Feature: A MAISE of Twisty Little Passages

[schild]

Submitted by a Mr. Mahrin Skel.

[Raph]

I'm cheating, because he gave me drafts of the article to read over the last few days. :)

"If they are currently pursuing goals that are less attractive to them,
it's because they are on their way to a larger goal that is attractive
enough to make it worth it"

Isn't it likely that sometimes they are pursuing less attractive goals because there's nothing else to do, or they are completely blocked from
their more desirable goals? This is likely a path towards quitting, of course. :)

"If the player cannot make this transition of viewpoint, either because
of the presentation (text vs. graphical vs. 3D), or because of avatar
selection (attractive vs. unattractive, humanoid vs. vehicular), then
they won't stay."

I am unsure that this assertion is true. There's certainly a lot of MMO players who treat avatars as just pawns. The 3rd person games are
reportedly preferred by players who objectify (I have seen data showing that females prefer 1st person, for example).

"...and treat the other players as real."

This seems to be glossing over the issues of disinhibition and lack of empathy, the whole "it's just a game" thing.

"The system inherently assumes that an individual player has only one
primary approach to playing the game, and will engage in others only if
absolutely neccessary. This simply doesn't correspond with how players
actually behave, where they will shift strategies and goals from night
to night, or even several times in the same playing session, even when
the "primary" path is still open to them."

I'm not as comfortable as you are with this statement. It's directly analogous to your above statement about how players pursue goals, yet here you arrive at the opposite conclusion. Think of the playstyle as an end goal for enjoyment; the shifting between approaches may merely be coping tactics to reach the nirvana of always playing the way you like. The primary path may be open, but not optimal; for example, roleplayers leveling up obsessively rather than chatting in the tavern may be because they are including in their decisionmaking factors like whether they will suffer level separation from their roleplay partners.

Mind you, I am not saying that I agree with Richard's somewhat absolutist model, but I do think it permits more flexibility than what
you paint it as doing.

"it is difficult to understand how adding more communication functions
will cause non-socializers of any stripe to depart. "

Relative development time emphasis? After all, development time is a fixed resource. Should one lobbying group repeatedly fail to get their
concerns addressed, while another group does, then they may well exit.

That said, my reading of the original paper is that the feedback loops are explicitly laid out and are not all equivalent. Richard laid out a
few stable configurations, and a bunch of unstable ones. It wasn't as simple as just pushing one to primacy.

"The system equates motivations and means, assuming that those who spend
most of their time chatting are in the game to chat. This leads to
Warren Spector's charge of "Why not just make a better IRC client?""

While I agree with the main point you're making, to be fair we have to point out that in the HCDS paper, Richard specifically says that the
socializers need the gossip fodder of the killers and achievers in order to thrive.

"It failed to detect a motivation that is at least the stated prime
mover for most online game designers, as well as many players: The urge
to explore strictly for the sake of exploration, to know things about
the world and its systems unknown to others (possibly even including the
developers)."

Didn't some of his later stuff start to see the emergence of a possible Explorer motivation? I seem to recall Nick went back and did further
analysis and came up with something.

On MAISE itself:

An interesting thing about these is whether they are internal or external validation. Mastery is external--it relies on the
acknowledgement of other players. No other players, nobody to master. Achievement is internal--the metrics tell you you have done well, and reliance on others is an option. It is completely empirical. Immersion is internal, it's measured in self-satisfaction, and socialization
external, in that it again requires other players to exist at all.

And then there's exploration, which is again odd man out. I wonder if there are actually two sorts of explorer--the researcher and the
teacher?

This cuts back to the comments I made earlier [[in reading drafts, and thse comments were addressed in the version you read]] about these being manifestations of status seeking. The internal motivations are less so.

"most of our games are essentially only designed for Achievement
oriented gameplay, with all other motivations being only accidentally
served."

By serving those motivations with a quantification mechanism, we merely turn them into achievement paths anyway, as with the social professions in SWG. Mind you, the folks who were truly interested in that path liked having the quantification anyway (everyone likes getting positive feedback), but once the paths were "demeaned by the grinders" they lost interest.

There's something interesting there, that relates to how motivations work. The self-satisfaction of pursuing that goal was diminished because of others pursuing the goal and succeeding at it without having the same motive.

"Frequently it has been assumed that if there was an optimum path to
Achievement, all players would pursue that path exclusively and
independently of any other."

By this do you mean the "take shortest path to the cheese" and "players do what they are rewarded for" sorts of things? Because I still think those hold true even whilst I completely agree with your path metaphor.

Clearly not all players will pursue the optimal achievement path; but I think it's also very true that it exerts a powerful gravitational pull.
And we've also seen players who choose to step off of that particular path end up feeling inadequate and quitting unless they get sufficient validation from another source. Lots of players quit because they feel like they are getting outleveled, shown to be inexpert or inadequate, and so on.

Nice conclusion, don't know that I have anything to add there.

One thing that seems related is the tyranny of dependency. One of the big knocks against SWG from some quarters was the interdependency between players--not a close dependency, but a somewhat distant one. "I don't want to have to depend on other players to buy my goods, I just want to sell stuff and get rewarded." "I don't want to have to depend on others for my advancement, I just want the game to reward me." There seems to be a gap between the clear sense of these games as social groups, and the desire to live apart from the group.

[Evangolis]

Such a large chunk for me to digest with such a small brain.

