Phrases like "broad market" or "mass market" are common when people talk about the future of MMOs. Many of us (but maybe not all -- see below) have a desire to see virtual world-games move beyond the current fantasy model (often somewhat pejoratively termed "men in tights" games). From a design POV, doing so allows us to explore new forms of online games that haven't been touched. From a business POV, doing this gets us out of the perceived niche of single white male gamers without social lives and hopefully significantly increases the number of people playing MMOGs overall.
The problem is, when we talk about "broad market" I think sometimes different people mean very different things. Which broader market do we want, if any?
For example, when I talk about creating an MMO that will attract a broader market, I mean one that women (especially) and men with families, jobs, and mortgages will want to play. A game that doesn't presume or require 10-20 hours or more per week to be engaging -- but which hopefully doesn't turn away such players either.
OTOH, apparently not everyone means this. I've been thinking about the quote from Nancy MacIntyre, SWG's senior director at LucasArts as given in the NYTimes article from last December about the game's "New Game Experience."
She said in part, "We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base." Okay, so far so good. But then she said, "There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. ... We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat."; Hmm. That style of gameplay hardly sounds like something that's going to attract people currently playing The Sims, Zuma, or other WoW-widows. OTOH, it sounds like just the ticket if their use of the term "broader player base" is really code for "console game players."
Now maybe that's what LucasArts/Sony Online are trying to do, and I'm not trying to argue that's necessarily a bad thing. There are a lot of console gamers who could potentially be turned into subscription-paying, item-buying MMO players. But is that really a broader market, or is it really just mining the predominantly young adolescent male market even more deeply?
Finally, there's another group that needs addressing, and that's those who are, whether they know it or not, deeply uncomfortable with attracting any broad market at all. These are the dyed-in-the-wool gamers who like the fact that the time they've lovingly spent to raise their main character to level 60 is typically equivalent to, say, the time spent in class during a little over a year of full-time college -- or if you like, three months of full-time work (according to PlayOn). In fact, as we've seen in discussion after discussion (ad nauseum) here focused on RMT, current "core" players so jealously guard the time investment required to succeed in current games that anyone who would want to circumvent this (the 'more money, less time' model) is viewed as a cheater or worse (this is not an invitation to morph this thread into yet-another-RMT thread).
Do we want a broader market for MMOGs? A lot of people say it, but do we really mean it? And if we do, which market do we mean? Do we mean the growing market of older women players, or of couples playing together, or do we just mean those core gamers whose minds the industry has already captured with consoles (and who have yet to be distracted with actual life)?
If we decide we do want to address a market that looks beyond those who are typically already playing online games, are we willing and able to create games that will attract millions rather than tens of thousands of players? Can we increase the broad market demographic beyond being just a sub-niche of MMOGs overall?
Everyone pretty much thought the market was saturated until WoW proved them wrong. There are a lot more potential vw gamers out there, they just need the right product put in front of them. Does this make some old school mmorpg players happy? Probably not the ones you mentioned, the guys who love putting in 12 hour days.
However, I think these types are a minority and really represent the hardest of hardcore social misfits. To appeal to the average person, you need a game that the average person can relate to and do well in. Reducing time commitments is a must, whether this be through RMT or purely game design. Your average 20 or 30 something with a real job and a relationship might like to take a stab at a mmorpg , but only one that is feasible to make progress playing 5-10 hours a week. And if it is something that appeals to females, it wouldn't hurt either. Most wives/girlfriends have no interest in the current batch of games.
Posted by: alan | Jan 24, 2006 at 00:08
As the average number of hours per week decreases from 20 (current) to 10 to 5, the nature of the experience needs to change.
IMHO, by the time the 5-hour per week player is hit, RMT is out of the question (except in rare circumstances), as well as monthly fees that are worth charging, since people are only willing to pay so much money for 5 hours a week of entertainment.
At 5 hrs/week the nature of the game changes because social relationships/networks are much more difficult to form. Guilds are unlikely. Crafting/trading is a maybe. And of course, you'll need to break away from the fantasy kill-fest paradigm.
Posted by: Mike Rozak | Jan 24, 2006 at 00:35
Fantasy-themed games can be all that and SO MUCH MORE.
Posted by: Abalieno | Jan 24, 2006 at 02:43
I never (to my recollection) refer to the "broader market". But if I were to pinpoint a desired vector for expansion, it'd be a takeover of the current entertainment sector. Idealistic, I know, but that's what I traffic in. Children MMOs taking over children TV shows. Adolescent MMOs in place of teenage movies. And maybe some Golf MMOs for those elders who can't walk the course anymore. =P
Naturally, it's not going to happen, at least, not anytime soon. And never mind that MMOs can easily subsume any potentially digital media.
Posted by: Michael Chui | Jan 24, 2006 at 03:07
I think your analogies are a bit out of whack. While the idea of the "mass market" might be the people who play The Sims and Zuma, but the people who play those games don't exactly match up with the kind of people console games are aimed at (unless you're Nintendo).
I hope for the sake of all that is good and playable that the ideal "casual MMO" is *not* an endless "kill, get treasure, repeat" patern. Games like that allready exist as well-known titles and IMO, they suck. I hate level grinding with a passion. (Notice, too, that the two example "casual" games in this post have about zero combat?) Of course, instant gratification is a must in a casual game, as is finding a good way to get rid of the level grind. Also important is letting the player kick some decent ass early in. While EVE Online is a bad example of a "mass market game", it does get a few things right in this area. While it ain't no dreadnought or battle cruiser, the low level frigate ships are pretty decent and can be gotten in a rather short amount of time (with enough money left for some good accessories.) And there are decent things you can do with them (if you like killing NPC pirates or hook up with a good newbie corp.)
The other part of the equasion, and perhaps the hardest one to master in any MMO game, I think would be to make the player feel like what they're doing *matters*. Running an erand for some anonyomous person who left a message on a public terminal, in a building that looks very similar to the last five or more I've been in for a very paltry reward *coughAOcough* is the wrong way to do it.
Posted by: Elle Pollack | Jan 24, 2006 at 03:15
alan>Reducing time commitments is a must, whether this be through RMT or purely game design. Your average 20 or 30 something with a real job and a relationship might like to take a stab at a mmorpg , but only one that is feasible to make progress playing 5-10 hours a week.
