The Laws of Online Gaming Revisited...

[schild]

...6 years later.

Full article here.

Edit: Warning, it's long.

[Snowspinner]

http://www.f13.net/index2.php?subaction=showfull&id=1087932920&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2&">Counterpoint.

[HaemishM]

Lots wrong in both articles, and a lot right.

All players are whiners, given enough circumstances. All players who take the trouble to try to contact a developer, including and especially those who bother posting on a message board, are consumate whiners and probably closet pedophiles as well. Fuck them in their stupid asses.

Let's repeat this mantra over and over until we get it right.

PVP = GRIEFING is NOT a true statement. PVP is not always inflicting grief, especially in situations where both participants have willingly placed themselves in the line of fire. PVP games who have allowed consensual PVP have succeeded; see Dark Age of Camelot, which still holds a high subscriber number.

I'd try to remember more, but my mind got side-tracked by business on the way to post.

[Snowspinner]

PVP = GRIEFING is NOT a true statement. PVP is not always inflicting grief, especially in situations where both participants have willingly placed themselves in the line of fire. PVP games who have allowed consensual PVP have succeeded; see Dark Age of Camelot, which still holds a high subscriber number.

For what it's worth, and though I know it involves some serious contortionism in terms of what the term means, I tend to think of DAoC as more PvE than PvP. I think blocking interrealm communication goes a long way towards de-humanizing the opponent. At the very least, it's quite different from PKing, which is, I suppose, actually what I mean.

[HaemishM]

PKing is a subset playstyle of PVP. Hell, Everquest at the high end was one of the most cutthroat, nasty, badly-designed PVP games I've ever seen, even if unintentionally so. Even PKing isn't necessarily griefing, especially in a game that only allows consensual PVP.

[WayAbvPar]

Some comments about Schild's article-

Koster’s Law (Mike Seller was actually the one to dub thus)
The quality of roleplaying is inversely proportionate to the number of people playing.

No, the quality of roleplaying is inversely proportionate to how often your gameplay breaks immersion. Stop blaming stuff on the players. Another important thing to remember is that you’ll never get good roleplaying from a newbie – when someone doesn’t know the system of gameplay, they will not understand how to roleplay in your game. In addition to this, given the quality of people’s writing, I would go as far to say that online roleplaying is a dead art.

I am with Raph on this one. A small group of players can be the focus of the adventure (ala NWN), and thus have a greater chance of staying in character and roleplaying. As you add players, the chances that someone is left out of the ongoing events for a moment or 2 (and thus get bored and break character to entertain themselves) go up. Add that to the 'monkeysphere' idea that those outside of the players immediate group/area etc aren't conceptualized as actual people, and thus open to grief by purposely breaking character, and you have a mess.

A caveat to the corollary to Elmqvist’s Law
The exception would be features that enhance the sense of identity of groups of players, such as player languages.

No. Only hardcore role-players like player languages. Placing a hindrance of communication upon people is one of the stupidest ideas one could possibly come up with. Player Towns, instanced group missions, guild missions, guild dungeons (where players control the enemy), etc. are examples of features that would enhance the sense of identity.

I love having different languages- it really adds immersion for me. As long as there is a 'Common' language for people, with the race/alignment/guild languages as a separate option, then I am all for it. I actually enjoyed 'learning' other languages in EQ.

Psychological disinhibition
People act like jerks more easily online, because anonymity is intoxicating. It is easier to objectify other people and therefore to treat them badly. The only way to combat this is to get them to empathize more with other players.

I don't like this. The only way to combat this is to bite the bullet and remove the troublesome players quickly and permanently. Ban accounts, ban credit cards, ban billing addresses, ban IP addresses. Griefplay costs SO MUCH money in terms of CS costs and lost subscriptions from people who quit because of it that the loss of a griefer's account should never come into the equation.


I'm spent. I may get to Snow's article later.

[Xilren's Twin]

What I would really want to know from Raph and Co's is something rather basic.

When it comes to game design, why design online worlds at all?

Seriously, why do one as opposed to a single player game or even a multiplayer title?  At what point to it become commonly accepted that making an online "world" instead of just an online "game" is more desirable?

Is it just the supposition that having a single "long lived, goal oriented online game of wide appeal" will make more money than say 3 single player games released over the same time span?  It is a desire to take on a comlicated and every changing challenge?  Is it about artistic expression?  Observation of online group psychology?  Is it about making some sandbox in the air that the designer have always wanted to play in?  A space where like minded geeks can hang out and have fun?  A visualization of some of our favorite storys we can be in?  An extenstion of the desire to be the DM of a good pnp session?

Seriously what the driving motivation to make these things?