I came away from Yee's work on player motivations with a similar feeling that there was a better set of facts than Bartle had produced, but a lack of the design framework that Bartle created.  I like the MAISE framework better, than what Yee got, but it still lacks the natural clarity of the interaction of player types that Bartle hard.  I thinnk that part of that clarity is due to the simplicity of Bartle's dichotomous axes, which probably explains at least part of the reason that expanding Bartle's framework is less than satisfactory.

So if we run with the MAISE framework, what can we say about the interaction of player types?  My training in earth and life sciences leads me to a preference for systems which incorporate diversity as being inherently more stable than less diverse systems; a cornfield requires great energy to maintain, weeds grow on their own just fine.  Therefore, my instinct is to design to maximize the player types my system serves, although that service need only be sufficent, not perfect or equal.  How then do we maximize service for each type, and where do the service of the different types come into conflict?

Multidimesional frameworks may produce more accurate descriptions of a complex system, but they are damn hard to vizualize without pretty pictures.  I guess the best way to employ the MAISE framework would be to take each motivation and posit it to be your preferred motivation, and then introduce support for other motivations except where that support conflicted with your preferred motivation.  Doing this for all five motivations shuld give you several examples of game designs, suitable for writing somewhere between 1 and 30 chapters of a book, which I won't be doing before I go to sleep tonight.

Nonetheless, I think that there is either a principle or process in there worth pursuing.  I think I shall sleep on it, and see what happens.


Edit: Oh good, Raph's said something while I was stuttering this out, so I can hide behind the beard until I have more of a clue...

[Evangolis]

A couple of quick thoughts on a couple of Raph's comments.

Style switching is something I often do explicitly and with intent.  Sometimes it is a matter of mood, sometimes it is a resource opportunity (eg, finding a really effective PvE leveling group and settling in for an extended pure achievement session), and sometimes I take pleasure from treating myself to contrasting mental frameworks (eg switching from intense action/achievement, ie PvE combat, to less intense immersion/socialization, ie chatting while quest running).

Adding social channels can, in and of itself be detrimental to those with lesser social interests.  If communication becomes too complex, with too many options, I find I tend to stop trying to master it, and ignore it for other aspects of the game, even though I like some degree of social interaction.

Ok, now I'm really going to bed.  Good night.

[Arnold]

IMO, "Achievers" do NOT master the game; they master fighting stupid "AI" and memorize the best was to increase level.

Explorers MASTER the game world.

Killers MASTER combat.

Achievers run on a treadmill.

[Llava]

The 3rd person games are
reportedly preferred by players who objectify (I have seen data showing that females prefer 1st person, for example).

I have nothing to add to the article, really, because it seems pretty close to dead-on.  But I noticed this in Raph's reply and didn't feel right about it.

I prefer 3rd person, for example, but that's because it actually provides a higher level of immersion for me.  First person doesn't covey the sense of self awareness that we have in our daily lives, for both positioning ("How close am I to that ledge?") and appearance ("What shirt am I wearing?").  First person is terribly immersion breaking for me- less like I'm inside the character, more like I'm in a camera about 6 inches in front of the character.

[MahrinSkel]

I'm cheating, because he gave me drafts of the article to read over the last few days. :)

"If they are currently pursuing goals that are less attractive to them,
it's because they are on their way to a larger goal that is attractive
enough to make it worth it"

Isn't it likely that sometimes they are pursuing less attractive goals because there's nothing else to do, or they are completely blocked from
their more desirable goals? This is likely a path towards quitting, of course. :)

I'm cheating too, I revised a few paragraphs after the last time you saw it.  On that one, I added "or habituation has made the earlier goals less attractive."  And they often don't have just a single motivation, making the alternative less incongruous than a strict classification would indicate.

People get bored with the grind, or with just chatting, or whatever, and want to try something different.

"If the player cannot make this transition of viewpoint, either because
of the presentation (text vs. graphical vs. 3D), or because of avatar
selection (attractive vs. unattractive, humanoid vs. vehicular), then
they won't stay."

I am unsure that this assertion is true. There's certainly a lot of MMO players who treat avatars as just pawns. The 3rd person games are
reportedly preferred by players who objectify (I have seen data showing that females prefer 1st person, for example).

True enough, this needs more exploration.  But I still think that either "you" become your avatar, or you leave.

"...and treat the other players as real."

This seems to be glossing over the issues of disinhibition and lack of empathy, the whole "it's just a game" thing.

Cheated again: "Even the sociopathic behaviour associated with anonymity and “keyboard lycanthropy” draws it’s attraction from what the system allows “you” to do to “them”."

If the other avatars weren't real people, they wouldn't be any fun to jerk around.  Disinhibition may make people do things they'd never do in person, but not because the other people aren't "real".

"The system inherently assumes that an individual player has only one
primary approach to playing the game, and will engage in others only if
absolutely neccessary. This simply doesn't correspond with how players
actually behave, where they will shift strategies and goals from night
to night, or even several times in the same playing session, even when
the "primary" path is still open to them."

I'm not as comfortable as you are with this statement. It's directly analogous to your above statement about how players pursue goals, yet here you arrive at the opposite conclusion. Think of the playstyle as an end goal for enjoyment; the shifting between approaches may merely be coping tactics to reach the nirvana of always playing the way you like. The primary path may be open, but not optimal; for example, roleplayers leveling up obsessively rather than chatting in the tavern may be because they are including in their decisionmaking factors like whether they will suffer level separation from their roleplay partners.

So a larger goal (stay with the group) has pre-empted their efforts.  Where's the contradiction?

