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ShannonA writes "The world of designer board games, including such classics as The Settlers of Catan and Modern Art, is full of creative collaborations between designers. In a new article, Six Degrees of Collaboration, Shannon Appelcline traces these collaborative connections across a half-dozen countries and over thirty years of time." Interesting to see how relatively small a part of the table-top gaming industry really is.

ChristopherA writes "There's a new Cthulhu Mythos comic out called "Return to Arkham". It's set in 1933, and includes beautiful, moody black & white art depicting H.P. Lovecraft's town of Arkham. In support of Lovecraft's belief in stories developed by Divers Hands, this comic has been released with a Creative Commons license, allowing anyone to create and release their own versions of the comic. This new comic is the second that online game company Skotos has released in a recent months, part of a new trend of turning games into stories. It's available for free at Skotos' website in a variety of formats."

ChristopherA writes "There's a new Cthulhu Mythos comic out called "Return to Arkham". It's set in 1933, and includes beautiful, moody black & white art depicting H.P. Lovecraft's town of Arkham. In support of Lovecraft's belief in stories developed by Divers Hands, this comic has been released with a Creative Commons license, allowing anyone to create and release their own versions of the comic. This new comic is the second that online game company Skotos has released in a recent months, part of a new trend of turning games into stories. It's available for free at Skotos' website in a variety of formats."

Thanks to Skotos.net for its article discussing the problems of perfect 'Mary Sue' characters in online MUD/MUSH environments. The author starts by explaining: "Mary Sue is what, in writing, is called an author avatar, wherein the writer creates an idealized version of him/herself and sticks the resulting character into the story." But as this is part of playing games, what's the big deal? It's argued: "The herd of people trampling over each other to be the most at something, be it beauty, wealth, or grotesqueness, is going to affect everyone else's characters. For starters, if the standard for beauty has been raised so high that pretty people are average, the average characters are now ugly. If the standard for wealth goes from a million dollars to a trillion, the millionaires are the new middle class. It messes with the game's dynamic, and that's bound to make people who are trying to create reasonable and balanced characters cranky."

Thanks to Skotos for its editorial discussing why free, open-source MUD development is failing to advance swiftly. The author notes "The best [text-based MUD] efforts have been almost entirely closed-source... Free MUDs, by contrast, just haven't advanced very fast." He points to several possible factors, suggesting that "MUD information is indexed poorly, and many projects don't maintain a web site with even a basic description of what they're doing", and continues: "Another reason is licensing. The Diku license is poorly understood and shoddily enforced... LPMUDs aren't much better", before concluding: "There is no existing license that does for MUD servers what the GPL does for applications. That grudging spread of features has never happened for MUD servers the way it has for GPL-licensed applications and libraries."

Thanks to Skotos for its editorial arguing that there's a certain level of 'realism' that all games must stick to in order to be enjoyable. The author starts by suggesting: "Bringing realism into a discussion that includes fireballs, trolls, energy swords, blasters, and nanotechnology is, at first glance, totally out of place", but goes on to explain: "Fun [videogame] environments both surprise and reassure us. They surprise us by working on rules that are very different from those of the real world, and reassure us by having an internal consistency and logic that is reminiscent of that we find in the real world." Are there some games which break all rules of logic and still remain addictive?

Thanks to Skotos for its editorial discussing the definition and previous use of the 'Beta phase' in relation to MMO titles. The writer argues, overall, that "The problems [in Beta] arise because of the differing agendas of the parties involved in bringing the games to and through the Beta process." He then posits that, "well before the full featureset is in place, the complexity surpasses the point where internal QA processes are adequate to cope", but "on the other hand, for the purposes of getting high-quality feedback that tells you what is wrong and where to look in order to fix it, Beta sucks." So, it's suggested, the end result is that "[massively multiplayer] Betas become exercises in community management, usually long before the team is ready to make the transition from developing a game to operating one. Meanwhile, an increasingly jaded marketplace is judging the Beta against the same standards they judge games at launch, or even years past their launch." What, if anything, can be done to ameliorate or fix these problems?

Thanks to Skotos.net for their article discussing ways players can co-operate positively in massively multiplayer games. The piece starts by talking about socializers, those "...players who are there because they want to interact not just with the game system, but also with other people", and then specifically discusses those who "...try and develop their own hierarchy by latching onto something within your gameworld to use as a token of control" (such as using friend/enemy markings in The Sims Online?) The article concludes by talking about whether MMOs encourage out-of-the-box socializing not designed by the creators: "Is your system robust enough to allow players to freeform Spin the Bottle? How about Pictionary? How about Charades?"

