Richard Bartle on MMO design (IMGDC 09)

[UnSub]

The modern MMO industry seems to be aiming at getting 1m players by developing titles that take years to get out the door, crush beta into a short period of time (or don't pay attention to live beta feedback), try to appeal to everyeon and launch before a full coat of polish has been applied.

Isn't a fair thing to say at this point MMO devs are forgetting they are building large systems and when calculating the debugging process it should take up atleast half of your development time? As a result they should consider beta as part of the debugging process where they are debugging the 'unfun' as well as the critical system errors?

I don't know if they are forgetting per se, but in the race to launch not enough time is being left to deal with it. Open betas have been used as marketing exercises, but the reality is that they should be viewed as large scale tests at how both systems and their underpinning ideas work with a critical mass of players. It's as close to real play as the game gets before launch. But at this point pretty much everything is locked down and the devs are really just stress testing systems to see if the servers can cope. If critical mass dislikes or breaks a system during open beta, there usually isn't time to fix it up prior to launch.

Then again, I'm of the opinion that MMOs shouldn't even announce themselves until closed beta is about to start. Plus no-one has put up a few stacks of a million dollars each to test out my ideas.

[Lum]

You really want to try to misrepresent a blog post that everyone can read?

So they are good points, obvious truths, F13 "didn't get it" and...you don't in any way endorse those points. Right.

No, misreading and misrepresenting blog postings seems to be entirely your area of expertise. Of course I endorse them. What I don't do is make the logical leap you accuse me of and say that since, to quote me,

There’s a vast difference between user-created content (such as City of Heroes’ architect system) and user-generated ‘content’ (such as the Eve Great War) - the latter is compelling and why people come back to MMOs.

Cloning WoW is expensive, you will probably fail, and the result isn’t very good from a design standpoint anyway

that means, to quote you,

Yes, except that WOW has neither of those and is a hundred times more popular. The first three points of Lum's retort are this sort of wishful thinking.

Translation: I don't like WOW.

The first point is at least arguable - although it's not the point I (or Bartle in his original presentation) was making, if you wanted to I suppose you could derive that. I'd disagree since the 'stickiness' for players in WoW raiding is less in the mechanics of how raids are laid out and more in how guilds cooperate to work through them, which is the sort of emergent high-end gameplay being referred to. But that is at least something that be argued over.

The second point is less arguable, and more ridiculous, since you're jumping to making assumptions about my motives that don't actually exist. (Especially since I just made a post nerd raging about how Blizzard is keeping me from playing WoW with their latest holiday patch.) I mean, if you think asserting that cloning WoW is a bad idea from a business case standpoint (or even a creative standpoint) means that I hate WoW.... that's not arguable, it's just silly.

The fact that your reponse to my request for an evaluation of WOW's success is a non-sequitor about innovation says it all.

Yes, it said I didn't respond to a tedious request to type a 50 point competitive analysis into an unrelated forum post and instead responded with 1 point.

There's nothing wrong with creating a VW as long as you realistically budget it and aim it at players who want that sort of game. Trying to cast a wide net and entice WOW players seems doomed to very expensive failure. The biggest problem with Bartle's presentation is that it amounted to "let's smush Eve and WOW together!" Which is a fine design if you have unlimited time and buidget. Otherwise not so much.

Actually, it's noting that both Eve and WoW do what they do very, very well, and both games address failings in the other, and learning from both and including elements of both might be worth trying.

[Margalis]

I'll abort our slapfight (in part because I can't read large italic blocks) and focus on the meat of the discussion.

Actually, it's noting that both Eve and WoW do what they do very, very well, and both games address failings in the other, and learning from both and including elements of both might be worth trying.

Typically games that do two things half-assed turn out a lot worse than games that do one thing well. One of the reasons WOW is successful is because it aggressively cut out a lot of features. It's hard for me to imagine how you could include elemnents of both Eve and WOW without creating Eve plus WOW. If you strip out a lot of features from Eve then it wouldn't have the richness of systems for the emergent gameplay to be interesting, and if you cut out a lot of content from WOW then it wouldn't stack up to WOW and other content-heavy games.

