Raph's Keynote Address for the GDC.

[Stephen Zepp]

but I don't think it's fair to back up any of the PvP positions in the debate by saying "WoW has huge numbers, therefore a majority of the players agree with the PvP concepts involved with that game".

Which certainly isn't what I have said. I said that PVP certainly isn't HURTING it, as many anti-PVP folks would like to believe. Your statement should be "WoW has huge numbers, therefore a majority of the players do not DISagree with the PvP concepts involved with that game."

Fair enough (although it wasn't just you specifically I meant), but honestly my gut feeling (unsupported by numbers, because they simply don't exist) is that for very large portion of "Joe WoW player"'s decisions to play the game, PvP didn't even enter the decision process.

[dEOS]

Is there a post I missed where everyone from F13 who went to GDC gives a report about discussions and show some pictures ?

d

[schild]

No one "from" f13 went to GDC this year. We'll be going to E3 and possibly/probably AGC. Maybe others.

[sinij]

Fair enough (although it wasn't just you specifically I meant), but honestly my gut feeling (unsupported by numbers, because they simply don't exist) is that for very large portion of "Joe WoW player"'s decisions to play the game, PvP didn't even enter the decision process.

 I see it as following - there were four groups of people joining WoW. First group was established PvP guilds that wanted to try something new, second group was established Uber-PvE guilds, third group was people that joined because this is Blizzard title and last group were people that wanted to try something new.  WoW brough a lot of new blood into mmorpgs and these new people don't mind PvP or PvE as much as older generations that tend to gravitate to all PvP or all PvE and tend to be intolerant of other side. This suggests that people start equally inclined to PvE or PvP and their experiences with the game shape them to be PvP or PvE players.

[HaemishM]

If you believe that griefer gankers can be channeled into positive conflicts, you are talking about one of two things:

1) The game is full of griefer gankers, thus limiting its mass appeal

2) You have ignored the entirety of MMOG history

Griefer gankers need one thing to make them happy: sheep. Sheeple. People who are victims. Which means that in order to please griefer gankers, you have to provide them with someone they can exploit, with an entire set of players who will be unhappy with their social interactions. Because to the griefer ganker, if their actions are not causing distress, IT ISN'T FUN. Just being able to play monsters is not going to be fun for them, because that's just another form of player character. They have to be able to destroy something other players have built. They have to be able to easily defeat someone with no challenge to themselves.

If you really want to cater to that crowd, you are designing your game to be a game only for griefers. It isn't JUST bad game design that creates griefers, there are truly people who do not deserve to be allowed to impact other people in an anonymous way.

[sinij]

I think this thread should go into Game Design since it is no longer about Raph's address but rather people's opinions about PvP.

[Evangolis]

It isn't JUST bad game design that creates griefers, there are truly people who do not deserve to be allowed to impact other people in an anonymous way.

While this isn't the post I'm actually replying to, it summarizes it nicely.

While I agree that game design is not responsible for griefers (in all their flavors and tactics), that does not exempt designers from designing for the griefers inevitable presence.  Poor design does not obviate personal responsibility, but assuming personal responsibility is poor design.

On the PvP in WoW, I would say that while WoW may not have THE solution to mixing PvP into a PvE setting, it certainly seems to have A solution.

[Raph]

I have posted the slides for the "follow-on" talk, "A Grammar of Gameplay". They're at http://www.theoryoffun.com/grammar/gdc2005.htm

[Stephen Zepp]

If you believe that griefer gankers can be channeled into positive conflicts, you are talking about one of two things:

1) The game is full of griefer gankers, thus limiting its mass appeal

2) You have ignored the entirety of MMOG history

Griefer gankers need one thing to make them happy: sheep. Sheeple. People who are victims. Which means that in order to please griefer gankers, you have to provide them with someone they can exploit, with an entire set of players who will be unhappy with their social interactions. Because to the griefer ganker, if their actions are not causing distress, IT ISN'T FUN. Just being able to play monsters is not going to be fun for them, because that's just another form of player character. They have to be able to destroy something other players have built. They have to be able to easily defeat someone with no challenge to themselves.

