Project & Story

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.“

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.

Level-design and tweaking of difficulty-settings are recurring items on our laundry-list, as you might imagine, so some blog-postings about challenging game-play and the ease of navigating through MMO-quests recently caught my eye. So, just how difficult should a challenge/quest in a MMO be—and should such level of difficulty vary for casual- and hardcore-related MMOs?

In Free Realms (as Eurogamer puts it), “Everything objective is clearly marked by the obsequiously helpful mapping system, dotted lines on the ground ensuring you never get lost as you follow the breadcrumbs… It’s compulsive, up to a point, but it’s often flavourless and dull.“
Sony’s philosophy here seems to be that short, casual quests (especially for a younger audience) should not comprise lengthy exploration and difficult brainteasers. World of Warcraft will soon patch something very similar in, as Pink Pigtail Inn’s Larisa describes: “A skull graphic will be placed on the map in the general area where players can find creatures they must kill for a quest. A skull graphic with red eyes will be placed on the map in the general area where creatures can be found that must be killed in order to collect quest objects…“

Both the approach of such hyper-efficiencent streamlining and players having mixed feelings about this are quite understandable. Probably all of us have been in frustrating need of a walkthrough here and there—solving a difficult strategic puzzle or beating a particular challenge, however, is often the most memorable moment in a game. On the one hand, a short, temporary gaming-experience cannot primarily consist of aimless exploring; on the other hand (with the words or Larisa), “somehow the ‘being efficient and do things as quick as possible, ticking off things from your list’ concept has completely overtaken the ‘experience, explore and lose yourself into a different world’ idea.“

It is obvious that such settings vary with each player and the mood they are in at a time—a solution suggesting itself therefore would be to leave it to the preference of each player, of how difficult he or she wants a quest to be. This is the approach we are trying to implement in Coobico. Rather than laying out blatantly obvious lines of breadcrumbs, think more in the ballpark of “buyable” levels of advice/cheats.

There has been an interesting study by interactive marketing firm Future Ads about dramatic cutbacks in paid- and console-games in 2009—interesting, even though the findings are disputable, since Future Ads runs a casual gaming website which lets the report appear to be a bit biased. 

“Consumers report slashing their spending on paid console and online games this year. Among the nearly 4 in 5 casual gamers owning consoles, 79% report ‘significantly’ cutting back on game purchases this year over 2008, with another 10% reporting they’re cutting ‘somewhat.’ There is also a similar tale for console accessories/peripherals: 85% are cutting back significantly, with another 7% cutting ‘somewhat.’ For paid online gaming (subscriptions, etc.) 83% are cutting significantly, and 7% ‘somewhat.’ Conversely, online casual gaming continues to boom: 61% are spending more time playing online games this year than last.

When asked what the single biggest drawback to console games was, 77% singled out ‘they’re simply too expensive,’ swamping the less than 4% that pegged other specific obstacles: ‘the technology becomes obsolete;’ ‘not all games work on all platforms,’ or ‘can’t travel with them.’ ... 78% of respondents report preferring free online games that are supported by advertising vs. the 22% preferring paid games without ads.“

Nonetheless, I dare say that these findings reveal the size of the impact free-to-play games had on the whole (traditional) gaming industry so far. Gamers find a lot of free offers online, with ever growing quality and quantity. Sure, free games cannot compete with the production-values of AAA-blockbuster games and “serious” hardcore-gamers probably mostly still prefer the next 60$ game retail, but the boundaries are getting increasingly blurred:

“The Gamevance surveys also reveal dissolving boundaries between casual and hardcore users and markets, a disappearing gender gap, and increased online gaming adoption across all age groups… 51% of online gamers surveyed personally play hardcore games. The time spent with, and enjoyment of, these platforms, is notably balanced: 52% spend more time with hardcore games, 48% more with casual. And despite multi-million production budgets for hardcore titles, 46% actually find casual games more entertaining.“
 
Via GigaOm

City-building games typically come in two flavors, either as goal-oriented games or as sandboxes; in the former, you typically share the game-world with one or more opponents who will trade with you or wage war over resources. In the latter, you can build and run your city unopposed, with a focus on maintaining economy, traffic and so on. 

