Friday, July 24, 2009

"Elegance"

I missed a couple days of posting due to being very busy with real world things. To top it off, I've been taking Benadryl to treat a vaccination not knowing that it induces sleep. Finally I became suspicious and found out that it is the reason I've had the overwhelming desire to go to sleep at 6 pm the last couple of days.

I'd as might as well come out honestly: I'm in a bit of an off mood. Why am I in an off mood? Well, it certainly isn't lack of sleep. The book "Art of Game Design" has suddenly lost a great deal of its luster for me, and I am beginning to find more and more of its claims and tools to often be useless and sometimes downright misleading. Of course, even recognizing these things takes a great deal of thought, and such thought does stimulate new ideas, so I cannot completely hate what the author is saying. What I do hate, however, is the author's relentless apologetic tone, and his incessant insistence on trying to cover his butt with claims such as "Of course, there are many other things not listed here..." and "There are many other ways of looking at..." and my favorite "Many people will disagree with..." These statements are not manly. [*Gasp* he must be a sexist!] Call me what you want, but I look for an author to take ground and stand on it firmly and with conviction, not prance around with lawyer-esque caveats. I'm finding this aspect of the book more and more difficult to get over.

Furthermore, many of the book's lenses strike me as completely useless. Now, in order to write a book, one is expected to fill a certain number of pages - this I understand. However, the author on the one hand caveats many of the true things he says with politically correct counter-statements (the differences between males and females is one of the grossest examples), and will on the other hand take a statement riddled with unproven implications as if it were an obvious assumption. I'm not going to quote specific examples because I'm simply not in the mood. If you think I'm incapable of backing claims with quotes from the book then this must be the first thing I've written that you've read.

Instead of discussing the book, I'd like to veer off into some of my own opinions of MMORPG game worlds. By actually taking a stance on specific issues, I am knowingly making myself vulnerable to attack. What good is writing that takes no stance or has no vulnerability? I'm ready to defend anything I've said here, and am equally willing to admit defeat and change my attitude or opinions. That goes for this entire blog now and to come.

Mr. Schell does mention one thing I'm going to use as a jumping-off point: Often times players don't know what they want. This fact rings truer in MMORPGs than in any other genre. Players have no idea what they want to do, they only know how they want to feel. Getting from point A to point B requires a deep knowledge of the way human beings experience life, of which I will touch upon a very small aspect here.

The vast majority of people simplify all of life's problems into convenient tests in order to decide what to do next. A racist will reduce complex disagreements between individuals into the simple formula: which one is closer to my race; I will agree with them. A gender bigot will ask who's gender is their own. A political activist will ask which side wears their colors. A religious zealot will ask which side is kafir. An environmental elitist will ask which side is called "green" by other elites. The sad majority of human beings reduce all complex questions down to considerations that have virtually nothing to do with the questions actually at hand. More often than not, this reduction leads to answers that are based largely, and often entirely, on the social structure in which they reside. Racists reside with others of their race, genderists commune with members of their gender, political ideologues surround themselves with other ideologues, religious zealots congregate with other zealots, environmental elites groupthink with other elites, and on and on it goes.

Why do I bring this up? Well, for one thing, most people have no understanding of just how widespread this phenomenon is. It permeates every corner of every society in the world. If you think game designers are any different, then you are lying to yourself.

One thing that has continually angered me as I've written/read about MMOs on various forums is the confusion over "elegance." I recall once I was on the IRC chat for the upcoming game Mortal Online, and there was some debate going on over how to punish griefing in the game. There are many ways to accomplish this, and many games have attempted a large variety of them. Admittedly, now that everyone and their pet gerbil plays WoW, I doubt most people reading this even know what true griefing is. In any case, I thought back to a MUD known as Major MUD, it must have been one of the most popular truly harsh MUDs there ever was. It was not merely full PvP and full loot, it was also perma-death. You could die a certain number of times, and gained new "lives" as you leveled, but eventually, you had to start over. This gave the game extreme intensity and competition.

Now, the way that MUD dealt with griefing was fairly simple. If you killed too many people unprovoked, you became evil, and God would strike you with a lightning bolt completely randomly. This bolt could come at any time, and generally did significant damage to the player, albeit not killing him. In the IRC chat, I voiced this possibility as one that they had probably not considered (the game's head developer was in the channel talking with us at the time). The head developer, who is an entrepreneur with no prior development experience, thought it was a fascinating idea worth some consideration. The head moderator, who is an elitist snob, exclaimed that there is an answer to every problem, its the elegance of the solution that is important. The lightning bolt was not elegant enough for him, and thus was not worth consideration. It's worth noting that "elegance" itself falls under many guises aside from that word alone, but that is the most common means of expressing it.

I think that this reaction is worth exploring. I'm not going to claim that the lightning idea is a great one, or that it is a poor one, because although it was relevant to the question when it was asked, it is hardly relevant to the discussion of the reactions it induced. First, let's consider the head developer, the entrepreneur with no prior design experience. He has not socialized with game developers for the last 20 years of his life, he has become wealthy through a wide range of activities, and has made his fortune considering every possible solution to every problem based on its merits alone. His sentiment was that it was a fascinating solution that was simple and easy to implement. The head moderator, who has socialized with gamers and developers for years, instantly dismissed the idea over a vague concept called "elegance." This notion of elegance, like the racist's notion of skin color or the politician's notions of political parties, is a complete and total reduction of the question down to something so low and void of detail that it cannot answer any logical concerns about how the conclusion of rejection was actually arrived at. In other words: it is a wholly emotional conclusion, foregone by the bias of said moderator.

Let us consider the elegance, or lack thereof, of the lightning solution to the problem of griefing. What makes this decision inelegant: well, the primary reason seems to be that it is detached from other mechanics and lore surrounding the game. While respawning itself may be the result of a focusing stone that the player binds their soul to, there may be no mention of "God" in the game's lore, or very little. God may play little to no role in the game other than this mysterious lightning effect, and this may leave the player with the feeling that the mechanic is slipshod and poorly sewn together. Furthermore, the randomness itself may be considered lacking elegance, since it is outside of the player's skilled control. All of this may be true, but sadly we can only speculate over why this person felt the mechanic was not elegant. However, let's look at what does make the design elegant: For starters, it is incredibly easy to code in the rules for it. Second, the lore surrounding it can easily be matched to fit the game world of Mortal Online. For example, if players bind their souls to bindstones, killing another player may instead cause his soul to burn yours, which could manifest itself as "soul burn" rather than lightning. Perhaps in this manner "God" could be left out altogether. Players who witnessed a player-killing could then stalk the culprit, and as soon as they witnessed him take soul-burn, pounce on him in his moment of weakness, which gives even randomness an aspect of skill. This might even create very interesting patterns of sneaking for "evil" players, and of stalking for "good" ones, which may help turn the tables for griefing in a larger sense - the whole goal of what we are trying to accomplish.

So, is the idea elegant, or not? You see, the question of elegance is a completely useless one, because the application of it is so broad as to have no real meaning. Oftentimes a web of seemingly patchwork game mechanics can form a very well-balanced gaming experience, and, conversely, design rules that on the surface appear completely seamless can be wrought with loopholes. I recall in the game Asheron's Call, there was a problem with players logging out while they were being attacked by other players. The cause was that player vs player combat was becoming pointless, since the losing player would log out during combat and not log in for an hour or more. The solution? Make the player logging off take several seconds to log off, undergo a very bright animation that allowed players nearby to see that he was logging off, and cause all damage dealt to him to be about 4x normal damage. Does this sound elegant to you? Does it tie in with game lore, or any other mechanics? Either way, it completely fixed the problem.

The overarching notion of simplified reasoning, and game designers' (and programmers’) particular obsession with "elegance" is at best a distraction and at worst a baseless reason to reject an idea out of jealousy or other equally emotional grounds. The problem appears to permeate MMORPGs in particular, probably because they are designed to have several interlocking kinds of experiences and a whole myriad of features. There is an old saying that basically states that a good philosophy is one that only takes a few sentences to explain. MMORPG designers have an apparent obsession with applying that worldview to game mechanics to the point where they no longer consider the implementation's actual impact on play. Stated another way, they often don’t stop to consider what "elegance" means as it applies to the experience itself, instead often exhibiting a misguided tendency to focus on its application to the game's code or theory, which are both mere means to a greater end: the experiences they produce.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

What to look for when hiring a game designer.

I ran across an article written for prospective game designer employers on how to spot bad designers. Naturally, I read it. It can be found here:

http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2008/10/opinion_how_to_hire_a_good_gam.php

While this seems like a mostly correct article, there are a couple points I take issue with.

1) Suggesting that good designers should have modding experience is narrow minded. I need no rant to go with this point - it's that cut and dry. Modding experience has nothing to do with the talent of the designer that's sitting in front of you at an interview. Modding is one of many ways to obtain design experience, and probably one of the less efficient ones at that.

2) "Beware of Ideas Man." What a terrible thing to advise an employer. Game design is all about ideas, many, many ideas. How can a supposed professional not know this? More bluntly: how could it not be true? If he means simply to beware bad attitudes, then he should have simply said it. I've read more than once that game designers who are afraid to have an opinion are far from desirable. Game designers are by necessity leaders, and therefore must have opinions, and not only opinions but on occasion downright mandates, else they are useless to the team.

3) Stating that game designers should be spending every waking moment of free time playing games is not only incestuous, its downright neurotic. Game designers need to aquire inspiration from everywhere, not only games. In fact, other games are probably one of the least important places to look, after all, who wants to just innovate or merge stale ideas? Don't we want brand new ones if at all possible? Isn't that what Mr. Schell, the author of "The Art of Game Design," meant when he described the greatest juggler in the room as being the one who wasn't the most technically skilled at juggling, but the one who got all of his inspiration from outside of the juggling circles? In fact, the juggler specifically said that the reason he was better than the others wasn't because he was a more technically skilled juggler, it was specifically because he didn't spend much time watching his peers.

