Monthly Archives: July

Few people shared their opinion as of lately that the social element of MMOs starts to erode (as compared to the “good ole’ days”), probably because going solo is so much easier than in the days of Ultima Online:

“Ryan goes through the list of things that made games social back in the day and emphasizes that the reason why we’re no longer social is because we do not depend on each other while we play anymore… We no longer deal with harsh death penalties, complex zones, real quests, or forced grouping…
‘Social game’ and ‘accessible’ are polar opposites in MMORPGs because it’s in each of their nature to suppress the other.“  (Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog)

I don’t buy the theory that better accessibility leads to lesser social games. Equally absurd is the contraposition, that unforgiving, inaccessible games (like in: no auctions, no maps, harsher death-penalties, forced grouping and so on) are more social. In my humble opinion, solo-play gained such a popularity because players were frustrated with the game-design (like forced grouping) of older MMOs in the first place.

When sifting through the manifold comments about this, you frequently encounter statements like “I just tend to play in a small group of close friends from time to time”, or “the constant analyzing of XP/minute and % of attack-power annoyed me, so I started to play solo.“
One could arrive at the conclusion that it’s not so much about the ease of solo-game-play opposed to the importance of relying on others or the ease of finding a group—it’s more about different types of “modes” within a MMO: group activities can get very competitive in nature the more players take part (i.e. raids, RvR and so on), partially because you try to gain an edge over other groups, partially because the game’s developers need to throw more hefty stuff at you to keep the challenge up for hardcore-players and -groups. Of course it’s okay to play like that, but it’s also understandable that people want to play in other modes too (i.e. in a small circle of buddies, or solo).

Seriously, I don’t see it as a problem that both group-game-play and solo-game-play is included in modern MMOs—it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. MMOs are not in such bad shape these days, social-wise. As Paul Barnett of Bioware Mythic put it lately at Videogamer.com, pretty much all games will be social soon:

“There’s online games, and very soon there will just be games. They will all be online anyway. I don’t think there’s an MMO any more. I think there’s online games and there’s online revenue, and they’re sort of going to combine.“

No, this is not yet another email about the Darkfall/Eurogamer-Review hullabaloo. I’ve been following this matter with some interest (as I’m sympathetic to both sides), so I couldn’t help but read the re-review of Darkfall, which I found extremely entertaining and witty. I never player Darkfall myself, so I can’t comment on the game, but Kieron Gillen points to a general problem of MMOs—unintended consequences of game-design:

“Playing in the small clan I joined, I found myself defending against an interloper. Running back from my adventuring in armour, I glanced at my fellows and felt terribly over-dressed. Because - y’know - I was dressed. Everyone else had stripped down to their underpants.“

What the f?, was my first thought, when I read this paragraph, but the underlying logic of the unintended consequence here becomes clear immediately:

“It’s logical enough. It’s a relatively meaningless battle. As such, going into battle and risking someone dying and taking stuff you’ve carefully collected - or, even worse, actually crafted - would be foolish. Why risk taking a random shot, falling, the opponent nabbing it and legging off? Better not to risk anything other than your default, infinitely-respawnable weapons… This is a world where, if you’re expecting trouble, it’s reasonable to strip down to your pants. This is stupid beyond all mortal belief.“

I wonder if the Darkfall-development team had this in mind when they designed the looting-system. Frankly, pondering about and pruning out corruptive gameplay-features for an MMO is (at least to me) both the most interesting and most annoying part of the job. In this aspect, designing of a MMO is more like creating a perpetual ecosystem than a game. Or, as Kieron puts it:

“Because, as always, MMO worlds are shaped by their mechanics as surely as the rules of physics and economics shape ours. A designer’s intent matters nothing compared to the shuffling of thousands of players trying to work out the most efficient way to progress. In a more World of Warcraft-derived MMO, you see fun quests being abandoned in favour of grinding out the one with the optimum XP payout. Ironically, single-player games often have more believable worlds, because competition with your fellows don’t force you into such nonsense.“

We’ve already been pondering about non-player settlements in Coobico, here is how we are currently implementing this feature: there will be a bunch of pirate shanties and bandit hang-outs scattered over the island, called “Strongholds”. Such strongholds will typically be a hideout to Scavengers, a motley crew of pirates, marauding landsknechts and soldiers of fortune (which we will introduce soon)—sometimes a stronghold will just consist of a Fortress with a few accompanying huts, on other occasions it might be girded with additional structures like merchants. This will enable players to take their own decision if they rather want to fight or trade with a scavenger stronghold.

Tobold has written another nice article, this time about the in-game implications of changing a MMOs business-model from subscriptions to micro-transactions-, free-to-play-based (like D&D announced recently):

“What game you aren’t currently playing would you play if it went Free2Play with microtransactions? And how would the design of that game have to change, to make that new business model actually work? I’m sure, you’d prefer if all games went Free2Play and only charged money for fluff, but if not enough players buy enough virtual items, a game would simply disappear. So how do we change game design to sell enough items that are useful, and desirable, but don’t make the items that you can get by playing obsolete?“

I dare say that this is true for changing of any important feature of a game; while tweaking Coobico’s game-play to get everything “right”, I frequently find us discussing chains of decisions, like “ok, we want to change feature A, but if you think closely about it, then you need to change feature B too, because it doesn’t make sense any longer—and then think about the consequences of feature C…“. Such things really need to be thoroughly thought through.

Gaikai and OnLive are cloud gaming services you might already have heard of since E3 (their idea is to render games at central server-farms, enabling games to be played on almost any hardware as a video streamed from the cloud).

After a recently released video demoing Gaikai, the whole discussion about cloud gaming and the healthy dose of scepticism both services have been receiving kept boiling up again—with the terms “convenience” and “play games in an ultra-accessible manner” used frequently. This is typically the vocab of casual gaming, which made me wonder what the target market of OnLive and Gaikai really is; is it casual or hardcore-gamers? Would it attract a new audience, since playing in your browser is such a low entry barrier?

Personally, I think that Gaikai is great way to offer game-demos (instead of your typical 1+GB download), otherwise I see both Gaikai and OnLive targeting the ultra-harcore rather than casual gamers, mainly because of the inevitable costs involved. In case of OnLive, you are going to pay the bill on-spot, probably as a subscription (I’d say they will offer different pricings blocked by video-quality, i.e. “play in a resolution of 800*600 for xx$ per month, or choose HD-quality for xxx$“). Gaikai offers its services to publishers, so you would be billed at each publisher individually.
I think there is definitely going to be a demand for that (“pay xx bucks on top of your regular WoW-subscription and you will be able to play it anywhere, anytime you’ve got internet-connection”), but I don’t see this coming from the field of casual gamers, it seems to be much more geared toward hardcore-gamers, who could use this opportunity for recurring tasks like crafting and auctions. In case of MMOs or any other game which involves an account, another obstacle would be to hand over your log-in credentials to either Gaikai or OnLive, which might be just too much nuisance for the casual type of gamer.