"it is difficult to understand how adding more communication functions
will cause non-socializers of any stripe to depart. "

Relative development time emphasis? After all, development time is a fixed resource. Should one lobbying group repeatedly fail to get their
concerns addressed, while another group does, then they may well exit.

That said, my reading of the original paper is that the feedback loops are explicitly laid out and are not all equivalent. Richard laid out a
few stable configurations, and a bunch of unstable ones. It wasn't as simple as just pushing one to primacy.

True enough, I do think that "community" is a dynamic equilibrium.  But I think it is *much* more complicated than Richard laid it out to be, and that the significant portion is that you have to avoid "vicious cycles", that seek an equilibrium of zero players.  Other than that, it will work itself out.  Otherwise, the motivational strategies will shift to achieve an equilibrium.  We have nearly as big a problem that our typical equilibrium is *too* stable, it discourages genuine immigrants.  In a game that's been around for a while, if you just pick it up and play, you're screwed, all the other people at your level are actually alt's getting powerlevels back up to a useful level, and they don't have time for a real newbie.

"The system equates motivations and means, assuming that those who spend
most of their time chatting are in the game to chat. This leads to
Warren Spector's charge of "Why not just make a better IRC client?""

While I agree with the main point you're making, to be fair we have to point out that in the HCDS paper, Richard specifically says that the
socializers need the gossip fodder of the killers and achievers in order to thrive.

Do they?  Then how do we account for every online community that *isn't* strictly inside games?  MUD-Dev is a mud? Something causes the primary Socializers to choose *this* social environment, why can't it be that they themselves have secondary motivations to play?

"It failed to detect a motivation that is at least the stated prime
mover for most online game designers, as well as many players: The urge
to explore strictly for the sake of exploration, to know things about
the world and its systems unknown to others (possibly even including the
developers)."

Didn't some of his later stuff start to see the emergence of a possible Explorer motivation? I seem to recall Nick went back and did further
analysis and came up with something.

If he did, I wish he had back-linked it to Facets.

On MAISE itself:

An interesting thing about these is whether they are internal or external validation. Mastery is external--it relies on the
acknowledgement of other players. No other players, nobody to master. Achievement is internal--the metrics tell you you have done well, and reliance on others is an option. It is completely empirical. Immersion is internal, it's measured in self-satisfaction, and socialization
external, in that it again requires other players to exist at all.

If it's internal, why play an MMO at all?  You can get purely internal satisfaction in Diablo.  Sure, *some* players play Diablo as much as the typical MMOG player, but if more than a small percentage put in those hundreds to thousands of hours, Battle.net would have bankrupted Blizzard.  And Diablo is sort of a hybrid, how many play Final Fantasy (other than XI) that extensively?

And then there's exploration, which is again odd man out. I wonder if there are actually two sorts of explorer--the researcher and the
teacher?

Entirely possible.  I think that the motivations may be fractal, the closer you look at them, the more is going on.

This cuts back to the comments I made earlier [[in reading drafts, and thse comments were addressed in the version you read]] about these being manifestations of status seeking. The internal motivations are less so.

"most of our games are essentially only designed for Achievement
oriented gameplay, with all other motivations being only accidentally
served."

By serving those motivations with a quantification mechanism, we merely turn them into achievement paths anyway, as with the social professions in SWG. Mind you, the folks who were truly interested in that path liked having the quantification anyway (everyone likes getting positive feedback), but once the paths were "demeaned by the grinders" they lost interest.

Yeah, you imposed a Achievement metric over their goal system, and it didn't work.  But do you really *know* that was why they quit?  People rationalize their departures.

There's something interesting there, that relates to how motivations work. The self-satisfaction of pursuing that goal was diminished because of others pursuing the goal and succeeding at it without having the same motive.

There may be an incompatibility of goal structures.  Bus I suspect it's something that could be finessed.

"Frequently it has been assumed that if there was an optimum path to
Achievement, all players would pursue that path exclusively and
independently of any other."

By this do you mean the "take shortest path to the cheese" and "players do what they are rewarded for" sorts of things? Because I still think those hold true even whilst I completely agree with your path metaphor.

Clearly not all players will pursue the optimal achievement path; but I think it's also very true that it exerts a powerful gravitational pull.
And we've also seen players who choose to step off of that particular path end up feeling inadequate and quitting unless they get sufficient validation from another source. Lots of players quit because they feel like they are getting outleveled, shown to be inexpert or inadequate, and so on.

Lots of players *claim* to quit for those reasons.  But I never found any statistical evidence for it.  I find it easier to believe they were quitting, and rationalize the decision.

One thing that seems related is the tyranny of dependency. One of the big knocks against SWG from some quarters was the interdependency between players--not a close dependency, but a somewhat distant one. "I don't want to have to depend on other players to buy my goods, I just want to sell stuff and get rewarded." "I don't want to have to depend on others for my advancement, I just want the game to reward me." There seems to be a gap between the clear sense of these games as social groups, and the desire to live apart from the group.

Player's main objection to dependancy is the idea that they be left high and dry, unable to find someone with the right abilities when they need them.  They screamed bloody murder over crafting in Camelot, but because a small number of crafters could service the needs of an entire realm, and the other player's need for their services was rarely pressing, it worked out fine.

--Dave

[MahrinSkel]

IMO, "Achievers" do NOT master the game; they master fighting stupid "AI" and memorize the best was to increase level.

Explorers MASTER the game world.

Killers MASTER combat.

Achievers run on a treadmill.

