The Wisdom of Crowds, MMOG-style

I've been reaching for a while for organizing metaphors to help me describe the relationship between developers and players in persistent-world massively multiplayer games. While thinking about developers as the rulers of a virtual state and players as their subjects or citizens is useful, it's also important to think about this as a mass medium and the players as an audience. This sounds more straightforward. But there's a very deep scholarly literature, particularly coming from cultural studies, about audiences in popular culture. With his book Textual Poachers, Henry Jenkins initiated what is now a commonplace insight in this kind of writing, that audiences for contemporary mass media are far more active and creative in their relationship to what they watch, hear and read than the old, tired portrayal of them as passive and disempowered. From that perspective, there's still something really amazingly different about the players of MMOGs. Via online forums, they're much more deeply involved in the nitty-gritty labor of managing and developing the mass media that they consume.

More importantly from the perspective of academics with an interest in the genre, players often function as experts whose understanding of the larger issues raised by particular games is deep, intellectually ambitious, and often resting on some fairly well-realized theories of gameplay, online sociality, and virtual-world design. I'm always surprised and frankly annoyed when I see developers who express passive-aggressive distaste for their own forums. It's true that all such forums are loaded with semi-literate trollage, astonishingly crude and unfair attacks on developers, and so on. But I don't find it that difficult to cherry-pick richly rewarding postings about a given MMOG from its forums.

Sometimes those useful posts just provision information about what's wrong (or right) with a given game, or provide good qualitative data about player behavior and culture within a given game. But often they also give voice to particular interpretations or understandings of MMOGs and their significance that I find very valuable--often ideas and observations that closely shadow and sometimes improve upon the arguments and findings of academics working on MMOGs. This really seems novel to me in the context of audience relationships to mass media: here we have an audience which in many cases has a very well-worked out expert understanding of the medium they're drawn to, and which is engaged in very intricate communication with those who produce that medium in a way that has a very measurable effect on the product itself.

Let me give this some focus by pointing readers to this thread on the World of Warcraft forums. The original poster, a character named Joowanna, offers a somewhat hyperbolic characterization of Blizzard as having been a "player's company" that has lost its touch. But note the way that the poster makes a development issue into a moral question, which has a certain rhetorical punch. More to the point, the post makes a fairly tight, terse argument that reprises a very deep ongoing conversation that goes all the way back to the earliest MUDs.

The issue behind the posting is that a World of Warcraft guild recently was punished by the live management team for "exploiting" a powerful endgame boss in an area called the Molten Core. Some of the details can be found in this thread. The first time the guild used line-of-sight issues in this area to split the boss from his companions; the second time they used a significantly different trick in terms of game mechanics. From the perspective of WoW's developers, the second time was morally or effectively the same, still an "exploit".

If you read through both threads, you find that Blizzard representatives justify this view in an interesting variety of ways. One is abstract: that the content represented by the particular boss is not meant to be experienced by itself, that players are meant to have to fight the boss at the same time as his companions, and therefore that anything which separates the boss from his companions is an exploit, as this is not intended by the developers. This understandably fills most players with anxiety as the vast majority of MMOG combat in WoW or any other game involves trying to "pull" or disaggregate groups of enemies and handle them in easily defeated clumps. But beyond that immediate concern (will I be punished for normal practice?) you can sense there is a deeper philosophical contest of wills here. Who determines how a game is to be played? What separates clever insights by players about the nature of the game's underlying programming from an "exploit"? Against what are we playing: a boss monster, the underlying programming of the game, or the developers themselves?

Blizzard representatives, especially in the thread by Joowanna, also offer a practical justification. An exploit is defined in this case as a tactic which permits overly rapid harvesting of economic resources with a consequent impact on the gameworld economy. It's easy to see what Blizzard's concern here is, as many MMOGs have experienced drastic forms of mudflation and other dislocations when players discover methods for dramatically accelerating intended rates of resource accumulation. But here too there is an interesting philosophical question, and it's one where I think the players by and large have it right. The entire design of WoW, like almost all persistent-world games, fundamentally mandates that players be driven by accumulative activities. Asking players not to act that way--and punishing them for doing so--is rather like the God of Genesis giving Adam and Eve insatiable curiosity, putting an apple in view, and telling them not to eat it under penalty of expulsion from Eden.

My Terra Nova colleagues will doubtless observe that these are deeply familiar, well-trodden discussions, and so they are, all the more so for those of us who've been at it since the prebiotic soup days of MUDding. *cough* Richard. But I continue to be impressed at the collective insight of players themselves about these perennial problems, and the sharpness of the challenge they provide to developers. Many MMOG developers may say they understand and appreciate "emergent behavior" by players, but for all their experience and skills, still often seem flat-footed and ill at ease when confronted by it--even when such behavior is a predictable consequence of the social and economic foundations they've built into their games.

