Category Archives: Design / Production

Is Social Interaction Really That Important to MMOG Players?

Posted on February 7, 2006 by David J Edery | 6 comments

A particularly interesting post on Terra Nova reveals the results of an eight month, detailed study of World of Warcraft. The dataset includes information from over 150,000 characters, so it’s certainly thorough enough. The post claims that the results of the study contradict the commonly-held assumption that people play MMOGs primarily for the social interaction they offer. However, it isn’t clear to me that the data really supports such an argument More on that.

Among the study’s most interesting findings: early-stage players (level 40 and below) spend only 30% of their time in groups, and less than half of WoW players belong to a multi-person guild. Furthermore, the average guild member collaborates (in quests, etc.) with only 11% of his/her guildmates for more than 10 minutes over the same month.

First, this data could indicate that many players rush through the early levels in order to enjoy end-game content with their friends. (Indeed, the study also found that end-game characters spend far more time in groups.) Second, guild members may form strong relationships with a small percentage of their guildmates and choose to group with them whenever possible. (They may not even have a choice, if those guildmates are the only guildmates who regularly play WoW at the same time of day.) Of course, all this could be incorrect as well. I’m just saying it isn’t clear.

The post also states that players favor “soloable” classes like hunters and warriors. (Data here.) That certainly has merit as an argument against social inclination. However, Warlocks are soloable, and they’re the least-played Alliance class. Players may prefer warriors and hunters for any number of unrelated reasons (for example, some may choose warriors because that class enjoys access to the broadest variety of weapons and armor.)

Lastly, from the post: “despite features like WoW’s ‘group xp bonus’, grouping is an inefficient way to level, which naturally steers the more ‘hardcore’ players away from groups (at least, in the early stages of the game).” But if the system is inherently biased against group play at early levels, I don’t see how you can make any major assumptions about social inclination from the data.

Long story short, I’d like to know more before accepting any pronouncements. That said, I’d bet a few developers would be pleased to learn that social interaction is not so important, since accommodating social interaction tends to engender the thorniest design problems.

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Posted in Design / Production, MMOG, Social / Cultural

Franchise IP-Based MMORPGs: Good or Bad?

Posted on January 31, 2006 by David J Edery | 1 comment

Via Slashdot, an interesting debate over whether MMORPGs benefit sufficiently from being based on major franchise IPs (like Star Wars). Paraphrasing the arguments in favor:

It almost guarantees a strong launch.
Design limitations required by the IP actually enhance the design process by focusing developer innovation within a narrower subset of possibilities.
The popularity of the Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter movies proves that you can create your own vision of a franchise and still make (enough) fans happy.

Arguments against:

Players turn away from IP-based MMORPGs because they cannot live up to the fanbase’s expectations. At the same time, original content (which an MMORPG must have) is always at risk of offending sensitive fans.
Developers have less flexibility when designing the environment, its rules, and the content that makes the game interesting (or not).
With pre-existing protagonists (i.e. Luke Skywalker) running around, players are left to portray secondary bit-players at best. Players want to be heroes, not bit-players.

The arguments against seem more persuasive to me. That said, I think it’s premature to assume that franchise-based MMORPGs can’t work. Many have worried about sensitive fans, and there is real risk there… but on the other hand, fans clearly are willing to embrace new, well-conceived content; so willing, in fact, that they often create their own. I wish I had a dollar for every homemade Star Wars script.

Naysayers generally flaunt Star Wars Galaxies as proof that franchise-based MMORPGs can’t work, but SWG’s failure had little to do with “sensitive fans” or protagonist-envy, and more to do with the fact that SWG was boring. Quoting from the Gamespot review: “…gameplay is generally slow and uneventful, and that once the novelty of the Star Wars setting wears off–and it probably will–there isn’t much of interest to be found in the game at this point.” We’ll never know if most fans would have tolerated much “original” content because of this.

Nor will we ever know if “protagonist-envy” could have been dealt with by simply making it a little easier to become a jedi (as opposed to making it trivial, which is what Sony did with its disastrous new game enhancements). And players were given extremely limited tools via which to enrich the universe with their own content and stories, despite claims that SWG would be a paradise of user-generated content. Players wanted to contribute, but most found the process too unrewarding. And that’s a shame, because capturing that energy is one of the things a great franchise-based MMORPG could potentially do very well.

