I want to fall in love again
Was digging through my old socialstudygames.com archives, and found this post from 2005. I am still waiting:
After spending a bit of time playing World of Warcraft together, colleague Gordon Calleja and I had a discussion by phone about how we felt about it. We were impressed with the technological achievement and visual style, certainly, but we were perplexed as to why we weren't getting that spark, that feeling of really falling in love with a game (often characterised by fiending to get back in immediately after logging off, just like wanting to call your lover the minute they've walked out the door).
Our consensus was that though the game is stunningly beautiful, there was something about the gameplay that wasn't really doing it for us. As Gordon said, it 'felt like too much of a grind'. I struggled with this feeling with Everquest 2, as well, but felt like something was wrong with me. As I imagined continuing to play, I visualised more errand running (and more running, followed by more running!), more monster whacking, some beautiful locales, but nothing that really seemed spontaneously delightful or unexpected. I thought, maybe I'm a bit too jaded? Am I seeking some kind of gameplaying nirvana that doesn't really exist? Or maybe I just need to get to higher levels to really start enjoying myself?
The need to get to higher levels might be the crux of it. Gordon and I have decided
that we have Busy Person Syndrome: These games with grind might be fine
for college students with a lot of time on their hands, but I'm a busy mother
working on a PhD, keeping house, cooking meals, and trying to exercise
occasionally. When I play, I want maximum fun in minimum time. That
means my Skinnerian responses had better be manipulated exactly right,
otherwise I'm just not going to play, given all the other options for fun that
I have (and given how much work I do in real life, I don't want games to feel
like work).
The industry calls people like me 'casual gamers'. But I hate that
term. Casual players are people who play Solitaire or Minesweeper because
they can't be bothered to find anything better. No, I'm a person who
really enjoys great games, but unlike BC (before children), doesn't have much time to play. As such,
any game I'm going to play instead of doing more important things had better be good.
So what is it that works then? What keeps me coming back? Well, as
a socializer/explorer type on Bartle's scale,
it's
gameplay possibilities that offer lots of opportunity for exploration
or
discovery, plus mechanisms that foster social interactions. It
also has
to allow for all this from the get-go, or at least within a conceivably
achievable amount of time. The 15-20 hours per week I spend
playing (multiple games and multiple characters in each game) is a
lot of time in my estimation... if I need to play 40+ to achieve the
pay-off
then it's not working. (Nick Yee has some interesting
thoughts on motivation and time spent, btw)
Here are the things that I think give great MMOGs their magic:
Ice Breakers/3rd Spaces (or social interaction made easy):
Ice breakers are important in any group setting. Too many MMOGs have
limited opportunities for casual conversation or initial smalltalk. The ability
to customise appearance is a great way to allow players to differentiate
themselves and offer opportunities for compliments, questions or idle
chit-chat. For instance, I was blown away in City of Heroes
when I saw a guy who had manipulated the character generation system
and very
cleverly created a superhero that lucked exactly like a duck, even
though the character options currently have no animal parts. Of
course, I commented. And this happens all the time in games or
worlds with good avatar customisation.
Houses, shops and other player created
content are also great ice-breakers. But in the absence of player real estate, other 3rd spaces can be used to great
effect. The cantinas in Star Wars: Galaxies have been researched by a
team from the Palo Alto Research
Center (see Designing
for Sociability in Massively Multiplayer Games: and Examination of the 'Third
Places' of SWG),
as spaces designed specifically to promote social
congregation. (the gameplay mechanics actually require a
symbiotic relationship between cantina-based entertainers and fighters,
a simple but brilliant way of encouraging players to take a social
breather).
City of Heroes experienced so much
emergent dance party behaviour in their open plazas and squares that they added
dance clubs with no other function than to act as 3rd spaces. The plazas
and squares also serve as venues for contests and other events, including a living
memorial to actor Christopher Reeve after his death.
The virtual world Second Life excels in this arena, boasting a tremendous
number of spontaneous in-game events with their own journalism coverage.
Player Searching/Matching:
This can be as simple as the 'looking for team' flag that can be set in City of
Heroes, through to the much more
complex player matching system in Star Wars: Galaxies (great idea, but rarely used, in my
opinion, because of usability issues). Automated solutions
eliminate the hassle and embarrassment of finding people to play with. I
announce my availability, people invite me to their team. Simple. I can play with them for a while to see
how we gel, if we don't then I can leave. It affords a great deal more
flexibility and injects my gameplay with that element of randomness that keeps
things interesting.