Comments

[Lee Sheldon]

1.

I know I'm going to come off as a reactionary here, but...

I have no issue at all with the audience, our players, being able to communicate in far more direct, and producer-acceptable ways, than other media. What worries me instensely is how much we interact with them; how much we let them know we're listening to them; and how direct the link is between complaint and "fix."

I've seen a vocal online minority overwhelm developers with complaints and suggestions, so that the developers steal vital working hours from their days to respond. These posters have come to assume a right to be--not just heard--but responded to, and if they believe they're being ignored, the posts grow more vituperative.

Then there is the case where developers seem all too eager to toss aside designs they supposedly believed in after a few complaints. Of course we make mistakes and hopefully learn from them; of course there is always good to be gleaned from anyone who knows your product down to its very seams. When I took over as the head writer of Edge of Night I found the detailed focus groups run by Procter & Gamble fascinating and informative. Up to a point. I never engaged in one-on-one dialogue with any of the focus testers.

It is a rare audience member indeed who has the knowledge, the desire, and the ability to tackle the creative process necessary to produce viable change.

In other media audiences are, if not content, at least realistic about their ability to directly affect change. In MMOs the online posters are pampered and coddled way out of proportion to their actual worth. Learn from them? Yes. Bow to them? Never.

[greglas]

2.

Tim> Blizzard representatives, especially in the thread by Joowanna, also offer a practical justification. An exploit is defined in this case as a tactic which permits overly rapid harvesting of economic resources with a consequent impact on the gameworld economy.

What is "overly rapid" though? I asked Raph to define exploit a couple years ago. I'm not sure if he didn't hear me or maybe he thought it was a rhetorical question -- but I know that there have been and there still are plenty of conversations over this issue between designers and players. Any good links to extended essays (or MUD-Dev threads) would be appreciated.

My 2 cents: I would think that an exploit occurs at the moment when the reasonable player would say: 1) the designer could not have possibly intended the task to be solved in this way, and 2) the designer would be displeased with the way I have managed to solve the task. #1 is not always bad -- having thousands of players means that someone will always solve a task with an unanticipated and more efficient method. So I think #2 is essential -- the player thinks "I'm not just being clever here and making this work well for me, I'm being *too* clever and making this work *too* well for me." Obviously, various players will have various intuitions about when they are crossing that line. TL has written about power gaming as an MMORPG play style that is derided because it does focus so much on finding the most efficient paths to success.

[That Chip Guy]

3.

Of course, ask those posters if they feel like they're being pampered and coddled, and they'll likely respond with an expletive.

I don't doubt that there's a lot of emergent wisdom on the boards. Having participated on the STAR WARS GALAXIES boards, however, however, I've also seen a real mob mentality at work as well as the ascendancy of special interests (such as the self-identified PvP proponents, disproportionately active compared to PvE enthusiasts).

With all of the pitfalls described by Clay Shirky almost two years ago still fully in effect, I see "the boards" as a limited, flawed institution that, due to completely voluntary participation, imperfectly reflects the desires and interests of the playerbase. Kind of like voting in the US. There's good stuff in those posts, but the amount of vitriol, hyperbole and noxiousness you have to slog through to get to it just really leaves me hating people.

[Richard Bartle]

4.

Timothy Burke>I continue to be impressed at the collective insight of players themselves about these perennial problems, and the sharpness of the challenge they provide to developers

10% of what players say is the kind of insightful, imaginative, pertinent information that designers want. The other 90% isn't. Unfortunately, every player thinks their suggestions are in the 10% rather than the 90%.

I'm with Lee Sheldon here. Player opinion is a data stream that designers should respect and consider, but that's all it is. The day that players dictate, rather than inform, a designer's actions is the day that a virtual world loses its soul.

Richard

[Jimpy]

5.

As an avid WOWer, and having followed the ConQuest situation with mild interest (admittedly only because I use the cesspool-like forums as a way to get a WOW-fix while at work), I'm not sure I agree that any anxiety on the part of the part of players is understandable. In fact, I felt that it was mostly being falsely alleged as a rhetorical tool than honestly felt.

I agree that accumlation drives player behavior, but I wouldn't call that a justification for behavior like duping or botting. Yet duping and botting are, in essence, nothing more than "content skipping:" Rather than face the monster to get another Stone of Jordan, you just create one.