There's a danger here in that there may be some minimum time commitment threshold below which you simply don't get the benefit of a virtual world. Might it be that if you can only play a random 5-10 hours a week you aren't going to form enough of a social relationship with players to get that virtual world "feel"? If this is indeed the case, any game designed to appeal to "casual" players is not going to be much of a virtual world.
Clearly there are games that appeal to the 5-10 hour crowd, for example Poker, but it might be that for virtual worlds to deliver their full potential, players need to spend more than some minimum amount of time playing.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Jan 24, 2006 at 03:26
Mike> IMHO, by the time the 5-hour per week player is hit, RMT is out of the question (except in rare circumstances), as well as monthly fees that are worth charging, since people are only willing to pay so much money for 5 hours a week of entertainment.
Not necessarily. $15 for 5 hours/month- that's around the range of watching 2 top-name movies at a theatre, and we're talking about 5 hours a week, so it's well within the realm of reasonable purchases. Heck, I know a few single guys that think nothing of paying $70/month for cable TV, but would be lucky to watch 35 hours/month- that's $2 per hour... and they wouldn't even consider cancelling it- usually citing 1 show they'd really miss. The market will bear quite a bit when it's something enjoyable.
Richard>There's a danger here in that there may be some minimum time commitment threshold below which you simply don't get the benefit of a virtual world.
That's a very real risk- or it could be that the nature of the world experience differs. City of Heroes, like (IIRC) WoW, has the option for many alts per server, but we also have a hard cap at 80 characters per SG. For many people, SG's appear empty and rather useless for teaming. With 10 characters on one server and 20 hours per week, the odds of one of these heroes being on simultaneously with the others is relatively slim.
The game's adapted- the vast majority of my team-ups (beyond my wife's) come from pick-up groups. PUG's don't need the long-term bond of a supergroup, nor do they need a time investment to create and maintain.
This might be the realm of the "5-hour MMO'er"- just as it's become for the heavy alt-er or the person splitting his time among multiple MMO's.
It's even possible that these PUG'ers can co-exist with the hardcore players in the right game design. In my experience, the largest barriers to "casual" players were the inflation-effects of the game world, the level of "undocumented" features / elements, and the "leet loot" that, rather than being marginally more effective, made competition between otherwise equal characters a non-event. The trick will be to balance "rewarding" the time-invested player in ways that, while meaningful, don't become a barrier to the play of the time-deficient player
Posted by: Chas York | Jan 24, 2006 at 08:57
I think the trick is to create a game that doesn't reward time investment. That's exactly what the current batch does. Reward creative thinking, strategy, and problem solving instead. It's true that to a certain extent time will reamin a factor. But there are people in real life who make more money in 20 hours a week than others make working two jobs and 80. They figured out how to get ahead.
My vision-- the next generation of games becomes more of a true vitual world where characters exist even when the players are offline. Players leave instructions for the way their characters will interact with the VW. Players who check in more often will have advantages of knowing the current state of the world but a huge time commitment is not required. (I would compare this to someone who actively checks the stock market conditions 2 or 3 times a day vs. the guy who looks at his mutual fund once a month. The active guy may make some great gains if he is smart but even the less active guy can still get ahead.)
Posted by: alan | Jan 24, 2006 at 09:26
Are we talking about some sort of "uber-game"? A single game that has mass appeal? I don't think that will happen, and I don't think we should want it to happen. Mass appeal, imo, will continue to emerge from the growning diversity and sheer number of MMO's coming to market. I think of Tad William's Otherland concept where virtually every niche is served and therefore there's literally something for everyone. Of course, the technology is a long way off (though maybe not that far) for a true Otherland experience, but the limits to variety right now are based on who has the creativity, the skill, and the power to make it to market.
Posted by: Chip Hinshaw | Jan 24, 2006 at 10:25
Chip> Are we talking about some sort of "uber-game"? A single game that has mass appeal? I don't think that will happen, and I don't think we should want it to happen. Mass appeal, imo, will continue to emerge from the growning diversity and sheer number of MMO's coming to market.
Our first steps don't need to be a "niche for everyone" mindset, but more of a "lower the barriers" attitude. Some games reward the "hardcore" time investment so much, or allow inflation to make such a barrier to entry, that the time-deprived player cannot compete (if competition is the goal).
Unfortunately, many of the game "rewards" that seem to be popular today with developers AND hardcore players (uber loot, for example) are easy to implement and popular to the current market, but might actually be harmful to the effort to broaden the market.
As each MMO released continues this model, it becomes a reinforced expectation that will be that much more difficult to break. If the goal is to broaden market appeal to those with less free time, different rewards need to be identified that don't serve as barriers.
It seems that, too often, developers look to the people who play 6-8 hours daily and ask "what do they like?" and develop for that, hoping to get more people that way. Perhaps they need to look at the players who only invest 3-4 hours, 2-3 times a week, but continue to pay the subscription. What causes them to quit? What causes them to stay?
I'm willing to bet that the time-starved market is much less tapped than the time-intensive market.
Posted by: Chas York | Jan 24, 2006 at 10:55
"I'm willing to bet that the time-starved market is much less tapped than the time-intensive market."
I'd bet you are right.
Game designers will actually have to put a little more thought into their games to attract this crowd though. It's been the same grind for awhile now, and that's not going to work. Challenge the player's mind , not his threshold for monotony. Invite the player into a world where his presence can have an impact , however small it may be. Reward the creative thinker, not the repetitive task.
Try producing a game with more than one focal point, which up to this point has been killing. I level to gain power to kill, I craft to make items to enhance my killing ability. What if, for example, I could design a building and sell the design to others who wished to place the building. A good design could lead to great economic prosperity for my character, a reward for creative thinking. I'm not saying, take killing out of the game by any means, just have other real options than that one end goal. I guess optimally what I would like to see is a more structured Second Life. The real objective should be to build in a virtual world.
Posted by: alan | Jan 24, 2006 at 11:52
And yet, what's most popular is WoW, which is a very time-intensive level grind. I mean, I've been chasing more varied gameplay, appeal to women, and so on my whole career. But... more focal points is, despite my own personal design preferences, both difficult to pull off and much trickier to make easily accessible.