Group Intradependence:
Different class abilities should be such that players can take on
distinctly
different roles, or combinations of roles. I might play a healer
or tank,
but that doesn't mean I want to heal or tank exclusively - other
abilities can
be weaker, certainly, but not useless. It's nice to do different
things
depending on the group's composition. And it's really nice when
different classes have distinctly different skill sets that require
entirely different group strategies depending on who's in the
group. Figuring out that balance keeps things really interesting.
(on a similar note: City of Heroes gets more kudos for its
sidekicking/exemplaring system that allows players of different levels
to group)
Allow Spontaneity:
The recent trends towards kill locking and instancing have been put in place by
game designers to prevent problems like kill stealing and camping. But in some instances, they've thrown the
baby out with bathwater, preventing spontaneous social interactions and bonding
that can result when strangers come to one's assistance.
Discovery:
This isn't really what Bartle means by exploration, but I'll lump it into that
category anyway... it's not just about game physics, a new town or area to
visit, or new monsters to kill, though those things are definitely
interesting. I'd say it's more about new capabilities or options that
significantly change my experience of gameplay. Maybe it's a new mode of
travel, or an ability that allows me to interact with other players or groups
differently. Pets and shapeshifting are great examples of this in
Identity-play:
This is very much related to the above item, but also includes opportunities to
change my appearance or other characteristics that affect the way other players
view me. Having the ability to differentiate my characters from others is
a very important aspect of the creative part of gameplay.
I also want to be able to choose my abilities and have a unique set --
different, if only subtly, from those of every other member of my
class. I need something to differentiate myself! Anything!
Flow:
Mihaly
Csikszentmihaly has dubbed the 'psychology of optimal experience' with the
term 'flow'. It's one of those words (like love) that's hard to describe to
other people, but it's obvious what it is when one's in the midst of it.
A lot of flow is about pacing and difficulty, though... in the case of a lot of
MMORPGs, flow can be interrupted by activities that are too repetitious or easy -- or too hard, for that matter.
Humour:
I just saw a conversation the other day bemoaning the lack of humour in games
and realised that's part of what draws me to MMOGs, though they are not
intrinsically humourous (Kingdom
of Loathing being the exception!). I find humour and delight in
groups. In fact, I'm starting to think I should do a study about how
often LOL, LMAO or ROFL shows up in a chat log. People are funny... and
people in groups that really work are able to interact in endlessly
entertaining ways.
New Stories or Universes
Frankly, the epic quests set in Tolkien-inspired fantasy universes have gotten
really boring to me. Give me sci fi, superheroes, or asian animism,
anything but elves and trolls.
Personal Agency and Dynamic Content:
This was Gordon's point.
Players want to see the effect they've had on the worlds they play in.
If too many of a particular species has been whacked
by all the newbie gamers that flooded in after Christmas, maybe they
should go
extinct. It takes a bit of work, but
updating the games to reflect what's happening in the game world (or in
RL) is
a very effective tool for stickiness.
Lots of players flooded back into City of Heroes
at Halloween to experience the well-publicised Halloween activities.
And if a game offers crafting, it's really dull if everyone makes the exact same items. Customisation is one of the best player differentiators, both in terms of how they look and live, but also in terms of what they can provide to other players. Second Life (and to a large extent, Star Wars: Galaxies) is particularly great in this regard. The powerful scripting language means that residents really are co-producers of this world, and one's individual contribution can be easily seen. Perhaps this isn't everyone's bag, but certainly we all like knowing that we've had an impact.
Now back to my larger point...
I've been playing games for about 20 years and can remember many a
weekend
spent enamoured of a new game. I remember not being able to sleep
at
night for all the puzzles and possible solutions swarming around in my
head. And when I did sleep? My dreams were full of
determined
little
sprites, beckoning me back to play with them again. Was it just
some sort of novelty effect? Or do I now require instant
gratification? And if so, why do I play at all?
Ah, to experience that love again... who's gonna build it for me? Or what's out there already that I might have missed?