ConQuest's finding holes in the code to trivialize dungeons is more time consuming that pure duping, but achieves the same outcome - a huge reduction in the "cost" of accumulation. Common sense should tell any player that if the developers take the time to create an entire dungeon, complete with mini-bosses, wandering patrols and a detailed map with a linear path to a final boss, it is highly unlikely that they intentionally provided a method of skipping all but the last element of their creation. Anyone who claims anxiety over not understanding the difference between "using strategy to split a pull" and finding a method of skipping 95% of the occupents of an essentially linear dungeon is, I think, protesting too much.

All of which leads me to ask (and forgive a 'noob' if this is part of the well-trodden discussions to which you refer) why isn't the goal to make the relationship between players and developers more collaberative? Many players (at least board posters) seem obsessed with the competitive nature of the relationship - are designers entitled to make me play a certain way? Can I 'beat' the game? Frankly, if I were a designer I would ignore that entire segment as much as possible. They are not on my side. I would much rather hear from allies - the tiny minority that present well-reasoned arguments backed by data to provide insights to help the designers make a better game. Personally, I don't want to 'beat' the devs - I want to give them the tools to enhance my enjoyment of their product.

You suggest the mass media/audience relationship as an important descriptor, and I agree. But audiences of other forms of media also have their lunatic fringe that should be ignored.

Personally, I love the idea of an audience giving feedback to the storyteller to create a better and more enjoyable world. I almost imagine an author stopping between chapters to ask the reader, "how do you like it so far?"

But the people claiming anxiety over (and justification for) ConQuests actions strike me more as the reader who demands the author just "skip to the last page" so he can be the first to know whodunnit. Unhelpful to the creative process and unsympathetic to those of us who are enjoying the full text.

[greglas]

6.

Jimpy> But the people claiming anxiety over (and justification for) ConQuests actions strike me more as the reader who demands the author just "skip to the last page" so he can be the first to know whodunnit. Unhelpful to the creative process and unsympathetic to those of us who are enjoying the full text.

If only the MMORPG were a book. Then one person could skip to the last page of her book, the author wouldn't care, and ot wouldn't have any effect on the other person who bought a different copy and wanted to read sequentially. But it isn't a book, it's a game, and a social game at that, so the way other people "read" becomes important to both the designers and the other players.

[yabonn]

7.

This reminds me my bro in EQ : swarm kiter extraordinaire, found tricks to pull trough walls, slayed epic quest mobs with only a duo team, all kinds of things. Not an once of greed in all that, nor any kind of annoyment for other players : it was just for the kick of it. I like to think that's why he never had a problem about this.

This may be the way to go : leave the "what is allowed/exploit" question hanging, and approach each problem of this kind through the simpler "is it content skipping/annoying for others/unbalancing/unintended etc".

That, and some wariness about the player boards internal dynamics, maybe.

[Dave Rickey]

8.

Fix the game, not the players. Every online game operator needs to print that on signs and paste them all over the office. If neccessary, tattoo it in reverse on their foreheads so they see it every time they look in the mirror.

"Exploits" are the *designers* error, not the players. Fix them. No excuses. If you can't fix them and the "exploit" is severe in consequence, turn off the relevant content until you *can* fix it.

This refers specifically to where the players manipulate the game systems using only the tools provided to them by the game. If they are using packet sniffers, file hacks, or kernel mode debuggers, then the rule is "Search and destroy".

--Dave (the players may indeed be "broken". But they pay us)

[dmyers]

9.

Richard >>> I'm with Lee Sheldon here. Player opinion is a data stream that designers should respect and consider, but that's all it is.

***

Crowds are not wise; on this we can agree. But crowds are both widely and incorrigibly plotless, which may be far better, at this moment in our aesthetic evolution, than wise could ever be.

No doubt, crowdly advice about narratives cannot provide the vision, direction, or singular point of view required. And this is most of all true of the most narratively of all: the plot.

Soap operas, for instance. Plot is really the only item kept sacrosanct and hidden inside the head writers’ walls, where it is reserved for the highest of the high-end head-writering. Any hack can write the dialog, and any actor – we are talking ACTORS here – can bring a character to the table. But plot is different; plot is vision and control and such. Plot is design.

Likewise in Richard’s favored Hero’s Quest. That’s pretty much all about plot, isn’t it? And plot is design and crowd is not – most definitely not if we are talking about design as literature and narrative and soap opera and space opera and MUD-text and all those twisty little passages.

But, equally definitely, crowd IS play. And one (mostly me, I guess) wonders if the crowd is not therefore the whole point – even moreso than the design.

Now, let’s be clear: You can’t listen to what the crowd SAYS. After all, the crowd can barely spell. But, oh, what the crowd DOES.