I used to think with the same sort of "wouldn't it be cool if" there was an online D&D world where I could play a character through mind blowing adventures with other cool people any time at all.  I used to think "I can't wait for my own holodeck" or "jack implant" or other nonesense read about in inumerable sci-fi/fantasy books.  Having experienced the reality of a bunch of mmorpg's over a number of years, my wants have changed significantly.  I no longer believe I want a massive game b/c most players i would just as soon not share my game with.  I don't want a massive world that has enough content to take me 2 years to see half of, b/c that generally means I wont be able to DO anything worthwhile in my limited play times.  Well, you get the idea.  

To sum up; I read those laws and there counterpoints and on the whole, find myself saying "hey, your high minded world is getting in the way of my low minded gaming fun".  Maybe I'll be ready for a "virtual world" again, when I have the time for it, like when I retire....

Until then, someone give me a lower cost MtG online already would ya?  Real price for virtual cards; a pox on both their houses!

Xilren

[Raph]

I could reply to a LOT of the points raised in the articles, but I think I'll hold off until there are five pages on the thread. So you better all get posting.

Haemish is right that PvP != grief.

Roleplaying and number of players--this is simple, guys, it's Tragedy of the Commons.

WayAbvPar, disinhibition happens to ALL players. You don't want to ban all of them. You ban the clear problem cases. Everyone else, you try to make into a decent citizen of your game.

Xilren's Twin, because http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/whyimakemuds.html, in my case.

[ajax34i]

A few opinions (and I'm by no means an expert in anything discussed here).

1.  Possibly they're trying to design worlds because it's easier to keep everyone on the same page about the game.  It only takes a few rules to create a "world" (Fantasy?  Scifi?  Basic gameplay features, etc), then you can derive the rest from them.  And if you're just creating a game, you still need these rules, you still need to decide what environments the players see, what they can do, etc.  

It may be easier for the devs to organize the info/rules as a world.

2.  About PvP.  Most people mean "unrestricted" a la EVE, L2, etc., not "option to duel if you want to" when they use the term "PvP".   And I'm personally starting to think that (unrestricted) PvP, while supposedly great on paper, becomes the biggest pile of crap if implemented.  Because it attracts the griefers.

[schild]

A lot of the replies in my article are merely to be contrarian. I'm not necessarily in agreement with some of the answers I posted. The real problem as I see it is people stopped thinking outside the box because it's safer inside the box.

At the moment I desire a virtual world. I need a break from the other types of gaming. Unfortunately the only adequate one is Star Wars Galaxies and I swore I'd never play that abomination again. It burned me too much in the year or so I had subscribed.

I refuse to play Second Life because it's trying too hard to be the real world with user created content. 99% of the time, in any game, user created content is crap. Putting it all in one place on one server is just too fricking scary for me to wrap my mind around. Good luck to the people over at Linden Labs, but the idea is just insane.

World of Warcraft is coming up. And I'll put aside my problems with the fanbase and say - what? No player cities? Bugger off. I like being social sometimes. The foozles can wait. I'll probably play the open beta, may even buy the box...probably not though.

Then we have EQII and Tabula Rasa. I fear for EQII being just more of EQ. Unless they are radically changing core systems, I won't touch it with your 10ft. pole. And as for Tabula Rasa, that's probably over a year away.

So at the moment, I'm screwed. Until the next big batch of releases, the MMO scene is looking pretty drab at the moment.

[Krakrok]

I would go as far as to say that the only thing I really look for in an MMOG is unique experiences. It really doesn't matter what form "unique experience" takes, be it getting griefed, seeing something cool, experiencing a bug, etc. I don't really give a crap about the "game" itself for the most part. When I want a "game" there are plenty of single or multiplayer "games" out there with repetative gameplay.

The governing question should be, "How does X create or help create unique experiences?".


I also think it is rather strange that most MMOG players I've seen don't care for Second Life at all (or downright hate it). I don't play it either but as a concept I think it is pretty cool as it offers the most bang for your buck unique experience wise. I would rather be creating or experiencing unique things vs. playing wack-a-foozle mob #989.

Maybe someone can answer, "What is it about Second Life that turns you off so much?". My theory is the programming aspect of it intimidates people but so far that hasn't been confirmed by anyone.

[Dundee]

Dundee’s Law
Fighting the battle for nomenclature with your players is a futile act. Whatever they want to call things is what they’ll be called.

Why is this considered a law?  This applies to everything in life

Nyuk nyuk.

Just make a game that’s fun – don’t worry about what the players call stuff.

That is the point.  Good job.

[stray]

I'm with Xilren's Twin with this one. I just want a "game". Just one that carries a little more depth, detail, and is more social than the others (that and I'm probably a little imcompetent to participate any further with these type of discussions).

Why do I make muds?

Well, because they happen to engage a particular range of talents and interests of mine. They're multidisciplinary, fairly unexplored conceptually, and rather complex. I like working in them because they hit on almost every area I enjoy working in or thinking about in life--writing, reading, programming, fiction, social sciences, artificial life, ethics, art, user interface, narrative, public speech, leadership, teaching, research, and perhaps most critically, pattern analysis (across a wide range of disciplines).