You're missing the point: Mastery is a separate motivation, one that nearly merges with Achievement in EQ-like games, but doesn't have to.

--Dave

[Margalis]

I have a serious question about all this. (Bartle, Yee, etc.) What is the point?

Is something about these various systems supposed to help people actually make better games? It seems to me to be mostly an argument about terminologies and such. I mean, all this is fine, but what about very simple rules like:

If your players are going to spend 80% of their time on one thing, that thing should be fun.

Most games can't get this right, so I have low hopes they would do well trying to design around one sophisticated framework or another. It strikes me as a can't see the forest for the trees sort of thing.

[Psychochild]

Interesting writeup, Dave.

I'm suspicious of the "Achievement" category you defined.  Is there really a significant number of people  that play these games simply for the joy of watching numbers go up?  Usually I think that there's usually some other motivation involved; Mastery: bragging rights and proof of said mastery, Immersion: wider variety of options for appearances and activities, Socialization: keeping up with your friends, Exploration: seeing more of the world.  I agree that Achievement is important because it's what current games as the "sticky" part.  But, I'm not sure there's that many players out there really all that interested in paying a monthly fee just to see numbers increase, so I'm hesitant to say it's a motivation.

One problem with your framework is that it's also slightly game dependent.  Someone who is a Bartle Achiever shows similar behavior in multiple games.  A person interested in Mastery, however, might have to do vastly different things in different games; in EQ it's all about the high end raids, in Planetside it's about the pwning, etc.  I wonder how applicable these motivations are from one game to the next.  If they aren't transferable, then you run into the problem of applying this to new game designs.

What is the point?

The point is that we're trying to figure out what paying customers want.  As much as you might hate to admit it, current games have done something right in order to get people interested and keep them interested.  So now we, as developers, are trying to maximize the number of people willing to play (and pay for) our game.  If we can determine a motivation, we can craft the game to suit the audience better.  "Players of type A respond well to X but dislike Y, but type B likes Y but hates Z."  The ultimate goal is to understand player motivation so we can offer (parts of) games to them that will appeal to them.  So, we know to offer X, but keep the Y out of player type A's sight so s/he doesn't hate our game.

My thoughts,

[MahrinSkel]

But, I'm not sure there's that many players out there really all that interested in paying a monthly fee just to see numbers increase, so I'm hesitant to say it's a motivation.

Fired up ProgressQuest lately?  For at least a brief time, it gives the same numbers-oriented "thrill".

One problem with your framework is that it's also slightly game dependent.  Someone who is a Bartle Achiever shows similar behavior in multiple games.  A person interested in Mastery, however, might have to do vastly different things in different games; in EQ it's all about the high end raids, in Planetside it's about the pwning, etc.  I wonder how applicable these motivations are from one game to the next.  If they aren't transferable, then you run into the problem of applying this to new game designs.

I think that's a strength, not a weakness, the fact that the same player, with the same basic motivations, will play a diferent game in a different way, is our road to escaping the gravitational pull of the WoW clones.  I don't think we can pull *different* players through these principles, I think we can erode the sand from beneath the diku-inspired foundations of the mainstream games.  Eventually, once the market isn't dominated by first or second time players.  In the meantime, we can start exploring the rest of the possibility space for niche games with a bit more of a roadmap.

[MahrinSkel]

This cuts back to the comments I made earlier [[in reading drafts, and thse comments were addressed in the version you read]] about these being manifestations of status seeking. The internal motivations are less so.

"most of our games are essentially only designed for Achievement
oriented gameplay, with all other motivations being only accidentally
served."

By serving those motivations with a quantification mechanism, we merely turn them into achievement paths anyway, as with the social professions in SWG. Mind you, the folks who were truly interested in that path liked having the quantification anyway (everyone likes getting positive feedback), but once the paths were "demeaned by the grinders" they lost interest.

Yeah, you imposed a Achievement metric over their goal system, and it didn't work.  But do you really *know* that was why they quit?  People rationalize their departures.

There's something interesting there, that relates to how motivations work. The self-satisfaction of pursuing that goal was diminished because of others pursuing the goal and succeeding at it without having the same motive.

There may be an incompatibility of goal structures.  Bus I suspect it's something that could be finessed.

"Frequently it has been assumed that if there was an optimum path to
Achievement, all players would pursue that path exclusively and
independently of any other."

By this do you mean the "take shortest path to the cheese" and "players do what they are rewarded for" sorts of things? Because I still think those hold true even whilst I completely agree with your path metaphor.

Clearly not all players will pursue the optimal achievement path; but I think it's also very true that it exerts a powerful gravitational pull.
And we've also seen players who choose to step off of that particular path end up feeling inadequate and quitting unless they get sufficient validation from another source. Lots of players quit because they feel like they are getting outleveled, shown to be inexpert or inadequate, and so on.

Lots of players *claim* to quit for those reasons.  But I never found any statistical evidence for it.  I find it easier to believe they were quitting, and rationalize the decision.

Need to elaborate a bit more here: Your dancers and other non-combat "immersion" oriented players wanted to stand out, and you flooded them with Achiever tourist and opportunists.  Of course they felt gipped.

--Dave

[Cheddar]

This article and the ensuing discussion is why I am a fanboi.  I  F13. 

[Margalis]

I guess my question would be, how do you go about applying this sort of stuff?

I would be more inclined to try a bottom up approach. (Aside: I am a software engineer, and the way I typically work when given a problem is I go prototype it 3 different ways, then write up the way I think was best as the spec. Then when someone signs off on it I say "ok, it's done already" only half kidding) Why not make a huge list of things good and bad in various MMOPRGs, and see if you can distill that into something? Look for common mistakes, groupings of different problems, notice which players tend to report different likes and dislikes, etc.

