[silvarilon]

Elvarlyn, I agree with your rant, but have been thinking about some of the specific points, and have some counter-examples.

Yup. Ideas are cheap. Good implementation of gold ideas is where the gold is. You need both. One without the other is pointless.

Uh, I still enjoy the company of my wife... - I'm glad I'm in the minority, in that case.

But not everything stops being exciting after 6 years. There are exceptions, and they usually exist because:

- The activity has ongoing levels of challenge, and knowledge necessary
(For example, chess. You can enjoy chess in year 1 playing against school classmates. 10 years later, you can enjoy playing tournament chess. 50 years later you can enjoy playing against grand masters. This is because the game changes as your skill increases. You both gain access to more challenging games, as well as needing more knowledge about the game. The grandmaster literally has to consider more aspects of the game than the novice does. A "grandmaster" WoW player doesn't necessarily have to track or plan more during their 10th year than they did during their 1st year.)

- The activity constantly provides new content
(I can enjoy reading Discworld novels, despite having been reading them every year for a long, long time now. Because each year the novel is a new story, and either provides more depth and richness to the characters, or introduces new characters.)

- The activity gives external benefits
(I can enjoy bike riding for many years, because I'm not *really* enjoying the fact that I learn to pedal, change gears, and steer the bike. I might have enjoyed that when I was four. Now, I enjoy it because I enjoy the sensation of wind in my hair, because when you exercise regularly your body craves it, I enjoy the "time out" from my otherwise busy day, and I enjoy the trip while, while not exactly stunning, is more appealing than an office wall.)

- The activity creates an output that you value
(I enjoy playing my guitar, both because I enjoy the challenge and activity of playing it, but also because I enjoy the music that I produce. If I could magically be able to play with perfection and no effort, the challenge would be gone, but I'd likely still enjoy the music that I'd be creating. Similarly, I suspect the better I become at drawing (and the more years I spend drawing) the more I'll enjoy the output I create, and the activity of creating it)

- The activity has a psychological "hook"
(Technically, not really enjoyment, but something that keeps you coming back. People don't "enjoy" gambling, but the act of gambling is set up in a way that encourages people to continue returning to the activity. Games like WoW are designed to make it hard for players to walk away from them.)

- The activity has a moral dimension
(If you feel good about yourself due to the activity, you're going to enjoy the activity for much longer.)


But that's the same as everything.
If it was easy, more people would do it, and our expectations would go up.

Let's use an example that minimizes the technical issues. Writing a novel. There *are* technical issues with prose, but most people in our society know the basics of writing a story.
And yet, I can go to the bookstore, and if I pick a random fiction book from the shelf, I've got... what? A 40% chance of actually getting a clever, well written, engaging story. Depending on how picky I am. And these are the books that have already passed through an editor, a publishing house, and the bookstore owner deciding what to stock.

If we include all the fan fictions, and all the manuscripts that must have been written and never picked up for publication... I suspect the chances that a random book would be well written would drop to less than 5%, and that's being generous.

Which is probably around the same percentage as "good" muds. Except, at least with muds, the bad ones don't get players, the server crashes, and nobody bothers to put it back online. The good ones are more likely to be tended, and thus to stick around.

So, yeah, I agree that making games is hard. But I think that doing anything to a high level is hard.