December 19th, 2022
I have received a number of plaints from players that they just don’t understand what’s happening in Le Morte D’Arthur, and they cannot figure out how to play well. Apparently I have buried the lessons built into Le Morte D’Arthur too deep for people to grasp. It took me three years to create this design, and most of that time was spent on deep thinking. The programming itself didn’t take much time; the program is pedestrian. The writing took a goodly amount of time, but by far the bulk of my effort was focussed on how to express some profound ideas. The frustrations that people are suffering are not due to poor design; they are exactly what I sought to achieve. My error was in assuming that people would spend enough time on LMD to figure it out on their own. Instead, as I observed in the previous essay, most people bow out after just a few moves, and nobody seems to have been willing to give it a second try after reaching the end.
I don’t want to ruin the experience by spelling out exactly what’s going on and what specific options the player should select while playing. I will reveal the fact that there is no single choice that determines the outcome, with one very special exception that will be obvious to the player when available.
LMD is a feat of misdirection. Everything about it screams a clear message to the player, and that message is a lie. Gamers are especially vulnerable to that lie; they quickly sieze upon it and charge down the wrong path.
At this point, I think it best that you watch this short video. It’s only one minute long. Watch it.
Le Morte D’Arthur is similar; it suckers you into counting basketballs and you never see the gorilla in the room. Everything you need to know to succeed is right there for you to see, but you don’t see it because you’re too busy looking in the wrong direction.
I warn players in the Introduction that Le Morte D’Arthur is not a game, and I suspect that the greatest handicap many people bring to LMD is a set of unconscious assumptions begotten from their experiences with games. LMD is an attempt at interactive drama. Imagine an audience expecting a version of Hamlet in which Ophelia is a bathykolpian seductress, Hamlet an over-muscled hunk, and the final swordfight is replaced with a shootout and multiple explosions — and not thinking that there’s anything amiss with their expectations.
Pay attention! You’re not looking for the cute but meaningless puzzles that you’ve mastered in games (e.g., “Aha! I must use the purple vorpal blade to kill the purple dragon!”). LMD has no puzzles, but it teems with problems; you must think through what’s going on at a deeper level than you use in games. Do you think that Merlin’s questions are just hot air? What’s he driving at with all those questions? How deeply do you think about your answers?
You’ll probably have to play LMD twice or even thrice to understand its message. That message cannot be conveyed by simple exposition; you can learn it only by thinking, failing, and thinking again. The message lies in the interaction. While that process might take as much as ten hours of your time, it will be more profitable time spent than all the hours you’ve invested in games: it will make you a better person.