It is interesting that he says game designers have a credibility problem, the reason he gives being that ideas are a dime a dozen and anyone on the team either could, or "feels" they could, create their own. Of course, in reality, the game designer is not just a ferreter of ideas, he is a leader.

It could be said that any leadership position has a credibility problem at first. After all, anyone who takes such a position has by necessity not held it before, at least at some point, and therefore all of their subordinates or peers will view them with narrowed eyes - until they earn the respect of the team. Consider the young officers of our military who, straight out of college, are given units of upwards of 30 men and women to lead, many of which are older and have more experience (sometimes by decades) than said officer. Such officers are in fact entrusted with these men and women's lives. Don't you think there is a credibility problem there, too? Don't you think his or her subordinates often feel that they could do a better job? This kind of problem is so old and so prevalent, that the fact that the author seems to think it is somehow novel to the game design industry leaves him the only one in the room with less credibility than they walked in with. Such an absurd viewpoint is, ironically, borne of the highly limited breadth of the author's knowledge and experience.

Such is the inevitable result when one spends "every waking moment immersed in gaming."

Monday, July 20, 2009

regarding my last entry, and progression...

First, before anyone points it out, I know that my last entry is not a boat-rocking masterpiece of design. However, I made a statement a couple of entries ago that I was sure that some brilliant designers could come up with something that would work for player-generated content. I was certain it could be done. An anonymous poster rightly called me out on this. After all, who am I to say that it can be done if I cannot do it? That’s a load, and not worthy of my own respect, let alone yours. So, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and come up with a basic structure for player-generated content (see my last entry if you care to read it). It is really the only aspect of next-gen MMOs that I haven't felt I've been able to fully flesh out. To be honest, I haven't seen a whole lot of people give it a shot, but would love to read other ideas. I don't think mine is really a bad start. The way I see it, there will likely always have to be some developer-made content, but if we can keep it to a minimum, and keep players themselves the primary content as much as possible, then we have succeeded in creating something new and outstanding.

Second, for those curious, I would like to define my ideal progression system. It is a skill-based system that, at first, appears to be level-based.

It's important to understand that levels mean nothing in my system other than to allow the player to gain more skill points, which can then be utilized to train new skills. Any skills. There are no classes. A level means two things and two things only: that your total experience pool is between x and y, x being the lower limit of total experience for that level, y being the upper limit just before you reach the next one. The other thing your level indicates is how many total skill points you have earned. That is all.

So, a level 5 player will have earned 5 additional skill points, and a total of between 20,000 and 25,000 xp (assuming those are the upper and lower limits of xp for that level). Beyond that, you would have to be the player to know the precise xp level. This means that the player may have spent those 5 skill points to unlock (aka train) a new skill of any kind that requires 5 skill points or less, as well as upgraded any of their trained skills with 20,000 to 25,000 total worth of xp. They may have put all of their experience into one skill, we'll assume sword, and completely neglected every other trained skill they have. Hence, a level 20 who has put all of their experience into sword, could still have higher sword skill than a level 50 swordsman who split his experience between sword, acrobatics, tracking, smell, and a magic school. Thus, in pure sword, the level 20 would have the advantage in that ability. The player’s "level" itself means nothing, other than that the level 50 has probably unlocked more skills, and has put more experience points into his skills in some completely unknown manner.

If the level 50 spent 90% of his experience on jump, then he may be able to jump like an Olympian, but that's about all he can do.

It should be clear why no one is actually pigeon-holed at all, even though this system utilizes "levels" in a very superficial way. It is really a skill-based system. “Well then what is the point of this system?” you, my astute reader, may ask.

The advantage of this system is the way it causes macro'ers to behave. You see, in pure skill-based systems, where skills are raised only by utilizing said skill, macro's of extreme simplicity can be created that are actually far more efficient than playing the game. Creating a macro that, for example, swings the sword repeatedly is just as efficient as playing, if not more so. Creating a macro that runs in circles in order to up player run skill is at least as efficient as running in circles yourself. So why play the game at all? Nothing you do will be as efficient as a good macro. This is exactly what I saw, and in fact did, in Darkfall. Playing that game helped me to see that this flaw is inherent in such a skill system. You can add constraints that say "you must impact with sword for skill to increase." Believe me, it doesn't work. My friends and I had a macro in a single day that stood at respawn making our characters kill each other repeatedly. There was no reason to play, because this was far faster.

The advantages of levels are several. First, to gain significant experience, the player must either kill other players, kill mobs, or complete quests – all of which must be equivalent to his level of power to mean anything to him. All of these require much more sophisticated programs than “skill-based” macros to automate. Second, the player must be modestly equipped in order to hunt and kill mobs, players, or complete quests, even if they have a macro sophisticated enough to do it. This means that another enterprising young player who happens upon a macro has a very high incentive to kill and loot it, and the macro'er thus has an incentive not to macro. Furthermore, the efficiency of macro'ing in level-based PvP games is virtually never as high as actually playing, which tends not to be true in skill-based ones. Level-based MMOGs are inherently more resistant to macros in full PvP worlds, I say this based both on experience, and sound theory.

The level-based design I have described is at its core a skill-based system, but employs levels enough to curb macro's and provide a way to allow characters to unlock new skills over time. Those are its only functions. Is this what you think of when someone says "level-based MMO?" I doubt it.

So, you probably found yourself wondering a little bit earlier: “If the level 20 has more sword skill than the level 50, what does that mean for him?” Good question. What it means is that the level 20 may have more pure sword moves unlocked than the level 50, and that he is able to utilize well crafted swords to their full potential, or at least more so than the level 50 with less sword skill. This means his base sword damage can be better, assuming he has a sword good enough to take advantage of it. I would like to note that this damage increase would not be massive. The level 50, however, if he were more well rounded, may have things like backflips, wall-jumps, rolls, and other sophisticated acrobatics, he may be able to smell the level 20 from a distance (an ability that I may reveal in a future entry), he likely has some spells to influence combat, as well as possibly some mana-using sword-based moves that are only unlocked when a certain minimum of both sword and magic skill is present. So, who has the advantage here? The level 20 with a high sword skill, or the well-rounded level 50? It depends on how well each knows their character, their limits, and the limits of their opponent. It also depends on how much practice they have.

This system is thus actually ability-based. Players evolve by primarily gaining additional abilities, or tools. Levels are superficial representations of overall experience gained, and skill points accumulated. In a pure skill-based system, assigning players a number based on how many total skill points they had increased over the life of their character would be equivalent, and yet the system would still be “skill-based.” Thus, do not be fooled by the presence of “levels” in this system into automatically believing it is your standard level-based progression system, because it isn’t.

Cheers.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

player-generated content

I'm going to cut the fluff and propose a solution by which MMORPG content may be generated by players. If you read my last post, particularly the first 2/3 or so, you already have a basic idea.

Essentially, the system works like this:
First, quest creation is a skill. The skill's level is based on the secondary attributes of the player. These secondary attributes may be raised by putting experience points in them. The quest creation skill level will be based on a simple formula of these secondary attributes, such as (concentration+intelligence)/3 This will determine your base skill in the skill of quest creation. Quest creation itself cannot be increased by putting experience points into it, unless the player "trains" the skill. What this means is that the player allocates a limited number of skill points to unlock the skill, which then allows them to increase it beyond its base level by pouring experience into it in order to "raise" it.

This is how all skills will work. At character creation, the player is able to unlock various skills from the beginning, based on a set number of skill points allotted, such as 50. Each skill requires its own unique number of skill points based on its overall "power." As I said in my last entry, lock pick would cost far less to "train," or "unlock," than sword or war magic. Quest creation will be one of the most expensive.

Quest creation (called lore mage, lore master, artist of the devilish mysteries, whatever floats your boat) will work by employing its own window on the screen when the character wishes to create a quest. The window will work by allowing the player to choose from a number of primary options, which are: surface, global, and dungeon. Within each option, which can be thought of as a "tab," are a number of sub-options. Sub-options for the "surface" tab will include quests such as: defeat a certain mob, visit a specific NPC, or retrieve a specific item. Upon selecting the sub-option, the player must then physically select the NPC, mob, or item that must be obtained. This means they must be in its presence, which will require travel. The player must also have an item on their person for the selection “spell” to be successful, and will have a skill check based on the difficulty level of said MOB/item.

Global sub-options will include things such as: kill a specific player, kill a specific number of players, kill a specific number of players of a specific level or greater, craft a specific item, gather intelligence on a specific player's inventory or guild chest, and so forth. Intelligence gathering will employ a specific "snapshot" function, upon which a player with the skill necessary to view a players inventory, guild vault, etc., can create an authentic list by this function, and return it as part of a quest (if such a quest were made). This intelligence will then become public knowledge via various NPCs.

Dungeon sub-options will include a dungeon creation page, that will employ a top-down two dimensional view of a dungeon. The player is then able to map out a dungeon using various pre-built pieces that fit together. The player places stairwells, mobs, traps, grand rooms, and the like. The end of the dungeon features proof that the dungeon quest was completed, with a “boss” of sorts that drops the proof. These dungeons are not instanced, players will fight for them.

Each of these major categories requires a specific degree of skill in quest-creation before it is unlocked. Surface-based quests are the easiest and require the lowest skill, then global, and then dungeon. Within each major category, the various sub-options will also only become unlocked when the quest creator's skill is sufficiently high. Furthermore, as alluded earlier, the quest creator slowly gains a library of mobs and NPCs that they may utilize in their quests by actually physically visiting the NPCs, obtaining the items, ensnaring the mobs (a skill unique to those with the quest-creation skill), and visiting and completing various quests inside catacombs that gradually unlock new dungeon-making abilities. On top of this, the quest creator will be required to have on their person certain rare and valuable items in order to create the more powerful quests. If they cease to do so, the consequences will be dire which I will explain shortly.