I find this sort of approach works very well for all sorts of stuff. Any creative endeavor really. And it has many benefits. You have conrete examples you can use to explain and illustrate with - it makes things memorable and understandable. And if nothing else, if you just avoid the mistakes on your list and try to do some of the good things you are off to a great start.

For example to refer to what I said earlier, my rule: If a player is going to spend 80% of their time doing 1 thing, that thing should be fun. That's really the end result of a lot of various complaints, mostly related to combat. Each MMORPG talks about how it will have better combat, with skill chains and hero wheels and multiple mobs and whatnot. All of that is really the same at the high level: make the primary activity fun.

You can collect all the complaints about things like auction houses, buying and selling, etc. What types of players tend to notice those sorts of things, and what else do they notice? A lot of doing anything well is just following rules of thumb, the more rules (and thumbs) the better.

[koboshi]

By the logic that a solid theory must work in all cases I have a question about the fringe activities of new players.

Let’s imagine for the sake of simplicity that the paths exist within a three dimensional space, a building. The floors of the building represent progression within the game, levels and such, and the breadth of those floors are filled with possible interactions, including ones which will cause the player to reach the next floor. The paths that each player will take will represent their experience of the game and will be closely related to others of their type (because they seek the same… cheese) but will diverge by a factor of their diversion from the pure form of their type. Furthermore all players will seek out their ultimate outcome, for example achievers will seek the fastest route to the top floor while socializers may plateau each time they reach a level that allows them to.

For the sake of argument let’s say that this is my first game. For an undisclosed reason I have purchased the game and have entered the game, I stand in the lobby of the first floor. Now if I was an MMOG player I would begin my way up because I would know where I was going. You and I would be clear on what my motivation is and your system would be able to predict my path. However I have not played before. I don’t know where I am going or that I am supposed to be going somewhere. What motivations draw me into the first level? Each one after that?

Would adoption of your classifications (or any others) cause streamlining of games to a point where every player is of one of the five types because they are one of those types, or are they one type because the game designers have only considered how to make a game for The Five Types?

To make a point through hyperbole lets say I was a player who for the most part played fighting games.  when I enter the game I say, "there is no twitch", or, "I cant stand that no matter how good I am, catasses beat me every time!" I leave. My path is one which many others have traveled before, but our path never leads to satisfaction. Which type of player am I? Is it possible that I am a player whose path is straight out the door I just came in? If so does that player type count? It would be easy to envision a game where even one of your five types finds themselves leaving, sometimes from the first floor and sometimes with more drama from the 30th. Perhaps Exploration types find that the game is a completely known entity by the first month or so. With no great pull from the other motivations all the players who are mainly explorers leave. Is it too far a stretch to suppose that there are those who remain outside your study's demographics because they are eliminated by design which focuses exclusively on the known entities?

Have you defined all players, or have you simply categorized those who remain?

Edit: superfluous third nipple

[Glazius]

To make a point through hyperbole lets say I was a player who for the most part played fighting games.  when I enter the game I say, "there is no twitch", or, "I cant stand that no matter how good I am, catasses beat me every time!" I leave. My path is one which many others have traveled before, but our path never leads to satisfaction.

Your path doesn't exist in the game. It's primarily a path of Mastery, with some Exploration thrown in, but when you try to walk that way you find that some asstard named Catass has locked the doors, and his superior, Ping Time, won't give you the key. The system as it exists is not a means for retroactively charting the path a player has taken, but for proactively labeling the various activities in-game. It is entirely possible to want to go in a direction where there is no trail.

--GF

[Glazius]

On MAISE itself:

An interesting thing about these is whether they are internal or external validation. Mastery is external--it relies on the
acknowledgement of other players. No other players, nobody to master. Achievement is internal--the metrics tell you you have done well, and reliance on others is an option. It is completely empirical. Immersion is internal, it's measured in self-satisfaction, and socialization external, in that it again requires other players to exist at all.

And then there's exploration, which is again odd man out. I wonder if there are actually two sorts of explorer--the researcher and the teacher?

So let's make system SAMITE.

Socialization, Achievement, Mastery, Immersion, Teaching, Exploration.

It could probably be better-acronymed, because the real pairs are:

Achievement/Mastery
Immersion/Socialization
Exploration/Teaching

(Or system AIR MiST, if you want to call game-Exploration Research.)

Power, Storytelling, and Knowledge motivate these three pairs. The left side of the slash relates directly to the game; the right side of the slash relates to the game community.

Note that just because they're paired doesn't mean that they're necessarily connected. Take a look at the speedrun community for an example of mastery disconnected from achievement.

--GF

[Pococurante]

First person is terribly immersion breaking for me- less like I'm inside the character, more like I'm in a camera about 6 inches in front of the character.

My response as well.  FPP is a porthole and IRL I rely heavily on my peripheral vision.  Hence why I blew money on a widescreen monitor and run my games with the perspective fully pulled back.  The only time I zoom in is combat in close quarters or I want to take a few seconds to admire graphic detail.

[Pococurante]

Player's main objection to dependancy is the idea that they be left high and dry, unable to find someone with the right abilities when they need them.  They screamed bloody murder over crafting in Camelot, but because a small number of crafters could service the needs of an entire realm, and the other player's need for their services was rarely pressing, it worked out fine.

