Lost in s-Space

Why don’t we add more social software features to MMOs?

A comment that Betsy made on the v-Space thread got me thinking about MMOs as social software. As this seemed divergent form the point of the thread I thought I would start a new one.

This is what Betsy said:

I am only interested in maps insofar as they can tell me where other people are and where the big events of the day are happening.

I wonder if MMOs can learn from social worlds (or more usefully social software) in this regard. MMOs -are- a form of social software but maybe there are things that they could do within the information space to help.

In fact even social worlds might learn from social software. Second Life has its clubs and groups but the kind of social network information space provided by the likes of Orkut or Linked-in would be handy.

But would the addition of this soft of information be a welcome or useful addition to a traditional MMO? For example one could optionally include social meta-data to one’s character profile and optionally have this information displayed.

Would the ability to see near by explorers, or people in the IT industry, or sociologists or US singles interested in Star Trek and puppies be a positive feature in an MMO? Or would it be a really annoying distraction for 99% of players or worse fodder for griefers?

Is this one of the keys to the holy grail of mainstreaming? Make the game element of a MMO just that, an element of the online experience?

Comments

[Alice]

1.

Well said, that man!

Equally, why don't social networks use more MMOG-y type interaction? They're usually so *flat*...

But yes, I think any game that pulls in socsoft style networks, real email/connections and puts its feelers out into the 'real world' will pull in more players to its virtual world. SWG has an intensely detailed player-matching system built in, with interests and blood type (!) and hobbies.. but it's entirely self-contained.

Multiplayer games ARE social software, better still to make them sociable software: interoperable with other systems.
x

[Raph]

2.

Nobody uses the SWG player matching system, btw. It was inspired by Lovegety. Blood type was there because apparently in Japan it serves the same purpose as astrological sign does in the West.

One of the things that muds used to have that today's games don't was user-settable title strings that showed after your name when you did a WHO.

They looked like this:

[47] Fred has set a custom title on his name
[12] Sarai has had a bad day
[35] Lady Alahn kills orcs orcs orcs
[46] Bilbo just got married to Sarai

...and so on. Stuff like the Lady prefix was earned, but the rest of it was user-settable at any time, and players used it as a freeform cue to others.

But in the big games, WHO is a much less useful command, since you cannot survey the space as easily. Instead, you have all these means of searching instead.

As with Amazon and many other retailers on the Net, the result is a distinction between searching and browsing. Browsing leads to wonderful accidents; searching lets you find things easily. For sociability, you really need both.

That's the interesting thing about the YASNS* to me, that they're a way of browsing things that are just beyond my immediate horizon of view. Friends of friends, basically. Where they fail is that they eventually turn into plain old contact managers, which is not useful.

-Raph

*YASN = Yet Another Social Network

[magicback]

3.

Hmm, I think when nthe social factor of an MMO-game becomes greater than the game factor, it ceases to be a MMO-game and become a MMO-lounge.

We already have much discussion about the trend away from MMO-worlds towards MMO-games.

Now, Raph previously cited 'gamey VWs attached to worldy VWs' can now be modified as social VWs holding various worldy VWs holding various gamey VWs :)

The YANSN tools sit on the 1st layer, the navigation tools sit on the 2nd layer, and game augmentation tools sit on the 3rd layer.

Are there more layers?

[Thabor]

4.

There are always more layers. From my perspective though I don't want additional connections to my gamey VWs.

Having people search me out in game, or from another system entirely is about as unappealing as in game telemarketing would be . And as immerssion breaking as having to answer the phone during ina play session. One of VWs primary appeals is escape from the real world.

This isn't to say that you can't have a VW with those aspects, just that pushing for integrating the social aspects to all VWs is probably misguided.

[greglas]

5.