Authors/artists/creators wish to retain control. I can understand that. Head writers desire authorship of their plots. Game designers desire authorship of their quests. Marvel desires authorship of their Wolverines. Perfectly understandable.

But what play (aided and abetted by crowd) demonstrates, is that authorship is trivial. And those things that require, demand, or are defined by authorial authority – plots, for instance – within play become inconsequential. Or, same thing really, exploited.

After all, this crowd play stuff may really and actually be emergent behavior -- rather than just some heavy-duty, super-duper advanced form of, say, a consumer data stream.

[Bruce Woodcock]

10.

Is there any room in this debate for someone to take the middle position?

I'm not going to defend exploits to the extent that I think players should be able to do nearly anything and not get punished. I'm sorry, but if you stand on a hill that the monster can't get up, and you rain arrows down on it until it dies, and get lots of experience this way, killing monsters many times your level that otherwise you wouldn't "normally" be able to kill in a straight-up fight, that's an "exploit" and you should know better. Yes, the developers could and should code up better pathing AI and/or detect when this happens and not give you experience for it (AC2 did the latter), but this is something that players doing it should "know" it is wrong.

But on the other hand, you can't just declare that every time a player defeats an obstacle in a way the developer didn't intend, it's an exploit. This is a reactionary, defensive stance that frustrates both developer and player. I think the operative question -- does the tactic being used still allow for a "fair" fight, or is it being used to access content that's not level-appropriate for the player to be accessing?

In the specific WoW case in question, the developers seem to have simply gone too far. Their basic argument is that any player who is supposed to kill boss mob X is "supposed" to also fight associated mobs Y and Z to get to it.

But this flies in the face of not only just about every other MMOG out there, but WoW's own internal mechanics. Players have been trained by many games to fight larger groups of mobs by splitting them off individually and taking them out one by one. What else are mezzes and roots for, if not to isolate and render harmless some of the defending monsters? I can't tell you the number of times I've done this in MMOGs. To declare now that splitting of mobs from their groups is not an acceptable game mechanic is to violate many players' preconceptions.

In WoW's case, what's actually happening is that a boss is getting split from his guards, and when the guards lose aggro, they wander back to their original spawn point... far away from where the boss is now, and thus unable to know to help him. This can easily be addressed by the developers if they choose by allowing the boss to summon them, or having them return to the boss rather than their origin, or so on.

Moreover, this is a "bug" that can accidentally become an "exploit" solely outside the player's control. For example, if I charge right in with a group, and some guys fight the boss and the others fight the guards, and they kill the guards, then the other guys kill the boss, there's no exploit. But if even unintentionally the people fighting the guards die, and the guards wander back home without helping the boss, suddenly the same tactic becomes exploitative.

And in WoW's case, were we talking about a group of lowbies trying to "unfairly" take out a high-level boss they would not otherwise be able to? No, not at all; everything I've seen suggests it was level-appropriate content. They just used a tactic that allowed them to get at the boss more easily because of time constraints. That's hardly a sin! On the other hand, perhaps the developers were never even consulted about whether or not the players were doing something "okay", and the GMs simply were overzealous in their application of policy.

To me this is really a symptom of "power corrupts" and the fact that WoW's admins are overwhelmed. They don't have TIME to address this issue the right way, nor is their any incentive for them to do so. They have hundreds of thousands of subscribers; what do they care if they lose a few thousand who were doing something they didn't expect? Far easier to eliminate them in a Stalinizing fashion, and scare anyone else from attempting the same behavior, than to actually address the root cause of the problem. When you weild absolute power, the path of least resistance often involves running someone else over.

Bruce

[magicback]

11.

Bruce> When you weild absolute power, the path of least resistance often involves running someone else over.

True, but running over someone with access to internet that potentially can reach millions is a bad idea. If a tree falls in the internet forest, everyone may hear. This is something we all have to consider.

Frank

[Adam Miller]

12.

Tax to inhibit, subsidize to promote:

Give people tangible in-game rewards for reporting exploitable bugs or exploiters.

Let them choose something from "God's Prize Closet" or whatever. Maybe it could be special or unique items, money, permanent structures, free levels, etc. The more flashy the rewards, the better. In any case, these would be rewards that you have carefully pre-chosen based on their calculated impact to the game world. Doing this, you've essentially contained the damage of unknown exploits in the wild to a handful of things you get to choose ahead of time.

Additionally, exploiters are in your corner for a change. They are dilligently documenting the problems, rather than using them. This solution captures the essense of what motivates some of these people to exploit in the first place: "I found it first!" and "I get something out of it."

