Testosterone and Competitive Play game design article

[HD2300]

"...
Conclusion
When we design a game, we are constantly on the lookout for 'fun'. However our ability to identify and augment fun is only as good as our mental model of what fun looks like. Our commonsense models of competition overvalues the delight expressed by winners and undervalues the reactions of other player populations. By adopting a more sophisticated model of how winners and losers react in various situations, a designer has a much better chance of knowing why their design fails and how they might fix it...
Now we have a fresh opportunity to design friendly competitive games that build relationships instead of breaking them down."

The full article is at http://lostgarden.com/2009/11/testosterone-and-competitive-play.html

The author Danc has been a game designer, pixel artist, painter, tools designer, product manager and marketing guy.

I found this article on another MMORPG website.

 

[Violence]

I'm under the impression UO has the most foul-mouthed and cheecky PVP crowds in any game I've ever played..!! This on various occasions includes my self.. LOL! ;D

Also UO has one of the most heated scenes when it comes to competition between players in any area. People will easily go to extremes to "win" or as a reaction to those who do. That's why cheating, gold sales, dupes and all that are such an issue. Admittedly all games that offer any form of PVP are even more open to this.

The problem isn't PVP itself though, rather insufficient measures to prevent what certain people will do to "win".