Good question, Ren. Off the top of my head, I think of Amy Jo Kim's book, Celia Pearce on Emergent Authorship, and JC Herz on Harnessing the Hive, and I think that MMOGs should be all about social software, because that's where they get their value. (And lest we forget, the socializer is even a *Bartle-type*)

But if this is so, why would a presentation on supporting guild leaders get a somewhat frosty reaction from developers?
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2004/05/support_your_lo.html

A few possibilities:

1) the devs don't get or buy the importance of social software to their games (there are plenty of rants on how the game owners can be out of touch with the subscriber base);

2) the devs feel threatened because they think social software is identical to user-generated content and emergence, and they don't buy that;

3) the devs aren't really keen on making the game more social, because they don't want to make the game more social. More social = more organized user base = more complaints and more hassle with organized community management issues. Who wants that?

Cf. the English stamp tax of the 1700's, used to limit the emergent social software of the printing press and newspapers.

[greglas]

6.

As a follow-up on that last bit about the desirability of preventing effective groups vs. the desirability of helping them emerge, check out Ted's comment in the previous thread:

The theorists typically respond to this by trying to figure out how to keep groups from forming. Groups are costly for their members to maintain, so the idea is to raise these costs. Keep corporations from colluding on prices, for example: you know it as anti-trust law. But discouraging grouping is antithetical to the/one point of a mog.

In games, I always think with sympathy about mog designers, who always have to imagine "What if a 100-person guild decides to go after this and screw it up?"

[ren reynolds]

7.

Raph > But in the big games, WHO is a much less useful command, since you cannot survey the space as easily. Instead, you have all these means of searching instead.

As with Amazon and many other retailers on the Net, the result is a distinction between searching and browsing. Browsing leads to wonderful accidents; searching lets you find things easily. For sociability, you really need both.

What I was trying to get at was a combination of these two paradigms, particularly brining in the notion of serendipity.

The idea of s-Space i.e. social space, was that one might be able to apply some sort of mapping tool to display social meta-data as an information overlay. Ideally this would use some of the more modern concepts in mapping and information delivery where maps are more dynamic and contextual. Here I’m taking inspiration from i.e. stealing ideas from, projects like http://urbantapestries.net/>Urban Tapestries.

Thus one could provide both a searchable information space and one that was relevant to context e.g. oh, the person I just groped with is also into XYZ. This might bring in some of the serendipity that social networks lack.

On the searchable side, a few years ago I used to write about Knowledge Management for IBM, and back then ideas were shifting from the whole tacit / explicit knowledge debate to working out who knows what and how to get to them, through systems like internal and external communities of practice. I’m starting to wonder how all that developed and whether any find techniques were developed that are applicable here.

Now the night before last I was listening to Raph’s fascinating talk about technology and MMO design (which I will blog when I get a moment), which does make me mindful of the technical limits that we might hit when we start to add to the ‘extended character state’ and start trying to do all kinds of fancy operations on it, but hey, that’s a problem that I’m sure can be sovled.

I don’t think that this is a magic solution to social-networking online as I don’t think that most MMO players would be into it, the groups in MMO are very self selecting and it would very much depend on play style. But just so long as it did not get in the way of other people I think it would be neat.

[ren reynolds]

8.

Thabor > Having people search me out in game, or from another system entirely is about as unappealing as in game telemarketing would be.

Totally.

The hardest thing about this is balance.

Would the integration of social software features pressure the community into being amenable to non-game communication, thus scaring off most of the population who are just there to game?

Or, maybe this would be a different type of community, the casual gamers that like a bit of networking on the side.

Does this community actually exist though?

[Nicholas]

9.

ren reynolds> Or, maybe this would be a different type of community, the casual gamers that like a bit of networking on the side.
Does this community actually exist though?

Almost certainly. Puzzle Pirates, for instance, consists of mostly casual gameplay combined with lots of social interaction. Admittedly, it has less than 15,000 subscribers, but it demonstrates the feasability of such a game. However, the level of dev involvement is very high; for instance, the lead dev emailed me when I canceled my account, and dev/GM events occur nearly every day. Also, only 3 servers exist, 2 of which were very recently established. I don't know wheter this model would scale to a game with a larger playerbase and more servers.