In addition there is such a thing as subtraction by addition. If I'm interested in a simulation game then I have to wade through a bunch of levels of directed mob fights first? If I'm interested in directed content I have to navigate large open spaces with no quests only to support the simulation aspects? My UI has a bunch of stock market trading buttons cluttering it that I have no interest in?

I have to question the premise that Eve addresses many failings in WOW. According to Bartle the Eve endgame is much stronger than the WOW endgame. Yet WOW is orders of magnitude more popular, even among long tenured players. Hmm. Not to mention the fact that expansions and patches make the game essentially episodic in nature. The end-game matters less when the level cap is raised and new quests added on a regular basis. I don't see how Eve addresses the failings of WoW as much as being a different game that appeals to a different crowd. Not trying to appeal to every player on earth is not a failing, it's a strength. What exactly is the failing that Eve addresses?

Your perspective seems rooted in "how do we justify making virtual worlds, given that not many people want to play virtual worlds?" But instead of the obvious "make it on a small budget for a niche crowd" your answer is "sucker WoW players into paying for it."

Edit: In the end saying something vague like "let's try melding these two games" is pointless, especially when "let's" is really "you guys over there try out my ideas!" This sort of academic theorizing has to be turned into budgets, schedules, hiring plans, etc.

"Let's try to combine Eve with WoW" is no different from what you see all over a place like gamedev.net. "I"m making a game that's Starcraft meets Diablo!"

How about WoW but with the combat of Devil May Cry? Or Eve but each planet turns into a game of SimEarth? Or perhaps in the next Star Wars game you could go into the cantina, plug in your Rock Band instruments and jam out in a music game. All of those *could* be good games if done competently.

The ability to produce an idea that sounds ok in a powerpoint slide is not interesting.

[Ratman_tf]

YES YOUR NICHE GAME MUST BE ACCESSIBLE,

CCP seems to be slowly trundling along in that direction. We had a new player on rpg.net who's just starting Eve as his first MMOG. I wonder if he's going to make it past the first few minutes or if Eve is going to stomp all the enthusiasm for MMOGs right out of him.

[Xanthippe]

Or Eve but each planet turns into a game of SimEarth?

Oh my, wouldn't that be wonderful!

[Lum]

Typically games that do two things half-assed turn out a lot worse than games that do one thing well. One of the reasons WOW is successful is because it aggressively cut out a lot of features.

City of Heroes is an excellent example both pro and con. Pro because it concentrated on one thing - a visceral combat system - to the exclusion of much else (economy being a huge example). Con because once you tired of that, well, you were done with the game (City of Heroes to date has almost zero end-game content). Which is fine for players (and healthier, at that) but it definitely hurt the long-term health of the game.

Your perspective seems rooted in "how do we justify making virtual worlds, given that not many people want to play virtual worlds?" But instead of the obvious "make it on a small budget for a niche crowd" your answer is "sucker WoW players into paying for it."

You're assuming what I'm saying is a zero-sum assertion. Just because a virtual world might be enhanced by gameplay elements that game-centric not-world games like WoW have proven to work does not mean it immediately has to "sucker WoW players into paying for it." Take Eve as an example. Slamming an end-game 25-man PvE raid system into Eve would not only be fairly nonsensical, it wouldn't work, because that's not why long-term Eve players are there. However, adding more compelling guided content for newer players would help address the yawning chasm of difficulty/approchability that helps keep Eve a niche hardcore title, without diluting the political endgame that Eve has proven to be successful for their players.

(Not very coincidentally, that's been where a large part of Eve's development has been focused the past two expansions.)

Edit: In the end saying something vague like "let's try melding these two games" is pointless, especially when "let's" is really "you guys over there try out my ideas!" This sort of academic theorizing has to be turned into budgets, schedules, hiring plans, etc.

No, actually I've been trying to make exactly that sort of game for a while now. And I am well aware of (and actually, far more comfortable with) budgetary constraints then academic theorycrafting.

[Slyfeind]

The only thing I ever hear from anyone, whenever Bartle says anything, is how irrelevant he is or how important he is, and how we should tell him to shut up or to listen to everything he says. There are, at most, three or four brief mentions on the entire Internet on points and suggestions that have been made. Everything else is people making fun of each other for praising him or condemning him. Holy crap people in the Internet are dumb and I have links to prove it!