Depends on the definition of "fine".  It's what drove me out of the game into another service.  As well as the other merchanting and artisan players I knew at the time.

[HaemishM]

I'm cheating, because he gave me drafts of the article to read over the last few days. :)

"If they are currently pursuing goals that are less attractive to them,
it's because they are on their way to a larger goal that is attractive
enough to make it worth it"

Isn't it likely that sometimes they are pursuing less attractive goals because there's nothing else to do, or they are completely blocked from
their more desirable goals? This is likely a path towards quitting, of course. :)

That's called cockblocking. EQ was very successful with this model.

An interesting thing about these is whether they are internal or external validation. Mastery is external--it relies on the
acknowledgement of other players. No other players, nobody to master. Achievement is internal--the metrics tell you you have done well, and reliance on others is an option. It is completely empirical. Immersion is internal, it's measured in self-satisfaction, and socialization
external, in that it again requires other players to exist at all.

And then there's exploration, which is again odd man out. I wonder if there are actually two sorts of explorer--the researcher and the
teacher?

Actually, I see the explorer as someone who can flip flop along internal and external validation easily. Some explorers just want to see new things to see them, the kind of immersion-based achiever who goes everywhere solo because he can, because he wants to see new things. Then there ist eh socialization-based explorer who explores in order to share his knowledge with others. Think Allakhazam, EQMaps and those sort of people. Of course, these kinds of explorers may also be doing it to enrich themselves in the metagame as well.

Explorers are strange birds.

"most of our games are essentially only designed for Achievement
oriented gameplay, with all other motivations being only accidentally
served."

By serving those motivations with a quantification mechanism, we merely turn them into achievement paths anyway, as with the social professions in SWG. Mind you, the folks who were truly interested in that path liked having the quantification anyway (everyone likes getting positive feedback), but once the paths were "demeaned by the grinders" they lost interest.

There's something interesting there, that relates to how motivations work. The self-satisfaction of pursuing that goal was diminished because of others pursuing the goal and succeeding at it without having the same motive.

I don't think that just the addition of measurement metrics turned things like SWG crafting into achievement paths. After all, WoW gives experience for finding zones you've never been to and CoH gives badges for exploring areas you've never been to. It's only when those metrics can be used to compare/compete with others in an achievement-based way, such as making better gear to sell to other players, only when there is a profit involved (or in Dave's terms, an increase in power) does it turn into an achievement path.

[HaemishM]

Multidimesional frameworks may produce more accurate descriptions of a complex system, but they are damn hard to vizualize without pretty pictures.  I guess the best way to employ the MAISE framework would be to take each motivation and posit it to be your preferred motivation, and then introduce support for other motivations except where that support conflicted with your preferred motivation. 

Or, if you are building a game based on conflict, introduce support ONLY where those conflicting motivations exist. Introduce ways for the diametrically-opposed motivations to succeed at their specialities instead of herding them into the other side's specialities. This is one way I actually support allowing "zerging" in PVP games. Zerg guilds that rely on numbers to win are going to have to succeed at their socialization skills, or else the zerg is just a chaotic mob. Herding those cats takes a certain type of skill. Meanwhile, the "mastery" types, the people who are achiever-oriented and want to be the best, the uber types who only want to do raids with 40 people, they will have to succeed by being better individual and group players.

[Lietgardis]

I guess my question would be, how do you go about applying this sort of stuff? [...]  Why not make a huge list of things good and bad in various MMOPRGs, and see if you can distill that into something? Look for common mistakes, groupings of different problems, notice which players tend to report different likes and dislikes, etc.

It's an attempt to codify matters of taste.  I can write my own huge list of things good and bad, and you can write yours, but they're not going to be the same, because we have different motivations.  When we "notice which players tend to report different likes and dislikes," it's much simpler if we can group the players into a motivational framework.

[WayAbvPar]

Actually, I see the explorer as someone who can flip flop along internal and external validation easily. Some explorers just want to see new things to see them, the kind of immersion-based achiever who goes everywhere solo because he can, because he wants to see new things.

I am a Bartle EKA, and this is more how I see myself. I don't mind being able to spout useless knowledge, but it is the feeling of wonderment and awe in seeing interesting parts of the game for the first time that I crave.

Interesting article, Dave. It has generated a lot of good discussion so far, and will likely continue (this is gonna be a LONG thread by the time it dies out). I will have to go back and read it again when I am fully awake before I comment any further- it  was a lot to get through in my semi-coherent 1st-hour-at-work state.

[Margalis]

I guess my question would be, how do you go about applying this sort of stuff? [...]  Why not make a huge list of things good and bad in various MMOPRGs, and see if you can distill that into something? Look for common mistakes, groupings of different problems, notice which players tend to report different likes and dislikes, etc.

It's an attempt to codify matters of taste.  I can write my own huge list of things good and bad, and you can write yours, but they're not going to be the same, because we have different motivations.  When we "notice which players tend to report different likes and dislikes," it's much simpler if we can group the players into a motivational framework.

But you are doing the grouping first. That's the problem.

I am talking about observing and then drawing conclusions based on carefully noted observations. These attempts at frameworks are often very short on real details and examples. It's make the framework first, then try to pick out things that fit it. If you read stuff by Bartle, it's quite clear he is pretty out of touch with MMOGs in general.

I can think of an infinite number of frameworks that sound ok on paper. All these attempted frameworks are based on some actual observations, but that observations are not listed, noted, verified or compared to anything.

