder how much of that problem was a difference between the players' and designers' expectations and approaches? I also wonder how much of that was colored by restrictions placed on designers by the IP (aka Lucasarts)?

I remember that from early beta one of the great raging debates was over the use of cloning as a means for re-spawning players. This debate coincided with the release of EP.2, which featured far more cloning, by topic, than any SW movie before. But the majority of the fanbase still screamed 'foul' at this use of cloning because it wasn't the norm for every backwater mechanic in the SW universe to be able to be re-constructed upon death.

It is largely for these reasons I approach any MMO based on cherished themes with much trepidation. Prof. Bartle brings to mind a potential designer difficulty of weighing the creative vs. critical approach. Ren emphasizes the difficulty of balancing player expectation on an IP vs. designer's delivery. When you throw the wrench in the system of the IP being in the hands of a 3rd party that assumes the role of approval board for all the content--I can only imagine how obfuscated the role of designer becomes in that circumstance.

For the record, I enjoyed quite a bit of SWG. But I didn't enjoy it because it was SW (even though I'm a SW fan).

38.

Matt:
Aye, the current crop of so-called "2/3-generation" MMOG is more or less text MU* with graphics slapped on, which fits in the analogy I made earlier regarding early movies being more or less filmed stage theater.

Learning from history would probably entail cutting some evolutionary corners in the process of getting the platform move on and find its own form(s) - whatever that may be - instead of falling numb to legacy and entropy by designing copycats of more ancient forms retrofitted with new shiney (see early automotive designs for a striking example of that).

On the other hand, there is strong case to be made that modern stage theater evolution is heavily influenced by the presence of TV and Movies, and I don't doubt MU* continuous evolution will likewise draw from what happens in neighbouring fields such as graphic online RPGs.

Of all people here, as you follow an alternative evolutionary path by working on the more mature (as opposed to 3D online worlds) MU* platform, I suspect you are bound to see the difference between learning from history and falling prey to it.

ttfn,
-- Yaka.

39.

Yaka St.Aise>the analogy I made earlier regarding early movies being more or less filmed stage theater.

I see textual worlds as being more like silent movies, with graphical worlds more like talkies. We've yet to get anything like colour. The equivalent of stage plays would, I guess, be tabletop RPGs. I feel that this correspondence (RPG, text world, graphical world vs.stage play, silent movie, talkie) works better than does mapping text world to stage play, because the interaction between GM and players in an RPG is more like that between actors and audience in a stage play. Also, the similarity between textual world and graphical world really is very strong - stronger than that between textual worlds and RPG.

That said, although early entertainment movies did draw heavily from the stage tradition, early virtual worlds didn't draw as heavily from RPGs; there was some input from them, but more from elsewhere. I suspect, therefore, that there is no perfect analogy here, but that we can be fairly sure that whatever we're going to see in the future, it won't be quite how we expected it.

Richard
Learning from history would probably entail cutting some evolutionary corners in the process of getting the platform move on and find its own form(s) - whatever that may be - instead of falling numb to legacy and entropy by designing copycats of more ancient forms retrofitted with new shiney (see early automotive designs for a striking example of that).

On the other hand, there is strong case to be made that modern stage theater evolution is heavily influenced by the presence of TV and Movies, and I don't doubt MU* continuous evolution will likewise draw from what happens in neighbouring fields such as graphic online RPGs.

Of all people here, as you follow an alternative evolutionary path by working on the more mature (as opposed to 3D online worlds) MU* platform, I suspect you are bound to see the difference between learning from history and falling prey to it.

40.

Richard:

Point taken.

This analogy I drew mostly around the way people basically did behave the same on a new medium (movies/graphic OW) they were used to on the elder one (stage/text MU*) new during the early era of said new platforms.

I suggest TT RPG would be better mapped as the equivalent of the tradition of fireplace tale-telling, or african griots, rather than live theater, because of the proximity between teller and audience, and the lack of fourth (or is it third ?) wall in these forms (as opposed to staged live theater).

There is none of the make believe there is on stage, movies, or MU* and MMOG in PnP or tale-telling, which is big part of what defines these media in my view. The remoteness/illusion is of a different nature as the platforms make for a more heavily mediated context.