[Margalis]

City of Heroes is an excellent example both pro and con. Pro because it concentrated on one thing - a visceral combat system - to the exclusion of much else (economy being a huge example). Con because once you tired of that, well, you were done with the game (City of Heroes to date has almost zero end-game content).

The problem with the combat system is that it's still not even close to the quality of real combat-centric games. It may be visceral compared to other MMOs but compared to other games it's still a slow paced dice rolling affair. So I'm not sure that's a great example of anything but poor execution or a design that's stuck halfway between two worlds.

No, actually I've been trying to make exactly that sort of game for a while now. And I am well aware of (and actually, far more comfortable with) budgetary constraints then academic theorycrafting.

Yes, but that's you and not Bartle. In all seriousness if you can make a kick-ass game that combines virtual worlds and games then good for you, I look forward to it. But there's no indication that Bartle has any interest in doing that vs. asking other people to spend fortunes trying to do it for him.

[schild]

No, actually I've been trying to make exactly that sort of game for a while now. And I am well aware of (and actually, far more comfortable with) budgetary constraints then academic theorycrafting.

Yes, but that's you and not Bartle. In all seriousness if you can make a kick-ass game that combines virtual worlds and games then good for you, I look forward to it. But there's no indication that Bartle has any interest in doing that vs. asking other people to spend fortunes trying to do it for him.

From his replies on Broken Toys:

The reason I don’t make them is not because I don’t want to make them, or am incapable of making them: it’s because I would have to persuade someone to cast a “rain of money” spell on me. Despite what many forum ranters seem to think, I can’t just knock on a publisher’s door, say, “Hi, I’m Richard Bartle; if you give me $50m I’ll make you an MMO”, and expect to get it. I especially can’t do that in England, where I live.

Considering how many less-than-desirable folks have had that "rain of money" spell cast on them, I don't know why he thinks that's an excuse.

[ahoythematey]

Well, that's not really fair.  There are a lot of shady motherfuckers born with silver tongues who are perfectly happy to tell the people with money that they'll make a better version of WoW.  Maybe his excuse is having no interest in doing something like that?

[schild]

Well, that's not really fair.  There are a lot of shady motherfuckers born with silver tongues who are perfectly happy to tell the people with money that they'll make a better version of WoW.  Maybe his excuse is having no interest in doing something like that?

The reason I don’t make them is not because I don’t want to make them, or am incapable of making them:

When he leads of with that it's incredibly fair. He can say it's because people won't give him money, I'm more interested in whether he's tried and NOT gotten money or if he hasn't tried. Which brings me back to fear. But then, if he has tried and hasn't gotten money, maybe there's a reason.

[ahoythematey]

I had assumed from his comments that he has tried, and I also assume that all anybody with the money wants now is a WoW-like because they are stupid enough to think that particular lightning can be captured twice.

[Margalis]

He could do something radical like apply for a job and prove his worth while subtely influencing the design of the project he was assigned to.

Or he could make a low-cost prototype and shop it around.

He could do it the way everyone else has to do it. Guess what, publishers won't give 50 million dollars to every random hobo who asks for it. Imagine! But somehow that hasn't stopped thousands of people from making games.

It's almost like if you want to accomplish something you have to put in a modicum of effort. Sorry but "nobody will gift me millions of dollars" isn't much of an excuse.

[Ratman_tf]

Considering how many less-than-desirable folks have had that "rain of money" spell cast on them, I don't know why he thinks that's an excuse.

He should hook up with Richard Gariott and/or Brad McQuade. They seem to have the bullshit skills to score dev money.

[schild]

I had assumed from his comments that he has tried, and I also assume that all anybody with the money wants now is a WoW-like

Do you really think that? Have you SEEN all the mmogs in development? Off the top of my head I can only name 5-10 that are aiming to compete with WoW whereas there's 30 to 40 publically announced that aren't. Do you think all of them just magically found money? I don't want to be mean to dev studios to make a point about Bartle, but put simply - there's a lot of people less qualified making devs than Bartle. Well, actually, now that I've typed that, I realize there probably aren't. More like, he's just not qualified for more than he's doing - which is probably the case. But hey, he really, really loves virtual worlds so obviously what he says is worth listening to.  The next best thing to having a career making them, I suppose, is talking about them.