If you really want to cater to that crowd, you are designing your game to be a game only for griefers. It isn't JUST bad game design that creates griefers, there are truly people who do not deserve to be allowed to impact other people in an anonymous way.

I'm not saying that you can eliminate all reasons for griefing by design--you are absolutely correct, there ARE people that feel as you discussed--they simply want to fuck with others and ruin their world.

However, there is a meta-category of "griefers" that I have seen personally (in fact, it happened to me): those that aren't inclined by pschological makeup to play that way, but in the long run, things like frustration with game mechanics, frustration with implementation (crashes, bugs, etc.) or simply boredom start to drive those that don't start as griefers towards the mentality.

Personal example: For my first year of shadowbane, I "played by the spirit of the rules"--we worked within the game mechanics and designs to drive conflict into our server above the level of simple ganking--lore based war, defending the under-dog guilds, countering actions of the "griefer crews", etc. After that year, and especially once our server was closed, we tried to move the same concepts and techniques to a new server, and we all just basically ran out of steam. For the next 3 months, I actually joined a ganker crew and played maybe a couple of hours a week simply attacking anything that moved, and then logging off when we got counter-attacked (the whole guild did this). Quite honestly, the combination of unworkable game mechanics, poor game design, and implementation frustration quite literally turned me from a strong 'M' into the super-extreme 'P' player, and all of this could have been avoided had the game designed for managing the killer style players into a better role, instead of making ganking/griefing in fact the easiest thing to do in the game.

So what I'm getting at is that design for the fact that you are going to be forcing people into the "griefer" role if they are killer type players, but you don't provide an outlet for their interests other than ganking. No, it's not going to cover everyone (because as I said, I agree that some people simply do not wish to channel their "killer instincts" into anything but destroying game enjoyment for others), but it's going to go very far in removing the catalysts for players like me as demonstrated in my SB history.

And yes, most certainly I am "ignoring the entire history of MMOGs", but I don't think in the way you meant. I'm "ignoring the entire history of MMOGs" in the way they handle the killer style players, because I've yet to see designs/implementations that constructively channel these players into roles that turn into positive conflict instead of negative.

[Evangolis]

I have posted the slides for the "follow-on" talk, "A Grammar of Gameplay". They're at http://www.theoryoffun.com/grammar/gdc2005.htm

I just read them, from a link on Feet of Clay.  Interesting, but even with your notes I'm going to bomb the quiz.

I recognized a couple of the references you cited as mandatory reading, any chance of links to the rest, or am I condemed to google for them?

[Hoax]

I'm with Zepp on this one.  Most people who enjoy pvp are not just sadistic l33t dewd assholes.  Thats just the form of pvp that is created in most mmog's. 

You take a PvE game and slap on some shoddy "pvp system" and you get a game that will not deliver for pvp'ers.  So they come to pvp and you give them WoW with its bind rush over and over and over pvp, unending npc gaurd spam and stupid battlegrounds that are just a fps map that rebuilds itself over time instead of just resetting (how many runs till that gets boring?).  There is no accomplishment, no reason and no persistence to the pvp in WoW.  So anybody who is playing a mmog for pvp is going to dislike it over time.  So what do you do, you start camping the lava and mind controlling people who are trying to do brs instance runs.  If you can't have fun some goddamn PvE hippie isn't going to...

I dont buy that theory 100% but I like it, it puts the blame back where it belongs on the people who design shitty pvp.

[HaemishM]

because I've yet to see designs/implementations that constructively channel these players into roles that turn into positive conflict instead of negative.

That's because you cannot create positive roles for these types, they will naturally gravitate towards creating their own negative roles.

If you allow it, it will be done. If it can be done to hurt someone, it will be done twice.