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Posted in Design / Production, Marketing / PR, MMOG

Fastr: Open Content Meets Casual Games

Posted on January 26, 2006 by David J Edery | 2 comments

Thanks to Wonderland, I’ve discovered a cool little game called Fastr which is based on the Flickr image-sharing service. Fastr is a multiplayer game. Every 40 seconds or so, it appears to pick a random (simple) word and then begins downloading images from Flickr that have been tagged with that word. It displays another image every few seconds. Your goal is to guess the tag word as quickly as possible (based on the images). A quicker guess yields more points. I love it!

This game has opened my eyes to a whole new world of potential design uses for open content. The possibilities are endless. For example, how about an FPS or RPG in which the player has the power to look into other people’s minds via ESP and see their thoughts (which would be expressed as images)? When the player uses his power on important characters (especially at key plot moments), he would of course see pre-defined content. But, when using his power to gaze into the minds of normal people on the street, the images he sees could be pulled directly from Flickr. Image selection could be based on a sensible set of random keywords. Or perhaps images could be pulled from a randomly-selected Flickr user’s library (preferably sharing a tag-word, regardless of the word itself), so that a truly meaningful “thought-sequence” would be reconstructed for the player. All of a sudden, “filler” NPCs in a game acquire unique, interesting characteristics. They cease to be filler, and instead truly enrich the player’s experience. 🙂

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Posted in Design / Production, User-Generated Content

Design Theory: A Game Play Notation System

Posted on January 17, 2006 by David J Edery | 3 comments

Danc (of Lost Garden) has written a fascinating article describing a new notational system, modeled after sheet music, which can be used to guide and analyze video game design. The basic idea: by mapping and comparing key game design elements such as reward, action, etc, over a continuum, you will be able to develop a better understanding of what makes a game “good”, and be able to spot weak points in any given game’s design. A very interesting (and, I think, elegant) attempt to bring some science into the design process. My summary doesn’t really do it justice; check it out for yourself.

Having given all that praise, I do want to share a few concerns. For one: Danc’s choice of analogy. After all, musical notation has value in part because we can use it to repeatedly replay a song in the same (or similar) manner. Game developers clearly don’t need help duplicating and refining existing ideas… in fact, they’re constantly accused of doing little else. Ironically, I think a game design notational system could actually stifle innovation by encoding inflexible conventions into the development process and/or encouraging rigid adherence to “proven” patterns of design.

Let me explain my argument by digging into Danc’s post. He lists “rewards” as one of the five important notational devices in his proposed system. No arguments here; rewards are definitely a huge part of what makes most video games fun. But, as part of his definition, Danc writes: “The general goal of a reward is to make the player feel good.” This assumption becomes encoded into Danc’s mapping system by necessity. But is “feeling good” truly the only reward a game can deliver? Some games (and movies, and books) make you feel terrible, and the sadness (or terror, or disgust) is the highlight of the experience. These sensations can’t be measured and interpreted in the same way. And various forms of reward complement and negate each other in complex ways over time. These variables: type of reward, strength of reward, and proximity to other rewards, interrelate in such complex ways that mapping and analysis becomes exponentially more complicated. I suspect that a truly nuanced RPG would completely wreck a basic mapping system, and a more complex system might become too complicated for regular (or any) use.

Designing a game is like starting a new business. Any decent b-school will teach you useful frameworks for evaluating a startup venture. These frameworks have a tremendous amount of history and intelligence encoded into them. They help you to avoid common mistakes and facilitate strategic thinking. But at the end of the day, you learn that frameworks were made to be broken. The greatest businesses in the world have often turned conventional strategy on its head. Put another way: it would be literally impossible to start a business (much less succeed) if you held yourself religiously to all the best frameworks — there are simply too many rules encoded within them. And, of course, it’s no surprise that many of the world’s greatest businesses were started by people who never learned any of this. 😉 All my long-winded way of saying: Danc’s notational system is really great, but I’m inclined to treat it as one of many useful tools, not as a system of paramount importance.

PS. Speaking of design tools; if you’re interested in this topic, you might find Doug Church’s historically-significant article on the subject to be of particular interest.

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Posted in Design / Production

Second Life Loses a Customer

Posted on January 10, 2006 by David J Edery | 1 comment

Thanks to a post on Clickable Culture, I’ve just discovered another user-generated-content-centric MMORPG called Active Worlds.

Apparently Wells Fargo is transitioning its private MMOG, Stagecoach Island, out of Second Life and into Active Worlds. Stagecoach Island attracted plenty of attention back when it was announced, just three months ago.

