Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design

Putting It Together

Multi-player games are harder to design than single-player ones; online games are harder still, and persistent worlds are the hardest of all. It's a bit like the difference between cooking for yourself and planning a dinner party. When you're cooking for yourself, you decide what you want, make it, and eat it. When you're planning a dinner party, you have to take into account more variables: who likes what food, who gets along with whom, and what people are going to do besides just eat. A dinner party requires more work ahead of time—but it's a lot more fun than eating by yourself, too. The flexibility and power of online gaming enables you to create entertainment experiences that you simply can't produce in other forms.