What about twitch gamers? Can I make a separate category for those people? It sounds reasonable. What about people who simply want to be the most skilled? There are entire genres of games based on that, and I don't see that represented here. (Mastery here is essentially leadership and power, and achievment is character advancement)

I play Street Fighter 2 because I like being good at a purely skill based game. So do I not fit into any of these categories? It would be easy to make a MMORPG that I *did* fit into. That's what Koboshi was getting at. What about people who like a game to be relaxing, like sailing around in Wind Waker? What about people who prefer a certain setting? There are literally hundreds of categories I can think of that make sense.

So I now have:
Mastery
Achievment
Twitch
Skill
Exploration
Teaching
etc.

Hell you can throw in graphics & animation whores. It still makes sense on paper. I will make a bold argument:

There is no way you can advocate one framework over millions of others unless your framework has backing data to support it.

In a way it seems obvious. For all we know, graphic whores and people who want pure skill-based games make up 99% of the gaming population and explorers one percent.

For this stuff to be meaningful you have to be able to say: Here are my observations, and here is how these observations led me to this framework, and here is how this framework validates against real-world scenarios.

[WindupAtheist]

If someone can come up with an acronym for their system that spells CATASS, I'll be tickled.

[Kail]

The ultimate goal the players seem to be seeking is status, and the motivations may simply be seen as strategies for pursuing it. If we evaluate each motivation as a strategy for gaining recognition and status, then a different picture emerges...

I'd argue with this.  Status seeking seems to be a motivation of it's own, rather than the end goal of every other motivation.  It's probably more closely associated with some motivations than with others (PK's get bored without people to fight, for example), but if you're setting it up as the end goal for every path, you're implying that EVERYONE who plays MMORPGs is doing so in order to get some sort of status, and I don't think there's much support for that.

If I'm roleplaying, for example, I don't care if other players look to me for entertainment (has there ever been anybody, in the history of MMORPGs, who's achieved significant status as a great roleplayer?).  If I'm exploring, I'm not really interested in players looking to me for tips and advice, I want to see neat and interesting things.  I also doubt that the big draw for most socializers is that they desire a reputation as a gossip-monger.  Likewise with achievement and mastery; other players can be nothing more than points of reference to me; whether they respect and admire me or not is their problem.

[koboshi]

The ultimate goal the players seem to be seeking is status, and the motivations may simply be seen as strategies for pursuing it. If we evaluate each motivation as a strategy for gaining recognition and status, then a different picture emerges...

I'd argue with this.  Status seeking seems to be a motivation of it's own, rather than the end goal of every other motivation.  It's probably more closely associated with some motivations than with others (PK's get bored without people to fight, for example), but if you're setting it up as the end goal for every path, you're implying that EVERYONE who plays MMORPGs is doing so in order to get some sort of status, and I don't think there's much support for that.

I have to second this. The only way for the premise to be true is if you stretch the definition of recognition to include simple acceptance. Yes, I do seek to find my place in the world, if I didn’t I wouldn’t require the multiplayer experience. But I don't require that anyone care who I am, only that they let me play in their reindeer games.

(has there ever been anybody, in the history of MMORPGs, who's achieved significant status as a great roleplayer?).

Well there was Mr. Bungle.

[AOFanboi]

If someone can come up with an acronym for their system that spells CATASS, I'll be tickled.

But then we'd have religious wars over which S stands for which term.

I think there is also an aspect here of new vs. established game: A new player to DAoC, EVE and other games focused on the end game will have a harder time at the lower levels because there simply are fewer "new" players, and all older players (in the form of guilds) will want to power-level you so you can join their ranks, exploration and gameplay be damned. I will be dropping out of EVE simply because there is no market for my low-end gear, and the game seems to move further and further towards a wargame between established guilds and pirate orgs.

This is one of the reasons WoW is successful, there is actually a lot to do for people who don't want to power-level. It is also the reason I play it, despite all the people addicted to it, you can play it casually as well, which means it covers more of the bases, no matter which system you measure by.

[Krakrok]

An under represented type of player seems to be the Builder (or Creation) type which appears to mostly be reserved for the MMOG developers at this point. All of the types listed (except for maybe killer) are locked into a consumer of content mindset. MUDs contained significant worldbuilding capabilities yet Builder seems to be lacking from Bartle's categorization but Explorer is represented?

I'd sight Neverwinter Nights and wikis or even legos as examples of the demand for a Builder type. I'd also sight Civilization as a Builder game.


And what effect do American social classes have on or define people's motivations for playing? Are middle class people more inclined to be achievers? Are upper class people more inclined to be socializers or killers? Do motivations mirror or invert real life motivations?

[Dellaster]

"it is difficult to understand how adding more communication functions
will cause non-socializers of any stripe to depart. "

Relative development time emphasis? After all, development time is a fixed resource. Should one lobbying group repeatedly fail to get their
concerns addressed, while another group does, then they may well exit.

That said, my reading of the original paper is that the feedback loops are explicitly laid out and are not all equivalent. Richard laid out a
few stable configurations, and a bunch of unstable ones. It wasn't as simple as just pushing one to primacy.

I noticed this misinterpretation as well. Dr. Bartle's full paper (http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm) asserts that an increase in Socializers has no effect on Achievers or Explorers and slightly increases Killers. Something that enhances the Socializer aspect of a MUD should not cause anyone to depart.

In general, I think misunderstandings of Dr. Bartle's work come from a lack of experience in MUDs where the full range of player options are available. Particularly those rare MUDs with a rough equilibrium of influence between the four player types. Current MMOGs do not have that same range of player options. Witness some recent blog/forum discussions about the apparent non-existance of the Explorer type. In a balanced MUD they're not at all hard to find and identify.