What seems to have worked for WoW in terms of accessibility is greater interruptibility.
Posted by: Raph | Jan 24, 2006 at 13:56
Richard said, Might it be that if you can only play a random 5-10 hours a week you aren't going to form enough of a social relationship with players to get that virtual world "feel"?
I'd have to disagree. For various reasons (which have nothing to do with how much I enjoy the game, I still love it), I haven't felt up to playing very much WoW for the past few months, so I've been averaging around 2 hours of actual gameplay per week, with more time spent logged in but not really playing, just hanging out in Ironforge and listening to guild chat, usually while I'm doing something else. This works because I'm part of the 80% of WoW players who play with someone they know in real life. I know my guildmates out of game, and go out with them on a weekly basis. My husband is in this same guild and plays quite a bit more than I do, so when he's playing and starts laughing and says, "Check out what Kevin said," I know who he's talking about, both in an in-game sense and in an out-of-game sense.
I don't think many people "play" WoW the way I do, but the vast majority are playing with someone they know out of game. I think there's potential for shared experiences and a robust virtual world, without requiring 20 hours of gameplay a week to stay competitive. After all, how many hours a week do you need to spend playing Animal Crossing with your kids in order to feel connected to the virtual world that you share with them? Sure, it won't feel like the early days of UO or EQ, where everyone came to the world on their own, knowing no one, forming guilds with people they'd never met in real life. But let's face it, nothing is ever going to feel like that again.
The frontier is evolving. Ten years ago, single guys came to online games alone and made friends with the people they found there. To put this in "Old West" terms, early MMOGs like M59, UO, and EQ were mining towns: mostly single men, the occasional brave woman, and activities that people with families reject. Social structures were built around encouraging these single men to get to know the other single men in the mining town, the conventional wisdom being that you could get people to stay in your mining town longer if they had friends in that town. We gave these single men the equivalent of Old West taverns, and for years they ate it up.
But this is changing. 80% of WoW players come to the world with someone they know out of game, and 60% of male players are in a romantic relationship. Online worlds are starting to move beyond mining towns, into small frontier towns, where married men and women enter together, and bring their families along. Our social structures need to evolve beyond the tavern, where men without families spend hours and hours every night. We need the equivalents of churches, community fairs, and barn raisings: events families can attend together, but which do not consume hours and hours every day; social structures that allow the people living in the frontier town to get to know each other and form lasting social bonds, but still allow them to have time alone with their families.
I believe we're seeing only the beginnings of this evolution. The first generation of kids who grew up with consoles in their homes are in their mid to late 20s now, and many of them are looking for a game experience that lasts longer, in terms of months and years, than a console game, but which doesn't require much time day to day to stay current with. I think we need to change our designs to match the changing demographic of gamers, as well as to reach those who may not yet have considered playing a MMOG. And I think we can do it without destroying social bonds or losing the "feel" of an online world.
Posted by: Samantha LeCraft | Jan 24, 2006 at 14:03
Samantha LeCraft wrote:
And I think we can do it without destroying social bonds or losing the "feel" of an online world.
Losing the feel of an online world is a pretty subjective thing. To many old-school players, it's already happened. WoW feels like an online game to me, for instance, rather than an online world. It's empty and there's little to no ability to actually have an effect on the 'world' that surrounds you.
--matt
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Jan 24, 2006 at 14:07
Matt said, Losing the feel of an online world is a pretty subjective thing. To many old-school players, it's already happened.
Well sure, but like I pointed out, we can't go back to the early days of UO or EQ, where everyone was a single guy who knew no one. We can design online worlds that feel more like worlds, by doing things like making our worlds living places, with NPCs who are more than vending machines, and a world structure that can be affected by the player. We can design online games that are fun and engaging and that broaden the market. We can try to do both within the same game-world. But what we can't do is go back in time. We have to keep moving forward, and I don't think anyone is ever going to re-capture the feel of MMOGs circa 1998 in any large way.
Posted by: Samantha LeCraft | Jan 24, 2006 at 14:17
But what we can't do is go back in time. We have to keep moving forward, and I don't think anyone is ever going to re-capture the feel of MMOGs circa 1998 in any large way.
No, of course we can't go back in time, but then 1998 is hardly a special year in terms of world-feeling games. Everquest was/is solidly on 'game' end of the world/game spectrum, whereas I'd put UO somewhere in the middle. The only MMOGs I've ever personally encountered that really feel like a world to me are a few text MMOGs. See? Subjective!
We've been putting out MMOs since 1997 that are extremely heavy on the 'world' feel compared to the 'game' feel. There's no need to recapture any world feeling, since it never went away.
To define "moving forward" as "appealing to more people" is simply untrue. Appealing to more people is just that: Appealing to more people. It's not "forward" except in monetary and population terms.
--matt
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Jan 24, 2006 at 14:26
Damn it, I am bad about not closing off italics.
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Jan 24, 2006 at 14:27
And another try...
--matt
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Jan 24, 2006 at 14:27
Son of a....what is WRONG with this software?! Before we improve virtual worlds, let's work on typepad.
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Jan 24, 2006 at 14:28
Let's see if I can fix the italics... ;)
I agree with you that "moving forward" and "appealing to more people" are not necessarily the same thing. However, in the argument for "appealing to more people" the point was brought up that to do so, we need to make games/worlds that require a lower time commitment. Richard pointed out that there may be a threshold of time commitment, beyond which "you aren't going to form enough of a social relationship with players to get that virtual world "feel"". His words, not mine.
I personally believe that we can move away from previous design memes by changing things such as the time commitment required, the central activity of kill-monster-get-gold, and the high fantasy themes, and by so doing, appeal to a larger player base. "Moving away from what was done in the past" is sort of like saying "moving forward," though I'm not sure that that's fair to those who like what was done in the past, since "forward" has the connotation of "better". I'm not trying to say "better", just "different". I believe we can move away from what has been done before, appeal to more people, and broaden the market without the whole thing falling in on itself. I think we can lower the time commitment without losing social structures, or destroying the central point of MMOGs (that being, to play with many other people online). I don't think a MMOG is required to have raids, high time commitment, and combat to deserve the label "massively multiplayer online game".