[Aleks]

10.

Would it limit the possibilities of interacting with people whom you'd never have come across in the first place because players would seek group members that "match" them in real life as well as online life?

While I'm a huge proponent of virtual worlds as social worlds, I don't know if this would be in the best interest of game makers or game players because it could reduce the immersion of the games. For the same reason that speed dating in the dark works (ha ha ha), there's something magical about meeting a person about whom you know absolutely nothing and getting along with them in an utterly un-real world. The relationship can then unfold as the associated partners disclose more and more information about themselves - as they see fit. Otherwise, I see this inclusion as something that might restrict the unique aspects of anonymity in virtual spaces.

Aleks

[ren reynolds]

11.

Aleks > Would it limit the possibilities of interacting with people whom you'd never have come across in the first place because players would seek group members that "match" them in real life as well as online life?

Possibly. It might be possible to look at the UI design so that it does not give primacy to this tendency. As I noted above, ideally it will increase the serendipity quotient beyond that which social software delivers, though it might have the effect of reducing that which an MMO typically delivers.

But, I wonder how instrumental MMO communication tends to be on the whole. Thus even though one might be grouping with wonderful new people a lot of the time, does one every actually know this, or it is just:

thx 4 hte group d00d

and off?

[Chas York]

12.

I'd often wondered whether some "social tools" would help reinforce social bonds in groups or build up barriers to meeting new and interesting people.

As a simple example:
When sifting through the thousand-odd items for sale at the game's (auction house / bazzaar, vendor system) what if I could have a setting to show sellers on my friends list, and on my friends' "friends" lists.

Now, when faced with a number of choices, I can more easily buy from someone in my "social network" if I so choose. It would reward merchants who appear personable and fair enough, as they would be added to more "friend lists."

If I befriend like-minded individuals (say... roleplayers rather than achievers) and they do the same, then I'm more likely to find a seller (in this case) that also caters to my style (roleplaying). Achiever-oriented sorts would tend to build their own circles as well.

(This is just a very basic example, since most people are familiar with friend lists. In reality, you can befriend a person and not consider them a trustworthy seller...)

However....
Would these server as a BARRIER to meeting new people? Would it reinforce the walls of the tight-knit social circles, meaning we never are challenged with alternate points of view, strategies, or personalities (egocasting, in a way)

[Chris Westin]

13.

There's no need for such games to include this software as part of themselves, since it already exists. Use any of the named software above.

Check out http://360.yahoo.com/eq2_permafrost_osric

This kind of thing has been going on in many games for some time, but with custom web sites. AC has bloggers such as Kwip, and Fist de Yuma, and large sites of photos and experience, such as Maggie the Jackcat's.

The only question is whether or not you want real life to intrude on your experience. Osric's page doesn't make reference to objects outside the game world, only listing in-game books and such as favorites. Similarly for his friend Asionia. Friends who play together can share information an experience this way, but may also view this as a creative form of entertainment for anyone else who cares to read. Players can also comment on the game world in a more persistent way than the ubiquitous bboards that quickly age posts to the bottom of the list because of the large amount of noise from uninformed, whiny, and me-too posts.

[magicback]

14.

Social tools are also well defined in the Asia for the casual market which Yahoo! and other portal companies are trying to duplicate in US.

An example is an objectified mini-homepage that is a mash of UO/Sim Online 2D home decoration, blogs, friendster, linkster, etc. where you can buy virtual decorations, objects, accessories etc.

It's by no means linked to a MMORPG, but can see how the two can connect.

Frank

[Richard Bartle]

15.

Chas York>When sifting through the thousand-odd items for sale at the game's (auction house / bazzaar, vendor system) what if I could have a setting to show sellers on my friends list, and on my friends' "friends" lists

What if you could ONLY buy stuff from your friends or their friends? And what if there were limits on the number of people you could have in your friends list and the frequency with which you could replace members?

What effect would this have on commodification?

Richard