That said, it's a good article. Lots of food for thought. I'll be digesting it for a while to come. Thank you.

[Raph]

I was the one who pushed the status-seeking thing on Dave. People DO seem to seek status either covertly or overtly in virtually every human endeavor. Many of the common emotions we feel can be traced back to forms of primate jockeying for status. I have trouble believing that you haven't seen roleplayers gain status via roleplay. For one, it happens constantly just within the roleplay group. For another, there's examples going clear back to things like Kazola's tavern and to more recent stuff like Leroy-Jenkins-movie-making.

[Llava]

If someone can come up with an acronym for their system that spells CATASS, I'll be tickled.

Collecting
Achieving
Trailblazing
Avoiding (reality)
Socializing
Storytelling

It's not perfect, but there you go.

[Psychochild]

Fired up ProgressQuest lately?  For at least a brief time, it gives the same numbers-oriented "thrill".

There's people willing to pay for that?  Hell, I'm gonna go code my next game this weekend and rake in the cash!

Oh, wait, you mean ProgressQuest was a joke?  The only people "playing" the game are status-seekers bragging about how long they've left their computer running?  Oh.

One problem with your framework is that it's also slightly game dependent.

I think that's a strength, not a weakness, the fact that the same player, with the same basic motivations, will play a different game in a different way, is our road to escaping the gravitational pull of the WoW clones.  I don't think we can pull *different* players through these principles, I think we can erode the sand from beneath the diku-inspired foundations of the mainstream games.  Eventually, once the market isn't dominated by first or second time players.  In the meantime, we can start exploring the rest of the possibility space for niche games with a bit more of a roadmap.

I think it's also a weakness, Dave.  Is the person leading a squad in PlanetSide doing it because he likes organizing people (Socialization), because he's the glue keeping the squad of friends together (also Socialization), because he wants more commander experience (Achievement), because he wants to be known as a good player (Mastery), because he wants to believe he's fighting a war (Immersion)?  All of these have the same external appearance, so it's hard to really determine what's motivating these people.

I fear this could have the opposite effect you want.  Developers could get afraid of developing new content because it'll take a while to understand what motivates people to use the systems.  Better to stick with the tried-and-true that we know about.

Some food for thought.

[Llava]

I was the one who pushed the status-seeking thing on Dave. People DO seem to seek status either covertly or overtly in virtually every human endeavor. Many of the common emotions we feel can be traced back to forms of primate jockeying for status. I have trouble believing that you haven't seen roleplayers gain status via roleplay. For one, it happens constantly just within the roleplay group. For another, there's examples going clear back to things like Kazola's tavern and to more recent stuff like Leroy-Jenkins-movie-making.

ON DAoC, in... I believe it was Percival, in Hibernia, there was a little level 4 or so character who was a Lurikeen, and he claimed he was the mayor of the town he inhabited, called Mag Mell.  I believe he hung around for well over a year, never passing level 4.  Everyone knew him.  He was well known and respected, and he never actually fought anything.  I don't think he even left his town frequently.  But everyone on the server (even those in other realms) knew who he was.  Hell, I knew who he was and I didn't even play on the same server.  There is absolutely status to be had through roleplaying.

[Kail]

People DO seem to seek status either covertly or overtly in virtually every human endeavor. Many of the common emotions we feel can be traced back to forms of primate jockeying for status. I have trouble believing that you haven't seen roleplayers gain status via roleplay. For one, it happens constantly just within the roleplay group. For another, there's examples going clear back to things like Kazola's tavern and to more recent stuff like Leroy-Jenkins-movie-making.

Yeah, but to jump from the statement "I've seen some roleplayers gain status" to the statement "all roleplayers ultimate goal is to achieve status" is going to require some serious evidence, which I'm not seeing.  That some roleplayers (or explorers or whatever) also seek status is fairly consistent with what I think the intent of the article is: sketching out a classification system in which the different categories overlap fairly easy.  Unless I'm misreading it, the point is that it's easy to be a roleplayer and a killer, or whatever, so a roleplayer/status seeker doesn't present a problem.  The problem I have is the claim that everyone, no matter how or why they play, is ultimately doing it for status above all other reasons.

For some people, yeah, social status is a big thing, but it's not unheard of for people to sacrifice social status for a higher personal goal.  Especially when we're dealing with video games; a few of us grew up during a time when being a gamer was kind of a knock to your status (it was a nerd thing).  I didn't start playing games because they were going to make me popular, and I don't continue to play them in the belief that this will change.  Maybe people's attitudes today are different, I dunno, but if social status was my ultimate goal, I sure as hell wouldn't be screwing around with World of Warcraft for ten hours every day.

When I eat dinner, it's because I'm hungry, not because I want any kind of special "dinner eater" social status.  I can choose which restaurant to go to, or what to eat, based on status ("I can't go to McDonalds, or people will think I'm a peasant!"), but that doesn't mean that my ultimate goal in eating dinner was to attain status.  With games, for me, it's the same way.  Sometimes, yeah, I may want to make a certain impression... but sometimes, I just don't care.  What the theory presented in the article says is that people are always in one of five (or so) categories, and that the ultimate goal of each of these is status.  That means that no matter what I'm doing, no matter if I'm roleplaying or exploring or what, I'm A) always in one of those categories, and therefore B) always seeking status.  That doesn't correspond with my experiences.