I’ve read a few rumors attempting to justify the move, but nothing that I think merits a reprint. I’d love to know more. Was Linden Lab (maker of SL) asking for “too much” money? Providing “too little” support? Did Second Life prove “too buggy” a platform? Questions, questions…

PS. My rant of the day: why are the interfaces on these otherwise fascinating user-centric MMORPGs so damned ugly and complicated? I realize that you need to empower gifted players with numerous interesting tools (so they can make interesting content), but a mass audience will never see that content if they get scared off by Frankenstein’s UI! If you can’t imagine a more streamlined and user-friendly system, then for goodness sake, make two — a simplified UI that’s enabled by default, and an advanced UI that scares the pants off of children (like we have now). You can expect advanced users to find the on/off switch; you can’t expect the average user to navigate a million options, nor learn the workings of a non-intuitive interface via miles and miles of ugly in game tutorial posters…

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Posted in Design / Production, MMOG, User-Generated Content

Why It’s More Than Just Courteous to Play Nice With “The Suits”

Posted on December 22, 2005 by David J Edery | 3 comments

I like slow news days; they give me a chance to think aloud. 🙂

A few weeks ago, I read an article in Gamasutra entitled Incorporating Marketing into Game Development. The author makes some really worthwhile points, but I’m not highlighting it for that reason; I’m highlighting it because it exposes deep prejudices that have plagued the video game industry for years. The article begins:

Have you ever tried to design a video game while wearing a suit? Doesn’t work. The moment you don that matching slate Armani you become a “suit”– your imagination is instantly limited to sequels of licensed ’70s TV shows and clones of titles that were popular and groundbreaking two years hence.

The problem is that there’s always a “suit” with an eye on the bottom line that will want to muck with your design. Armed with sales figures and focus tests, he threatens to steal the soul of your game. His intentions are good — he wants to make sure the game sees financial success — but his relationship to the game design is antagonistic rather than collaborative.

Here’s a suggestion: do his job for him…

This sentiment is endemic to the industry. I even experienced it at EA, which prides itself on an “X Process” intended to encourage cross-functional cooperation. Ever heard of “division of labor?” This amazing concept has permitted the development of modern civilization. Not that hunter-gathering wasn’t fun and all.

Good marketing professionals spend their day trying to understand the customer. They study mechanisms via which to connect with buyers. They explore strategic pricing models (which, I’m afraid, is tough to do from an armchair. A few thousand marketing professors are still trying to figure this stuff out.) Say what you like about their effectiveness, but marketers must, by definition, have something to share. If nothing else, a competing point of view! Homogeneity is as helpful to a business enterprise as it is to the evolution of a species… in other words, not.

Instead of insulting “the suits”, why not make a sincere effort to work with them? This means more than the occasional courtesy call between development milestones. It means inviting them to game brainstorming sessions. It means asking to attend to some marketing meetings. Does this take time? Absolutely. Will some significant percentage of the suits’ feedback go straight into the trash? Very probably. But who knows … you might just get a million-dollar insight during the process. Meanwhile, you’ve built an actual relationship with the people you’re counting on to sell your product! They have more reason to like and respect you, and hopefully vice-versa. Isn’t that better than bitching and moaning when your game gets marketed “the wrong way” (assuming it gets marketing’s attention at all?)

This stuff takes time. If you’ve never bothered to build a relationship with the suits, you won’t do it overnight. But the rewards are worth the effort. This isn’t mindless blather like “there’s no ‘I’ in team”. It’s a fundamental recognition of the fact that nowadays, without market insight and marketing support, a game is probably toast. You can try to wing it on your own. There’s certainly a chance you’ll get lucky (it happens all the time.) I prefer not to count on luck.

PS. This editorial is not a defense of innovation-phobic business types. Yes, they exist, and yes, it can be painful to work with them. That’s no excuse to ignore the real benefits of a strong working relationship with the business team (in general.)

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Posted in Design / Production, Marketing / PR

Star Wars Galaxies Community Unravelling

Posted on December 14, 2005 by David J Edery | Comments Off

Wired looks into the apparent unravelling of Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) following the so-called New Game Enhancements (NGE) which fundamentally changed the game and offended many of the MMO’s remaining customers (estimated at about 200K, pre-update.)

LucasArts released the NGE with little notice and without soliciting much feedback from current customers on the full scope of the upgrade. SWG producer Julio Torres claimed that an earlier announcement might have gotten “lost” amongst others. (He seems really defensive, in general.)

Sony Online Entertainment President, John Smedley, posted an explanation/apology on the SWG message board. (It was conspicuously deleted — I’ve linked to a copy.)