Posted by: Samantha LeCraft | Jan 24, 2006 at 14:56
Samantha LeCraft wrote:
believe we can move away from what has been done before, appeal to more people, and broaden the market without the whole thing falling in on itself. I think we can lower the time commitment without losing social structures, or destroying the central point of MMOGs (that being, to play with many other people online). I don't think a MMOG is required to have raids, high time commitment, and combat to deserve the label "massively multiplayer online game".
Yep, I agree with all of that. I was just making the point that this isn't 'moving forward' per se, just moving in a different direction.
--matt
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Jan 24, 2006 at 15:00
"I don't think a MMOG is required to have raids, high time commitment, and combat to deserve the label "massively multiplayer online game"."
I agree completely Samantha.
The fact that you spend 90% of your time in current games monster bashing and gold collecting simply seems to point to the fact that there are much more social things you could be doing that require more interaction butless time. Five hours per week is more than enough time to get to know people and develop a character's role in the world ... if the role is meaningful and not merely a repetitious toil.
Posted by: alan | Jan 24, 2006 at 15:23
Hey Alan, please email me. slecraft -at- onlinealchemy.com. Thanks!
Posted by: Samantha LeCraft | Jan 24, 2006 at 15:58
I would play that Ideal game in that ideal world. hell, in abstract I would try to make it my way of earning RL money so that I could continue to play. The world that will really snare people is the one that combines what is addictive about WoW (*Not* the grind, it aint addictive) with a surrounding world that is deep, clearly and permanently affected by each PC's actions, large or small (to some degree), and complete.
The usability of WoW combined with the raw potential for interaction of Second Life, with a highly developed atmosphere like a good Stephenson book. Add a solid, understandable, but not limiting structure, and make it an obvious genre: MMOSCI-FI, whatever.
----
I think Raph's comment on WoW's interruptability is also solid.
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Posted by: Lanky | Jan 24, 2006 at 16:23
Ok, so it is just anecdotal I realize, but I've been rather amused to discover over the last year that I'm a model member of the new "broader" market. And I have to say that Samantha's descriptions are the ones that ring true for me.
I'm an "older" gamer with a wife and a kid. My two-year old like to play WoW with me (he can "talk to the dwarves" in Ironforge, "fly a bird" to Menethil to see the "boats" and use the macro I made for him that casts a "bubble" and makes the /train emote). I also play with my sisters and father on Thursday nights - a fun way for us to "hang out" the way we used to play Final Fantasy III together on the Nintendo 20 years ago.
Interruptability is key, as is a lower time commitment. I happen to have gotten more and more involved over the last year. My sister, on the other hand, has a six-month old "main" who is level 28.
At the end of the day, WoW has managed to grab 5 "accounts" from our family for nearly a year, ranging from my 55-year old father to my 23-year old sister. And what do you think my 2 year old is going to want to play when he gets a little older?
I'm not experienced enough in the field to tell you exactly why WoW is so amazingly accessible and addictive, but I can tell you that it is bringing more and more "new" bodies into the space.
It isn't a "grind" to us. We don't really see it that way. I don't feel a need to "impact" the world - I'm actualy pretty happy when my sisters and I just have fun killing pigs in Razorfen Kraul and get some cool new sword. Personally, I can't wait to take them to see the Skeleton Mosh Pit over in the Downs accross the way.
On the flip side, I don't think any of us would play Second Life for more than five minutes. We really *are* looking for mindless escape to some extent. I don't want to design buildings, I want to do the online equivalent of goofing off with my family. WoW gives us a way to "play" together, even though we now live far apart.
Just some ramblings from the masses . . . :-)
Posted by: Jimpy | Jan 24, 2006 at 16:41
Lanky, maybe you would like EVE Online.
Posted by: dos | Jan 24, 2006 at 17:15
Jimpy wrote:
On the flip side, I don't think any of us would play Second Life for more than five minutes. We really *are* looking for mindless escape to some extent. I don't want to design buildings, I want to do the online equivalent of goofing off with my family. WoW gives us a way to "play" together, even though we now live far apart.
I think you're right on in terms of the larger market. The "worldy"-ness of MMOs like ours or Simutronics' demands a lot from the user in terms of committment to the world and a willingness to at least somewhat play along with the fiction. The building capability of a MOO or a Second Life demands too much knowledge and mental bandwidth. As you say, people often just want to goof around. (Surely, that's the only explanation for 80% of network tv. You can't mentally get into it as there's nothing to get into and it demands little to no thinking of you. It can be, however, relaxing and fun anyway for a lot of people.)
--matt
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Jan 24, 2006 at 17:39
Does reducing the time commitment of a game really help it appeal to a broader market, or just a bigger one? I tend to think that reducing them only makes the game more appealing to busy people who like that genre, not necessarily to people who don't care for that type of game.
I think most game developers really mean bigger when they use the term broader as that is by far the easiest and safest for them to attempt. By this I mean you just take the most popular genre, get rid of the things that players don't like and keep the things they do ala World of Warcraft. These games are just more polished versions of older games, but not evolutionary. Eventually you get to the point where most of the negatives have been removed and then all the games begin to be the same and developers are left with relying on name recognition to differentiate themselves from their competition. I think we are close to that point now where you have WOW as the polished fantasy genre game, and the competition is hoping having Dungeons and Dragons or Lord of the Rings in their title will bring players to them as they are only slightly more polished.
To see the pitfalls that await a developer who really wants to attract a broader market (women and older players for instance), just look at Star Wars Galaxies when it first launched. You had social professions that appealed to women and non-combat crafting which attracted the average Sims player. The problems started to occur when these professions started demanding the same developer attention as the traditional combat professions, yet only made up a small percentage of the player base. In the end, they don't get the attention they need and they slowly wither and that once broad market is now slowly transforming back to the typical one of that genre. I don't think there is a developer out there today who is willing to risk the money on a team large enough to cater to a broader market when it is unknown if they will get the player base to justify it.
Posted by: Keebler | Jan 24, 2006 at 18:03
Jimpy> On the flip side, I don't think any of us would play Second Life for more than five minutes. We really *are* looking for mindless escape to some extent.