The way the general quest formula will work, assuming all the prerequisites are met, will be something like this: Complete [quest component] and [quest component] or [component] then [component], etc. Each [quest component] is one of these defined goals, which, as stated, may be to travel to a specific NPC and obtain his seal, craft an item, obtain a mob-dropped item (a scalp, for example) or a number of them, kill a player of a certain level, complete a dungeon, etc. These components are then strung together, and may be done so in a specific order (then statements), any order (and statements), as options (or statements), or any combination. The total number of statements able to be strung together would be based on several factors, such as skill in quest creation, enhancement items worn by the creator, number of times quests have been completed by players, and so forth.

Quest creators may also demand one final kind of quest, which I call "resultant components." These are simply placing into the equation, that the player must also obtain [the results of player "x"s quest called _____]. This means that players may incorporate each other's lesser quests into their own.

Upon accepting and completing a quest, the player will then travel to the NPC that handles the quest. (Quest creators choose what NPC or NPCs handles their quest, they may choose multiple if the have the prereqs.) Upon creation of the quest, the game will determine the kind of reward that the quest will generate, which is based on the quest creator's preference: weapon, armor, gold, experience, potions, enchanted jewelry, totally random, etc. The most skilled quest generators will be able to specify weapon types, armor types, etc. The game will then choose what "tier" weapon, armor, etc will be generated by the quest's completion.

The item will be based on a specific formula. If a high level player must be killed during the quest, then the power of the weapon will be enhanced greatly, if a fire type creature must be killed, then the weapon will gain fire type damage, if a great deal of distant NPCs must be visited, the weapon will bestow speed on its wielder, etc. More difficult quests will result in better rewards. The same quests will not drop the same items over and over, they will generate randomly based on said formula (which I just simplified for the sake of discussion).

In addition, the top tiers of quest generation will allow quests to be built where the “boss” mob at the bottom is an actual replicate of powerful player in the world, with its same abilities and items. The creator must first have the player’s scalp, which means someone must kill them for it. The mob will require decent AI, but nothing out of this world. This further gives the community a feeling of being part of the world.

This next part is important: Players who generate quests decide who will be allowed to partake in them. A player, upon generating a quest, may specify specific players to be allowed to accept it, all players, all players except specific clans or players, specific clans, specific clans and their allies, or all clans currently at war with a specific clan or clans. Note that once the quest is generated, changes in politics will not change who is able to accept the quest unless the creator chooses to “recompile” the list. It is for this reason that quest creation will be a fiercely political practice. Clans will seek the best quest creators for themselves and their allies, in order to generate new wealth for themselves. In return, these quest generators will gain their protection, because it is very likely that their demise should become part of enemy quest-creator’s quests.

In addition, quest creators must log on for a specific amount of time/week for their quest to remain active. The total amount of time depends on the “tier” level quest is presently active. This fact, combined with the fact that the quest creator must maintain a series of items on their person for their quest to stay intact, will cause them to be widely sought after by warring clans. If they no longer have the requisite items, the quest will “recompile” anew, minus whatever components it no longer has. This may cause the dungeon to shut out, the awarded items to diminish greatly, and so forth.

If a quest creator cancels a quest, everyone who has already accepted it will have one week to complete it. No additional players may accept it. The quest creator may immediately begin forming a new quest, but may not cancel their next until the timer is up on the last. Thus, they may have a maximum of one in the world, and one in deletion.

The best items in the game will be produced by the most advanced quest creating players.

For reasons that I have not explained here, the game will encourage small clans of around 20 active players online at any given time, which will be done mainly via experience bonuses. Larger than that (commonly known as “zerg” clans) will be punished with heavy experience penalties. This encourages small guild-on-guild politics, which nourishes political intrigue. These clans may form alliances, however, but alliances may require upkeep (I haven't decided yet).

Lastly, the game will incorporate lore into these quests. Quest creators will have a series of mad-lib type choices in order to splice together lore. Lore will be based on player politics, not on made up developer content. Thus, the lore will generally revolve around attacking a player or clan’s reputation, or building it up. This lore will merely provide a sense of humor and comic relief in general, as the real lore will be in the actual guild politics themselves.

Ok, this whole concept of player-generated content is something I'm new to tackling. However, tt seems certain to me that the next truly revolutionary MMOG will incorporate some form of it. Simply by being full PvP, the amount of content generated by players in the form of politics will be enormous. This is something that I think most players and developers alike do not realize, as most have not played one. Giving them a way to further the political intrigue with their own quests, either in a system like this or some other, seems like it may very well be possible.

If you have feedback on this concept I'd love to hear it. Ideas are welcome.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

comment response - breaking the mold

I slept for 11 hours last night. I'm thinking it must be my body fighting the immune shots I had because I haven't slept like that in ages. I haven't had time to read any more of the book yet, but I think my last post was one of my better ones. It's my belief that reading makes us better writers, and writing makes us better readers. When you write, you learn the labor of the art, which cannot but give enhanced insight into what others are trying to convey. When you read, you absorb new styles with which to express your own thoughts. The two activities produce a positive feedback loop that to me seems undeniable.

I just received an anonymous comment, and since I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to put into today's entry, I thought that a response to it would make for a good one. It didn't hurt that the comment was articulate and well reasoned. I'm only going to quote the latter part, since it sets up the question well enough:

"When you create an MMOG, you're not really creating a world that naturally evolves over time (and is naturally enjoyable), you're actually just writing one perpetuating "section of time" - a world that exists only in the past and continually loops after a certain point. Only the first wave of players actually get to experience what you intended.

So we add more content in monthly mini-expansions.

Well, adding new content as fast as we can only goes so far since that's a race against the players we cannot hope to win...

In the end, the only saving grace for our industry may be new technology in 'constantly (and consistently) generating new content procedurally.'

What are your thoughts on this procedural content generation?"


This is a perfect description of today's class-based skill-less MMOs. This comment reminds me of the article Will Armstrong showed me that can be found here: http://www.buzzcut.com/archive/article.php~story=20060303211856230.html

The fact is that this is the sad state of main-stream MMORPGs. As long as lore is one-dimensional, quests are nothing but treasure hunts with arrows pointing the way to the next clue, players are pigeonholed into one of several class-based roles, and combat is about who put the most time in grinding, this will never change.

The only way to fix the state of MMORPGs is to do several things:

First, make the players the content. By this I mean make the players create the content by virtue of what they do. This would require some really brilliant minds to put their heads together, but I'm convinced that it can be done. First of all, the world needs to be 100% player vs player. I am absolutely convinced that this is the only way to free up honest tendencies of social interaction enough so that real, believable player interaction can take place, and believable societies and factions can form. Being a moron must have consequences, which will also serve to teach players real world social skills. Tact goes a long way in a complete PvP world where death means loss. I say this because I’ve played it.

In addition, creating quests needs to be a skill that players can learn. Players must be able to obtain in-game tools for creating their own content, with a very sophisticated and open content-generating system. The system will work by allowing players to take external variables within the world and produce unique, individual quests with them. Such quests will involve members of one society killing members of another, and returning a degree of proof, they may involve theft, they may involve intelligence gathering, they may involve crafting a needed item, or going to a distant place and acquiring an item and returning without dying, it could be a chess tournament, destroying an amazing monster somewhere, or combinations of these and many other things.

The way to look at it is this way: What is a "quest" in a real-world sense? It is nothing more than a demand. If I want you to go get something for me, or do something for me, then I am demanding certain goods or services. If the player does these things, then he is supplying the goods or services, for a fee, which is the reward in the gaming sense. The goal should be to set up a world that has the potential to be vibrant enough to where the supply of certain goods and services is so difficult for some players to obtain, easy enough for others, that there is a real market for these quests for both parties. Another important aspect is that both the creation of quests must be fun and exciting (sort a quest all by itself), as well as the quest that is generated by it. The more difficult the quest is to generate, the more rewarding it is for both parties when it is concluded. The quest creator must invest in their quest in some manner (obviously it all boils down to time), but their investment should be returned and then some when the quest is completed. It seems reasonable to me that the quest generator might not even know every aspect of the quest they create, which serves to keep everyone honest (some variables are outside their control).

An idea I am tossing around is something like this: First, there is your standard open world where most of the MMORPG world takes place. This is where the cities are, the land has its mobs, whatever NPCs are needed, bind stones, etc. The standard infrastructure that the game requires.

Then, there is a kind of "basement" of the MMO. This basement is the potential dungeon land that the quest-generators of the game are able to utilize for quest-building. It will be the clay with which dungeon quests can be created. These quests will not be instanced, they will be standing dungeons that players will war over and war inside of. In all likelihood, you enter such a quest by entering some sort of “portal,” which is located perhaps based on where the quest creator places it, or perhaps where the game deems is appropriate based on its estimated difficulty. Now, not everyone will be able to just build wonderful dungeons with tough mobs. To the contrary, quest creators will have to actually acquire a library of possible monsters, items, and dungeon size and architecture over a long period of time. The number of such dungeons that they can have built at once will be extremely limited, which means they will be rebuilding quests as they become better at their craft - both literally and in the gaming sense. You may ask: "Why in the hell would someone waste time creating content like this?" The answer is because everyone has an innate desire to create experiences for other people. Everyone wants to be a designer. I say let them have at it. These dungeon quests would also interplay with the surface world, creating quests much more complex than a simple dungeon crawl. They may require several visits to the same dungeon, visits to multiple smaller ones, visits to multiple towns across the surface map, or may even incorporate other quest-creator’s items, quests, and dungeons.

