LibriumArcana.Games

You already know all about the MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) phenomenon: the GDC panels, the rants, the spectacular failures and successes, the addictions, the “Make Love, Not Warcraft” South Park episode, the ubiquitous elves, and especially the profits. Just in case you haven’t been paying attention, though, here’s a brief explanation of why MMOs are important.

World of Warcraft is a rather successful MMO. Its subscription model gives it a trump card against software pirates, and its massive subscriber base guarantees continued revenue for the next few years at least, if current trends are to be trusted. Even World of Warcraft’s older, poorer cousins, such Everquest and Ultima Online, continue to turn profits many years after their initial release.

On the other side of the PC gaming coin, non-subscription retail games face increasingly grim prospects as customers turn to pirated software and parasitic games such as the aforementioned World of Warcraft, which more than one executive has blamed for slow PC game sales. And they appear to have a valid complaint: retail sales of PC games have fallen every year since 2001, while revenue from subscription fees has skyrocketed.

Clearly, the trends show that the future of enthusiast PC gaming lies with games that can hold a player’s interest over long periods of time; at the very least, these games commute PC gaming’s death sentence for a few years, until game consoles can provide the features, depth, flexibility, and convenience that PCs allow.

The thing is…we all expected these games to evolve. We looked at Everquest and its addictiveness and reasoned that surely someone would improve on this formula, creating a breed of entertainment that the entire spectrum of gamers could enjoy. Instead, we have seen a parade of copycats that fails to appeal to a large portion of the potential market, despite far bigger development budgets than any offline games.

What’s the problem? Is it that MMO developers choose to design their games for a niche audience? Or are the designers, who often have little to no experience with traditional video game design, simply incapable of designing anything but a nerd-fest? I can’t answer that, but here are a few questions on the subject I do want to try to answer from the standpoint of a traditional game designer: What exactly is an MMO? Will the current MMO formula hold up over time? What is holding this type of game back from more universal success, and how can it be improved?

Massive Misnomer

If we are to understand why these games have such widespread popularity, it is important to recognize what distinguishing game elements draw players in and keep them hooked.

In defining just what kind of games fall into this category, the term “MMO” is itself not particularly helpful. If my memory serves me correctly, “massively multiplayer” was simply marketing-speak used to promote Everquest when it launched. Being able to interact with thousands of other people was touted as one of the game’s most important features, setting it apart from more diminutively online multiplayer games of the time, such as Diablo.

However, the “massively multiplayer” aspect of subscription games is not what draws people into these games and keeps them hooked, in most cases. Imagine, for instance, that World of Warcraft were set up like Diablo 2 (not a “massively multiplayer” game), where only eight players could play in a single game, and the game was balanced with this restriction in mind. The game would still be quite playable and fun for most of the people who currently subscribe. In fact, in the game’s present form, players rarely interact with more than the same few people every time they log in. If dragons could be killed with only eight players, players’ social circles would be even smaller, making the other thousands of players nigh-irrelevant.

That’s not to say that all these other players are a bad thing; they’re just not the most important thing in this particular type of game. It is quite possible to create a game where interacting with lots of people is the most appealing feature (Second Life and others). However, that category of quasi-games is outside the scope of this discussion.

Persistence Pays

What is it, then, that convinces a subscriber to pay triple digits every year for a single game? What facet of the game would cause the whole tower to crumble if removed? The answer is persistent character progression. Imagine that World of Warcraft is now back to hosting thousands of players on each server (plus several hundred in the login queue, of course). This time, however, when a player gains a level, it only lasts until the player logs off—like a game of Quake, where all kill stats reset when the game is over. The same goes for abilities, items, and all other forms of progression. Players can still interact with thousands of other players and do everything else they could do before; the one change is that their character progress is no longer persistent. My hunch is that under these conditions, the game would not have many subscribers left, as neither the gameplay mechanics nor the ability to interact with thousands of players would provide enough appeal to retain them.

The reality is that the MMO as we know it is primarily about advancing a “secure” persistent entity (character, team, vehicle, country, etc.) in a multiplayer environment of any size. (Diablo 2’s wonderful experiment with “Closed,” “Open,” and “Ladder” realms provides convincing evidence that the feeling of accomplishment increases—and attracts more players—when it is validated by the presence of other players and by attempted cheat prevention.) For the developers and publishers, of course, it is also about collecting a subscription fee or other type of regular payment, but this is not an essential part of the user experience. My term to describe these games, then, is Persistent Entity Game, or PEG.