I occasionally forget that repetition and pattern-finding ARE highly appealing. I can recall years of Pac Man abuse, despite the "perfectly executed routine" done over and over... Once I discovered the virtual-"I win" button on "Yie Ar Kung Fu" I kept plugging in the quarters... and I played Double Dragon long after I beat the game without losing a single health box while defeating every foe with the "elbow punch." Never once felt like a "grind" then...
I guess I expect more from a "Virtual World." I want something that truly expands on the promise of so many predecessors rather than a rehash of the tried-and-true with just prettier graphics and heftier system requirements. To be honest, it's a bit depressing to think that the market segment that feels the same might not be broad enough to sustain such a project.
Posted by: Chas York | Jan 24, 2006 at 18:18
Well, it's clear the Asian market is moving well beyond the West in terms of the subject matter of its MMOs. But the business models of the market there -- specifically the free-to-play or pay-for-time models -- mean that MMOs can be games to be visited without much if anything in the way of long-term commitment. The size of the player base supports greater experimentation and not-so-massive online games.
I don't think we've come anywhere close to exhausting the potential of fantasy MMOs in the West, though. Fantasy is a lot more than elves and dwarves, as a moment's glance through the SF/fantasy section of any bookstore will make clear. Today "fantasy" really refers to "anything that isn't the real world, and isn't explicitly SF". Note that there's no shortage of women and girls reading fantasy, either -- nor does fantasy need to be limited to the nerd audience, as the popularity of Harry Potter among both children and adults clearly demonstrates.
Posted by: Lydia Leong (Amberyl) | Jan 24, 2006 at 18:51
Reaching a broader market in MMORGs will not be possible under the current technical models. Go to any user forum and you will quickly find the same postings about the same subjects. Currently the industry is completely incapable policing its player base as well as itself. Combine that with a purely bottom line mentality and developers are committing suicide at increasingly quicker development cycles. For future MMORGs to achieve long term success companies will need to build solid and fundamental core systems that allow expansion without pandering to vocal minorities or destroying core players. Looking at console games as a model for online gaming is a short term solution by bureaucrats scrambling to justify development costs.
An even more pressing problem is the lack of civility, lawlessness and the anonymous nature the internet fosters.. But that’s another subject.
Posted by: Edward Niecikowski | Jan 25, 2006 at 04:05
Richard Bartle Writes:
There's a danger here in that there may be some minimum time commitment threshold below which you simply don't get the benefit of a virtual world. Might it be that if you can only play a random 5-10 hours a week you aren't going to form enough of a social relationship with players to get that virtual world "feel"? If this is indeed the case, any game designed to appeal to "casual" players is not going to be much of a virtual world.
With the more efficient and expressive communication medium of voice chat, it may be possible to get deeper social engagement over a shorter period of time. Of course voice chat brings with it a whole range of disadvantages.
I wonder whether there is something to be learned about broadening MMOG design from the attempts to broaden the appeal of online first person shooters such as "Battlefield 2"? Here the holy grail is casual teamplay; the integrated VOIP services in BF2 may have been a step in the right direction, but I'm not sure it achieved as much as the developers hoped.
Posted by: Mike Bond | Jan 25, 2006 at 08:51
Dos> Lanky, maybe you would like EVE Online.
Ah Dos its great to hear from you again.
I think I would enjoy something like EVE Online, definitely, perhaps with the ability to be a single character who could pilot a freighter or go out into the wastes and hunt the animal life. Trade, or kill, or create. Paint a fresco using a built in artistic program and have it approved or denied by a GM, and placed somewhere in a city.
That kind of interaction would hook me, as long as it had some structure, and I was "human" (read: limited) unlike SL's utter freeform power.
Posted by: Lanky | Jan 25, 2006 at 10:33
Mike> Here the holy grail is casual teamplay; the integrated VOIP services in BF2 may have been a step in the right direction, but I'm not sure it achieved as much as the developers hoped.
Is VOIP the path to a "broader market?" I'd have to agree that it would be a necessary step to take things away from the keyboard and onto the console, but I'm not convinced its the right step.
I've used voice chat on occasion, and people seem to speak "about" their characters in the game rather than speaking "as" their characters. It seems to take everyone a step back, away from the immersive experience... or perhaps its just because the technology is new and not as "integrated" with the world that leads to this conduct.
Posted by: Chas York | Jan 25, 2006 at 13:47
To be honest this whole idea of mass appeal of MMO's leaves me questioning whether I'll find myself playing and MMO's in the future.
I have no problem with a company trying to get as many subscribers as possible. A healthy population makes the game more satisfying. This mass appeal frenzy seems to go hand in hand with dumbing down games and removing all complexity from them. I myself could have been considered a casual or a hard-core gamer at various points in the past, but having less time to play did not mean I wanted any less complexity. I have a hard time understanding how less time available to play means I am a dumber player or enjoy mindless entertainment.
However if developers keep gearing games toward the lowest common denominator just to net a larger base, then count me out. I'd rather play small niche games with the rest of the hardcore gamer snobs than play mindless games with Joe Sixpack.
This trend could be indicative of our society at large. Damn the stupid people...they ruin everything.
Posted by: T-dizzle | Jan 25, 2006 at 15:49
Samantha LeCraft >"Our social structures need to evolve beyond the tavern, where men without families spend hours and hours every night. We need the equivalents of churches, community fairs, and barn raisings: events families can attend together, but which do not consume hours and hours every day; social structures that allow the people living in the frontier town to get to know each other and form lasting social bonds, but still allow them to have time alone with their families."<
I don't agree that 'we' need game structures that consume less time, and are therefore more accessible. In terms of reaching a broader market, perhaps there is no such beast for virtual worlds. A 'world,' by definition, would seem to require a certain time investment to understand, appreciate, and contribute to, whereas a mere game does not. Virtual worlds are not for those with short attention spans and/or other demands on their free time, no matter how much those who profit from said virtual worlds would like that to be the case.
I believe virtual world mmo's have reached their zenith in terms of market penetration, simply because if you dumb them down anymore than WoW and it's ilk already have, they cease to be virtual worlds.