You could even set the system of as a sort of quest-generating guild. In this system, aspiring quest-creators would form guilds that would enhance their overall power. Top members in the guild require a certain number of followers before they can move up in their tier of content generation (surface world quests, to complex surface worlds quests, to basic dungeons, and so forth). The lesser members of the guild could serve lesser roles within those same quests, i.e. maintain items for it (in the case of they not generating automatically), obtaining mobs, generating small content features, and just generally maintaining the most complex and difficult quest aspects. These guilds may be some of the most lucrative in the game, and may hold huge political sway (putting up hits on players, giving secrets about their ever-changing quests, etc.). They may require the protection of other, combat-oriented clans. For example, perhaps members of the guild must have an expensive item on their person in order for content to stay intact, and killing them causes them to drop said item. Perhaps they must be online a certain amount of time/week for their quests to stay active, and other quest guilds can put hits on them to set back their competitors. The possibilities are really endless.

On top of this dungeon layer of quest creation, surface quests would be made as well. As I said, these quests would generally revolve around players hunting other players (but not limited by it).

In addition, by also having quests that involve players hunting one another, quests become more complex as players continue to learn, evolve, become stronger, more loyal to one another, and more protective of each other. Players gradually become the epic mobs. This adds an entirely new element to questing and the role-play aspect of the game. Ensuring that this system is not abused would require careful thought, but it is doable.

The second major change that must come to MMOs is that the combat system must become skill-based. By this I do not mean that there should be no levels, in fact, I believe levels to be the best possible system. However, the fights themselves must be based on player skill, and not simply who is more geared out or has higher skills. Let me explain my idea of the best system:

First, the progression system should be very similar to that of Asheron's Call. I do not say this simply because I liked the game. I actually sat down to think up what I felt was the best progression system from the ground up, and as I formed it, I suddenly realized that it was extremely similar to the system AC used. For this reason, there is no doubt in my mind that AC's skill system was thought up from the ground up. The way it works is this: Players have one experience pool, and all the experience they acquire goes into that pool. In addition, at character creation, players are allowed to "train" and "specialize" in 50 skill points’ worth of skills. Each skill requires a unqiue number of skill points based on its overall power within the game - lockpick required far less than war magic, for example. Specializing a skill takes twice as many skill points as training it, but requires a somewhat less exponential curve to increase when dumping experience into it. Once trained, you are then able to dump experienced into any such trained skill you want. Every time you level, you get a skill point, up to a certain level, then its every 3 levels, then ever 5 levels, etc. Thus, as you progress, you save these up to obtain new skills, and your skills get better as you allocate experience in each. There is no "class" in the game, everyone can create their character however they want to. The player also puts experience points into each of their secondary attributes (strength, coordination, quickness, etc) and primary attributes (health, stamina, mana). In this manner each player becomes totally unique.

However, the next generation of MMO must go farther than this. First off, the game must be collision detection (as AC was). Dodging spells/ranged attacks must be possible. Next, the game must employ multiple melee stances, and multiple attacks within each stance. Think Jedi Knight II. Each stance is learned as a new "skill," and when points are put into the stance, the attacks gain the potential of dealing more damage (depending on weapon quality). New special attacks within stances also sometimes require a skill to be a certain level in various magics or acrobatics as well as said stance, may require specific items be on the player's person, may require base level attributes, and many many other things that would take too long to explain in detail. I'm typing very quickly right now, there is a great deal to say about the way this system works and putting it all here would take quite a bit of time. Suffice it to say that the combat mechanic seen in Jedi Knight II is a good example of the general sort of combat that the game would have: fast-paced melee-oriented combat, with crowd control spells that can be used during melee combat, as well as ranged weaponry that is deflectable with both sword and spells. There would, of course, also be offensive spells, but due to balancing issues they would only be castable with a wand equipped. I've also designed an additional mana pool I call "essence"...ok I'm rambling a bit. You get the picture. The player gets more powerful by gaining new tools of combat, not by gaining more powerful ones, per se. Although old tools do get stronger, it is not to an extreme degree. A player that is high in level has the primary advantage of more stances, more attacks within each stance, more and stronger spells, more acrobatics, etc. But a low level player with good enough timing will still win, even with his more limited toolset.

The overall point here is that the game must be skill-based. This is not the same thing as "twitch-based." Twitch combat mean who gets their reticule on the opponent's head first and pulls the trigger. Again, look at Jedi Knight II. The game is kind of twitch, but it is much more a game of chess: if your opponent pulls a gun, pull it out of his hands and into yours, or deflect the shots with your saber, or throw your saber and jump towards him, or push him away for distance, or pull him towards you and close on him. If you are the one pulling the gun, then you can attempt to hit your opponent low where he can't block, you can keep him at a distance by pushing him, you can pull your saber just as he closes on you and surprise him. Once the melee battle has started, it becomes a complete chess-match, each move having different reaches, different commitment times (times until you are reset back to stance and can block or attack again), different coverage areas, etc. Add the acrobatics of back flips, wall flips, wall running, high-jumps, kicks, etc. and, constant spells thrown in, and the melee is far more chess than twitch. I know this because I bothered to get extremely good at the game, as I haven't found as intricate an FPS/TPS melee game yet. This sort of combat, in my opinion, must be the game's overall core mechanic. Content generation would be a close runner-up, since both would have to be conceived and balanced brilliantly.

Finally, there should be no limit to player level. Even though the game is level-based, the max level should be so high that it is either never reached, or takes years to get to. Again, Asheron's Call had this progression system, and it took two years for anyone to hit max level. If it weren't for experience chains in that game, I don't think it would have ever happened. XP was passed up from followers, with increasing gains, all the way up to monarchs, which allowed them to amass unimaginable amounts of xp over time. It took monarchs with thousands of followers two years to hit max level, and that was when max level was only 126, it was later increased to 275.

I've done a lot of rambling in this post about a lot of specifics that I have only half-explained. MMO's are complex, intricate things to discuss, and it is hard to convey the mechanics of one without writing many, many pages. I'm sure much of what I just wrote was not written well enough to convey what I mean, and for that I apologize and hope to clarify things in coming entries.

Thanks for the question! Let me know what you think.

Friday, July 17, 2009

more "The Art of Game Design," and the subconscious

As I'm starting today's entry with a Guinness in hand, it's safe to say this could be a long one. I'll probably be rambling a lot, and like always will decide to stop at a seemingly random point, topping the post with the suggestion that I'll get that last thought in on the next entry. That last thought just never seems to make the cut.

I made it through another 13% of "The Art of Game Design" (heretofore AoGD). The book has become considerably more intense, and rather than roll back and allow the author to simply "tell me how it is," I've begun to rebel a little bit here and there against some of his ideas. The author himself seems to think in a rebellious manner, even his own thoughts seem rarely good enough for him. For this reason, I think it's safe to say that scrutinizing the book is actually in the spirit of the book, which makes for a fairly weak rebellion after all. Oh, the paradoxes...

In any case, I over-used quotations in my last post, so I'll try to be better about that in this one. Also, I've been referring to too many places as "chapters" when they are actually only sub-sections. It's hard to tell the two apart on a Kindle, so I'll just refer to pretty much everything as a "section" from now on.

I'm going to skip right to the stuff I consider ripe for discussion. The next Lens that I found truly compelling was the Lens of Resonance. This Lens is all about finding a value in an experience that is rooted very deeply in our psyche. An example given was the resonance of the story of Hercules: a man "virtuous enough to defeat death." This idea of virtue having not only intrinsic value, but intrinsic power, is something I know I've grown up seeing all over the entertainment industry, from cartoons to top budget films. With this in mind, I thought of my own dream game, and thought: "What is my deep resonance?" I know that I have one. I'll explain.

My game fundamentally involves a player who begins as a new angel, which I call a "fledgling." The actions that the player takes cause them to evolve continuously into a more angelic being, or an increasingly demonic one. All along the way, they fight with other fledglings (remember, this is an MMO), and the way they do so determines in what manner they progress in terms of this "alignment." However, when they finally get to a certain point where they are an angelic paragon, or a demonic one, they have the option to "turn pure." After they do so, they are pure demon or pure angel, and their actions no longer impact this kind of "alignment." The player becomes morally infallible, and the game completely changes in terms of social dynamics for that player.

Now, leaving out all the features and mechanics I've designed (which pains me to not discuss), it seems clear to me that there is some kind of deeper resonance with the idea of evolving into an Angel or a Demon, and with actually being one. In my mind, many if not most/all of the good guys and bad guys we see all over the entertainment industry are just rehashes of the very old myth of demons (and angels of course). This is not rooted in Christian mythology, it dates back much farther, and the ideas of ideologically opposed spiritual beings seems to have arisen independently all over the world in ancient times. The reason for this may be scientific, but it makes the idea no less resonant. So what is the resonance, exactly? The best I've come up with so far is: a being that is pure in its motives cannot be defeated by one that is not.

These motives may be "good" or "evil," it makes no difference. The more pure the motives, the more powerful the being, and pure motive is perfect power. This theme is present in every movie, show, or game in which the "boss" is the strongest, hardest to kill, and the most ideologically pure. The hero is also the strongest, hardest to kill, and most ideologically pure. As you move down the chain of command on either side, you find a gradual decline in power that also corresponds to ideological purity. A good example is Star Wars: Yoda > Luke > Obi Wan > Mace Windu etc. Star Wars even goes through special pains to ensure that its strongest heroes become increasingly ideologically pure throughout their development, to ensure that it correlates with their power. Darth Vader is a perfect example of this: he is extremely powerful, and ends up as one of the dark side's strongest ideologues (before betraying the emperor). While this is not present in every game/movie/show, it is present in enough to suggest strong resonance. This resonance is already written into my game design, and it makes me very happy to now be able to articulate, define, and tweak it more clearly.