[Samwise]

I have posted the slides for the "follow-on" talk, "A Grammar of Gameplay". They're at http://www.theoryoffun.com/grammar/gdc2005.htm

I'll have to reread that a few times to really grok the diagram notation, but all the individual concepts made sense.  Once I get a better handle on it it'd be a very fun project to diagram a few simple games using that system.

[sinij]

I have posted the slides for the "follow-on" talk, "A Grammar of Gameplay". They're at http://www.theoryoffun.com/grammar/gdc2005.htm

Try adapting nural networks notation, imo it will fit your goals a lot better.

[El Gallo]

NITPICKING DERAIL ALERT!!11!
Am I the only person who hates the use of the word "grok"?  I realize that I am an old-fashioned snob, but it makes it very difficult for me to take the writer seriously (unless I know from previous experience that the writer usually has something worthwhile to say, like Samwise who nevertheless sparked this diatribe).  It isn't just that it is slang, it's that it is such an awkward word, and it is popping up more and more in gaming discussions.  Especially considering the fact that 99.999% of the instances of "grok" I have ever seen could be replaced with "master" and the rest with "understand" or "intuit." 

[Aenovae]

I feel the same way about the word "paradigm."

It's a stupid, overused word.

[Samwise]

"Grok" is four letters and a single syllable.  "Understand" is ten letters and three syllables.  Given the choice of two equivalent words, I will almost always use the shorter one, regardless of whether it appears in OED.

In addition, "understand" doesn't quite convey the meaning I am trying to express - you can "understand" a language without being able to express thoughts in it.  "Assimilate" is probably closest to the mark, but that's an entire four syllables, and sounds even sillier than "grok" thanks to the Borg-ish connotation that any Star Trek fan will undoubtedly assign to it.

Don't knock "grok".

[Darthus]

Firstly, this whole business of E, Ms and Ps is sort of stilly. Obviously by definition Ms will be most people. By defining Es and Ps as extremes, Ms will be the most simply be being in the middle.

But what I would contest is that even Ms will appreciate "open PvP". The initial difficulty of even talking about open PvP is that nothing you have experienced in a big name MMO has come close to Open PvP. The goal of open PvP is not to encourage gankage, or even to create a quake-like setting of competition. It is to imitate reality. That is the point of MMOs. Maintain fun, while imitating an alternate version of reality. The more dynamics of reality in your MMO, the easier the user will be able to suspend his disbelief and become truly immersed in the game. The trick is including these elements of reality in a fun way.

As someone mentioned, the epitome of the griefer is one who enjoys ruining other people's day. People like that exist in real life as well. But systems, which people have also mentioned can get around that. Anyone who has played a game like UO has seen the pure potential that is there for things like player justice. Anti-PK guilds for example. But without the systems to support that, they're fighting an uphill battle. The EverQuest MMO mold is still the basis for most every MMO that comes on the market today, including WoW, because it can package addictive levelling in an easy to balance formula. But it is becoming admittedly stale.

Player justice CAN work. Even in a world where "Ms" want to just be left alone. The same effect can be created through organic systems, without throwing huge "NO PK HERE" hardcoded flags in the game. That's just sloppy game design. And the more systems are player run, or organic, the more easily the suspension of disbelief comes. That's the definition of open PvP. It's not "PvP anywhere". It's "the game doesn't tell me when I can and can't PvP".

FoM's prison system is only one example of how that can be done. As you kill people you are more recognized as a criminal, and can be sent to prison. That's only one solution though. They should not be used as the shining example of an open PvP system. They're just guys who had the courage to try to actually think up an organic, player based system that will allow people who don't want to be PvPed to go on their way.

Even having Zones like in WoW can be handled more organically. Currently it just says, "This area you can PvP in" and "This area you can't". If instead for example, Stormwind was open PvP, but there were more tools for people to keep tabs on when horde were in their area, ways for people who saw a horde to actually easily send a "last seen location" to everyone nearby who was Alliance, and the world was laid out in such a way that the horde would have to cross a lot of Alliance filled territory to ever even SEE Stormwind, then you would seriously not have a problem. How many horde would make it to stormwind to kill noobs? Almost none.