Ultimately, what's the point of making a simplistic, accessible virtual 'world?' Not surprisingly, the point seems to be to make them more profitable for those whose livelihood depends on attracting new subscribers. This, unfortunately, does not lend itself to creating a true virtual world.
Posted by: Jef | Jan 25, 2006 at 17:48
Richard Bartle>There's a danger here in that there may be some minimum time commitment threshold below which you simply don't get the benefit of a virtual world. Might it be that if you can only play a random 5-10 hours a week you aren't going to form enough of a social relationship with players to get that virtual world "feel"? If this is indeed the case, any game designed to appeal to "casual" players is not going to be much of a virtual world.<
A random five hours might well be too low. But a scheduled five hours is likely enough. At least in the everyday world, meeting for five hours once a week seems enough for a social bonding. I am thinking a regular playtime might well appeal to those with a regular life.
It wouldn't be too hard to try it out with a game like WoW. Have a server that is only up for one day a week, at least as far as your character is concerned. You could charge less, but it wouldn't have to be much less, for the "more money than time" crowd. Certainly, I find the time commitment of current games a bigger barrier than the money one.
I recall the early beta days of A Tale in the Desert. The beta server was only up now and then at published times. It made it possible to play quite "hardcore" in terms of keeping up with the crowd, without a huge time commitment. And I do recall a pretty good community feel.
That would be one way to a bigger market, as Keebler labels it. Success of that kind of server might encourage games that are aimed centrally at the five to ten hour crowd. With much less content to produce, these might be broader games too.
Posted by: Hellinar | Jan 25, 2006 at 19:04
1. Samantha LeCraft> Online worlds are starting to move beyond mining towns, into small frontier towns, where married men and women enter together, and bring their families along. Our social structures need to evolve beyond the tavern, where men without families spend hours and hours every night. We need the equivalents of churches, community fairs, and barn raisings: events families can attend together, but which do not consume hours and hours every day; social structures that allow the people living in the frontier town to get to know each other and form lasting social bonds, but still allow them to have time alone with their families.
Samantha, I thought your entire post was right on the money (and very nicely written to boot), and this was the best part of it.
The frontier analogy is excellent. My own take on it is that the frontier is about survival. Living in survival mode means focusing on the now, on the local, on the concrete. But when the group becomes so successful that many of its members no longer worry about surviving, then the needs of those members change to the future, to the global, to the abstract.
Maybe this is what's happening in MMOGs now. The culture of the early adopters is at odds with the culture of the next wave of immigrants. "Broadening the base" may mean accepting that if they want to expand, these worlds have to shift their designed incentives from the old quick/personal/loot rewards to the more abstract and long-term sorts of rewards that alan suggested.
And yet... what about the Frontier Thesis? If dynamism and individualism and self-sufficiency are frontier virtues, do we risk losing something valuable if MMOG designs evolve into more "civilized" worlds?
2. I had the same reaction Chip described: Does reaching out to a broader base of players necessarily mean making One Game to Rule Them All?
Assuming it's done as part of a planned strategy, are there reasons why a developer wouldn't instead try to create a stable of numerous smaller games, each targeted at different types of players?
I can appreciate that there'd be ramifications to this. I personally prefer games that encourage different player types to mix it up. Segregating players into separate games would limit that kind of interaction. (Unless you've got some kind of multiverse design, but that could be tricky if context means anything.)
But speaking practically, wouldn't the odds of success go up if you create a few smaller targeted games than to try to build (and balance) one large do-it-all game? For that matter, doesn't the risk of losing the company drop when you've got a stable of games, rather than just one game on which everything's riding?
Portfolio diversification is not exactly a new way to minimize risk!
--Bart
Posted by: Bart Stewart | Jan 25, 2006 at 20:18
Oh, and on interruptability: I wonder if this has something to do with the single-player experience of being able to save your game whenever you want.
To what degree is that possible (or desirable) in a persistent world?
--Bart
Posted by: Bart Stewart | Jan 25, 2006 at 20:22
As the player's time per week approaches 5 hours of playtime we have to get out of the idea that the only meaningful gameplay is the gameplay done from our massive monolithic game client. To appeal to a mass market, the game has to be accessible to the mass market. Why does it take a next gen PC with a huge graphics card and gobs of CPU power to play a new MMO? Sure, when your in-game you need this because well, you have to compete with all the other games out there. Chatting is about the only thing that I have seen implemented into a web site with current MMOs. Why can't I manage my auction house inventory from a web site in WoW? Why can't I get notifications that an event occured in WoW on my cell phone? Laugh all you want at these items, but if I only have 5 hours a week to play then anything that helps me coordinate those 5 hours or eliminate the "maintenance" tasks before I get online enhances the amount of time I have to socialize and form the bonds we're saying dissappear as time gets shorter.
To me, its not about the time getting shorter, its about changing game mechanics and processes so that the shorter amount of time leaves room to accomplish more. Chat, Guild management, LFG mechanics, auction/bazaar management, crafting? and other game mechanics should be doable online through a web interface not requiring me to be logged in to a DirectX game client. Its time to evolve the interface to these games if we want to get them to the mass market.
--Derek
Posted by: Derek Licciardi | Jan 26, 2006 at 08:36
Derek, I think your points build on many of the great comments here. It's been said that in an economy of plenty, attention is the scarcest resource.
As MMO players acquire not only families and mortgages and careers, but also the desire to try out and maintain relationships in (and potentially across) multiple MMOs, the slice of the player's time which any game can garner is going be smaller and smaller. Those who spend 20+ hours per week in a (single) game are going to become the exception, not the rule.
As developers we can choose to plan for this, or ignore it and hope it'll go away. I recall another game industry that was in a similar position in the 1980s: fast-expanding market share, lots of new games, increasing complexity and verisimilitude, rabid fans, and often derisive of those trying different things or saying a broader market was going un-served. Today of course, hex-based games are as common as dinosaurs (well, the tuatara is still around too), and even hex-paper itself is difficult to find. It seems laughable to compare MMOs today to hex-games even in their glory days, but to me the parallels are striking in many ways.
