Agreed, with regard to the point about directors vs. actors. The general public, in wanting to be entertained, rarely is concerned with who created that entertainment; they only want to experience it and move on to the next thing that advertisers feed them.

And that, my friends, is where it all truly lies: Advertising. I''m no marketing guru, but for some reason it seems like a good portion of the marketing powers that be aren''t grasping onto a relatively simple concept. Pay attention, ''cause in my mind, this one statment is what determines whether a product of any kind succeeds or fails: People buy what they see.

A critical extension of that is that people buy what they remember. Thats why most of those of you who have a television can likely quote half a dozen commercials, from Pizza retailers to mattress pitches, and probably you can recite at least twenty company slogans at the mere mention of the company''s name. Quality products have a longer shelf life and a stronger community following, but the best-selling products out there are not the products that were designed well. Rather they''re the mediocre-and-better products that were advertised like mad by companies with lots of marketing muscle and money (like EA for instance, which interestingly has a large number of very popular products).



Brian Lacy
Smoking Monkey Studios

Comments? Questions? Curious?
brian@smoking-monkey.org

"I create. Therefore I am."

Hmm, and as for the "death penalty" -- I think it depends on how serious and focused the game is, but I like the idea of a really tragic death scenario, such as permanent character death (the player then taking the form of the character''s descendent and "inheriting" his/her posessions).

Nevertheless, what I find in MMORPGs is that regardless of how severe or lenient the result of dying is, it becomes part of the culture of the game. For instance, in UO, if you die you become a ghost, you potentially lose all your posessions, and you find yourself unable to interact with the game world other than to manifest yourself to other players who can "Rez"... "rez''ing" is a term and an act that is part of the games culture. In UO, people rarely talk about dying as though it were the end of the world, even IC -- and rightfully so, because in that world, death and resurrection is as real and tangible as lasting death in our own world.

In other words, no matter what happens to characters that die, it will make sense within the world that the developer creates. Player taste is an issue, but not a significant one; if the player likes the game overall and finds him/herself drawn into the game''s culture, then they will naturally absorb the part of that culture that deals with death.


Brian Lacy
Smoking Monkey Studios

Comments? Questions? Curious?
brian@smoking-monkey.org

"I create. Therefore I am."