Catering to such gameplay poses no problem for games which are not massively multiplayer (i.e. nearly each currently existing city-building franchise)—but what about a city-building MMO like Coobico? Different types of players will inevitably meet each other in an open world. While this is a great opportunity to play together, it might also lead a clash game-plays (i.e. griefers/killers versus socializers).

We would like to enable both competitive and sandbox-type styles of gameplay in Coobico and let players choose their own experience—but without spoiling the fun for everybody else. We are therefore restricting the level of personal confrontation between players a bit; as an example, it will not be possible to just personally walk into another player’s settlement to wreak havoc there. But apart form that, we are working on ways to compete martially with other competitive-minded players.
It’s a feature we have not yet fully nailed down. I am going to elaborate more on this in the next article about Garrisons and Fortresses in Coobico.

Recently, Daniel James, CEO of San Francisco based Three Rings Design, has shared the revenue-metrics of their MMO Puzzle Pirates with the developers’ community at Gamasutra: “People often ask me, with a wary look such as you’d give a lunatic, ‘Why do you dish out your numbers like this?‘ It’s a good question. There are possible downsides, but they are limited… The upside is that the more information that circulates the startup and games community, the more people will share their data. This rising tide will raise all boats. If I can shame my fellows into parting with their data, we’ll all benefit.“

Good job, Daniel! Read more after the jump.

Recently there has been an interesting meme about if avatars in MMORPGs should be treated as mere game-tokens or rather as more than that, kicked off by Wolfshead with a posting about gender-issues in MMOs.
Tobold holds the opinion that “ultimately your avatar is just a playing piece, and reading too much into his gender or race, and then projecting real world politics onto that, can only be a bad thing” and should thus be treated as something akin to “a shoe in Monopoly“ even if an avatar offers the opportunity to be customized along the player’s ideas.
Raph Koster, in reply, expressed the opinion that “even if we wish it to be so (and indeed, much of game design demands that it be so, much of the time) it’s not actually humanly possible,“ because “in effect, our tokens have become rich enough to cause us to subconsciously treat them as people, whether or not we intended it” as the player’s choice of appearance of an avatar ultimately influences how he/she will be treated in-game.

My personal two cents are closer to Raph’s than to Tobold’s opinion—an avatar is more than a token to interact with a virtual world; the function of its customizability is not only to distinguish a player’s avatar from everybody else, it also creates identity. Let’s not forget where the idea of MMORPGs and avatars is coming from: the good ole’ pen & paper role-playing games—where it becomes even more obvious that a character is more than a mere playing-piece.
Anyway, I would like to take this discussion even further and apply it to city-building games and related RTS games. This might not be immediately coming to mind, but it’s an important issue for Coobico as a genre-mix of city-building game and lightweight role-playing game.

In city-building- and RTS-games, settlers and/ or units are mostly plain providers of resources or forces to attack and defend. What would happen, if these tokens would be treated more as avatars? What if they would have customizable traits that, in turn, would influence the game for a player—and which would be due to change throughout game-play? It’s quite plain to me that you would end up with something akin to The Sims if you think this out in all possible details—the degree of “avatar-ization” would be the very essence here.

In my opinion it would be possible to add new, subtle yet important angles here, without twisting the genre of city-building too much into a sim-like game.

Coobico makes extensive use of Jack Doyle’s truly great TweenMax (which seems to be merged with the ubiquitous Grant Skinner’s gTween soon?). However, we were so impressed by the possible animated filter effects of newcomer-engine Tweensy by Shane McCartney that we quickly decided to add it to our toolkit. We had previously written and used a simple and rudimentary home-grown particle-engine which basically got the job done to animate necessary effects (like clouds of dust), but didn’t really offer any advanced features. Using Tweensy for this provides us with infinitely more visual candy now…   Tweensy allows for rendering effects to a bitmap if you need lots of particles and effects with dynamic filters.

We took a look at real 3D particles with Flint a few months ago, but Flint didn’t seem to play nice with Coobico’s engine—or maybe we chose a too early beta-release.