In a later section, the author tells us to state the problem that our game is attempting to solve (called the Lens of the Problem). He does not always appear to take this approach to creating new games, as it is most useful if you already have a kind of game in mind. So, I went to work defining my question, and based on the way the author tends to word his questions, I came up with: How can I create a game that quintessentially personifies the war between good and evil? I may be alone in this, but that sounds like a compelling and fun idea to me.

The next Lens is my favorite one so far. It is the Lens of Risk Mitigation. This Lens is all about finding what could muddle up your game, and how to keep it from happening. For my game, there are two major things to start with: 1) Unplayable lag or extreme server costs, and 2) A core mechanic that is either not fun or not balanced. The way around these problems is to understand the proper design cycle for a successful game. In doing so, you learn that "looping" the prototype of the game is an important key to ensuring it succeeds. However, we don't need a finished game, we can prototype pecific problems, thereby saving us great headaches down the road. For me, this would start with testing the poly counts for large battles, testing to see if the servers can handle the simultaneous players and the complex movements and acrobatics I intend them to have, and testing the core mechanic in isolation to see if it is enjoyable. After that, we start over, defining our new problems, isolating them again, and continuing. By doing this, we build our game in multiple key places at once, and gradually bring the whole thing together.

In reading this Lens, I was actually able to envision how my game could be developed through chopping it up, as well as consider how it allows the entire design team to work hard from day 1. It further taught me that, if I do learn how to program in the future, I might be able to contribute to the team by knowing just enough to help make these small prototype games; thus one doesn't have to be a programming whiz to put some grunt coding time in with other members. I'm sure this would be very appreciated by the team, even if it was mostly to see that the designer was willing to sweat code with them.

The next Lens is the Lens of the Toy. One of my top favorites, this one exposes the problem with a lot of modern games. The idea of this Lens is to take out the part of your game that makes it a "game," and just turn it into a free little world. Now, how much fun is this little world to play around in? What you've effectively done is made it a toy, and if that toy isn't much fun, it may not lend itself well to games. The best toys, such as the ball, are fun to just mess around with by themselves, but also can be made into many different games. The makers of Grand Theft Auto actually made the entire game world before they knew what the game would be about (it wasn't called GTA at the time). I find that both stunning and a great lesson. I wish more MMORPGs would take this Lens to heart.

That's as far as I got. I would like to stop here briefly and say something that's been on my mind as I read this book: I find it incredibly hard to believe that most of the people who talk down to other designers and recommend they read books such as this have ever actually read the book! The book makes it clear time and again that everyone has ideas to bring to the design table, because everyone has different experiences. Furthermore, he states bluntly that simply calling yourself a designer makes you one. And it's absolutely true for reasons that independent-minded people tend to realize in their early adult lives. Every few pages in I just have to stop myself and say "either many of those people didn't read the same book I am, or they weren't paying attention."

I'd also like to mention a point that I differ from the author about. He goes through great pains to explain the creative process and how best to coax your own creative subconscious forward. I'll address the subconscious bit in a minute, but first: I think he gets too obsessive over the environment that one must be in in order to be creative. For example, he starts talking about how smaller paper feels limited and unatural, and he likes to use huge thick sheets of paper to put his thoughts down. He also doesn't like lined paper, because it boxes him in. I then looked at my own (lined) notepad that I was taking notes and jotting down ideas on and thought: "wow, this is a cramped notepad." And then I realized it had never felt cramped until the author told me it was. This angered me slightly. He then began talking about standing on your head, standing on your chair, driving somewhere new, etc. in order to get your creative juices flowing. At the time I read this I was waiting for my car to get done with a tune-up, and I thought "yeah, this is kinda dull." But again, it had never occurred to me before he said it.

These sorts of things are like the old island parable (a non-Biblical parable), where a village lives on an island surrounded by a steep circular cliff. An outsider goes to the island and begins telling the happy villagers how dangerous it is to live near this cliff, and that they need a fence in order to be safe. So, the alarmed villagers erect a fence up all around the village, and continue to live happily for a while. Then, the fence is blown down by a great storm, and the villagers huddle in the center of town, completely paralyzed by this new fear. You see, they lived happily in their setting before someone explained to them why it was unsatisfactory, and then everything fell apart. That's the sort of thing I fear this kind of "creative coaxing" tends to perpetuate. I like to be able to feel creative in a whitewashed, tile-ceilinged, fluorescently lit, dingy little cinder block building as well as sitting in a convertible on a cliff watching the sun set. Suggesting to a person that creativity only comes in certain circumstances, or is more likely to come under certain circumstances, is a dangerous road to tread down.

However, when it comes to his discussion of the sub-conscious, particularly as if it/he were a seperate person, I was overjoyed. You see, I have been having odd dreams with my subconscious self (if that's what you want to call it) for years. In fact, in college, one of my roommates' favorite things about living with me was that they got to hear about all my crazy dreams. It's important to know that I've always wondered: within our dreams, just who is controlling all the other people. Clearly it is part of my mind, but what part, and why does it/he seem to sometimes be stronger than I am? I have lucid dreams on occasion (I used to all the time, but I don't take naps as often which is what seems to cause them), and I would always attempt to ask one of these people: who are you. Well, on a couple occasions I've gotten an answer.

The funny thing is that Mr. Schell says that people's sub-conscious in dreams do not talk to them, they use art, pictures, actions, emotion, etc for expression. Well, mine talked. I walked up to a guy in my dream, put my arm on his shoulder, and he turned around, and I asked: Who are you? Of course, I meant this in the sense of: What part of me are you, or are you a part of me at all, what is your purpose in my head, etc. and, since dreams can always read your mind, he knew what I meant, and I knew he knew it. Upon asking the question, the whole dream suddenly turned black, as in the scene completely vanished, except for this man in front of me. Then, the man's face contorted, and it became my face. It wasn't my face in the sense that it's the face I see when I look in the mirror, it was a different looking face, but somehow I knew this is my face. At this point, I could only see the man's face, which I now knew was me, but (oddly, in hindsight) not exactly me with my physical face. He had a clear look of extreme pain on his face, and he sputtered out the words: "Stop...doing...this." The act of speaking appeared to put him in so much pain that he could barely get the words out. And then, after he said those words, I woke up.

I spent literally the entire day thinking about this dream, as I could not get it out of my head, and I've thought about it occasionally ever since. My subconscious said "stop doing this," but in reality he meant a lot more, which, as I said, in dreams we somehow always know the full meaning of things. What he meant was "Stop pursuing me, stop trying to figure me out, stop trying to dissect me, stop trying to make me something I'm not." You see, I had been trying to get a conversation with him for a long time, and for whatever reason he finally caved. Now, in hindsight, thinking that the subconscious may in some sense be another person in our brain, another consciousness in some vaguely literal sense, I feel guilty for having put him through the ordeal. In every dream I had that was lucid, as soon as I started to think "ok, maybe I'll pop the question," the characters began to behave differently towards me. I can't quite say how, but it was just different. That, or I would sometimes lose my lucid control of the dream. I can't say if its because I had the thought, I'm just stating that that is what happened sometimes. I have had many lucid dreams and lost control of them, so I can't define a correlation.

In any case, Mr. Schell talks about respecting your subconsciousness, and building a relationship with it. It was a very fascinating part of the book, because prior to this I hadn't read literature that discussed these kinds of experiences, and no one I've ever met has had an experience like the one I just described. One thing is for certain: In the future I will endeavor to read more on the topic, and until then will try to be good to my subconscious. After all, he really does have what I need: creativity.

Alright, this one is pretty long. While I was reading these latest parts of the book, I jotted down ideas for my own game design (since I would start staring off daydreaming, from time to time, which is one time when they always tend to come) and I had a lot of great new ones. When I ever get to the point where I'm describing my dream MMO in more detail (if I get there) I will definitely share them.

Have a great Friday night.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

on "The Art of Game Design"

Just yesterday I had to receive a few immunity shots (including anthrax and smallpox) and I've been considerably more tired as of last night than I normally am. Because of this, I was only able to make it through the first 10% (I'm reading on a Kindle) of "The Art of Game Design." On top of it all, I read slow. I don't read slow because I can't read fast, I read slow because I frequently stop to consider what an author is thinking when they write any given sentence, what their motivations are, what other consequences of a theory there may be, and so forth. I do this with fantasy and sci fi novels just as much as with theoretical books; it's just how my mind develops. What little I did get through proved to be better than I had anticipated.

Have you ever read a book and had the feeling you were reading your own writing? As if a version of yourself, a life you might have otherwise lived, had manifested itself in some other author who put down their thoughts in almost the exact manner you yourself had considered them? That is how I felt the moment I began reading "The Art of Game Design." I'm sure most people can relate to this experience, even though on its face it appears to be one of those things only an egomaniac might say.

The only real issue I have with the book is that, on occasion, the author seems to be defending himself from his invisible colleagues who he knows will read and scrutinize the work. So, he sometimes ends up delving into one "now, you might think this is silly because __" after another. Once in particular this rabbit trail got a little bit absurd, and it was clear he was defending himself from an anticipated retort from a colleague in his own mind. However, I can hardly fault the author for this, as I have caught myself doing the same thing, even on this young blog. So, I fault him for this in the manner I fault myself for it: it isn't that good, but I certainly sympathize with it.

A few particular areas of interest:

After describing everything he's ever been in his life, including professional juggler and comedian, Mr. Schell says the following: "I mention all this only because at various times in this book, I will be drawing examples from these experiences, since every single one of them has taught me valuable lessons about the art of game design. That might sound surprising now, but hopefully, as you read this book, it will help you see the ways that game design meaningfully connects to the many experiences in your own life." No, Mr. Schell. In fact, I could not possibly agree more.