Edit to add: Virtual Worlds, I'm pretty sure, have more full-on non-journalistic careers surrounding them than any other gaming genre. Of course, assuming we're not counting people teaching art, sound, etc. That is to say, Virtual worlds have a lot of people TALKING and not DOING and at the same time have a lot of people DOING that probably shouldn't be. It's a mess.

[Khaldun]

Cloning WoW is expensive, you will probably fail, and the result isn’t very good from a design standpoint anyway

Translation: I don't like WOW.

This is pretty much the consensus opinion at this board and most gaming forums. So Bartle sucks for saying it? No, it is not "WoW sucks". It is "Making a WoW clone where you come into market less resourced and polished than WoW at launch, let alone WoW as is, is a fucking clueless move". You might say that's fucking obvious. Well, it's not so fucking obvious that two development houses didn't just urinate millions of investor dollars down the drain doing exactly that. I'm sorry if you get all pissed that somehow the postings of people in a nerd forum didn't carry the day for that opinion, but it didn't. So as far as I can see, it's a very good thing if Richard Bartle or anyone else says it wherever they say it.

[Khaldun]

No, actually I've been trying to make exactly that sort of game for a while now. And I am well aware of (and actually, far more comfortable with) budgetary constraints then academic theorycrafting.

Yes, but that's you and not Bartle. In all seriousness if you can make a kick-ass game that combines virtual worlds and games then good for you, I look forward to it. But there's no indication that Bartle has any interest in doing that vs. asking other people to spend fortunes trying to do it for him.

From his replies on Broken Toys:

The reason I don’t make them is not because I don’t want to make them, or am incapable of making them: it’s because I would have to persuade someone to cast a “rain of money” spell on me. Despite what many forum ranters seem to think, I can’t just knock on a publisher’s door, say, “Hi, I’m Richard Bartle; if you give me $50m I’ll make you an MMO”, and expect to get it. I especially can’t do that in England, where I live.

Considering how many less-than-desirable folks have had that "rain of money" spell cast on them, I don't know why he thinks that's an excuse.

There are a million cunts out there doing philanthropy in really shit ways. What have you done to save the earth today? What? You have other things to do? But what about those million cunts handing out money to fight malaria or whatever?

Come on. Complaining about what other people haven't done and demanding that they do something that that no one has yet done well as a condition of their legitimacy to speak is bush-league stuff even when you have a resume as big and long as Vin Diesel's left bicep.

[Khaldun]

Shorter summary of this thread:

Nerds who talk a lot about virtual worlds complain that people who talk about virtual worlds haven't created Robot Jesus yet. Film at 11.

Get over yourselves.

[Rendakor]

Get over yourselves.

Says the guy who posted 3 times in a row. 

[schild]

Nerds who talk a lot about virtual worlds complain that people who talk about virtual worlds haven't created Robot Jesus yet. Film at 11.

Way to miss the point completely.

[Margalis]

People aren't reading this quote all the way until the end:

Cloning WoW is expensive, you will probably fail, and the result isn’t very good from a design standpoint anyway.

Make note of the part after the final comma.

Yes, cloning WoW is expensive and yes, will most likely fail. But saying that a clone of WoW will have poor design implies that WoW itself is poorly designed. That's the part I take issue with.

Also most MMOs fail, regardless of whether they attempt to clone WoW or not. That part of the above is meaningless. If you compare games that try to copy WoW to games that don't I'm not sure there is a significant difference in terms of success rate.

People like to use WAR and AoC as examples of games that aped WoW and failed tremendously but what about non WoW-clones like Vanguard, Stargate Worlds, Tabula Rasa, Planetside, Romans in Spaaaace!, the game Lum was working on that was cancelled before it was even announced, etc etc? And what about (relative) success stories like LOTRO that did clone WoW?

Show me the empirical evidence that cloning WoW is a terrible idea vs. doing something very different. It's kind of tiring to here Eve constantly thrown out as the sole example, as if the market can support 50 Eves when in reality it can barely support one.

[lamaros]

People aren't reading this quote all the way until the end:

Cloning WoW is expensive, you will probably fail, and the result isn’t very good from a design standpoint anyway.