Nothing I can think of will get you off the hook for fixing these exploitable bugs as soon as possible, though. I predict you would recieve a heavy stream of bug reports that probably come in faster than you can fix them. But, it's a better situation than the alternative. There is also a built-in exploit communication inhibitor, since they don't want someone else getting their reward for reporting the bug. They tend to keep it secret from other people, except you.

[Alex]

13.

I have generally been impressed by how the developers of City of Heroes manage the exploit situation.

In general, exploits are fixed in the code. The developers will explain that game changes were made because the game was being played in a way that did not reflect how they had designed it. Nobody is penalized. As a result, the transition passes as smoothly as possible without (justified, I believe) reaction from the player base.

I would also like to point out the effort that Cryptic have put into training the online forums. They only reply to sincere and honest postings, apologize when they are wrong and sometimes engage in constructive conversation where appropriate. As a result there is a definite "professionalism" to the game's boards, whereby issues are discussed and solved in a very mutually supportive fashion. Frankly, only rarely do the developers have to defend themselves for any one decision since the decision often belongs to the collective.

I'd like argue that forums are a resource and a blessing to any developer. They let you know who your customers are, and what they want. The MMRPG is not a product to be delivered once and then topped up with updates. It is a service, where there is a constant relationship with the client that needs to be managed appropriately. Banning someone can be seen as a complete breakdown in communication - and thus a situation from which the service provider, and *not* the consumer, should be the first to learn.

[Richard Bartle]

14.

Dave Rickey>"Exploits" are the *designers* error, not the players. Fix them. No excuses. If you can't fix them and the "exploit" is severe in consequence, turn off the relevant content until you *can* fix it.

I agree, although I don't think it's unreasonable for the designers to ban an activity once it has come to their attention, to give them time to fix it. Sometimes, an exploit is too broad to be isolated.

Example: if there's a dupe bug that arises when players cross zone boundaries in a certain way, the designers must try to fix it. However, they can't stop all travel between zones while they're fixing it, because this would have a more detrimental effect on the player base than the problem it addresses. A reasonable compromise would be to say, "OK, now we know about this practice we're banning it while we fix it".

I also don't feel it's unreasonable to include explicit definitions of harmful exploits in the terms of service. "We've created this product in the belief that it's impossible to use its in-game money in such a way that it can be used to create more money without any risk of loss. If you find a way to do this, let us know: we'll give the first player to do so a bug-finding reward of $200. If you decide not to let us know, then when we discover you've used the bug we'll cancel your account, delete any associated in-game data, and tell our smart lawyers to hassle you with a criminal damage suit".

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

15.

dmyers>But what play (aided and abetted by crowd) demonstrates, is that authorship is trivial. And those things that require, demand, or are defined by authorial authority – plots, for instance – within play become inconsequential.

Authorship within play, yes; authorship of play, no!

Virtual world design isn't the authoring of plots and quests and activities, it's the authoring of structures and spaces and frameworks, both social and worldly. Within these, players have the freedom to play. The designer creates the playground, the players create the play - but always confined by the designer's design.

The aim of virtual world design is to restrict players' freedoms just enough that the resulting context makes for fun. This is not something that is trivial or inconsequential.

Richard

[Jessica Mulligan]

16.

Sometimes, it seems like we have to go through this discussion every time a major MMO is launched. Aside from the discussions of what is and isn't an exploit and how to handle them (and I tend to agree with Dave: Fix the game, not the player):

As a developer, you really have no choice but to be intimately involved in your own forums. They are a huge opportunity to find out what the most motivated of your players are thinking. You can't just read, though; you have dig a little and interact to make sure you know what the true motivations are in the case at hand.

Yes, there are special interests and extremely vocal minorities among the players and many who think that their idea or opinion is *the* one that will save the game/fix the game/make the game perfect/what have you. There are also players for whom your forums are the 'game outside the game,' where torturing the developers is part of the daily ritual. Any reasonable and responsible community relations person or developer can figure out the differences and weed out the wheat from the chaff. For that matter, most of your players know the difference, too, though some developers tend to treat them that way. They players aren't dumb; they know you aren't going to change the entire direction of your game based solely on forum posts, because they know less than 15% of your players will ever post. However, the collective intelligence of the player base is far greater than yours and they have a lot more time to play your game than you do; they may well know before you do - and generally *do* - where the bodies are buried. They will also be mistaken or misinterpret issues or your intentions, but they won't know that unless you engage in a dialogue with them.