This said, it is not the place of analogies to be perfect - as it so easy to forget, shiney as metaphors are to the mind-eye. ;)
Analogies and metaphors are probing tools, often more enlightening in the ways they break than in the way they hold.

Which, incredibly enough is right back on topic: is the grudge held by some designers against the crtics/scholars not about academics looking more interested by online worlds as metaphors (discourse) than craft (fact) ?

ttfn,
-- Yaka.

41.

Oops! Just spotted that my post (2 before this one) contained 3 excess paragraphs from Yaka's post that I was quoting. Sorry about that!

Richard

42.

Yaka St.Aise>is the grudge held by some designers against the crtics/scholars not about academics looking more interested by online worlds as metaphors (discourse) than craft (fact) ?

It could be. There are other reasons, too, though, including:
1) Academics understand their own theories but not what they're applying them to.
2) Critics don't know as much about virtual worlds as those they criticise.
3) Academics look at niche but easily-accessible virtual worlds and apply their observations to virtual worlds in general.
4) Critics only consider superficialities or single issues. They don't consider the whole picture.
5) Academics judge all virtual worlds based on the first one they got into.
6) Critics judge all virtual worlds based on the first one they got into.

Note that these views are not necessarily mine, or indeed anybody's...

Richard

43.

1: is bullseye, imo.
Rest of my comment is corrolary.

2: is obviously true to an extent, yet I suggest academics mostly don't know the same things designers regard as relevant to their trade and strive to get more knowledgable about.

3: Point taken, and mostly agreed.

4: As for point 2, I reckon they consider a different picture instead.

5 and 6: fully agreed, while I suspect this trait is shared by a sad number of designers, too (the whole legacy thing is largely about that).

fwiw,
-- Yaka.

44.

Oops.
Points 2 and 4 were about critics, not academics, objection therefore withdrawn on 2, and comment revised on 4:

4: As critics likely consider a different picture (the end result), they probably shoudn't speculate on the process that led to it.

Please read original comments #2 and #4 as relevant only to academics.

Sorry about the double post.

45.

Now I know everything if "designeritis" spoils the fun for the designer, or not (and else). Ok.
One Question Richard B. made is not "sufficiently" answered for me, and I'd really see an, however opinionated, answer: Does designeritis let designers make better games, or not?
If yes: Will new games become better?
If no: Will games stop to improve, but become odd (like *designers* want games to be, but not players), except for those made by complete newbies with a state of mind equal to the targeted audience?

46.

Ragnar-GD> "Will games stop to improve, but become odd (like *designers* want games to be, but not players), except for those made by complete newbies with a state of mind equal to the targeted audience?"

Interesting. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that most of the really novel ideas that actually get turned into games come from "unknown" developers who aren't trying to give the masses what they say they want, but who just have what they believe is a really cool idea for a game.

Most fans of a particular game don't want something radically new -- they want the game they like, only with more features. Meanwhile, the folks who've been making games long enough to have a hit wind up having to make sequels -- the same game people like, only with more features.

Although there are a few exceptions, my impression is that it's usually an unknown, non-fan game designer who comes up with the innovative games that define a new genre... or am I wrong?

--Flatfingers

47.

I'm responding (late) to Greg's call for a humanities take on all this. This may be incredibly dull... take it as you will.

Literary criticism lost most concern for the artist's emotional experience after Romanticism: you have T.S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent," where he says the poet has in poetry only that "which is only a medium and not a personality." Eliot compares poetry to a science, insists that it be approached somewhat dispassionately, and places on the poet the responsibility for understanding the ins and outs of this science to the best of his (or her, though I doubt Eliot would be gender-neutral here) ability.

So, from this point of view, designeritis is not only inevitable but a requirement for good art. The poet is fundamentally different from an ordinary reader -- has to be, if the poetry's to be any good.

Some time after Eliot, we get into the vicinity of Barthes' "Death of the Author," and the question of the writer/artist/designer's inner experience is decreed irrelevant. From this point of view, text doesn't mean anything when it's created, only when it's interpreted.

Which is, I think, a good place to bring games back in, because the idea that designeritis is even a concern, that a designer might need to experience the fun of play, is predicated on the idea that being a player -- and not only a player, but a player experiencing a "magic" outside of self-consciousness -- is creatively important. It's a perspective that places weight on emotion, and it places importance on play as necessary to make the game "real."