Comments on I want to fall in love again:
The first MMO you get into is the one you love. The rest are never going to be able to live up to it, because only the first comes with a sense of wonder; therefore, you are never going to replicate that feeling (at least, not by playing one).
Richard
Posted Jan 10, 2010 12:09:46 PM | link
Great article!
I don't know if it is true that you only love your first mmo. I felt a sense of wonder when I first played Ragnarök online, which was my first mmo. There was practically nothing to do in that game, which somehow served as a great icebreaker and actually allowed a lot of freedom when first getting started. However, when I first logged into WoW I felt that sense of wonder again and couldn't wait to log back in.
I definitely feel now though like I am endlessly searching for "the game" that does that for me again. Like you I wonder am I really just seeking novelty or will there be some game out there where everything aligns perfectly once again... and of course once it does how long will it last?
Posted Jan 10, 2010 12:24:24 PM | link
Richard, you've depressed me!
Solution, then, is to invent new genres. Shall we declare the MMORPG dead? Service to humanity perhaps?
Has anyone, btw, heard of a game with 'feather' in the title that has an Ico-esque feel? I saw a snippet on G4 and was intrigued...
Another stupid question... anyone know how WoW is doing these days?
Posted Jan 10, 2010 12:30:19 PM | link
P.S. My first MMO was Ultima Online, but I was ganked so quickly and viciously that I didn't touch another MMO for a few years.
Posted Jan 10, 2010 12:31:19 PM | link
For me, the solution is to play as many different types of video games as possible. One day Uncharted 2, another day Canabalt or Orbital. I do continue to get infatuated with new games that way.
Posted Jan 10, 2010 1:31:16 PM | link
Guild Wars is what you want. I wrote a longer comment but my iPhone went AWOL.
Posted Jan 10, 2010 9:51:39 PM | link
Posted Jan 11, 2010 3:02:09 AM | link
LisaG>Richard, you've depressed me!
How do you think I feel? I never even got the wonder of seeing my first virtual world!
>Solution, then, is to invent new genres.
No, the solution is to give people closure and to stop children from playing them. Neither of these is likely to happen.
>Another stupid question... anyone know how WoW is doing these days?
In terms of player numbers or in terms of turning into Xbox Live?
Richard
Posted Jan 11, 2010 3:12:10 AM | link
Great article!
The first time I heard about WoW in 2005 or maybe 2004 - it was in the beta, and level cap was 20 - that the nice thing about WoW is that you can sit around fishing and have a conversation without this "busyness" of getting things done. This idea impressed me.
It turned out that WoW has the problem too: Becoming higlevel means Work! This problem exists still in WoW and I don't know any MMOG, which doesn't have similar problems. I think it's reasoned by the content adding and level cap rising. With each higher achievable level the former levels become less worth, so you want them to overcome them pretty early.
While I played WoW struggling with the reason of doing the same things over and over, I made up improvements in my mind, how to design a MMOG to overcome these problems, i.e. be full time player or log off, too boring or too hard challenges or take fantasy or leave it.
For example let's think about a very WoW-specific problem, namely that a normal dungeon group consists of five members and the dungeons are designed to fit that way. But in my case I played many times with only one or two friends together. Connected va Voip and interested in good teamplay we focused on playing dungeons on our own. "Two mages in Wailing Caverns" (For WoW players, not highleveled We got through except of the big green boss!)
I still can't understand, why blizz don't provide challenges for smaller groups. And since I had last year a class about capital market theory, I have an idea. The basic concept of capital market theory is about the assumption, that on a given set of assets there is an optimum portfolio, which consits of specific combined fractions of the assets.
What if each group member is an asset, the player's stats are determining the "return" and "variance" and the monster's stats are determined by the optimum portfolio? I would say, you can dynmically examine the monster's strength in correlation to the group. And then it doesn't matter anymore, if five warriors or a healer with a mage enters the dungeon.
Best regards
Christoph
P.S.: I want to fall in love again, too!
Posted Jan 11, 2010 7:10:39 AM | link
I also sympathize with Lisa. Recently I've tried WAR and Aion and a re-try of WoW. Despite my early enthusiasm for WAR, I ended up being bored by them all quite quickly. Part of it is that it's just not possible with my time constraints to get involved socially.