Another later quote: "...you will be even more surprised to see how [this book] uses principles, methods, and examples from music, architecture, film, science, painting, literature, and everything else under the sun will be pulled in...Everything you know and everything you have experienced is fair game at the design table. [emphasis mine]

It does not make much difference what a person studies. All knowledge is related, and the man who studies anything, if he keeps at it, will become learned. - Hypatia"

It is incredibly refreshing to see my own sentiment stated by an established, respected game designer. It isn't knowledge of games that makes a great designer, it is knowledge of anything and everything. As I said in my first entry, it is the renaissance man.

The following gave me a little bit of comfort as I have been struggling to get to a discussion of the specifics of game design on this fledgling blog. Here are his two cents: "Game design is not an easy subject to write about. Lenses and fundamentals are useful tools, but to truly understand game design is to understand an incredibly complex web... Everything in this web is connected to everything else...Most experienced designers have built up this web in their minds, slowly, over many years, learning the elements and relationships by trial and error. And this is what makes game design so hard to write about." He then goes on to describe the difference between linear entertainment that is driven by the entertainer, and the non-linear form gaming takes on as it puts the fate of the experience in the hands of the recipient. To me, it is this fact that makes a sandbox game world the greatest form of game design of them all: it puts the player's fate in their own hands like no other form of entertainment attempts to do.

This next quote seems to support this opinion: "There are certain feelings: feelings of choice, feelings of freedom, feelings of responsibility, feelings of accomplishment, feelings of freindship, and many others, which only game-based experiences seem to offer." What form of game combines and magnifies these more than all the others? Admittedly this is debatable and changes from player to player, but in my mind, the answer is the sandbox MMO.

He later says: "Anyone who creates something that people are meant to experience and enjoy has something to teach us, and so we will pull rules and examples from designers of every stripe, being as 'xenophilic' as possible." This was a humbling area for me, as it has not been the purpose of my profession to create enjoyable experiences for others (although I feel it may be my calling). There are those all across the entertainment industry that know the particular principles far beyond my bare understanding. I have played a few musical instruments in my life (oboe, drums, steel drum, and guitar mainly) so music is the only place where I feel marginally competent. Even in that field, I have close friends whose knowledge of musical theory simply puts me to shame, and they aren't even industry professionals (although they easily could have been). This area was a lesson well taken, and imagining myself in charge of a group of people each with deep knowledge in lighting, music, sound, graphics, and all other aspects of production quality, was a very healthy thing to do.

The first Lens is "The Lens of Essential Experience." This lens is about distilling what the overall experience you wish to convey is, and finding creative ways to cause the player to experience it. This Lens is fantastic. Mr. Schell gives one example when he describes a game whose essential experience was to recreate a snowball fight. He talks about the differences between players with gloves and those without (they form more compact balls, but their hands turn blue, begin to shake, etc.), he speaks about the sound of the wind whistling by, of puffs of mist coming out of players' mouths, and on and on. He lists all of the memorable experiences involved with a snowball fight, and attempts to determine the essence of each memorable experience. There is some confusion in this chapter, as he seems to define Essential Experience on the one hand as that experience which is essential to the game's design (perhaps to its core mechanic, I do not know), and on the other hand as that particular essence of any experience which makes it memorable. He kind of bounces between the two, so I'll assume he did this because he thought of them as two sides of the same lens. Applied to my own MMORPG, I am able to pin down the essential experience in my mind, but I'm not quite ready to attempt to describe it in words. I will endeavor to do so in the future. I feel that discovering the essences of those experiences within the game that I intend to be memorable will be a much easier task.

The second Lens is "The Lens of Surprise." Mr. Schell makes a fair attempt to explain how surprise is a part of all entertainment. This Lens' description is extremely short, and I vaguely feel that it is a little superfluous, although not necessarily useless. Surprise seems to me to be better served as a means to a larger experience than as an end in and of itself, so I fear this Lens may be somewhat misleading. Nevertheless, it is worth keeping in mind.

The third Lens is "The Lens of Fun." He begins this chapter by saying that "Fun is desirable in nearly every game..." Nearly every game? Unless he is referring to "game" in the purely lexical senses (i.e. "war games" etc.) then I can't imagine a game in which fun is an undesirable trait. It is often difficult to know if he means words like "game" in all the lexical contexts in which they might occasionally enjoy use, or in the sense that we would expect him to actually mean in this kind of book. This can occasionally cause a bit of confusion. In any case, I found this Lens to be, ironically, the most fun so far:

Mr. Schell spends most of the chapter trying to define "play." He walks us through various popular definitions, and the humorous thing is that all of these popular definitions are grossly flawed. He points out exactly in what way each one is flawed, but anyone with half a brain can quickly discern the reasons for him or her self. It becomes evident that Mr. Schell is not entirely sure that a 100% accurate definition is possible. However, having debunked all these other definitions, he offers up his own: "Play is manipulation that indulges curiosity." He is quick to add that this definition is not perfect, and asks the reader if they can find the flaws. So I did.

Quite simply, there are instances of "manipulation that indulges curiosity" that are not also play. For example, if you reach your finger into a light socket, wondering what will happen, it would seem strange to define that as "play." Let's say further that you are a homeowner, and in order to diagnose an electrical problem in you house, you (fairly stupidly) decide to test the socket by sticking a fork in it. Clearly, that was not play, regardless of whether you are electrocuted or not. You might as well define play as "intentional discovery." I would also ask in what way running around playing a game of "freeze tag" indulges curiosity - yet it is clearly play. I suppose in some shallow sense people playing tag indulge their curiosity over who will win the game, or who is the fastest runner, yet this feels like fairly empty reasoning.

So, I came up with my own definition of play, which I think is relatively solid. To me, play is: the act of entertaining a fanciful ego. I mean "entertaining" in the sense of indulging. Every sports player who plays is entertaining their ego, or alter-ego if you prefer to call it that, of being a great ball thrower, runner, catcher, quarterback, etc. A cat playing with a ball of yarn is (likely) entertaining its ego as a slayer of mice. Children playing tag are entertaining their egos as great predators, quick-running sportsman, or any number of other things. This definition is unique because it incorporates the reason someone does something: two people may do the same thing but its possible only one is playing. That occurs frequently in real life. The one we would call "playing" is the one entertaining some part of their ego; the one who is not entertaining their ego is either "working" or doing something akin to it. Mr. Schell gives an example of a man who inspects boxes, has done so for years, and loves his job. The man has turned his job into a game by trying to beat his personal average inspection time each day, with each box (each box requiring roughly 30-45 seconds to inspect). He is entertaining his ego as the great Olympic champion of box inspectors. The book even states that, as quoted by a psychologist who has studied the man, "he approaches his task in the same way an Olympic athlete approaches his event..." Remember, it's not just the person's ego in general, a key word in the definition is fanciful.

I would also say that a person who is mindlessly playing a game such as Minesweeper, is not actually "playing" at all. They are merely acheiving an objective, and it would be more accurate to say that they are working at Minesweeper. The fact that we don't say a person is "working Minesweeper" is a failure of us, socially, to use words of proper conveyance - unless, of course, the person using the game is entertaining their ego (vying for a top score, for one example). Perhaps the reason we always assume activity such as Minesweeper is play is simply because we cannot know their mind, and the word play is inherently less depressing than the word work.

So, what do you think of my definition, and of Mr. Schell's?

The final lens I had time to read was "The Lens of Curiosity." It is only discussed briefly, and serves to ensure that the player in a game is still active in attempting to learn new things. This lens is extremely important in today's MMORPGs, which seem to have dumbed down player quests/goals with relatively boring, linear systems lately.

Next comes the section that actually attempts to define a game. Knowing that this section would require the full brunt of my attention, I decided that it was a good place to stop for the evening.

I have left out a lot of information in this synopsis. These are the parts that intereted me the most. There was a great deal of discussion of experience in the metaphysical sense, how philosphers have thought of it over time, and of the more pragmatic (and scientifically accepted) way of dealing with human experiences: i.e. subjecting someone to something and watching how they react. He also discussed why the metaphysical way of looking at experience is more useful to us as game designers (although both can be). There really was a lot of good stuff I don't have time to discuss, and that is how it will be as I continue to report on the book in future entries.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

two new books and some important rambling

Alright, I don't have a lot of time to post today so I'm going to try to make this one quick.

First, I just picked up two new design books that I'm beginning as soon as I finish this post. The first is called "Postmortems from Game Developers: Insight from the Developers of Unreal Tournament, Black and White, Age of Empires, and Other Top-Selling Games" by Austin Grossman. The other is called "The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses" by Jesse Schell. The first is basically a bunch of designers that each contribute to a segment of the book by going into detail about their own successes and mishaps throughout a particular game’s development cycle. The second is a book about different perspectives one may apply to design, and it so often quoted and referenced that I finally caved and decided I will have to read it for myself. I'm undecided on which one to read first. I'm leaning towards the latter, since I may be able to apply its insights directly to the real-world experiences of the first when I read it.

Additionally, I realized that I had not mentioned something that I should have stated from the beginning about my philosophy of MMORPG design. You can basically boil it all down to one thing: If you do not understand the world you already live in, you cannot possibly expect to create one of your own. This is what I mean when I suggest that knowledge in breadth is better than knowledge in depth when it comes to MMORPG game design (although clearly both traits are desirable and they do sometimes beget one another). It is for this reason that I freely go into discussions on things such as social philosophies - they are a big part of your world. In the theory of MMORPG design practically all knowledge and experience is not only useful - it is urgently so. If your worldview is not solid, then the world you create will fall apart. Your worldview is built on everything you know and have experienced up to this day.