Posted by: Mike Sellers | Jan 26, 2006 at 09:51
Bart >>"If dynamism and individualism and self-sufficiency are frontier virtues, do we risk losing something valuable if MMOG designs evolve into more "civilized" worlds?"
Maybe we do lose something, but we gain a lot more. Some people may think living in the Wild West frontier would be great, but given the choice most people prefer to live in a society with a lot more to offer.
Bart>>"But speaking practically, wouldn't the odds of success go up if you create a few smaller targeted games than to try to build (and balance) one large do-it-all game? For that matter, doesn't the risk of losing the company drop when you've got a stable of games, rather than just one game on which everything's riding?"
Maybe I'm just in love with the idea of one world for everyone, but I think that this is a concept that could work quite well. Specialization creates differences but it also creates interdependencies. This leads to a more dynamic, social environment. Currently all of the social behavior in games feels very forced, i.e. I need a group to defeat this encounter because thats the way the designers want it.
Also, allowing the player to specialize and show creativity helps create one's own niche in the game world, giving a greater feeling of accomplishment. It's the difference between being able to build a custom house and putting down a generic house like everyone else already has. (Such as the current housing in UO vs. the older version or SW Galaxies housing.) It feels like more of a accomplishment because its unique (unlike the feeling of completing the same cookie cutter quest or attaining the same flaming sword of destruction that everyone before you has done)
Posted by: alan | Jan 26, 2006 at 11:52
alan, if we're talking about what we like personally, I fully agree with you. I prefer world-y games; I want them to contain multitudes of different kinds of players doing different kinds of things that all interrelate (even if indirectly).
But having said that, I also have to admit that the bigger the game world, the more opportunities for exploitable bugs that unbalance the game. No doubt there are counterexamples, but I get this impression this belief is causing developers to turn away from do-it-all worlds. Their main takeaway from WoW's success appears to be that the quality of the gameplay experience is more important to financial success than the quantity of gameplay.
If I'm right that this is a trend, I'm just extrapolating that trend out a little further. If there's a "small is beautiful" perception happening among developers, it's easy to imagine them preferring a stable of highly focused and highly polished small games over a few big, complex worlds.
Let me offer an example. I completely agree that offering a few types of housing is boring. Boring to make, boring to live in, boring to see in any world, real or virtual. As a builder-type, I naturally assume that letting a player play as an architect -- especially if you let them have the title of "Architect" -- means you ought to enable them to do... architecture. Architects should be able to design unique buildings.
So, back in my more optimistic days of playing SWG, I worked up what I thought was a reasonably nice concept for how modular housing could be implemented that would enable creative architecture. I did the best I could without knowing the technical details of SWG's 3D and "interior instancing" systems; I tried to constrain it to keep it simple and to limit abuse. I even made a point of saying that what really mattered wasn't that my idea got implemented, but that something was done to enhance this aspect of gameplay.
Yet houses in SWG remain trivially simple boxes that require no architectural activity to create. Am I upset that my idea was never implemented? Nope. Because when I take off my player hat and put on my programmer hat, I know that implementing a feature like modular housing (assuming it was technically feasible) would have complicated an already-complicated game. (I also guess that it wasn't considered attractive enough to combat-oriented players to be worth doing, but that's not something I can claim to know.)
As a player interested in expanding world-y features, modular housing seems like a great idea. As a programmer, designer, and project lead, I know that adding such a feature would mean replacing a currently functioning system with one that's more complicated, thus increasing the risk of failure.
If I can imagine this, how must SWG's developers have viewed it with their actual knowledge of SWG's complexities?
So, I figure, it must go for other games. For Explorer-type players like me (and perhaps yourself), complexity is nearly pure goodness. It opens up opportunities for exploiters, yes, but mostly it means lots more things to explore. But for game world developers, complexity isn't so shiny. Every time you add a new complex system to a code base that's already full of complex systems, you increase the chances of nasty inter- and intra-system bugs.
And who needs that in a post-WoW, "small is beautiful" industry?
But I could be wrong. So let me turn it around: Why would any developer today set out to make a complex game world intended to satisfy many kinds of players?
--Bart
Posted by: Bart Stewart | Jan 26, 2006 at 15:49
Bart: But I could be wrong. So let me turn it around: Why would any developer today set out to make a complex game world intended to satisfy many kinds of players?
Because complementary roles and gameplay styles enables and sustains community, which is the lifeblood of any MMO.
More and more people in MMOs want to play with others they know outside the game, especially romantic partners and family members. Such people are likely to enjoy different forms of play -- you're not as likely to engage both people in a couple with a WWII shooter or a game where you raise unicorns. A world-game that enables multiple gameplay foci (not necessarily a combination of WWII and unicorns!) is more likely to keep these people interested on their own terms and thus playing for a longer period of time. A game with a single gameplay focus may keep them for a while, but as soon as one gets tired, both (or all, in a group of friends) are more likely to leave for greener pastures.
Posted by: Mike Sellers | Jan 26, 2006 at 16:01
No doubt it is easier to have to deal with less in game mechanics. I would never argue that making the near perfect virtual environment will be a simple task. However, if someone can do it and do it well, then I would argue that the payoff could be very large. I can fully see a game that captures people's imagination to the extent that they could be life long players (given that the game is updated visually with the times).
Posted by: alan | Jan 26, 2006 at 18:20
Complex designs are a problem but technically a complex design can be overcome. There are much more complex, properly functioning software systems in the world today so the idea that the programming is too complex is hard for me to believe. Perhaps its too complex for the "I'm used to single player PC games" programmer but a team of good systems programmers should be able to overcome the complexity. Besides, lots of the gameplay extensions I mentioned in my previous post could be done by an ASP programmer. I've been on credit card processing system teams. I've been on large scale ERP design teams. MMOs aren't any more arcane software projects.
Assuming the complexity can be dealt with, I tend to agree with Mike in that multiple "meta-games", if you will make, your world more accessible to a broader audience creating bonds and experiences that facilitate longer subscriptions. This, however is conjecture and opinion on my part because I have little hard data to back it up.