This is treasure beyond price. Some developers fail to see this because their own players scare them or tick them off: "How dare they say that? Don't they know how hard we work and how much we care???" Well, no, they don't, not unless someone is out there in the trenches relating to them. What more often happens is a withdrawl from communicating with the players ("Those guys just refuse to pleased, so f*** 'em.") and so begins the spiral downward.

The key here is this: The forums and your web site as a whole are your best tools for properly managing the expectations of the players. If you don't respond at all or with enough content to give them an idea of what you are thinking or where you plan to go ahead of time, they will develop unreasonable expectations. Simple as that. You don't have to turn over your development process to them. You would be wise, however, to discuss your thoughts out loud to give these subject matter experts a chance to point out the weaknesses and strengths, because you've probably missed something.

As I tell my own people from time to time:

Your interactions with a community are a karma bank. Build up enough good karma and the community will stick it out with you during the bad times, such as when you make a boneheaded blunder or have to take some unpopular action. Don't build up that karma and you can expect wild speculation, unreasonable expectations and to have your good intentions questioned at every turn.

[dmyers]

17.

As to the notion of whether authorship within play is inconsequential/trivial, Richard sez:

Authorship within play, yes; authorship of play, no!

***

Perfectly understandable.

But when thinking of the game designer who designs the game and then claims authorship of its play, I think of the novelist who writes the novel and then claims authorship of its reading. Or the chef who cooks the meal and then claims authorship of its digestion.

Or the father (or the mother) who claims authorship of the child.

Here, the concept of authorship begins to become a bit stretched -- especially as regards play, which seems most fundamentally unbound and unbindable (e. g., the dark, the grief, the exploit), and, thus, in the sense of the above, unauthored and unauthorable.

After all, if the authoring of structures and spaces and frameworks really is just to “restrict player’s freedoms,” then that authoring is really no different from the authoring of plots and quests and activities, is it?

But now: what if these two – the structuring of the plot and the structuring of the structure (or “playground”) -- WERE different?

That is, what if some virtual structuring or spacing or framing were to restrict players’ freedoms just enough to justify a claim of authorship of play? Or, similarly, what if some genetic engineering (i. e., some biological structuring or spacing or framing) were to restrict an organism’s reproductive “freedoms” just enough to justify a claim of authorship of the child?

Good thing or bad thing?

***

In City of Heroes, there was this winter lord/winter event thing where the designers created some monsters that could be killed very quickly for mucho experience points and, essentially, power-level your character past probably a good third of the game plot, content, and design. This was a design fiasco from my point of view. A sort of designer-imposed exploit, a shooting of the foot.

But a helluva lot of fun, actually. Increased the server populations significantly. And dominated forum discussions for some time.

Now to fix such a thing, I guess you just don’t design monsters like that. Which is okay. But, if you really believe in the authorship of play, then perhaps you also believe that you can fix such a thing by changing how players play.

Perhaps you believe, for instance, that by carefully defining what an “exploit” is and by making sure that there are structures and frameworks and forums and guilds and player feedeback channels providing consumer data streams constantly being monitored by sophisticated marketing management teams, then you can design a game and restrict players’ play just enough that the crowd will play precisely how the crowd is “supposed” to play.

Good idea or bad idea?

I’m thinking bad.

[Dave Rickey]

18.

Dupe Bugs tend to be the exception that proves the rule. Where most other "exploits" can be hard to separate from smart game play, turning a stack of gold into two stacks the same size (or anything else getting duplicated) is so obviously not an intended form of gameplay that it can be treated as a bannable offense without a lot of arguments.

--Dave

[Mike Sellers]

19.

One thought that occurs to me is that 'exploits' occur in different aspects or dimensions of the game.

There's the technical dimension - using some bug or system tech to your advantage as in a dupe bug. That's pretty easy to highlight as an exploit. Sure you need to fix the bug, but anyone who knowingly makes use of it is risking suspension or banning.

There's the social dimension, where for example people ("griefers") use the tech or the game systems to negatively affect other people. Such players claim they're just using the rules the designers set up, but sometimes fail to see the game operator's need to not allow some to maximize their play value by explicitly minimizing others'. This isn't as clear-cut as a tech exploit, but in terms of keeping the service running responding to this with warnings, suspensions, or bannings is often an easy decision on the operator's part.

And then, weakest of all, there's a design dimension, which is what "you're not playing as intended" I think typically speaks to. If there's a monster that has a fatal design flaw and drops phat lewt, are the players really wrong for "exploiting" its (say) extreme vulnerability to fireballs? Or as in the WoW case, if a big boss can be easily separated from minions and hit with LOS attacks, are the players wrong for playing intelligently and taking advantage of this?