Programmers tend to be intellectuals. While I have no raw data to back this up, I can remember scarcely a single one I've met who wasn't. Intellectuals tend to be progressive, generally liberal in their political leanings – the programmers I know are no exception. Progressive, generally liberal people tend to believe in socialist philosophies. Socialist philosophies inherently micromanage people in their daily lives. The micromanaging of men’s lives tends bring free societies to shambles.

Now, let me say real quickly that I am a Conservative's conservative. I'm a conservative in the way Ronald Reagan was and probably even moreso in the way that Ron Paul still is. With that said, please read on.

The most profound flaw found in raw intellectualism (and by extension progressivism) is that people who consider themselves intellectuals tend also to consider themselves more intelligent than most people around them – aside from socially higher ranked intellectuals. The fact is, often times they are correct - perhaps even always (it makes no difference). The flaw is that intellectuals by extension believe themselves to be more intelligent than all of those lesser intelligent people, combined. This popular sentiment is what leads to the belief that what we need in, say, a President, is in fact a brilliant intellectual (if you haven’t heard that rallying cry then your head has been in the sand for the last 12-20 months).

Now, the intellectual, believing that they are smarter than the sum of the lower intelligences beneath them, begins to espouse actions that control the lives of the individuals intellectually inferior to them - in order to help them. From the President’s vantage point, we are talking about millions of people with literally centuries of evolving experience, culture, knowledge, etc. behind them. The intellectual President, believing that he knows better how to run their lives than they themselves do as free individuals, begins to micro-manage them by interfering with the economy (individual's exchange of goods and monies), with medicine (where doctors practice, how they practice, who they aid), with insurance (who they will serve and with what policies), with mortgages (who must be given loans regardless of risk), with investments (socializing their risk), etc.

Intellectualism is thus an inherently flawed worldview when it takes on this form, a form manifestly common in our society. In addition, its personalities tend to manifest themselves as exceedingly corrosive and arrogant due precisely to this highfaluting nature, which is yet another hallmark trait of many game programmers and designers whose blogs and forums are found all over the internet.

Now, with at least the basic understanding of why I see this worldview as flawed, you can begin to see why I am so critical of current MMORPG designers. It is extremely clear to me that these brilliant intellectuals (and I don't say that ironically, they are brilliant men) aspire to a destructive and ultimately flawed view of the world, and more specifically of society. It is precisely for this reason that the current generation of sandbox MMO's (the only kind of MMO that attempts to actually mimic a full-on world) are failing miserably. The reason that they fail is not a wholesale condemnation by the market that sandbox MMOs make for bad business, it is a condemnation of the worldviews that form the very premises upon which those sandboxes are built. These men rarely understand the natural laws that govern the relations between free men, and it becomes abundantly clear in the way in which players are allowed to interact.

You see, the constraints within which players may interact within these “sandbox MMOs” reflect a mind that looks in on itself for its own version of what a society should look like, and then attempts to create rules and methods of interaction that will allow players to form societies in the likeness of the designer’s own image. Not in the image of the society that the players want. The problem is that no true sandbox MMORPG has yet been created; not that sandbox MMORPGs are a lost cause.

And no, I consider neither UO nor Eve true sandbox MMORPGs, each for different reasons that would take a wall of text to properly explain. They are among two of the closest examples, however.

Now
, with that understanding, perhaps if you go back and read my third entry, you will be more successful in understanding some of my more nuanced reasoning.

There was a third unrelated item that I wanted to discuss, but this entry is long enough. I’ll save it for next time.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

a little piece of art

I call it: 80's-TV-balanced-precariously-on-brick-rubble-wall-with-lamp-post.

In other words: my living room.

I've been fooling around with the UE3 editor a bit lately and it can be quite a bit of fun. It reminds me a lot of a CAD program named "Solidworks" I used to use. Albeit it turns out that this is much more intuitive. I'd like to make a working level with the current package and then see if I can make a few of my own objects to toss around later. What I really don't know is what kinds of triggers a programming bumpkin like myself might be able to pull off. I'm betting a map that serves as a rudimentary non-persistent RPG with some form of very simple progression could be fairly difficult, but perhaps not. After all, take a look at what the guys over at JKA Galaxies are attempting to pull off.


On another note, I ran into a great article over on TenTonHammer (a site I usually don't like). It dates back to 2006, and basically takes the stance that MMORPG design is an art, and not a science. One would not think it, but it seems that this view flies in the face of what at least some of the established brains believe. Have a read for yourself: http://www.tentonhammer.com/index.php?q=node/107 Jeff Woleslagle does a great job of defending his point. I'd really like to put some time into describing why, but something has a hold of my eyelids and won't stop pulling them shut. Perhaps tomorrow I'll have a go at it.

In the next few days, Iwill get around to more specific MMORPG design business.

my first professional response!

Ok, so I'm sure you'll all be excited to know that I received my first posted comment on this site (among a scant two), and it was quite special: it was from an industry professional! I'm already making contacts, can you believe it? It reads as follows:

So, I've read your first two blogs. Quick note right quick: I work in the industry, and no, you do not need a computer science degree to be a designer. I certainly don't have one. In any event, designers don't do a whole lot of programming, anyway. Maybe in some companies? My experience is a little limited. Anyway, the designers I know don't really do much coding. It's all fairly easy stuff, and for the most part you can teach yourself as you go.

That said. No. You are NOT more qualified than the people already in the industry. Not only is your information WILDLY off-base, but there's not really any theory here. Maybe in the third post, which I don't see myself reading. I would suggest reading blogs from established and knowledgeable designers.

http://brokentoys.org/

That's a pretty good resource for starting out. I would delete this and just try again a few years later.

Also, I'm not trying to be a dick here and troll your blog. But, you aren't going to get anywhere doing this. You have reasonably acceptable grammar, though.

tl;dr? Nice effort, but ultimately useless/misleading. I Read two out of three entries, and found no "theory" only some vague nostalgia-fuel and anecdotal trite.

It's too bad they didn't read my third entry ;) (sarcasm)

Now, since I anticipate this kind of sentiment to be quite common among amateur designers/programmers reading this site, I thought it would be good to go ahead and respond to this one in a general sense so that we can avoid such, well, nastiness in the future.

First off, I'm fairly sure I actually know who posted this, being that the number of places I advertised this blog was extremely few, and (unbeknown to their participants) I actually shadow those sites frequently and recognize the very distinctive arrogance and writing style of the above. I will let that be, however. After all, such arrogance has shown itself to be quite common in “the industry” and I may be wrong.

To this kind of nonsense in general: First off, if you are going to tell me you work in the industry, do not be like this person - provide at least minimal background. This goes double for anyone who, like the above, is going to simultaneously admit that they have limited industry experience, as well as summarily reject everything I've written (with attempted authority no less). Additionally, what is "the industry?" Is it single player game design, text-based MMO design, or perhaps MMORPG design? If you don't specify I will always assume that it is not the latter, and thus won't take your criticism as seriously as I otherwise may.

Second, do not assume questions that I have not asked. For example: I already know that a degree in CS is not needed in order to be a game designer. In fact, this entire site is based on that premise; indeed the premise of this site is that no degree at all is necessary per se. Just because you spend your day trolling/moderating an amateur-filled forum does not mean you should assume I am yet another misguided soul full of misinformation. Further assumptions will only make you look increasingly silly. For example, I've known about brokentoys.org for some time now, and frankly it rarely impresses me.

Thirdly, if you are going to accuse me of being wrong or "wildly off-base," at least have the kahunas to be specific. Where is it that I'm off base, and why? Failure to at least attempt this only further degrades your credibility, particularly if you are posting under the guise of an industry professional.

And lastly, do not make assumptions about me, my profession, or my expertise. Simply take my statements and thoughts for their face value. Making a statement such as to say that I have "reasonably acceptable grammar" makes you look like an ass. This goes double if you are going to write: "I certainly don't have one. In any event, designers don't do a whole lot of programming, anyway. Maybe in some companies?" There are gross grammatical errors in all three of those sentences (among several others). There isn't the time in a day to unsplice every comma and shorten every run-on within my side-hobby blog. I wish there was, but there simply isn't and probably never will be.

I am not your standard modern apologetic male, so if my confidence offends you then either get over it or get back to reading your kitty site. Suggesting I should “delete this and come back in a few years” undermines the purpose of this site. Any fool should know that (as with all blogs) my purpose here is as much to flesh out ideas as it is anything else.

In response...

First, I would like to thank the constructive e-mails that I have received. To the less constructive one(s), thank you as well. I appreciate all kinds of feedback. I'm putting comments on hold temporarily while I figure out the best way to deal with their moderation. E-mails still work at nextmmo@live.com

I'd also simply like to state that not everyone is going to understand many of my blogs. I knew this going in. My third entry, for example, could probably be distilled into a workable doctoral thesis. There are a great many claims and statements within it which simply cannot be properly supported in the form of a blog entry. The assumption, of course, is that the reader has sufficient life experience and a workable knowledge to fill those gaps. Many people will not be able to follow everything they read here; that is ok. Furthermore, I intentionally write in a prosaic form, after all what's being discussed here is the art of world-building; it is not a science. With that said, I'll post more later when I have some more time.

Have a great afternoon.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Another Perspective

Like many game designers I've seen or read, I adhere to the belief that it is important to look at a video game's design through more than one perspective (some might call them "lenses"). If you are reading my blogs in order (and I hope you are, since that's how I intend they be read), you'll remember that at the end of my last blog I gave special credence to the game Asheron's Call.

I stopped short of explaining specifically why. I'd like to hold off on going into too many specifics and continue to speak in terms of generalities if I can get away with it for a little while longer.