I can see where your coming from. DDO certainly backs up the idea behind simplify gameplay and create multiple games. Like overuse of instancing, I'm of the mind that the current trends are bad for the genre as a whole excepting the idea that they seem to be drawing people to the games in record numbers. Is this because nothing better has come along or because the public truly wants a singularly minded MMO? *shrug*
Posted by: Derek Licciardi | Jan 27, 2006 at 02:00
Derek>>"I'm of the mind that the current trends are bad for the genre as a whole excepting the idea that they seem to be drawing people to the games in record numbers. Is this because nothing better has come along or because the public truly wants a singularly minded MMO? *shrug*"
I agree somewhat, as I don't like the direction new releases are headed. On the other hand I would have to say that anything that draws new people into the genre is good. If I think back to the first mmorpg I played, it was an almost magical experience. It soon left me wanting much more once I had experienced enough of the content to start using words like "treadmill" and "grind". I would think that a lot of WoW players are going through the same thing, since many of them must be first time mmorpg players.
Posted by: alan | Jan 27, 2006 at 08:06
Derek said: "Complex designs are a problem but technically a complex design can be overcome. There are much more complex, properly functioning software systems in the world today so the idea that the programming is too complex is hard for me to believe. Perhaps its too complex for the "I'm used to single player PC games" programmer..."
I don't disagree with you overall, Derek, but it's important to draw the distinction between the difficulties of a complex design and complex programming. The 'design level' that's complex in this case is that of a multi-focus game intended to serve multiple audiences simultaneously -- for a non-game example, think of some classic cartoons (Bugs Bunny, or more recently, The Incredibles) where there was humor for both parents and their kids, but they laughed at different things. Not an easy feat to pull off -- and far more complex at this design level than other large enterprise systems. When you're talking about thousands of people who may change their desired play-style over time, and making sure those play-styles all complement each other (and no combination unbalances or out-does another), the task becomes incredibly complex. But this has little to do with the complexity of the underlying programming.
One reason I think this is difficult for us though is because we're primarily still designing (and thinking) from a single-player POV. WoW is a great game, but it is primarily (especially until you get to the raids) a "massively single-player" game (not to discount the attraction of knowing that other people are in the world with you, but they have little effect on most of the gameplay). That we refer to the "hero's journey" (singular) at all as an archetype for massively multiplayer, many-viewpoint games is itself ironic and evidence of our firmly rooted Aristotelian thinking.
I've come to believe that in general, we're just not very good at non-linear, wholistic, many-viewpoint thinking. Most people aren't very good, for example, at accurately predicting what will emerge from simple rules that interact (e.g. in a flocking system). I also think this is a skill that can be learned, and a deep shift in thinking comparable to learning a new language or going from procedural to object-oriented programming, so hopefully all is not lost.
IMO, World of Warcraft likely represents the pinnacle of first-generation MMOs (I know that some are now referring to "third generation MMOs" but this makes little sense to me -- the gameplay in most is virtually identical to what it was ten or twenty years ago). We'll have some additional first-gen games that come out and eke out a living in WoW's long shadow, but I believe that the next successes will be those that manage to branch out and provide new forms of gameplay that are attractive to those who are playing now and those who find current MMOs inscrutable (or just not worth their time), both being able to play together in the same world.
Posted by: Mike Sellers | Jan 27, 2006 at 09:31
When WoW, LotRO, DDO and StarTrek Online were announced, I commented to my business partner that the best thing these licensed games will bring to the market is a huge number of subscribers that will want more after they've been introduced to MMOs. For future games, this is a big deal. While I believe that a more complex design serving multiple play styles is the next generation of MMOs, I also recognize that this same game will have a steeper learning curve than today's games. That said, I'm glad WoW has seen 5 million or so subscribers. Two years ago the entire genre was barely 5 million subscribers large. Now its twice, maybe three times as large. Go WoW, LotRO(if it releases), DDO and STO.
The biggest problem with the whole Multiple Play Style World theory(tm) lies in getting others to understand its goals. Investors don't get it; publishers won't fund it; players are confused by it. The latter is the big one for me. Assuming a game of MPSW complexity can get funded, how do you show the WoW player that's been trained to enjoy games like WoW that there is something more? How do you do that without overwhelming them? How do you do it and keep the game fun?
If DDO and its quest oriented experience system is any indication of what happens when you throw something different at the current crop of players, then the problem is indeed harder than we would have first thought it to be. DDO didn't even take out the grind for xp. It's there, just colored differently and the Internet boards are lit up with complaints about how DDO is no WoW killer...
So, we have a shrinking number of hours players can play. We have an increasing design complexity attempting to reach out to an increasing set of known and unknown play styles. We have an installed player base actively resisting most design changes they are not familiar with. We have developers that need to fundamentally shift their ways of thinking. Finally we have investors that are enamored with the success of WoW and blinded by it. Sounds like a tough problem to solve for the MPSW crowd but, if anyone can crack that nut, I think they will change the landscape of MMOs as we know them today.
Posted by: Derek Licciardi | Jan 27, 2006 at 11:07
... We have an installed player base actively resisting most design changes they are not familiar with. ...
It's always this way. You can't expect the entrenched portions of the installed base -- the "true believers" -- to embrace something too new. They know what they like, and it bears a striking resemblance to what they already have. They're also vocal about it. This is one major reason why in any field (not just games) "current users" are among the worst judges of which innovations will be successful -- even ones which they'll come to champion later on.
But the installed base is nevertheless there. They're going to be the first ones to pick up and try your new product, so you have to attend to their needs too. Do so too well and you get left behind as the market changes; do so too little, and your product likely never catches fire in the market. There's a dynamic balance point you have to hit in giving people what they expect and like, plus leading them with breadcrumbs into what they didn't know they'd like (again, none of this is unique to games).
Now the other issues you mention -- getting investors and/or publishers to understand this -- are difficult; in the latter case, possibly intractible. I disagree, btw, that the learning curve for a "MPSW" (nice, another acronym!) could be steeper than today's games. I think the opposite is true. WoW has done a great job of breaking down the barriers (that we all just used to accept, however reluctantly) in the "new player experience" for MMOs. As the market broadens, we're going to need to see a redoubling of this effort to make these games even easier to get into.
Is this a tough nut to crack? Absolutely. If it wasn't, we'd be awash in such games already.
Posted by: Mike Sellers | Jan 27, 2006 at 12:21