Although even envisioning that, there are more core problems with WoW that will prohibit such a system. 4 level 10s have no chance of killing a level 60. In real life, no matter how good you are, if you just try to stand there and fight 4 guys, you're probably going to get your ass kicked. But the very system of PvE level factoring so heavily into PvP performance precludes a system like I mentioned above. Any level 60 could just walk through, killing lower levels who have almost no chance of killing him, and walk up to Stormwind. But envisioning a system where a few lower levels could actually kill that level 60, then it simply would not happen.

I'm not trying to propose a hard and fast system change that will make WoW a great open PvP game here. I'm just illustrating to you that with a little inventive game design, even Ms can be happy in a game with "no PvP restrictions", because there can still be many many areas that are perfectly safe for Ms, just like Wow, it can just be done in a much much more organic way than PvP flags.

[Shockeye]

NITPICKING DERAIL ALERT!!11!
Am I the only person who hates the use of the word "grok"?  I realize that I am an old-fashioned snob, but it makes it very difficult for me to take the writer seriously (unless I know from previous experience that the writer usually has something worthwhile to say, like Samwise who nevertheless sparked this diatribe).  It isn't just that it is slang, it's that it is such an awkward word, and it is popping up more and more in gaming discussions.  Especially considering the fact that 99.999% of the instances of "grok" I have ever seen could be replaced with "master" and the rest with "understand" or "intuit." 

I'm with you 100%.

[schild]

The more people see The Tick live action series, the more will start saying "I grok your mouth music." Grok has been embedded in the geek subculture because of Putty.

[Stephen Zepp]

NITPICKING DERAIL ALERT!!11!
Am I the only person who hates the use of the word "grok"?  I realize that I am an old-fashioned snob, but it makes it very difficult for me to take the writer seriously (unless I know from previous experience that the writer usually has something worthwhile to say, like Samwise who nevertheless sparked this diatribe).  It isn't just that it is slang, it's that it is such an awkward word, and it is popping up more and more in gaming discussions.  Especially considering the fact that 99.999% of the instances of "grok" I have ever seen could be replaced with "master" and the rest with "understand" or "intuit." 

I'm with you 100%.

Hmm...interesting that people are reacting to what is basically the equivalent of a foreign word used within our language as being awkward...it's awkard because the english language doesn't have an equivalent (when grok is used as the author intended)...is it any more awkward than that french term I can never spell, but sounds like "say la vee", or "faux pas", or "carpe diem"? "Grok" doesn't mean "master", or "understand", or "intuit"--it's a much more broad concept. I don't use it myself because I've never really grokked anything, but I do agree that people use it poorly!

EDIT: The term has been around for more than 40 years by the way..."Stranger in a Strange Land" was written in the early 60's (won the 1962 Hugo award).

[schild]

Shockeye was just being funny. He was saying "I'm with you 100%" instead of "I grok what you're saying."

El Gallo was just nitpicking. Again, the Tick live action, watch it.  :-D

[MrHat]

Puddy!

[Shockeye]

Shockeye was just being funny. He was saying "I'm with you 100%" instead of "I grok what you're saying."

El Gallo was just nitpicking. Again, the Tick live action, watch it.  :-D

schild, you can shove your "grok" straight up your "ass".

I despise "grok" and will never use it unless I am poking fun at the word, concept, or a person who uses it.

Can you "grok" that?

[schild]

For someone who so vehemently hates that word, you just used it 3 times in one post. When do you spontaneously burst into flame?

[AOFanboi]

Another interesting tidbit about "Stranger in a Strange Land" is that it's significant in one version of the "Bet Story".

Basically, the story goes that Robert Heinlein and L. Ron Hubbard made a bet whether you could create a religion from scratch, and have people believe in it. Heinlein wrote "Stranger", with some Martian philosophy and new words like "grok". Hubbard wrote "Dianetics".