Make note of the part after the final comma.

Yes, cloning WoW is expensive and yes, will most likely fail. But saying that a clone of WoW will have poor design implies that WoW itself is poorly designed. That's the part I take issue with.

It's just poor communication. "Not very good" is probably meant to mean something. Why it is phrased in such a way I don't know. Perhaps to hedge his bets. Perhaps because it allows fanboys to read whatever they want into it and thus agree with him. Perhaps bceause he just sucks at communicating. Perhaps because he really doesn't know what he means and hasn't thought his ideas through well enough to properly articulate them.

Why might cloning WoW not be "very good" from a design point?

Your first point is one that would make sense, that the implication is that WoW itself is poorly designed.

It might be that cloning might not be that great from a design standpoint because you wouldn't properly understand and control the design decisions that have gone into WoW, meaning you won't be able to properly run your WoW clone, even if you do clone it properly.

It might just be a really bad way of saying "I don't like WoW style game design".

Maybe it means "I think WoW style design will soon be outdated, and cloning it will just leave us with an out of date product by the time we get around to doing it properly".

I'm sure we can come up with a number of readings, depending on what we want to have a go at...

Also most MMOs fail, regardless of whether they attempt to clone WoW or not. That part of the above is meaningless.

Show me the empirical evidence that cloning WoW is a terrible idea vs. doing something very different. It's kind of tiring to here Eve constantly thrown out as the sole example, as if the market can support 50 Eves when in reality it can barely support one.

I agree that it is mostly meaningless. It provides too much area for people to project their own assumptions of what is being said. It's fun to do that, but better to just ignore it and address the more definite questions you mention.

Also I think Guild Wars is probably an example of a MMOG that has done ok while taking its own route.

[Matt]

You and most of the posters here seem to feel pretty comfortable telling people how to make a game too.

I'm not quite sure you're getting it.

We know what fun is, and feel pretty comfortable telling them / you / whomever that what they're making is not fun.

No, you feel comfortable telling people what you find fun. It's an opinion. That's all.

--matt

[Matt]

Every time I hear a dev say their not competing with WoW I roll my eyes. Simply by being an mmo your competing with WoW. There is no real depth in the mmo industry to really say your not competing with a 8 million pound gorilla. Your either WoW side of the spectrum or Eve side,

Naah, that's not true. You're talking about the retail space, which is a sub-section of the entire space. Most of our pre-release forum users at Earth Eternal, for instance, have never played either WoW or Eve and aren't looking to. They've played Runescape though.

[Lum]

Yes, cloning WoW is expensive and yes, will most likely fail. But saying that a clone of WoW will have poor design implies that WoW itself is poorly designed. That's the part I take issue with.

Actually, what I mean was that developers who try to "clone WoW" explicitly more often than not learn the wrong lessons, duplicating things that are pointless (such as having a 3d image of the player's avatar in a circular portrait on the top left) while missing things that are important (having enough quest-driven content to advance a character with a minimum of percieved 'grind'). Thus more often than not "cloning WoW" as a design directive results in bad design because rather than making a good game, the producers are trying to reverse-engineer someone else's. And historically (and in other genres besides MMOs) that has not gone well.

[Ratman_tf]

Actually, what I mean was that developers who try to "clone WoW" explicitly more often than not learn the wrong lessons, duplicating things that are pointless (such as having a 3d image of the player's avatar in a circular portrait on the top left) while missing things that are important (having enough quest-driven content to advance a character with a minimum of percieved 'grind').

Even then, there was plenty of just such a situation in WoW on release. I remember having to grind mobs in Arathi Highlands and *sigh* Stranglethorn Vale because of gaps in quest content. That stuff didn't hinder WoW's growth in the slightest.

[UnSub]

I think that a lot of people think that if they try hard enough, they can catch the perfect storm that propelled WoW into pulling in over $1 billion in revenue a year. They can't because a number of factors that helped WoW succeed weren't even related to design issues.