Key quote: With the game the way it was we knew we would never be able to attract enough people to really keep SWG viable as a business… it wouldn’t have appealed to the really large Star Wars fanbase out there.. and frankly over time the existing userbase would have churned out as happens in any game like this… The real purpose of this post is to ask for your help. In this thread, could you please list the top issues you see needing to be addressed in the short term. — better late than never?

Smedley also gave a (more tame) interview to Gamespot.

Only time will tell if LucasArts/Sony made the right call here, but it seems unlikely. MMOGs, like all other social constructs (i.e. neighborhoods, companies, etc) develop a fixed culture. Changing that culture is very hard; changing it without a major, extended socialization effort is near impossible. People get married in SWG … think they might get a little attached to the existing system?

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Posted in Design / Production, Marketing / PR, MMOG

User-Generated Content: Not Without Obligations

Posted on December 5, 2005 by David J Edery | Comments Off

The 2005 Second Life Game Developer Contest, intended to generate positive PR and fun new in-game content, appears to have generated some serious controversy as well. Jeffrey Gomez, the contest winner, recently discovered that a system-wide software patch had rendered his 1st place entry non-functional.

Linden Lab has argued that Gomez could have used their test servers to identify and troubleshoot the problem before it was too late. Gomez has responded that he (and other users) shouldn’t be forced to adopt a patch before they are good and ready.

I chatted with my friend Sameer Ajmani, PhD graduate of MIT’s computer science program (and a systems specialist) about this debate. His words:

It can be very difficult to enable users running different versions to coexist in a game. But even if they could coexist, this would force users to choose between features of the different versions. Most MMOGs require that users upgrade to the latest version specifically to avoid this problem. However, since Second Life depends on its users for content, Linden Labs ought to make every effort to make API changes backwards-compatible. If users have no guarantee that their content will work after the next upgrade, then they will be demotivated to create new things.

Someone who makes content for Second Life doesn’t necessarily want to maintain it for the rest of their (real) lives. Users don’t have the same persistent (and/or consistent) committment to a game that the game’s developers do. If users can’t be certain that their efforts will retain value for a significant period of time, without significant upkeep, their motivation to produce will diminish. A business that is reliant upon user-generated content cannot afford this.

PS. While we’re on the subject, check out this cool business simulation Second Life competition. The Apprentice meets MMOG. 🙂

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Posted in Design / Production, Social / Cultural, User-Generated Content

How to Indulge the “Low Playtime” MMO Gamer?

Posted on November 20, 2005 by David J Edery | 5 comments

There’s an interesting discussion taking place on Slashdot… a user of A Tale in the Desert says he cancelled his account because he wasn’t playing enough to justify the monthly fee, and asks “where is the metered model for the casual gamer?” The lead designer of Tale responded that he might set up a server especially for casual gamers that limits playtime to a few hours a month, but costs the same amount. His rationale: most casual gamers complain that they can’t “compete” with hardcore players who give the game more time; they don’t complain (at least outwardly) about cost.

First, I think it’s really important not to lump “low playtime” users into the larger category of “casual gamers.” Someone who wants to play WoW for eight hours a week is not a casual gamer; a dedicated user of Pogo.com probably is. That said, I think a “casual” server is a compelling idea, but I doubt you can charge all players the same amount. People feel very strongly about fairness, and as a game developer, you violate those feelings at your own peril. If a casual server is identical to a “hardcore” server but has limits on playtime, gamers will probably expect a discount (and I see no reason why not to indulge them.)

Of course, there are other pricing models that remove emphasis from playtime altogether. Second Life’s “play for free, pay monthly fees for land ownership” model, for example. This could be extended to MMOs like World of Warcraft by, for example, charging a small monthly fee for ownership of a mount, a guild hall, etc. Ultimately, hardcore players would still end up paying a fair amount.

Pricing solutions aside, I’d love to see an MMO that makes both “low-playtime” and “high-playtime” gamers happy by truly addressing the problem of competitive disadvantage. WoW tried to do this via rest experience bonuses (the longer you’re offline, the easier it is to gain experience while online) — but it only helps so much. How about designing an MMO in which “important” functions only require a limited amount of time (say, one hour a day) but “less important” functions can be enjoyed endlessly? For example, a space trading game that limits crucial mercantile functions to a given number per day, but places no limits on exploration, combat, etc?

The game industry is currently underserving two markets: people who would love a casual MMO (like Yo Ho Ho Puzzle Pirates), and “low playtime” gamers who enjoy hardcore games but hate to be left behind by high playtime friends and/or enemies. Going after those markets would probably entail less risk than making the next traditional hardcore MMORPG, too.

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Posted in Design / Production, Marketing / PR, MMOG