It is not quite right to say that PEG (or MMO, in its current usage) is a genre of game; the concept of advancing a persistent entity (or interacting with hundreds of other players) can be included in games of many genres, from First Person Shooter (World War II Online), to Real-Time Strategy (Shattered Galaxy), to Sports (Smallball) to Role-Playing (Ultima Online). Even tedious games that are terribly designed in a traditional video game sense (not naming any names here) can hold a great deal of appeal for many people, simply because the allure of a persistent character is so strong.


Solving the Problems

Problem #1: Boring Gameplay

Just as with adventure games of yesteryear, the persistent-character games on the market today have stale and unappealing gameplay mechanics. The central mechanic is “die-roll” combat, where players and monsters take turns hitting each other at regular intervals until statistics dictate that one of them falls over.
Solution: Ensure that gameplay provides enjoyable mental and/or physical challenges

Almost every good video game in existence requires the user to surmount challenges with brains or dexterity, rather than tedious repetition. And PEGs need to be good video games first and foremost, not just treat dispensers. If the only real challenges in the game are spending a few thousand hours playing the game, hoping your stats are better than your enemy’s stats, and waiting for the treats to drop into your lap, it is not a good video game, as the satirical “game” Progress Quest illustrates.


Problem #2: Grinding


Another issue that stems partly from die-roll combat is that of “grinding.” Grinding is the act of playing in a repetitive, unexciting, or otherwise un-enjoyable fashion in order to make faster progress. Since die-roll combat is based on two factors that are generally very easy to quantify and predict (the player’s power and the enemy’s power), it follows that players almost always know at the start of a battle who the winner will be. This knowledge lessens the excitement and tension of battles. As players are able to predict outcomes with a high degree of accuracy, games are balanced with the assumption that players will win a very high percentage of their battles. In other words, the punishment for losing a single battle far outstrips the average reward for winning a single battle. Players will spend hours at a time churning through feeble, ineffectual opponents rather than taking on more risk, because the game rewards them more for adopting this style of play.

Another factor that leads to “grinding” is that PEGs tend to be balanced in a way such that players run out of new things to do well before they have advanced their characters far enough to move on to new content. As a result, they must do the same things over many times before they can progress.

Solution 1: Encourage players to play in fun ways



All things being equal, players will choose fun activities over dull ones; all a game designer has to do is to ensure that players are not rewarded more for choosing the dull ones. Once the reward for “grinding” is less appealing than for playing in a fun way, players have no reason to “grind.”

In particular, games should give players who take on tougher or more unpredictable challenges, even if they fail often, better rewards (such as faster advancement) than if they had 100% success with weak or predictable challenges.

Solution 2: Tune advancement to match game content

If players get bored at level 24 because they can’t have any meaningful new experiences (such as exploration, loot, enemies, and quests) until they reach level 30, then players should reach level 30 sooner, or the designer needs to add more things for them to do until they reach level 30 (besides repeating the same things they have been doing). Players should still need to “earn” their advancement, but the best way of earning it should involve overcoming interesting challenges, not by subjecting oneself to hours of tedium.



Problem #3: Advancement-holics Anonymous



Voluminous discussion (including the lion’s share of all gamer and developer “rants”) has been conducted on the subject of PEGs. Most of it, unfortunately, assumes the inclusion of boring gameplay mechanics, then goes on to debate implementation details such as game balance issues (whether progression should primarily take the form of character skills or levels, whether one type of character is more powerful than another, etc.), how best to prevent real money from influencing in-game accomplishment, and other secondary issues. They rarely address the problem described in section #1: boring gameplay mechanics.

This misplaced focus reflects one of the problems of the genre: issues related to advancement comprise the bulk of the discussion because the game’s appeal comes almost entirely from character building. In fact, designers treat it as the game’s ultimate goal. Everything else—quests, game mechanics, social interactions—are an often undesirable means to a desirable end; namely, acquiring levels and loot. Players have learned that the best rewards in a PEG always come from burning through the game as quickly as possible. Nothing in the game is worth experiencing for its own sake; if it doesn’t give experience or loot, it’s a waste of time in players’ minds. Designers, unfortunately, make little effort to discourage the player from thinking otherwise, as they put very little content into the game that is worth experiencing for its own sake. In other words, they encourage players to play this way. This model is the exact opposite of single-player games, where character advancement (skills, items, levels, etc.), though still a reward, is primarily a one of several tools the player uses in his primary task: advancing through game content.

Solution 1: Provide worthwhile alternate goals


Players like advancement because it gives them a feeling of accomplishment, acknowledges their abilities (or time spent on the game, unfortunately), and in some cases, gives them the feeling that they are getting closer to the best parts of the game.

One way to tempt players to play for something other than numerical advancement is to offer other avenues for accomplishment.