I recently read a book called "Game Development Essentials: Online Game Development," by Rick Hall and Jeannie Novak. I absolutely could not put it down. The book focuses largely on the business aspects of game design, and successfully makes the case that a MMORPG designer must not consider him or herself at odds with the players, the artists, the level designers, the corporate suits, etc. Instead, the successful designer looks at all of those components as pieces of the same puzzle - pieces that must be made to interlock. In game design, even those pesky "griefers" should be thought of as a force not to be avoided or obliterated, but harnessed. Rick Hall makes the same case for anything one would normally consider a "constraint." Instead of thinking of it as a constraint, he urges readers to think of it more as a direction, as a guidepost, as one more technicality that we no longer have to worry about deciding, as a force to harness, or one of many other things aside from a "constraint." Of course we have to deal with constraints, but the best designers construct games that make those constraints work for them. They don’t stifle them, they use them to make their world more dynamic and interesting.

Now before I go too far, I want to say bluntly that I do not believe that all perspectives, or "lenses," were created equal. In fact, as I'll illustrate in a later blog, I believe that some are decidedly more useful and truth-telling than others. With that said, however, one never knows if a lens distorts perception or magnifies it until one has in some way compared it with their most trusted set.

I'd like now to quote a post I made on another message board concerning the game "Asheron's Call." At the time I never anticipated using this post in a blog, but I believe it suits our purposes here quite well. Essentially, the purpose of the thread was to discuss nostalgia regarding the game, and to a lesser extent discuss what made it such a great game. This was my first post on those particular boards (I had happened across the thread through a Google search I was doing.)

"….I think there is a kernel of truth to those who say we are nostalgic for [Asheron’s Call] because it was our first, however I believe that that statement only goes so far. AC was not the first video game I ever played, and it was not the first MMO I ever played, it was only the first 3D immersive MMO I played. The truth is that AC was great and will not be easily surpassed for the same reasons Plato and Socrates were great philosophers who will not be easily surpassed - it was designed philosophically from the ground up. Philosophies since Plato's era have appeared, but they largely take their foundations for granted, and build upon premises that they don't bother proving (Marxism comes to mind). Occasionally, however, we still see a philosophy appear that actually bothers to start from the beginning, define all aspects of self and life, and then move on to social proofs only after that is complete (Objectivism comes to mind) - but these are rare. In video games we see the same thing happening. Older MMO designers had to literally sit down, ask themselves what is a game, what makes a game fun, what makes it feel immersive, what makes players feel free, what is "progression" and how should it be defined, is there a thing as too much freedom and if so what is it, how is an immersive game different from a 2D game, etc. They literally had to go back to root questions.

Philosophically, the earlier designers overwhelmingly concluded that the best kind of immersive MMO is that which leaves as many decisions as possible to be made at the lowest level - the player. A Republic operates on the same principles - counties/cities make as many decisions as they can, then come states/provinces with only the big decisions, and then the "federal" government only when they absolutely must. The most efficient system always leaves decisions to the lowest possible level. That is the fundamental "sandbox MMO" premise as well, and early designers probably didn't consider an MMORPG being good for much other than a sandbox design - why would you take an MMORPG and make a theme-park type game out of it? That would be like taking a flat screen tv and using it as a table - sure you can, but there are plenty of other ways to make a table. The same goes for directed, handholding gameplay - it can essentially be done with single player games, so why take this awesome new (at the time) technology - the immersive MMO - and do directed gameplay when we can create something totally new? So they did.
[As an aside, of course from a market perspective creating a theme park single-player-like game that never ends (such as WoW) is a neat idea, after all, its like guaranteeing you sell a new single player game every month. But some of the early designers don't appear to have considered this, probably because they were looking at how to use this new technology to create a brand new experience out of it - not a never-ending version of an old one. I will elaborate on this point in a later blog.]

The newer MMOs, however, are not asking the fundamental questions anymore. The newer MMOs glance at the old "philosophies," do not bother to fully understand the ancient texts, and start writing nonsense. They take the decisions away from the lowest level and put them in the hands of the state, aka the game. The rugged individualism of Asheron's Call has given way to the communism of Maoist China. And not enough people bother to ask: Why are these my constraints? Why is my life pigeonholed? Is this really the most efficient way? Is it the most fun? The most fulfilling? Instead, people look around, see that millions of other people are doing what they are doing, and conclude that this must be the best way (ala World of Warcraft).

There will be another Asheron's Call, but it will require two things: First, a team of designers must step back and design their MMO completely from the ground up, and actually be able to fully articulate why they make the design decisions they do. Why utilize levels? Why make character progression directed? Why have a radar on the screen? Why make a level cap? Why make death trivial? If they can't answer these kinds of questions, or if their answer is "Because the industry has shown that these things work," then they definitely can't articulate their beliefs on truly fundamental questions, such as "how free is too free." Second, the team of designers must be able to obtain funding from a committed entity that is willing to put its trust in them and not micro manage the process. If the funding comes from a source that actually believes that decisions are best left to the lowest level, then they should see the error in micro managing the designers anyways...."

Now, if we can put some of the more loaded statement made here aside for a second, we can examine the overarching point I was attempting to make. Yes I am aware that a "republic" is not necessarily governed in the way I described, and yes you may be a big fan of Marxist theories and hate Objectivism - let those thoughts go just for a few minutes please. Most people reading this blog should know that there are two overarching genres of MMOs: "theme park" and "sand box." Those extraordinarily shallow labels have been used ad nauseum to describe virtually every MMO ever made.

In my last blog I attempted to take a very cursory look at MMOs through what one might (somewhat sloppily) call the perspectives of Live-Action Role-Play and Pen & Paper Role-Play. If you haven't quite caught on yet, in this blog we are beginning to look at games through the perspective of social philosophy.

We can take a look at social philosophy through the lense of real-world history, and when we do, we see that a strong case can be made for rugged individualism as the greatest overarching societal rallying cry ever made. Now, why on Earth would I say that? Particularly when game developers are known to hold widely liberal viewpoints - aren't I shooting myself in the foot here? Well, consider the greatest superpower the world as ever known: the United States. To fully appreciate the dominance that that country has held for the past several decades, one must have a solid grounding in history, but as I don't have time to make this already long post a history lesson as well, I'll assume that the reader is willing to grant this fact as indeed true.

The relevant question then is: What made America so powerful? It wasn't particularly rich in resources, and it wasn't the only country on the planet with oceans on two sides. In fact, many countries have oceans on three sides, and several on all sides. It certainly wasn't the most isolationist country, nor was it the most imperialistic in human history (albeit it has become much more so in recent years). The singular thing that has always separated America from every other country on the planet is its continued deference towards individualism. At the root of the Constitution is the fundamental belief that the most fulfilling life is a life of freedom. An unforeseen consequence of that belief has been that the decisions of men are consistently made at the lowest possible level. Only a fool actually believes that because they are more intelligent than a farmer, they are more intelligent than all farmers combined - yet that is the fundamental flaw made via the micromanagement we see in socialist countries of every flavor. As a consequence, their “farmers” are not only less efficient, but are also less happy. This same phenomenon infects every facet of the socialist state; not just the farmers. This same phenomenon also illustrates the fundamental flaw of the restrictive MMO, and highlights why it can never be anything more than a "them park."

You see, the socialist state does not see man's desire for wealth and other market incentives of private citizens as forces (aka "constraints") that they should elegantly allow to work for them. Instead, they view the men and women as tools to forcefully set on various pre-formulated paths, which they then periodically tax. It is the brute-force method of game design applied at the state level. A state that allows the natural tendencies of man to work for it, i.e. the United States, ends up as the greatest power the world has ever known. The state that constricts its people, tells them what they will do next, and then taxes them for it, ends up one of the most repressive, unfulfilling experiences the world has ever known. It's an extraordinary shame that many of the people of China have no concept of what they are missing out on. In the MMO world, a “China” has already been created in the form of World of Warcraft, among several clones, and it is certainly not a mere irony that many of the players of those games have never experienced an MMO world outside of that game type. But this begs the question: Where is our “United States?”

Let's say you find all that stuff to be a bunch of nonsense: Then consider for a second what the purpose of a "state" is. Is it to advance technology, or provide order, or keep its citizens alive, or advance itself in a global market, or....? What is it? You see, in my mind, the "state" is what sets the rules by which its people act, which is very similar to what a game designer does when they design their MMO. The two are practically synonymous. Now you may very well respond: "But the purpose of a game is to have fun! Not create jobs, provide health care, etc." I would counter that the purpose of a state is none of those things, it is actually to allow its citizens to define their own "fulfillment" for themselves, and then simply allow them to seek it within reason. MMOs are eerily similar. Everyone plays MMOs for different reasons, and everyone wants to define themselves and their role individually; they each have their own idea of fulfillment within the context of their alter ego inside the game. The question for the designer is whether or not they allow that inborn desire to work for them, or whether they attempt to eradicate it from their players with pavlovian carrot... after carrot... after carrot. Isn' this same type of conditioning seen in socialist states of all forms? Ironically, it is...except it isn't really ironic at all, is it?

When a designer sits down to create an MMO, does he recognize that the rules he is crafting are similar to the rules governing a state? Does he even know what his own social philosophy is, and can he articulate why? If so, can he take that social theory and distill it down further, digging into those questions that define morality itself? If he cannot, because he has not bothered to work them out for himself, then how is it that he can be trusted with millions of dollars to design a virtual world based on premises that he does not understand, or worse, has not even considered? You see, the answer "because he spent six years as a QA tester and ten more as a level designer" just isn't going to cut it when it comes to world design. This is partially why we see so many MMOs flopping, and a bunch of corporate suits left scratching their heads wondering what went wrong.

Now, was Asheron’s Call a totally free game? Of course not. However, it was clearly designed philosophically from the ground up – or at least closer to it than any of its near competitors (circa 1999). What Asheron’s Call did suffer from was very poor marketing and corporate micro-management. Perhaps I will attempt to elucidate particular examples in my next post, this one’s long enough.

Thank you for reading.

Followers