That's a wide variety of interests, and I can admire that. One thing though: I noticed that you didn't mention "gaming". Are MUDs even "games"? If they're not, I'll stop bitching from here on out. Could be that I was never ripped off -- I just happened to buy the wrong product.

[Miscreant]

It’s a SERVICE. Not a game. It’s a WORLD. Not a game. It’s a COMMUNITY. Not a game. Anyone who says, ‘it’s just a game’ is missing the point.
No, you’re missing the point. It’s a damned game!

Wow, that rule explains a lot.  It's like when you wonder why people used to beat their kids, then you find the childrearing manual from 1800 that says, "Rule 10: Beateth yor childe liberally."

The game is only thing the developer flat out must deliver.  Community can build itself if the will is there, and without the game, there is no will.  

As evidence I offer City of Heroes' Supergroups.  They're totally half-baked;  they do absolutely nothing; they are a costume and a crappy chat channel.   But players will keep limping along with them as long as the game holds their interest.   Could combat have been half-baked, but the Supergrouping a polished gem?

A lot of those other rules are pretty interesting, though.

[Soukyan]

The real problem as I see it is people stopped thinking outside the box because it's safer inside the box.

Costikyan (sp?) has a good article along similar lines.

The quote that I think applies to that is his summation:

No tabletop fantasy RPG has ever achieved one hundredth the sales of Dungeons & Dragons. There's a big first-mover advantage. Someday, a North American MMG will dwarf EverQuest in size--but it won't be a fantasy-themed, hack-n-slash graphical MUD. EQ owns that market.

Seek to own something else.

He also words his statements a little bit better. Let me quote and add a third word to our conundrum as well:

Remember that this is a service, not a product. Customers need to be entertained continuously, forever and ever, until the heatdeath of the universe or they cancel their subscription, whichever happens first. And you want the heatdeath of the universe to happen first.

Service, product, game. MMOGs are games. They are also services. They are not a product, or rather, you do not want yours to be, as Greg states better than I. You want to make a subscription game service. So MMOGs are a service, but part of that service is offering your players a game. Other parts include community and a virtual world.

[Soukyan]

Maybe someone can answer, "What is it about Second Life that turns you off so much?". My theory is the programming aspect of it intimidates people but so far that hasn't been confirmed by anyone.

For me, the biggest problem was that it looked like ass and performed extremely poor. I don't want to watch a 3D slideshow. I know that loading all of the unique assets is what impacted framerate, but it was bad and it never got better. Has it gotten any better? Choppy framerate gives me a headache after about 5 minutes. Other than that, I thought it was quite interesting and would have liked to have spent more time with it.

[daveNYC]

One thing I noticed about the rules is that a few of them mentioned things like "length of the game", implying that the games would be of a finite length and then end.  A little out of place in the current 'expansions forever' business model.

And on the game/world thing, having a world means I can do something permanant to it, and it can do something permanant to me.

[Xilren's Twin]

I'm with Xilren's Twin with this one. I just want a "game". Just one that carries a little more depth, detail, and is more social than the others

Why do I make muds?

Well, because they happen to engage a particular range of talents and interests of mine. They're multidisciplinary, fairly unexplored conceptually, and rather complex. I like working in them because they hit on almost every area I enjoy working in or thinking about in life--writing, reading, programming, fiction, social sciences, artificial life, ethics, art, user interface, narrative, public speech, leadership, teaching, research, and perhaps most critically, pattern analysis (across a wide range of disciplines).

That's a wide variety of interests, and I can admire that. One thing though: I noticed that you didn't mention "gaming". Are MUDs even "games"? If they're not, I'll stop bitching from here on out. Could be that I was never ripped off -- I just happened to buy the wrong product.

Thank you Raph for having written that; that was the kind of honesty I was looking for.  Like Stray said, I think it also illustrates the absolute breakdown of communication between dev's and players quite well.

While I was like to make a sweeping general statement on behalf of players, I can really only give my personal take on this.  What I am looking for is NOT a powerful tool for good or evil, or a even an experience I'll remember 5 years from now.  I'm looking for a game+.

What's a game+ to me; it's an entertaining game at its core, but it has more depth, detail and social aspects to it as Stray said.  The why's are simple.  Increased depth and detail to make the game longer lasting and thus more enjoyable (however, this presupposes the base game is fun in and of itself thus more of it is a "good thing").  The increased social aspect b/c it's more fun to play games with other people (however, there is a huge difference between wanting to play with a few like minded friends and wanting to play with several thousand strangers).