While I think it's within the rights of the developers to say "oops, that's not what we intended" and to apply a fix to the game (no doubt over the howls of the 1% vocal minority complaining about the game being gimped), I don't see the players who do take advantage of this (until it's fixed) as taking advantage of an exploit. Take the boss out of play if necessary; but slamming players for playing the game (note, not the tech or the social landscape) effectively just seems counter-productive to the goal of having customers who maintain a sense of personal success and satisfaction within the game.

[Stephen Routledge]

20.

Jimpy>All of which leads me to ask (and forgive a 'noob' if this is part of the well-trodden discussions to which you refer) why isn't the goal to make the relationship between players and developers more collaberative?

I've always considered that an "unwritten" relationship existed between designers and high end achiever players. The achievers get to experience content first and potentially get a few easy items by using their vast experience and sheer bloody mindedness to test/consume the content in many different ways that the average player could not possibly envisage. The developers watch this and fix as appropriate. You very often hear about the problems that high end content has initially (horrible risk/reward, game breaking bugs and so on) which are all usually ironed out by the time your average player gets around to consuming it thanks to the extensive testing that the achiever players gave it. The designers get a nicely balanced, finely tuned and bug free encounter that can be experience by 90% of the population while the achievers occasionally get small rewards in the form of easy items or kills using loop holes that are summarily removed.

[Richard Bartle]

21.

dmyers>But when thinking of the game designer who designs the game and then claims authorship of its play, I think of the novelist who writes the novel and then claims authorship of its reading.

This is a nurture/nature thing. For a virtual world, a designer provides the nature and the players provide the nurture. The designer can claim authorship of the nature, and can legitimately say that through said authorship they influence the players' authorship of the nature, but they can't claim to author the nature (well, they can claim it, but it wouldn't be a virtual world if that claim were well-founded).

>play, which seems most fundamentally unbound and unbindable

It's bindable. In the real world, you're bound by the physical universe: no matter what you do, you can't be in two places at the same time, for example. You couldn't therefore play tennis with yourself, just a modified version of it (whacking balls against a wall, say).

It's bindable in virtual worlds, too. You can only play with the rules, pieces and players to which the virtual world gives you access.

>if the authoring of structures and spaces and frameworks really is just to “restrict player’s freedoms,” then that authoring is really no different from the authoring of plots and quests and activities, is it?

It's not just to "restrict players' freedoms", it's to "restrict players' freedoms such that they gain greater freedoms as a result". It's different from authoring plots and quests and activities because those all take place within the context of the virtual world; authoring the context is not the same as authoring what goes on within that context.

>what if some virtual structuring or spacing or framing were to restrict players’ freedoms just enough to justify a claim of authorship of play?

You wouldn't have a virtual world, you'd have a virtual theatre.

>Perhaps you believe ... you can design a game and restrict players’ play just enough that the crowd will play precisely how the crowd is “supposed” to play.

That is something I believe, but for me "supposed to play" is "having the freedom to become who they are", or in layman's terms, "having fun". It's not some exercise in mind control: quite the opposite, in fact.

>Good idea or bad idea?
>I’m thinking bad.

It depends what "supposed to" means. You clearly have your own idea of how a crowd is "supposed to" behave, even if that comes down to "doing whatever the hell they want". Would a virtual world designed to uphold your view of how people are "supposed to" behave be a good thing or a bad thing?

Richard

[Adam Miller]

22.

Some quotes from dmyers:
"...designers created some monsters that could be killed very quickly for mucho experience points..."
"...This was a design fiasco from my point of view..."
"But a helluva lot of fun, actually. Increased the server populations significantly. And dominated forum discussions for some time."

That sounds like a huge success to me. Who cares if they skip some content if they had so much fun and excitement? I think the focus is too much on how the player is "supposed" to play.

In an effort to legitimize virtual worlds (and careers based on them) and trying to avoid calling them games, let's not suck the life, fun, and excitement out of the whole thing. I see virtual worlds as firmly planted in the entertainment industry, which makes them games/diversions, which are supposed to be fun and exciting. This is a multi-billion dollar industry and as a result, people's careers are already legitimized by default. To me a virtual world with no "game" elements is just a database with a grpahical viewer. But I disgress from the topic...

I like Raph's theme park concept in MMORPGs, but I go further and say that the MMORPG IS a theme park itself (pardon me if I take too many liberties with your analogy here). Customer pays at the door, then there are tons of activities available. They can ride a rollercoaster, take a break and have lunch, then go see the water show, sit in the plaza and talk to friends, and then play in the arcade. Should you care about the order in which they do things? If you've built alot of content that requires things done in a certain order, then those might be design mistakes. Many long and linear quests/content doesn't sound like open-ended gameplay to me. Are you creating a book/movie rather than a game?