Solution 2: Make the journey interesting


The “roller coaster” game has a designated start and end point, as well as a pre-defined path connecting the two. Experiences as the roller-coaster travels from the start to the end provide the enjoyment—visuals, play mechanics, story, characters, enemies, animations, scripted events, settings, novelty, etc. Examples of well-received “roller-coaster games” include Half Life 2 and God of War. Although there are different ways to play and customize the experience in these games, the player does not deviate from the pre-defined path in any meaningful way.

Many PEGs are primarily of the roller-coaster variety. Although they allow the player to roam around, customize characters, etc., the point of the game is still to travel along a relatively pre-defined path from the start (level 1) to the end (maximum level and best equipment). There is rarely creativity involved, and the only meaningful customization is typically a series of one-time choices made at the start of the game (character creation). Players who have reached the “end of the game” and made the same initial choices (class, race, skills, etc.) often have nearly identical play experiences and characters. In itself, this is not a terrible thing, as the same is true of many high-quality games. However, instead of being like a roller-coaster, PEGs of this ilk are more like freight trains. Although they are still constrained to the path dictated by the designer, there are few interesting experiences between the start and end, the trip is painfully slow and entirely predictable, and the whole point of the journey is to get to a destination, not to enjoy the ride.

Problem #4: Making Players Feel Ordinary

One reason that video games are appealing is that they allow players to be someone important: a rock star, a valiant hero, a benevolent deity, a nefarious villain, a cunning thief, a brilliant general. PEGs, which are supposed to enhance this attraction with advancement elements, ironically tend to diminish this appeal in various ways.

First, a player doesn’t feel all that important when there are thousands of other “heroes” in the same world doing the same things. Instead, the player is just another face in the crowd, trying to get a little bit ahead in the rat race. In the land where everyone’s a hero, heroes are commoners.

Solution 1: Make difficulty progression varied


Typically, RPG-type PEGs increase difficulty by bumping up enemy hit points and damage output. These tougher enemies may require more time or more players to defeat than easier enemies, but the player does not have to take any different actions to defeat them. The same buttons are pressed, the same ability types used. Therefore, players do not feel any more powerful than when fighting the earlier enemies, even though they may have advanced significantly since then. In order to give meaning to this advancement, the challenges the player faces should force the player to view them in a different light as difficulty increases.


Solution 2: Make character progression about more than just numbers

Because even good gameplay mechanics will wear out their welcome with enough repetition, it is important to introduce new mechanics and variations, as well as new uses for old mechanics, as the game progresses. It isn’t enough to give the player a more potent version of an old ability. Players will use this ability in the same way and in the same situations they used the old ability; gameplay is unchanged. The player doesn’t need 20 different variations of “do some damage”; instead, new abilities should offer markedly different gameplay possibilities if they are to hold players’ interest and give them a feeling of genuine advancement.

Solution 3: Design for the solo player

Encouraging players to play alone or in small, regular groups solves several problems. First, the player feels more powerful because he is not surrounded by hundreds of other players whose persistent entities are stronger or more advanced than his. Second, the player is not involuntarily exposed to aspects of unexplored game content (a.k.a. “spoilers”) through contact with those other players, making exploration and discovery of that content more satisfying later on. Third, the time necessary to play the game is reduced, since the player does not need to spend time finding other players to play with first (this is discussed more in section #6). Fourth, limiting the number of players who can congregate in one area allows CPU/GPU cycles to be used to make the game look and play better instead of being reserved for scenes where dozens of player models must be drawn. Lastly, solo play gives anti-social players a way to advance their persistent entity without affecting other players’ game experience, as well giving all players a way to avoid anti-social behavior without lessening their game experience in some way.

Problem #5: Domineering Design

There is nothing as frustrating for a player than being told by the game, “You can’t do that!” without a logical explanation for the limitation. Examples of this type of artificial limitation include:
· Invisible barriers preventing a character from walking into an apparently open area
· Abilities becoming useless in certain areas or against certain opponents
· The inability use two different abilities together (“stacking”)
· Limited interaction with certain non-player characters (NPCs), such as the inability to attack quest-giving NPCs

Artificial limitations like these make the game environment feel more like a set of arbitrary rules than a real world. It is not a big deal for glorified board games like Civilization, where the game consists of rules and artificial constructs with just a thin veneer of realism. However, for role-playing games, where the point of the game (supposedly) is to exist in a fictional—but believable—universe, unnatural constraints are especially problematic.