[tmp]

Actually, what I mean was that developers who try to "clone WoW" explicitly more often than not learn the wrong lessons, duplicating things that are pointless (such as having a 3d image of the player's avatar in a circular portrait on the top left)

Considering such portrait is about the only way the players are going to have a good, close look at face of their own character and anyone else's, i'd say it is not pointless as it's simple validation of work some players put into character creator. It's basically a permanent but low-key "yes, you are semi-unique snowflake" ego stroking.

I guess the lesson from this could be, people who try to analize WoW are quick to dismiss stuff as pointless if it doesn't appeal to them directly. Even established developers

[schild]

Actually, what I mean was that developers who try to "clone WoW" explicitly more often than not learn the wrong lessons, duplicating things that are pointless (such as having a 3d image of the player's avatar in a circular portrait on the top left)

Considering such portrait is about the only way the players are going to have a good, close look at face of their own character and anyone else's, i'd say it is not pointless as it's simple validation of work some players put into character creator. It's basically a permanent but low-key "yes, you are semi-unique snowflake" ego stroking.

I guess the lesson from this could be, people who try to analize WoW are quick to dismiss stuff as pointless if it doesn't appeal to them directly. Even established developers

Wow, that's embarrassing.

Edit: Seriously. I can't get over this. I heard that slap from across the internet come through my monitor.

[Lum]

Considering such portrait is about the only way the players are going to have a good, close look at face of their own character and anyone else's, i'd say it is not pointless as it's simple validation of work some players put into character creator. It's basically a permanent but low-key "yes, you are semi-unique snowflake" ego stroking.

There's a bit of a difference between "hm, let's display the character's headshot as a reminder of their avatar identity" and "hm, let's display the character's headshot in a circular window on the left hand side, with three bars representing health, mana, and something else extending to the right, as a reminder of some other game".

Here, I have it on good authority this forum likes charts!



(The Warhammer one is a photo from a trade show because it was during their NDA'd beta.)

Oh, and extra UI bonus chart!

[Modern Angel]

That's not what you said.

Moreover, so what? It's a minor thing which is both a) good enough to be industry standard and b) is actually expected to be industry standard now. This might sound like moon man talk but out of all the things to complain about with WoW the UI is seriously not one of them.

[schild]

He didn't say other developers were doing it wrong. He's just saying you're wrong to call how WoW did it as pointless. It's not.

When other companies copy it, they may not being copying it for the right reasons ("because WoW did it" is not the right reason, the psychological effect of seeing the face is), but the end result is the same. Unless they screw it up, which many do.

[Lum]

Shrug. I thought that my meaning was pretty clear, but if you want to encourage a pile-on over having the temerity to critizice cloning another game's UI, feel free!

It's a sore spot with me, because (a) I am a compete user interface/usability fascist already (it comes with learning to code on Macs, they drill it into you by force) and (b) there's nothing quite like the feeling of firing up a game and having the interface tell you in 5 seconds that "we couldn't be bothered to come up with our own".

I mean, if we're going to clone everything about WoW's default interface just because it's WoW, I guess that means we need to ensure that people can't move most interface elements freely (because in WoW's default interface, you can't) despite that being a feature of almost every game prior to WoW. Or make sure you use a serif typeface despite usability studies consisitly showing sans-serif typefaces being more far readable over time, because, hey, WoW.

WoW did do a good deal of commendable work in making their UI accessible. But it's not perfect, and just aping it without thought quickly becomes really obvious.

[IainC]

If you make a list of the big design lessons to learn from WoW ordered by importance then 'Hey, let's copy their UI elements' has to be pretty low on that list. Taking the superficial parts while ignoring the deeper elements isn't likely to end in success.

[Modern Angel]

Do you get worked up that almost all FPS UIs are about the same? If not, why not? Do you think it's possible for a game or game genre to hit just the right sweet spot of UI accessibility and usability that you don't need to tweak a given aspect any further?

Because I think the above example of yours is taking something which is demonstrably done *right* and insisting it's derivative crap. On top of *that*, you're roundabout saying we need to change something that works exceedingly well because WoW does it which is every bit as bad as making a clone because WoW does it. Which puts us right back at square one even if bottom is now top.

But more than anything none of this has fuck all to do with the fact that Bartle hasn't done anything for thirty years, even though he could have, which was the thrust of this entire abortion in the first place and here we are, Bartle-ing everywhere all over the place.