However, I think the major design flaw now was, ironically, a wonderful thing when it first appeared: The Quest Hub. You see, we are now all familiar with how it goes: You make a character and enter the world. You find eight NPCs standing there with the Come-and-Get-It signal over their heads. You do all those quests and level. The last quest says "Go to {The Next Town} and see {NPC}." You do that, and find eight NPCs standing around with Come-and-Get-It signals.
While an improvement over the chaotic quest systems in games like EQ1, Quest Hubbing, now that I've pattern-matched it, has killed the genre for me. It's game-on-rails design imported to the MMORPG genre. Sad, because here we have this big open world to explore, which, you'd think, would invite nonlinear gameplay. But instead we end up getting Game-On-Rails design.
I am still waiting for the solo-exploration MMO.
Meanwhile, my sense is that much of the innovation in fantasy gaming has moved back to single-player RPGs. I just finished Fallout 3 and I have started Dragon Age: Origins. Multiplayer RPGs have a lot of catching up to do.
Posted Jan 11, 2010 12:45:21 PM | link
I, too, have limited time to play and when I do, I want to make the most of it. WoW added a number of ways to level besides questing, which made leveling another character much more palatable. I can now go PvP for experience when I'm bored of questing or hop into a dungeon with the new dungeon tool. I've seen some things I never saw before because I was too busy grinding. I didn't like PvP when I first started playing, ironic given that my first MMO was Quake, but now it's a nice change of pace and I enjoy the teamlike atmosphere that happens more often than not.
But, I can feel myself getting bored, when I've spent too much time playing. I used to like turn-based games like Civilization, but you figure that out pretty quickly. And I began my game-playing career with Sierra games, which were fun, but too scripted--and you can see where games like WoW got their foundations--there are questlines, objects to get, etc. I'd love to be able to make up my own food recipes or other crafting recipes. Wouldn't it be cool to make those discoverable or purchasable? But I think the audience for WoW, atm, is not that interested in crafting. They're still in it for the grind.
Posted Jan 11, 2010 4:29:36 PM | link
Greetings to one and all: In that most precious name. That name which is above every name, the name: "Jesus"
There's tremendous power in that name. I'd suppose we'll never fully realize all that can truly be accomplished, by us simply calling out that name in true faith.
There's an old, old, gospel song that goes like this: Faith in the Father, faith in the Son, faith in the Holy Spirit, great victories are won. Demons will tremble and sinners will awake, faith in Jehovah will anything shake.
For you who have never come into this realization, if you're reading this, just give him a welcome into your heart and life. You will both feel and see an awesome difference. You will have also purchased the ticket to heaven (by accepting, therefore making him welcome to come into your life. You will also sup from His cup that contains living water. (As did the woman at the well of Bethesda.) John 4:10
Much love,
Your brother in Christ Jesus, who is both our Lord, and Savior.
www.eloquentbooks.com/BeyondTheGoldenSunsetAndByTheCrystalSea.html
http://www.eloquentbooks.com/OffToVisitTheProphetElijah
Posted Jan 12, 2010 11:54:57 AM | link
Thank you for a thought-provoking essay. Since it’s Tuesday morning, which means WoW is down for maintenance, I thought I’d write a bit on the current state of the game.
WoW has changed quite a bit over the years, as more content has been added, players have gained new skills, and mechanisms such as dual specs and the looking-for-group tool have made group activities easier to do spontaneously.
I played Zork and Adventure online a long, long time ago when the Internet had a couple hundred nodes, then stopped, and restarted gaming with Runescape when my kids got old enough to discover online browser-based games, I had much more time, and I wanted to see what they were into and play with them. Runescape had some interesting features, and was easy to get into, but leveling skills was mind-numbingly repetitive and despite the presence of player-moderators with the power to silence or ban people, it seemed like it was still filled with scammers and shock-seekers. I moved on to EVE for a time, which has a very interesting real-time-based leveling mechanism and I liked the player-owned corporation model of "guilds" and I love the setting, but I didn't like that I could lose so much work if caught out in a pvp zone by a player who had been skilling up for longer than I had, the pve "mission" content was very limited and quickly became boring, and big battles were unplayable due to server lag. Single-player games generally and first-person shooters in particular have never really interested me.