But it IS most definately still a game.  It has to be that first or the rest can't happen b/c I wont be around to look for depth or engage in the social aspects.  This stuff isn't unique to computer games either; think about your beer league softball team, or even your local mtg crew.  Groups of like minded inviduals playing a game with added social aspects.  Yes, you can make friends (and enemies) with your teamates and keep them once the season is over, or once you give up MtG, but you would have never even met those people had it not been for the fun game you enjoyed playing in the first place.  As such isn't it the game which has to be of primary importance as the gateway to all the + stuff?

In short, the game's the thing.

It's Pascal's wager. If it's all just a game, then I was just a crackpot all along. But if it's not... There are only two responsible ways to behave with such a tool. Either step away from it altogether, and let someone qualified take it up; or take it up and be as qualified as you can.

What do you think the average players expectation of signing up for a mmorpg is?  Game, or world?  I think a large part of the eternal dev vs player relationship is nothing more than the two sides having wildly different expectations.  If all I'm expecting is a game and thus don't really give two figs about the "world", odds are I'm not going to behave the way the world proponents would want.

Back to Pascal's wager;  I understant what you are saying about wanting to err on the side of caution, but I disagree with the way it's stated.  See, it's not a simple "either it's a game or it's not".  It's a game plus more.  And because of that, IMHO the best way you can't be qualified to make these things is by making good games first and then working on the additional aspects of them.

Hey, we're right back to designing inside out vs outside in again aren't we?

Xilren
PS Quick, someone throw in 4 more pages so Raph will respond :)

[Mordechai]

Griefers and people who enjoy PvP may overlap, but they are far from contiguous.

Griefers will find some way to wreck other players' enjoyment in any game. I do not doubt that there are griefers in online chess games. I spent years playing a MMORPG with a "justice" system which, for reasons nobody is entirely clear on, condones stealing but savagely punishes even the mildest profanity. Nearly every "justice" report is in fact a griefing attempt. It's a system that can be used to grief, so it is. If there is anything in a game that a player can do that negatively impacts the fun of another player, whether it's killing their avatar and stealing its stuff, or corking up doorways, or /sending them random insults, griefers will do it.

PvP is simply another tool for the griefers. It makes no more sense to not include PvP because griefers will PK lowbies than it does to not include /say because griefers will swear at people. There are many valid reasons for not having PvP in a game, but griefing is not one of them.

The solution to grief players is threefold:

1. Make it as difficult as possible for them to get what they want.
We all know that players keep playing a game when they get what they want, and quit the game when it's too difficult to get what they want. This applies to griefers as much as the next person. For example, a robust /ignore feature makes insulting random people an mostly worthless mode of griefing. Identify the tools available to griefers in your particular game and make those tools as hard to use and as ineffective as possible.

2. Identify the griefers and ban their asses.
While you're at it, ban their credit card numbers, their IP addresses, their physical addresses, etc., along with their asses. However, this must be done as an admin decision, on a case-by-case basis. Why? Because if you have a "zero tolerance" (= "zero thought", like expelling an honor student for having a nail clipper) policy, that too will become a tool for griefers. They will learn what triggers the "griefer" red flags, avoid them themselves, and manipulate other players into triggering them. Remember: Anything a player can do that negatively impacts another player -- and setting them up to get banned is a huge win -- will become a tool of griefers.

3. Make the game so enjoyable to non-griefers that they will tolerate the (hopefully minimal) level of griefing which exists despite 1 and 2.
Griefers are a negative part of the game, just like bugs, lag, crashes, and all the other things we wish games wouldn't have but, realistically, know that they do and will have. It's an equation: Is the fun of playing the game greater than the non-fun of bugs, lag, crashes (and griefers) or not? If a game is really fun, players will tolerate a lot. If a game is boring, tedious, or just plain not fun, it takes very little to push that balance to the negative side and cause players to go somewhere more fun.

Getting back to PvP: I happen to love it myself. For me, it has nothing at all to do with feeling like I spoiled another player's fun and everything to do with the challenge. Fighting an AI mob, you learn the pattern to kill that mob, or that camp, and do it. Again. And again. And again. Pull. Peel. Kill. Pull. Peel. Kill. Rinse. Repeat. No matter how many times you clear the bridge room in Spindelhalla, the mobs never think "hey, maybe we should do something about that mass murderer out on the bridge." Players, on the other hand, learn. They change. They react to your tactics. If you've ambushed two groups of Hibs at one spot, the third group is probably going to be bigger, buffer, and coming at you from behind.

I tolerated Shadowbane for three months after launch, with its griefers, bugs, broken gameplay, lame content, and all, because of that rare type of fun. It's the reason that people still play StarCraft on battle.net when they long ago tired of it in single-player mode. Competing with other players -- and the easiest competition to implement is PvP -- is a challenge, and it's one that stays fresh a lot longer than any number of fedex quests or kill-foozle missions ever will.

