(and I think I’ve finally “said it all”)

Nyght:
Are we trying to build an everlasting world or the next highly sucessful broad market MMORPG?

People in the room who think both goals can be achieved in the same product raise there hand.

Me. Unashamedly. I believe Raph too.

I summarized somewhere else what I think of this discussion: “doing better, not doing without.”

This discussion is *useless* if we cannot find better mechanics that retain ALL the qualities of the levels and then some. If possible new ideas aren’t unquestionably better, then we can as well keep developing and playing level-based games and be happy.

If it’s true that “levels suck” it’s also true that better models are possible. *And* that they can be more successful.

If you beileve instead that level up mechanics are the best we can have, then the premises of this discussion would have been proven wrong. Raph wrote those two articles because he obviously believes that there could be better models, or there wouldn’t be any reason to doubt of those level-up mechanics in the first place.

From my point of view this is a pragmatic manifesto. Not abstract theorization.