Thanks to Skotos.net for their article discussing how social interaction affects gameplay in MMO titles. The piece suggests: "That the majority of MMORPGs, MUDs, and other multiplayer games ultimately support achiever players over socializers, or even killers, I think begins to outline how poorly we understand - and support - true social interactions in today's multiplayer games." It goes on to discuss freeform socialization ("We slap a chatline into a game. Then we spend as much time making it look nice"), competitive socialization ("the richest form of interaction possible in multiplayer games, yet ironically it's more often been seen as a problem than as a potential virtue"), and co-operative socialization ("One of the few games that has really tried to push this envelope is Asheron's Call with its ideas for feudal structures.")

Thanks to Skotos for their column discussing whether MMORPGs are sometimes too complex for the average gamers. The writer suggests: "Often, I just want to sit down and do something simple and fun. Yet, the structure of most MMOGs doesn't accommodate this", and goes on to illustrate this, arguing "It seems like many MMOGs lately are tending more toward 'have fun doing your tax forms online while paying for it.'" The piece also discusses boredom: "How many MMOGs have the ability to mine/farm/fish/collect wood? How many are there in which this is NOT just a repetitive clicking of the mouse based on the computer response?", and putatively suggests a solution of "play[ing] Tetris to mine faster", coincidentally implemented by the recently launched Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates.

Thanks to Skotos.net for their article discussing why the TV show Big Brother 4 is an example of good game design, and what we can learn from it. It's pointed out that "a group of n/2 (rounded down) + 1 people can dominate the game", if well-organized, but "the producers of Big Brother have made changes which dramatically reduce the power of a majority", including the ability to veto potential evictees. But it's argued the jury of previously evicted players voting on the final two contestants means "...if you backstab someone or betray them, even if it gets you further in the game, it could prevent you from winning." Is there a perfect strategy for winning Big Brother, and if not, is the concept of "unworthy winners" dissatisfying?

ShannonA writes "Dave Rickey examines the growth of the online RPG industry in his newest Engines of Creation article, 'Age of Discouragement?'. Based on his own analysis, and SirBruce's MMOG subscription chart, he projects that the best growth for MMORPGs is still ahead: 'In truth, we are solidly in the growth phase of our market, and our largest related markets have yet to really open up.'"

ShannonA writes "Dave Rickey examines the growth of the online RPG industry in his newest Engines of Creation article, 'Age of Discouragement?'. Based on his own analysis, and SirBruce's MMOG subscription chart, he projects that the best growth for MMORPGs is still ahead: 'In truth, we are solidly in the growth phase of our market, and our largest related markets have yet to really open up.'"

Thanks to Skotos.net for their article discussing randomly-generated content in videogames, in which the author discusses pioneering games with random elements, suggesting: "One of the reasons [classic RPG] Rogue was so popular (and spawned so many children) is due to its generation of random content." But he goes on to point out: "Computers don't have the imagination to make good puzzles... asking a computer to create an interesting puzzle is very similar to asking it to tell a story, make up a joke, or create a riddle." The suggested answer is game elements "placed randomly within the [linear] structure", but with recent random level-generating games such as Toe Jam & Earl III striking out, how far should randomness be taken in games?

Thanks to Skotos.net for their column discussing a brief history of tabletop role-playing games, as the author, aided by resources such as the Pen & Paper RPG database, charts the evolution of the RPG from 'character modelling' in the earliest titles ("...the purpose was to create statistics, abilities, and rules which could be used to depict a character"), through 'character development' in the original 1974 Dungeons & Dragons ("Instead of having static characters, players were offered ways for their characters to evolve and change"), right up to the 'story telling' emphasis in the '80s and beyond ("player investment in individual characters was dramatically reduced in exchange for telling better stories.")

Mahrin Skel (Dave Rickey) writes "When I wrote up my Engines of Creation column for August 12th with a focus on Dr. Richard Bartle's Designing Virtual Worlds , I had no idea it was the closest thing to an independent review the book had yet received. I hadn't intended my column as a review, but simply as nit-picking over an almost theological point of disagreement between my philosophy of game design and that of Dr. Bartle. My intended audience was the normal readers of my column, mostly other people already working in the Online Games industry." Rickey provides a review of Bartle's book for a more general audience below, and explains his reasoning for doing so. Designing Virtual Worlds author Richard A. Bartle pages 768 publisher New Riders rating Very Good reviewer Dave Rickey ISBN 0131018167 summary An overview of Virtual World Design by one of the field's founders

It never occurred to me that my review would be read by a wider public, most of whom had never heard of me or even Dr. Bartle, and would see only the hostility, and not understand the narrowness of the focus. When the column was picked up by Slashdot I was stunned, when I realized it was also linked by Clay Shirky in Many to Many and by Joystick101 among other places, I felt slightly ill. Without intending to, I may have damaged the reputation of Dr. Bartle and of his book, and I feel an obligation to set the record straight with an actual review of his book. I'm not sure why it has not already received such a review, except that only a few dozen people in the world currently make their living at virtual world design and would really be qualified to write it.