[sinij]

I think Snow is dead wrong on many issues in his counterpoint – most noticeably Identity and PvP. You don’t have to be in character to have an identity, simple fact that you entertain an idea of a game environment and adapt to its rules that are very different from real world demonstrates this fact. With regards to PvP – you are dead wrong. All PvE games strive to challenge players with intricate and complex AIs that fail miserably short of even mediocre player. What gives PvP a bad name is ability to be cheap and sore winners or losers, you eliminate these and you can have rewarding PvP game.

[tar]

All PvE games strive to challenge players with intricate and complex AIs that fail miserably short of even mediocre player.

You wouldn't say that if you'd grouped with some of the people I have :) Snarky-ness aside, there are cases of game AIs being toned down because they were too good; players weren't enjoying fighting them.

My point here is that games aren't failing to come up with decent AIs, it seems to be a deliberate choice to keep the players winning most of the time.

If this is the right call or wrong is another matter. I tend to favour the position that things that make the game less fun for more people are bad, there is however an argument to be made for challenge. Something to remember though is that the higher the challenge, the more people you cut out of the game. Equally, if you leave the bar too low, you run the risk of alienating the higher-skilled players.

[HaemishM]

The game is only thing the developer flat out must deliver.  Community can build itself if the will is there, and without the game, there is no will.

Here's a very important point, and one I've tried to make for years.

Games build communities, whether or not the game is multiplayer or single-player, whether or not there are specific tools for community-building or even communication or not. Quake clans is one example, but there are thousands of others. Witness the hordes of fanbois of Final Fantasy games, that until recently didn't even have an online multiplayer component; once these fanbois were able to use the Internet, they formed communities of their own. Canasta groups, bridge clubs, miniature gaming tournaments, whatever the case may be, games build community, whether by common interest in the same game, or by direct competition, or by cooperative play.

As a developer, you don't have to do one goddamn thing for your game to form a community. It will happen organically, IF THE GAME IS COMPELLING ENOUGH TO PLAY. Every community-building tool you add to the game is gravy, or as Xilren puts it, it's the + in the game + formula. But the heart of the game, the way it plays, the very stuff that makes it compelling is the absolute building block essential first piece of the puzzle. If that first building block isn't compelling, all the great chat channels and forced grouping and guild tools won't matter.

People have to want to play the game and play it together before they will ever be interested in forming a community. I don't count pre-game release guilds in this because these people are sad and need help. The game they are playing is in their head.

Anything a player can do that negatively impacts another player -- and setting them up to get banned is a huge win -- will become a tool of griefers.

This is true. Developers can either accept that players having a negative impact on other players is a necessity of compelling gameplay or they don't. If they don't, roleplaying is restricted, and you've removed one of the paths people can take to create an interesting experience. Not to mention the fact that removing the negative impact players can have on others removes a tool of retribution against griefers.

Developers have to accept that their will be negative actions on other players. Then they have to find those players whose sole purpose in the game is to cause negative actions that are external to the game world, and ban the fuck out of them.

Preferably with pliers.

[daveNYC]

Every community-building tool you add to the game is gravy...

Unless your gameplay is based on the existance of communities.  SB's lack of advanced guild tools as the example.

[Sentack]

I read the article, but I really must say, I don't agree with a majorty of the revised points.  A lot of it seems to be a bitter stream of attacks on developers for not being perfect.  

  A lot of what is gaming I find is really an art.  It's difficult to master, easy to screw up and impossable to predict.  I think a lot of what Raph said originaly involves that amount of imperfection and unpredictability.  I think basicly it just needs to be taken to as fact that developers can't accurately predict how every change they make is going to work and that no amount of internal testing is going to prepare them to go live.  When money is an issue, not even a focus of a game, some things happen that might otherwise not make logical development sence.  You have deadlines, you have subscription rates, you have a Burn rate to stay alive.  So money changes things in a very drastic way.  Thus, while you can try to predict what should happen in a perfect world, and may even want to excuse the faults of the imperfect world, it should be almost expected that it needs to happen.  For good or ill.

   I think a lot of what the original laws stated, where lost to the author of the revised notes.  I almost feel like it was more a bitter player, who got burnt by a previous game and had to debunk a lot of the realities of gaming was writing this article, then someone who may feel a bit more sympathy to a developers and have more realistic expectations of them instead.  

  I understand that developers CAN do a lot more to make a product, 'perfect', but in the end, I feel it's never, ever honestly going to be the case.  We're at the baby stages of MMOG's right now, nobody really knows how they work or why in absolutes.  We can only hope for the best, but honestly expect the worst.

  Oh, and one last thing, I indeed do blame the Players for a lot of the problems.  Players destroy game more, then developers, They don't have to, it's sometimes not even in their best interest to do so, but oh do they love to do it.  The annonymous nature of the internet breeds Poor behavor.  Plain and simple.

  Sentack

[Riggswolfe]

I will attempt to keep my anger over SWG in check long enough to make this a civil post.