I started playing WoW a few years ago, and hit 60 a few months before the first expansion raised the level cap to 70, so I never experienced the 40-man raid content at 60, but since then, I’ve played way, way more than I’d care to admit. The expansions have the effect of doing a "reset" so newer players can catch up when the people who have gotten all the tier-3 gear at 60 find that everything's obsolete when they hit 70. Having the skill and the gold helps, of course, but it provides enough of a level playing field for new players to play with people who have been playing for years if they work hard, something that seemed impossible in EVE. A subsequent reset when the second expansion came out and the level cap was raised to 80 allowed me to switch my "main" from a rogue to a paladin and try healing, which has been a fun change. Recently, as new content has been added, they have changed the level of gear available to newer players (by changing the reward tokens from “Emblems of Heroism” to “Emblems of Conquest” and more recently “Emblems of Triumph” to make it possible for new players (or new alts) to get gear that allows them to enter high-level instances without having to grind through content released earlier in the expansion (for which groups are hard to find).
Leveling up has been made quite a bit faster, with the XP per level reduced, many of the harder quests nerfed, and “heirloom” items introduced, which allow a max-level character to provide an “alt” on the same account with a few pieces of good gear that automatically gets better as they level and has the effect of increasing the XP gained per quest or kill.
In version 3.0, Blizzard introduced an “achievement points” system, which has done wonders for more than just the “Achiever” types, since there are achievements for exploration and pvp activities that give those types of players a measure of their accomplishments. There are always more achievements to work on, if that’s your thing. These points don’t provide anything but bragging rights and in some cases unique cosmetics such as mounts, pets, and titles which are more important to some people than the gear. In my opinion, the number and variety of achievements has been a key factor in keeping players interested and made the 3.0 expansion a huge success.
The most recent patch, in addition to releasing the final raid content of this expansion, introduced a new “looking for dungeon” tool which makes it much, much easier to find a 5-man group for instances, both while leveling and at max level. Previously, 5-man groups while leveling up were very rare. It was too hard to find a group all at the right level, and it was much more common to find a max-level friend or pay someone to run you through an instance than to actually run it the way it was intended. Now you can put yourself in a queue, specify what role you’d like to play, and go on about your business questing or whatever until a group can be put together. The group may include players from other realms, which greatly expands the number available, and makes it possible to put together a group of similar levels in a reasonable amount of time. A significant reward is given for completing a “random” instance daily, which means that everyone wants to do one, even though for well geared characters, they are mindlessly easy.
However, even as it solves the problem of endlessly sitting in the city spamming “LFG for ” in trade chat, this grouping tool feels like it isolates me from other people. Groups rarely stay together for a second instance, because the reward for some of the players is only worthwhile for the first of the day. When I’m thrown in with a random group including players from other servers, most of whom just want to blow through it and leave, the social aspect of accomplishing the completion of an instance with a group is gone. I’m an achiever/explorer, not a socializer, but I do like getting to know the people, finding players that I’d like to play with again, and team accomplishments are very meaningful for me. You can still form a group with people you know, but it’s so much easier to just queue up and get a random group, that the majority of instances are now run this way.
The 40-man raids of classic WoW changed in 2.0 with the introduction of a first-tier 10-man raid, followed by 25-man raids for harder content, and in 3.0 with parallel 10 and 25-man versions of all raid content. 3.0 also increased the number of different classes which could provide key group buffs, allowing groups more flexibility in choosing players for their raids. These changes have made forming groups for raids much easier, resulting in the formation of pick-up groups even for top-tier content. The Ulduar raid zone in 3.1 introduced “hard-mode” encounters which gave top guilds access to rewards for doing the same encounter faster, or in a harder way, either by meeting a time limit or by purposefully activating the “hard-mode” version. Blizzard continues to experiment with this, in 3.2 there were “normal” and “heroic” versions of entire raid zones, and in 3.3, individual encounters may be attempted either at normal or (after completing the entire raid zone at normal) heroic difficulty levels. In classic WoW and 2.0, much of the content was never seen by most of the players, but now, most of the content is in reach of anyone who can play a few sessions a week.