I think it's entirely debatable whether designeritis is desirable or not; if it shapes up like the debate Eliot was responding to, then questions of populism and sophistication will inevitably pop up. Avoiding designeritis, from a populist POV, is a sacrifice that needs to be made for the good of the players; from a sophisticate's point of view, it's a dumbing-down of the art.

Regardless of whether you think Spielberg is a good director or not, his work is for the most part aggressively populist: he wants his symbology and his mechanics to be recognizable and emotionally resonant to Joe Non-critic. His work is, for better or for worse, fundamentally directed against portraying "designeritis." In other words, we can take Spielberg's, or the designer's, own experience out of the equation to some extent, and place the question on the games: as others have asked, does designeritis affect games, and how?

Or, to maybe put it in a more entertaining way: would you rather play "Raiders of the Lost Ark" or "8 1/2"? And, given the current economics of virtual worlds, what are the odds of "8 1/2" getting produced?

48.

Flayfingers>most of the really novel ideas that actually get turned into games come from "unknown" developers who aren't trying to give the masses what they say they want, but who just have what they believe is a really cool idea for a game.

"What the masses want" comes in 3 varieties:
1) What they say they want.
2) What designers believe they actually want.
3) What no-one knows they want until they see it.

The first of these is how things are going in virtual worlds. Players argue for changes in an eloquent or vociferous fashion, and those changes get made. Sometimes, though, what the player says they want is actually just a symptom of some deeper desire that they don't always see but that designers do so, which leads to the second case. Designers can have a better understanding of what players want from a virtual world than the players themselves have, and it can be deeply frustrating for them to have players demanding features that they can see have bad long-term consequences. It's like persuading someone who wants to lose weight not to take up smoking: yes, you probably will lose weight, but .

The third case is where someone designs a game because they like the idea, or because it has a premise or mechanic they like, and it happens that other people like it too. It's revolution rather than evolution.

Unfortunately, although it may be obvious to those enlightened souls who read Terra Nova that there are different perspectives on what players want, the players themselves don't always see it that way. They think it's patronising and arrogant for anyone (let alone a designer) to claim to know their mind better than they do, and when a new idea comes along that catches their interest it always seems obvious to them (now).

Giving the players what they want is therefore often quite difficult. They may not want what they want, or they may want what they don't want, or they may not know what they want at all.

Richard

49.

Giving the players what they want is therefore often quite difficult. They may not want what they want, or they may want what they don't want, or they may not know what they want at all.

(The above statement reminds me of a Donald Rumsfeld quote.)

Maybe part of the problem is that players don't know how to self-select themselves into virtual worlds appropriate for their concious and sub-conscious desires. (Or maybe VW's are too homogeneous that such self selection isn't possible.)

For example: Someone that wants romance isn't going to see an action flick, and vice versa. What would happen if all movies were one genre, or if viewers showed up to an inappropriate genre? People wanting romance would complain there's not enough romance, those wanting action would bemoan the lack of action, and designers that followed user feedback would produce romantic action-filled science-fiction horror comedies.

At the very least, someone attending Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" is going to know ahead of time what to expect. So, if they happen to be sitting next to Spielberg in the theater they won't say, "You should have put in more comedy and a bit of cross-border romance." And they would have known that the BnW in Schindler's List was artistically motivated, and not a bug.

50.

Mike Rozak>And they would have known that the BnW in Schindler's List was artistically motivated, and not a bug.

Yet the B&W in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet, which at the time he told everyone was because he saw it more as an etching than as a portrait, was actually because he fell out with Technicolor. So that WAS a bug!

Richard

51.

Richard> Giving the players what they want is therefore often quite difficult. They may not want what they want, or they may want what they don't want, or they may not know what they want at all.

As someone who in his day job regularly works with customers to define software requirements, I think your observation scales up to generic "users" very nicely. ;-)

This idea of users not articulating their true desires to a designer is interesting. If users fail to communicate what they really want, it's probably from one of two reasons:

* they don't know what they really want
* they know but lack the tools ("big picture" ability, technical language, etc.) to describe it

In other words, gamers seem either to not be interested in analyzing play (they react to game features with "fun for me"/"not fun for me"), or to care so much about some specific subsystem or activity that they don't learn enough about design generally to make effective suggestions. Trying to give these folks "what they want" is likely to be an exercise in frustration -- you might as well create features you enjoy, because you're going to get criticized no matter what.