I think the problem here is that Raph at some basic level doesn't understand what players are. He expects to build this world of his and see the players merrily running around making it live and breath.

Let's use SWG for an example. He gave us alot of tools for world building. Player cities, very deep crafting system, etc...

That part of the game works fantastic. Problem is, he sorta missed what most players want.

Fun.

It has broken combat, borderline forced PvP, and doesn't at all feel like the source material.

I came to realize this while posting on the boards for my Star Wars guild. The game does a good job of modelling a virtual world. It doesn't do a good job of being a fun Star Wars game. Hell, it doesn't even feel like Star Wars.

I think that I have to totally disagree. It IS a game, first and foremost. If you think it's not you're missing the point, and the players won't be around for long. I think I've moved past anger over SWG to sadness for what could have been. I like many others might not even be lured back by Jump to Lightspeed.

I guess I can play WoW and City of Heroes and just pretend I'm fighting Stormtroopers. <sigh>

I still remember beta. We tried so desperately to tell you that things like HAM weren't what we wanted, but we were told it was already done and couldn't be changed.

[WayAbvPar]

WayAbvPar, disinhibition happens to ALL players. You don't want to ban all of them. You ban the clear problem cases. Everyone else, you try to make into a decent citizen of your game.

Obviously you don't ban everyone the first time they spam the broadcast channel with vulgarities, or even the first time they name their character something offensive that slips by the filters (2 examples of fairly benign griefplay). However, the 2nd offense should be punished severely (like a month's suspension). Anyone found to be using cheats or exploits should be banned (and castrated, if you can find the time).

I almost think a 'Rogue's Gallery' would be helpful- post the name and pic of the character banned (whose account, credit card, IP address, etc have also been banned, of course), along with a brief explanation for their offense. You will get the misanthropist asshats who strive to get on the list, but you will also get some positive effects- your law abiding players will see that the powers that be are taking action to keep the game 'clean', while those who may be 'at risk' to grief occasionally will hopefully be deterred (obviously not a guarantee).

A lot of what is gaming I find is really an art.

It was an art when Richard Garriott was writing Akalabeth, just to see if he could do it. As soon as he started slapping copies into Ziplock bags and charging people for them, it became a business. No matter how arcane the process of creation, customers are entitled to good service and good products. If they don't get them, they have every right to complain and to stop being customers. If the artists don't want to be bothered, they should give their work away or keep it to themselves. The instant money changes hands, expectations begin.

[Xilren's Twin]

Every community-building tool you add to the game is gravy...

Unless your gameplay is based on the existance of communities.  SB's lack of advanced guild tools as the example.

Actually, I disagree with this.  Players have long adapted to creating their own work arounds for things like community building and maintenance external to the game itself.  While having more advanced guild features in SB would have helped, that wasn't the deal breaker by any means.  Technical issues, boring pve that never ended, and losing a city being a very unfun position to be in/try to recover from was what drove most away, not guild tools.

As Haem said, these communities will form anyway, whether they use in game voice chat or out of game teamspeak is largely immaterial.

Xilren

[Wukong]

The fundamental problem that this revisiting of 'the rules' highlights is the the disparity between where MMOGs have come from, and what they have become. The majority of developers have their roots in MUDs. The majority of the players however have never played, nor do they have any desire to ever play a MUD. This can seem like a gulf between player expectations and developer intentions, but it is really the gulf between MUD players and MMOG players.

For example, when asked why he designs MMOGs, Raph points to his reasons for designing MUDs. For the average MMOG player, you may as well point to a recipe for pecan pie.

The MMOG genre is a young one and these are common growing pains. It's like how the first TV shows were televised radio shows. It takes time for a new medium to come into its own. MMOGs will never come into their own as long as developers are stuck in the MUD.

[daveNYC]

Every community-building tool you add to the game is gravy...

Unless your gameplay is based on the existance of communities.  SB's lack of advanced guild tools as the example.

Actually, I disagree with this.  Players have long adapted to creating their own work arounds for things like community building and maintenance external to the game itself.  While having more advanced guild features in SB would have helped, that wasn't the deal breaker by any means.  Technical issues, boring pve that never ended, and losing a city being a very unfun position to be in/try to recover from was what drove most away, not guild tools.

As Haem said, these communities will form anyway, whether they use in game voice chat or out of game teamspeak is largely immaterial.

Xilren

Just because they can, doesn't mean they should have to.  I know that guild tools weren't what killed the game, my point was that if the game is designed so that a community is required in order to be sucessful at the game, than the game better have tools to facilitate the existance of the community.

[Mordechai]

Shadowbane had a truly staggering number of problems, from bug-ridden software to the admins' naive belief that after 30 days of being ganked the instant they set foot out of a safehold in a futile attempt to level, newbies would actually pay for a continuing subscription. It's sad that the game they promised us for all those years never made it into production. But out of all its flaws, one was the most critical: PvE.