One of the most annoying things about crafting skills in these games is that most of the items which are crafted are useless, and are produced and immediately disenchanted (i.e. broken up for enchanting materials) or vendored solely to gain experience in the craft and reach the maximum level, either for the achievement or for unique capabilities available to top-level crafters. Much of the economy revolves around low-level materials selling for prices only affordable by top-level players who wish to “skill up” a crafting profession. As a result, low level players can become relatively rich quickly if they choose only gathering professions. A low level player who chooses a crafting profession and a matching gathering profession to supply it (such as herbalism and alchemy) will be poor unless they sell some of their gathered materials, as the demand for low level crafted items is non-existant. In addition to low-level materials, some top-level gear requires unique materials which can only be acquired in top-level raids. The evolution of these sorts of materials has gone from rare drops in classic raids, to less rare but still bind-on-pickup components in 2.0, to tradable objects which only dropped in high-level raids. Now, in 3.0, these items (a new one is released with each raid tier) are purchasable with reward tokens that may be obtained (slowly) from easy instances or (somewhat more quickly) from high-level raids. The fact that reward tokens may be used to purchase either bind-on-acquire gear or tradable materials allows top-level raiders to get rich easily, selling materials acquired by using their tokens.
Unfortunately, unless your goal is to acquire 2^31 copper pieces, there is little to spend all this gold on. While Blizzard has added many gold-sinks such as prestige mounts (1500g for an Elementium-plated Exhaust Pipe, just one of the components need for an engineer to construct a motorcycle? Those goblins are making out), it feels like there is still way too much gold sloshing around, and the advertised cost of gold from gold sellers has plummeted.
Well, maintenance is almost over, hope this has been an interesting summary.
Posted Jan 12, 2010 1:41:38 PM | link
Virtual worlds, if they are anything like what the word 'world' implies, will pose very interesting challenge to new users: how do you explore a world with millions of virtual square feet of space?
For Second Life, sites like ThreadMap (http://www.threadmap.com) attempt to provide quick and easy way for new Second Life users to find the most appealing places in Second Life.
Posted Jan 13, 2010 9:53:30 PM | link
To be honest, I have no idea what William Dunigam is talking about. But I have a guess and think he isn't completely wrong.
The wanted game, weare talking about, should be dynamic in every sense, like non-standard quest system. At the same time it should have an interesting story, which we can follow; we want be lead through the game. We want to be black and white at the same time.
I think the problem and solution is balance.
I still hear -it's almost 3 years ago- the WoW-Players flaming that the warlocks are "imba". (imba = imbalanced) Blizz had to learn, how to balance the game properly, especially when adding content. -They still have problems-
On the other hand if you were able to find e.g. a skilling scheme, which is both completely free in detail and following patterns like e.g. WoW, it would be Jesus.
Posted Jan 14, 2010 4:22:02 AM | link
Ted>Part of it is that it's just not possible with my time constraints to get involved socially.
This happens a lot when people have a family. Even if you have the time, you get those 10-minute interruptions that mean the rest of your party has to wait for you to BRB or kick you.
>Multiplayer RPGs have a lot of catching up to do.
Have you tried any text MUDs?
Richard
Posted Jan 14, 2010 4:28:13 AM | link
No, I have never tried a text MUD. I can't explain why. I really can't. Spoiled by visuals? Don't like to read? I don't know.
WTH, why not. If you recommend one, I'll check it out.
Posted Jan 14, 2010 9:44:43 AM | link
OK, well you could try Raph's old stomping ground, LegendMUD, which I believe is still going strong.
Richard
Posted Jan 15, 2010 3:20:21 AM | link
OK!
Posted Jan 19, 2010 1:56:38 PM | link
www.armageddon.org is the best MUD I've ever played. permanent death and a pretty thorough character application process though! the entire game experience is supposed to be roleplayed realistically, so you can get some decent storytelling opportunities, but there's a lot of action to it too.
I have to disagree with Richard's initial comment; if you can't find an MMO you fall in love with after your first MMO, you aren't looking around hard enough... I missed UO's heyday, but I loved Dark Age of Camelot's RVR, and EVE Online's permanence and Darkfall brings them all together in a pretty entertaining way.
Posted Jan 20, 2010 3:07:59 PM | link
Excuse the pimping, but Echo Bazaar *might* scratch some of your itches. We do the humour, we do the exploration, we do the new stories, we fold player contributions back into the world, we do OK on the social front. We're a casual game, we're very beta and we're trying to step away from the grind ladder, but I don't think there's anything else quite like us out there at the mo.
We're at
and here's an Escapist interview which gives a quick summary:
Posted Feb 8, 2010 11:03:14 AM | link