As a player, I don't like to be corralled through content. I want to play on my own terms and I want to be able to progress my avatar by doing activities in any order I choose. I expect to encounter some restictions, but they should be few and far between, and I expect most of those to be technology restrictions. Remember that I don't buy a game subscription based on what you DON'T let me do. In a real-life theme park, I expect there to be some attractions where I sit in the car, the lap-bar comes down, and I ride through the thing in a certain order like everyone else. But if you notice, most of those rides only last a few minutes. If you lock me in to something, keep it very short.

Epic quests and other such long-running quests can be lame from a player perspective. The reward you need to give me at the end to make up for what you put me through is going to be game unbalancing anyways, so just skip it all together!

By the way, ever notice how people take screenshots in game of interesting sights and events? That reminds me of taking photos at a theme park. We take photos of interesting sights and events. Maybe we need to have more of those in MMORPGs. For example, I think it would be really neat to see a parade of summersaulting mutant dwarves through the town square. There is not much for a player to do in such an event, but some of the fun in these games is just being there when something interesting happens. Like when a spawn goes wrong and there are hundreds of the same mob running around town. Sometimes the most interesting things are those unexpected events. I think it is a lot of fun walk out of the world geometry in WoW and explore the lands that I assume have been set aside for future expansion. There is nothing there but empty hills, plains, and holes, but somehow it is alot of fun just to see it. there are neat places where three colors of terrain meet in one spot. It's just neat "stuff". I took lots of screenshots by the way. :-)

The "proper design and control vs. fun" concept reminds me of the car business, where folks get so uptight about design, mileage, reliability and they forget that half the car buying decisions are based on emotions and perception of fun. Like when my wife bought a piece of junk new Jeep Wrangler. I believe it's common knowledge there are more reliable cars available, but she bought it because she liked the color, it had a drop-top, big knobby tires, and looked like a lot of fun to drive. We as humans are a hopelessly emotional bunch and it sells. I'm comfortable with it, can more VW designers become comfortable with it, too?

[Iamblichos]

23.

> I've seen a vocal online minority overwhelm
> developers with complaints and suggestions, so
> that the developers steal vital working hours
> from their days to respond. These posters have
> come to assume a right to be--not just heard-
> but responded to, and if they believe they're
> being ignored, the posts grow more vituperative.

Those of us who remember the old days with Turbine can definitely relate to this. :-) I've seen the same progression in the WoW forums. It only takes a few screamers with lots of free time to make a relatively inconsequential issue seem like the Apocalypse.

It seems that the primary complaints of everyone on every game's forum relate to communication. How much is needed, how much is too much, why weren't players told X, or if they were why weren't they told sooner/in a better fashion/in a post in all caps at login, etc. As a WoW player, I feel like Blizzard has definitely come up with an enjoyable game. As a reader of the boards and a person who takes an active interest in following the latest "word from Olympos", I think Blizzard has dropped the ball badly. (Nota bene: I'm using Blizzard as an example, but they are far from the only company to try this.)

Blizzard's MMO dept. seems to be operating under the single-player mentality, where changes, patches, nerfs etc. are not as noticeable. Instead, every time they change something, thousands of people notice and dozens test it exhaustively and report it (often profanely) on the boards. The time when changes went unnoticed is over, but Blizzard seems to be stuck in the "what players don't know won't hurt them" mindset. This may very well be true... but the problem is, now we all know every time a change is made. When they deny or obfuscate the issue, they are proven wrong by comprehensive testing by the dedicated player base. What this leads to is lost faith in Blizzard every time they are caught with egg on their faces, which leads to even more distrust, more testing, etc.

A classic example of this is the recent "stealth nerf" of imp hp. The warlock is one of the more popular classes in the game. A 40% reduction in one pet's hp might go unnoticed in a single player game - maybe. To do such a thing to a class played by tens of thousands of people and then deny any knowledge of it is ludicrous.

If this company were to release a statement saying "We did X for reasons of game balance", that would settle many of the complaints. It says that a) the change was intended, that b) a developer thought it was a good idea, and that c) it was presumably factored into the ongoing game balance. Discussion can then ensue as to whether or not it was a good idea, but at least it's a known quantity. With the current lack of communication and stonewalling, noone knows if it was intentional or not, and it makes the company look incompetent at best, duplicitous at worst. Once the player loses faith in the gaming company, they will generally leave, which results in loss of revenue over time.

[online pharmacy]

24.

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