Shadowbane was marketed to people who wanted PvP, more PvP, and as much PvP as any human being could handle. We were then forced to "pay" via time doing something we hated -- PvE -- in order to participate in the PvP that we bought the game for: First incessant PvE to reach high R5, then the constant farming to pay for repairs to your stuff, replacement stuff, etc., not to mention if you had a city to help support. I calculated once that for every hour in PvP I was spending three hours in PvE to pay for it. People should not be forced to do something they hate, to no benefit to themselves or any other player, in order to "earn" a tiny bit of something that they're already paying real money for.

Games are an entertainment medium. When you are playing a game, you should be having fun. Imagine going to a concert by your favorite band and being told that in order to hear them, you were first required to sit through two hours of off-key polka music, and then for every song by the band, there would three more by someone so bad they couldn't open for William Hung. That's what Shadowbane was to a PvP player. I dread to think what it must have been like for someone who hated PvP (there were some there, believe it or not) ... seeing that it had possibly the world's most boring PvE, there was absolutely nothing in it for them except grief.

Now, of course, Shadowbane is being trotted out as "proof" that PvP games won't work, that nobody really wants PvP, etc. But it wasn't PvP that killed SB ... it was the inescapable, unavoidable, and mind-numbing hour after hour after hour of PvE.

= Mordechai =

[Arcadian Del Sol]

Good articles but to be honest, trying to teach Raph how to design online games is a lost art.

Raph, don't tell me where to put my commas, and we'll get along just fine.

[schild]

Both games.slashdot and you all seem to think that I'm trying to teach Raph something. I'm not, I was trying to get you all, and whoever else was interested to think outside the box. Some of you are, some of you aren't (talking about fucking Shadowbane - an abomination on mmogaming is NOT thinking outside of the goddamn box). Many would say there hasn't been an original thought about mmorpgs in 3-5 years. Yet, many of us still stick around getting donkey punched every time a new game is released. Why? You probably won't admit it, but it's because you have hope for the future of online worlds. Well, I wrote that article because I'm starting to completely lose hope - when you don't see an original idea for the better part of a decade, you start getting angry. I don't know where I'm going with this but uhm....carry on.

[Raph]

Still not answering the articles. :)

Soukyan, Stray, and others: online worlds are a medium, a platform. Games are one of the things that can be put in them. They are the commonest thing, of course, but they are not the only thing. By and large, MMOs are currently not doing games as well as single player games are, in large part because MMOs have a wide array of other things that go in them as well, and divided attention means less effort towards any given element.

I am a big fan of games. I've been playing video games since the mid-70s, and I've been making videogames since the early 80s. I love games. I have a great deal of respect for games as an important part of human culture, and think they can stand honorably on the shelf with Shakespeare and Mozart and Picasso. I am not, however, going to fall into the trap of thinking that online worlds ARE games in themselves. They are not, as can be shown by countless basic experiments, the two of the most obvious being:

- logging into Second Life or There or Cybertown or Alphaworld, or any other online world whose basic premise is not "game"
- imagining the addition of a working chessboard into any existing online game, which demonstrates a nesting principle

Xilren's Twin, I appreciate that you are not looking for a powerful tool for good or evil. I'm saying that whether you (or we) like it or not, this happens to be one. It happens to be used for games too, which I am perfectly happy about. "Just a game" is used as a way to avoiding considering a lot of issues, as a way to avoid responsibility, and that is why I dislike the phrase. But by no means do I think that lessens the importance of games in and of themselves, cf http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/theoryoffun.pdf.

You state that the best way to approach this is to make a good game first. I'll assert that from a strictly technical and design point of view, you literally can't. You have to start with the premise of the online space itself, and then add the game to it. And there's a TON of implications of the online space that you have to deal with that form what sorts of games you can make. "Online world" is more fundamental than "game" in a lot of very literal ways.

Haemish, I've stated before that "community is the one thing you get for free." Any time you have shared interests and a medium of communication, you will get community. That said, it's sort of like saying "it's gonna rain." The shape of the ponds, rivers, lakes, fountains, pools, and so on are very very much dependent on the landscape you create for it to rain on. The longevity of the community, its ability to grow, to police itself, its stickiness to a given location, all those things are very much driven by the design you do up front. Community just happens in the real world too, and yet we spend a lot of effort on urban planning, city government, and so on. There's a reason.

Notice I didn't say that the shared interest had to be a game.

Xil, apropos the above, this starts to matter a lot when community sticking in one place = revenue.

That said: Riggswolfe, saying what I just did does NOT mean that the game is not important. It is, especially because it's being marketed as a game and it's what you guys are all there to find. By saying these things, I am trying to fight the urge many many people have to reduce the issues, because being reductionist about it leads to wrong answers.