But there's a third class of user: those who can and do educate themselves broadly. They may not become designers and critics, but they've learned enough to speak the language of designers and critics.

Are there enough of these users to design a product for them? If you did, would it be "art?"

If so, would it then be so abstract and refined that it loses its relevance to the life of the average person? Does art have value if only a select few can appreciate that value?

Concerning virtual worlds as art: Can a designer who aims to make art wind up with something massively popular? Can a designer who aims for mass popularity wind up creating a work of art?

Which is more likely?

--Flatfingers

52.

>>Concerning virtual worlds as art: Can a designer who aims to make art wind up with something massively popular? Can a designer who aims for mass popularity wind up creating a work of art?

If the answer is "yes", gamedesigners would be making pop-art, in the spirit of andy warhol. Just as I think about it, comparing his techniqes to the process of game developement has some striking parallels. And also think of the rockstar-(self :)-image of gamedesigners, creating multiple instances of the same thing, whatever, you name it... :D

53.

>>> As players play, they come to understand more about themselves and the virtual worlds they visit. In time, what they once found to be fun no longer holds the same attraction; it's been supplanted by other, more refined interests. Why shouldn't the same apply to designers?

***

The question seems to be whether an increasingly well considered, more sophisticated, or otherwise more complex conceptual model of an aesthetic experience somehow intervenes, trumps, or otherwise interferes with that aesthetic experience. I think this could be the case with aesthetic experiences that are largely conceptual to begin with. But, most -- even all -- aesthetic experiences are more visceral than conceptual.

Does knowing the physiology of taste change the pleasure of tasting strawberries?

The exception, possibly, is the aesthetic experience and pleasure of novelty, which can only be experienced with reference to pre-existing conceptual sets (including null sets).

Certainly, players can become jaded. I suspect designers would be equally if not more prone.

However, players become jaded with games -- not play.

And it has been my observation that PLAYING games consistently reproduces the experience of novelty, just as tasting strawberries consistently reproduces the experience of strawberriness.

Some designers, perhaps, think that playing GAMES produces this experience of novelty (or that the right combination of euphoric drugs produces this experience of novelty).

But it's the tasting, not the strawberries. Likewise, it's the playing, not the games -– and (hopefully) not the drugs.

54.

At some point in his life, I am willing to bet that Stephen Spielberg watched a movie with somebody that, at the time, knew a *lot* more about making movies than he did. Great movie directors come from young people who like movies, some of them happen to be geniuses. Why should be games be any different?

55.

I'm amazed this thread is still alive!

Concerning virtual worlds as art: Can a designer who aims to make art wind up with something massively popular? Can a designer who aims for mass popularity wind up creating a work of art?

I think cases of the former are common in all media. Bob Dylan springs to mind in music. I also think that the latter happens a lot; Beach Boys to Beatles, music is rife with examples.

The question seems to be whether an increasingly well considered, more sophisticated, or otherwise more complex conceptual model of an aesthetic experience somehow intervenes, trumps, or otherwise interferes with that aesthetic experience.

The answer in my mind is "of course it affects the experience."

Whether it trumps it altogether is a more complex question. DMyers says

Does knowing the physiology of taste change the pleasure of tasting strawberries?

and I think it's the wrong analogy. It's more like the way an oenophile can come to have a different experience from wines than someone who has had little experience with them. Most designers don't go all the way to the physiology of taste--they stop at wide experience of many games. And yet, we still see "designeritis" cropping up.

The core point is that novelty becomes harder to come by for someone with wide experience. Designers typically have both wide experience and less superficial experience. It doesn't seem surprising to me that therefore they find it harder to find novelty, and are often attracted to games that are off the beaten path.

56.

The "off the beaten path" tastes of designers may reflect the same crave for novelty displayed by players (aren't most designers semi-reformed players themselves ?), and maybe the fact it's about as easy to become jaded about games for designers (relative to design) as it is for players (relative to gaming experience).

This "been there, done that" stance may account for a host of overlooked good games/design features, as there is a strong zeitgeist effect (read economy of the fashionable, here) at work on both sides of the fence.

fwiw,
-- Yaka.

57.

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