Solution 1: Design for fun first, balance second



It’s incredibly tough to take a dull but balanced game and make it fun. It is much easier to balance a fun but unbalanced game. There are several steps that can be taken to ensure that the fun goes in first:
· Create a gameplay prototype to get an idea of how your ideas translate into a real experience.
· Think about the “fun factor” a feature adds for the average player before including it. Don’t throw things into the design just because Game X had it or because a vocal minority demands it.
· Avoid adding limitations just because they will save a little bit of development time. Go the extra mile to give the player the greatest sense of freedom possible.
· Don’t be afraid to throw out genre conventions.
· Trust your ability to balance things later. That’s the easy part.
· Don’t assume that the fun will magically appear once some feature or piece of content is added late in development.



Solution 2: Make creativity the object of the game

[snip]

Giving players the power to alter the game world through creation has another strong advantage, as discussed in section #3: players would provide each other with the fresh content necessary to maintain the game’s longevity. All you have to do is provide viable tools, sufficient incentives (either real or virtual), and a quality filter. A sampling of myspace.com user profiles shows that even people with no technical skill can be motivated to learn new tools and concepts that allow them to create and customize. With the proper tools, such as the dungeon-editing GUI in Dungeon Keeper and the creature editing tools in Spore, you can put your players to work for you and make the game more enjoyable for them in the process.

Solution 3: Present the player with diverse challenges and multi-purpose tools



Intelligent, adaptive AI and interactive, volatile environments are two examples of game features that can provide a foundation for the “emergent gameplay” that can help generate the kind of challenges needed to keep players on their toes without each individual challenge having to be prepared in advance by a designer. A simple example: In Act V of Diablo 2, on the Bloody Foothills level, the designer scattered friendly soldiers across the level. These soldiers are somewhat weak and will die without the player’s intervention. The player can choose to ignore these soldiers and proceed as if they did not exist, in which case they will all likely suffer a cruel demise, but the player can continue playing as in all the other levels. Or the player can focus on rescuing the soldiers and protecting them, gradually accumulating a veritable army (if successful) on the way to the boss fight. In this case, a very simple and inexpensive addition to the game has created a new, unique challenge for the player to take on (and fitting rewards) without shoving it down the player’s throat.

Problem #6: Exorbitant Time Requirements

The biggest reason is that a large portion of the market is unwilling or unable to dedicate a lot of their time to your game. Former PEG players who have had to quit because of time constraints, uncooperative spouses, jobs, graduation from college, etc., might be willing to play a PEG that provided equal enjoyment for a smaller time commitment. People who game at lunch, on breaks, at the office after work, or even during work could be buying and playing your game if it provided enough enjoyment within their limited time frame. Why should they be wasting their company’s money playing Solitaire when they could be wasting it playing your game? Instead, it has become conventional wisdom that you have to dedicate all your gaming time and even a big chunk of your life to enjoy a PEG, and as a result, this part of the market is largely untapped.



In current PEGs, three elements are to blame for making short play stints unsatisfying.

First, players have to spend too much time organizing and preparing, whether it is seeking out other players for grouping, traveling (often to join those players), or arranging players into groups, giving instructions, and clearing “trash” (typically, unchallenging encounters that yield little to no reward, but that must be cleared before it is possible to fight a boss) for a “raid.” Playing with others is fun; organizing and preparing is not.

Second, players typically must play for a long time before they receive any reward, yet another aspect of current PEGs that would be a death warrant for any single-player game. When players fail to earn any reward, they either end up playing a long session in order to earn the reward or quit altogether because they are not having fun. Neither situation is desirable.

Third, many challenges simply take long, continuous play sessions to overcome. If the player leaves the game before the end, he must start again from the beginning in his next attempt. In many cases, even staying logged in and leaving the game for a few minutes can result in disaster, whether it be from the ensuing miscommunication (Leroy Jenkins!), enemy behavior (spawning, wandering), or a suddenly short-handed group being overwhelmed.



Solution 1: Let the player have fun right away



Let players get where they are going as quickly as possible (Diablo 2’s waypoints are a fine example). Let them accomplish something meaningful without having to organize with other players. If they do want to join other players, provide an efficient matchmaking feature and allow them to join each other as quickly as possible. The character summoning feature found in several games is a good solution, but it is often restricted to specific locations and/or high-level characters.



Solution 2: Unchain players from the keyboard

Sometimes, players just have to stop playing for a while. Biological needs, kids that need to be picked up or taken care of, and meals are just some of the common events that take players’ attention away from the game. The game design should take these interruptions into account. Players should be able to get back into the action quickly and without causing in-game problems such as death/dismemberment, separation from the group, etc. The Diablo series, which despite its flaws is one of the best game design teaching tools in existence (Magic: the Gathering and Deus Ex are two others), solved this problem neatly with Town Portals, which allow players to go instantly to a safe area for as long as is needed and return at will.



Solution 3: Let the player accomplish something in a short play session