Wukong, there's very few significant differences between MUD design and MMO design. Almost none, actually, given that  there have been graphical muds. The fact that modern MMO players get hung up on text versus graphics is (sorry) an indication that they are being superficial about things and not looking at the issues. Think of the differences as being like the differences between making a black and white movie and a color movie. Or a musical versus a play. Both are still theater, and the majority of the same issues of staging, lighting, acting, seating patrons, curtain calls, props, a script, and so on are the same.

Arc, "a lost art"? Doesn't that mean that someone somewhere had it before, and we forgot how to do it? I'm trying to figure out your phrasing here. (I realize that's not a comma nitpick but a word choice. Nyah nyah.)

Schild, to be honest, you don't know what shape box I am thinking of these days anyway. Tim Burke in his essay about SWG said something like "I'm getting pretty annoyed at the difference between what Raph says and what the games are like." There's a largish gap between what a given person wants to make and what  they say, just as there's a gap between what they want to make and what they actually get to make. I realize you're frustrated. I happen to believe that the pace of change, albeit slow, is not as bad as it seems.

[HaemishM]

Just because they can, doesn't mean they should have to.  I know that guild tools weren't what killed the game, my point was that if the game is designed so that a community is required in order to be sucessful at the game, than the game better have tools to facilitate the existance of the community.

You are correct in this. All I'm saying is you don't HAVE to add community tools for a community to form. Which means that when you base most of your design on forcing people to form the type of communities you want them to, you have already fucked the pooch. You cannot adequately direct the formation of a community in the design stage. You are better off providing a modular system that allows the designer to add important features to the community system once you actually have gameplay that doesn't suck monkey balls.

If the gameplay is golden, community will form regardless of your attempts to steer it one way or the other.

Shadowbane's guild tools sucked monkey balls, so people used Teamspeak. But even with monkey-ball level guild tools, there were still huge guilds created, because the gameplay required it. EQ's guild tools were even worse, yet there's been a cottage industry of web tools that helped, such as Guildmagic, Guildportal, EZBoard, etc. none of which could have been forseen by the designers beforehand.

For an MMOG to release today, it has to have guild tools at least as good as EQ's; that's because the market has already developed a standard set of 'must-have' features. But even if it didn't, an MMOG will create a community all on its own. Better gameplay will create stickier communities, and better community tools will enhance that as well.

But it has to start with better gameplay, not better community tools.

[schild]

I realize you're frustrated. I happen to believe that the pace of change, albeit slow, is not as bad as it seems.

It's not frustration so much as just plain lost hope. Eventually I'll write an essay I've been planning to write, and that's that MMORPGs can save or break PC Gaming. To put it very shortly, with the inevitable addition of a keyboard and mouse to the console and HDTV's looming as a living room necessity, there are only 2 types of games that will save PC Gaming. RTS' and MMORPGs. Why? Well, after the Xbox debacle of putting a hard drive in at launch, they ended up with modded systems that went against their wildest imagination.

Large MMOGs and RTS' REQUIRE hard drives. Loading times from a cd/DVD on a console would be unacceptable. That said, the pace of change isn't just slow, it's unbearable. Every game that comes out makes 1, maybe 2 changes on a previous concept. That wouldn't be a problem if it were a game every 6 months or so. But BIG MMOGs come out about once every five years. I can list the number of big MMOGs that are worth their salt on my 10 fingers. Smaller companies don't have the money to back them up if an experimental idea comes across as trash. Big companies do. SOE, NCSoft, and Microsoft (who as of yet has produced nothing - THOUGH, they do have the money to make collosal mistakes) are the only companies that can really innovate. Blizzard may have the backing to innovate, but they never do, they only refine concepts and ideas.

What I'm seeing with Everquest 2 is promising - there are some really neat concepts including the way guilds are structured and the way housing/community buildings is handled. But I still worry that the combat will be the same crap we've seen over and over again. City of Heroes was a step in the right direction, but after a player got their favorite skills set up in an orderly fashion, the grind really started to show. What killed longevity in CoH was it's complete lack of or care for building a community with tangibles (i.e. guild halls, housing, etc).

Star Wars on the other hand got community building and crafting right (after a long while) but the core combat system was so horrible, it literally drove people away. Coupled with the complete lack of interesting content, it was just a disaster (maybe not financially). I'm a big fan of good content. If you're only going to have a little, make it the best damn content you can produce. If you're going to have a lot, make sure it's all at least interesting, if not compelling.

What we don't need is a trickle of improvements. What we need is a flood of changes that completely tear down the past monuments of core gameplay and replace them. A new way of counting advancement is a good start, but combat is really the key. Compelling combat in a game will put the game a cut above everything else out there.

Simply put - core systems need to be changed, not the frilly lace around the edge.

Edit: sigh, Haemish said exactly what I wanted to say right above me. Verbosity is hard.