Hubbard seems to have won.

(In another version, the bet was against Clarke or Asimov or someone like that.)

[SirBruce]

There are multiple versions.

I'm tempted to believe Harlan's version myself, since as a friend I trust his word more than that of others, but it's possible he too is embellishing the story.

Bruce

[El Gallo]

"Grok" is four letters and a single syllable.  "Understand" is ten letters and three syllables.  Given the choice of two equivalent words, I will almost always use the shorter one, regardless of whether it appears in OED.

In addition, "understand" doesn't quite convey the meaning I am trying to express - you can "understand" a language without being able to express thoughts in it.  "Assimilate" is probably closest to the mark, but that's an entire four syllables, and sounds even sillier than "grok" thanks to the Borg-ish connotation that any Star Trek fan will undoubtedly assign to it.

Don't knock "grok".

"Master" is only two syllables, conveys the meaning you are going for, and is a word in a real, live language that you can plausibly expect other speakers of that language to comprehend.  Anyway, I am just being a dick I guess. 

[Riggswolfe]

It's always blown my mind how people believe in Scientology. I've noticed alot of movie stars are into it and I suppose that says something...

[Evangolis]

I hereby pronounce this thread well and truely derailed.  Move along.

[Samwise]

Oh no you don't.  I'm re-railing back to the previous derailment.  (We already had a Scientology thread, dammit!)

is a word in a real, live language that you can plausibly expect other speakers of that language to comprehend. 

Every real, live language is constantly acquiring new words, either by stealing them from other languages or by having someone coin a new term from thin air.  When someone says "seppuku," do you bitch them out for using a word that speakers of English won't comprehend?  They could just as easily say "ritual self-disembowelment."  When someone says "foozle," do you bitch them out for using a word that's not part of a real-live language?  They could just as easily say "object that you whack".   

Would you have complained if I used the verb "chunk" instead of "grok"?  That'd be my runner-up choice, but you probably won't find that particular usage of "chunk" in OED either.

[Hoax]

You call that a re-rail?   

[Samwise]

Yes.  In fact, I even left a bridge back to the original topic by mentioning "chunking," which is something Raph talked about a fair bit in Theory of Fun.  Damn I'm good!

[HaemishM]

"I chunk your mouth music, man!"

Hmmm, that just sounds vaguely sexual. Or something.

[El Gallo]

"Chunk" is possibly even worse, since its use is narrower (it isn't listed even as slang most places) and the word has many other meanings (hell, even urban dictionary defines it as an ethnic slur against overweight Asians before it gets to the gaming meaning) while it also appears to be replaceable with other words.

If someone gave me one example of a sentence using "grok" where an actual English word could not be substituted for "grok" then I would perhaps be more receptive.  But really, people have been "grokking" things for thousands of years; it just seems very unlikely that any developed language would not have a symbol for this concept.

"Seppuku" is different, because it refers to a social practice that did not exist in English speaking countries, so it is natural to borrow it, especially because it flows well.

I am 100% in support of evolution in language.  Hell, I think it would be great if we could get speakers of English to agree on an audible way of distinguishing the plural "you" from the singular "you."  However, "grok" seems like a solution in search of a problem.  I suspect it's just an attempt to "jargonize" language to identify peers like most slang, perhaps with a little "we need jargon to make our discipline look serious" obfuscation thrown in.

There's also the fact that when we come up with new words for a new concept (like those new-fangled picture boxes) or an old concept that is now used frequently enough in a particular field where a new word would be handy (like adjusting avatar powers downward to make a game more balanced), we usually make the new word out of other English words or pieces of predecessor languages (like television) or by appropriating another word that has an intuitive link to the concept (like "nerf").  "Grok" on the other hand, just looks like a newly made-up word attached to nothing else in the language.

Sorry for the longish post, since I am having some trouble unpacking my feelings on "grok."