What is in the book? The "Introduction to Virtual Worlds" of the first chapter does a very good job of laying out what a virtual world is, and defending that definition as a category that includes but is not limited to the online games that are the most common examples of the type. The history lesson included a lot of information even I, after six years in the industry and a serious attempt at studying it, was not aware of. The second chapter gives a very good overview of the process by which the world is created both in business terms and in structural arrangements. The third includes a reprise and updating of Dr. Bartle's now-classic Players that Suit MUD's, the touchstone for every theory of player motivation in online games, and continues into a description of the properties and dynamics of the communities that form in and around the worlds.

Where most of the first three chapters are a primer -- containing the base knowledge needed to understand the whole field in functional terms -- the 4th and 5th chapters focus much more on the worlds as games. The mechanics of game systems, the structure of "advancement" systems and the psychology that makes them run, all of the myriad elements that make a virtual world a game.

Chapters 6 and 7 take a more academic overview of the field, discussing the "why's" of the worlds, what they are, what they may become, and what other fields of human endeavour they are most similar to and therefore may have lessons to offer. Chapter 7's effort to establish the academic and artistic "legitimacy" of virtual worlds was the main source of my disagreement with the book: I think that virtual worlds are entirely capable of standing on their own merits and do not need to be considered credible by the academic arts to be worthy. But this is the "almost theological" issue, and although significant to myself and a handful of others in the field, it's not something that should be counted against the work as a whole.

Chapter 8 focuses on the fact that as virtual as the worlds may be, the people in them (and therefore the relationships) are real, and therefore certain ethical factors normally not considered an issue in game design become much more important. Added to this are questions of "ownership"; if there is no game without the players, but the operator has a finger on the power button, who is in control? Who should be? The book doesn't solve many of these problems (every solution is likely to be unique to a particular setting), but does lay out where most of the fracture lines occur.

What I liked: The book establishes good points and brings the reader up to date on the known principles of the field, with copious references to other writings on the subject provided in the footnotes. The general focus on the "players eye" view is a very important attribute: too often, discussions of virtual worlds have the "God's Eye" designer's view from orbit, and forget that in the end it's the ground-level "fun or not-fun" experience of the players that makes or breaks a design.

What I didn't like: Dr. Bartle is much more broadly educated than I am (they don't give out any titles for an Associates degree in electronics), and tries very hard to make a case to the academic community that virtual worlds are worthy of consideration as serious works of Capital-A "Art." Since I am not concerned about credibility with the dilettantes and dabblers who make up most of academia in the Arts, the repeated references to the Hero's Journey and the effort to define a dramatic theory of online games in Chapter 7 distracted and occasionally annoyed me. But those interested in such things will probably find his efforts there as workmanlike as the rest of the volume.

Summary: This book is a must-read for anyone who works in the field of online games, and highly recommended for anyone who wants to understand the theory and structure of the systems that make them run, or to effectively discuss them with the teams that work on them.

You can purchase Designing Virtual Worlds from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Mahrin Skel (Dave Rickey) writes "When I wrote up my Engines of Creation column for August 12th with a focus on Dr. Richard Bartle's Designing Virtual Worlds , I had no idea it was the closest thing to an independent review the book had yet received. I hadn't intended my column as a review, but simply as nit-picking over an almost theological point of disagreement between my philosophy of game design and that of Dr. Bartle. My intended audience was the normal readers of my column, mostly other people already working in the Online Games industry." Rickey provides a review of Bartle's book for a more general audience below, and explains his reasoning for doing so. Designing Virtual Worlds author Richard A. Bartle pages 768 publisher New Riders rating Very Good reviewer Dave Rickey ISBN 0131018167 summary An overview of Virtual World Design by one of the field's founders

It never occurred to me that my review would be read by a wider public, most of whom had never heard of me or even Dr. Bartle, and would see only the hostility, and not understand the narrowness of the focus. When the column was picked up by Slashdot I was stunned, when I realized it was also linked by Clay Shirky in Many to Many and by Joystick101 among other places, I felt slightly ill. Without intending to, I may have damaged the reputation of Dr. Bartle and of his book, and I feel an obligation to set the record straight with an actual review of his book. I'm not sure why it has not already received such a review, except that only a few dozen people in the world currently make their living at virtual world design and would really be qualified to write it.

What is in the book? The "Introduction to Virtual Worlds" of the first chapter does a very good job of laying out what a virtual world is, and defending that definition as a category that includes but is not limited to the online games that are the most common examples of the type. The history lesson included a lot of information even I, after six years in the industry and a serious attempt at studying it, was not aware of. The second chapter gives a very good overview of the process by which the world is created both in business terms and in structural arrangements. The third includes a reprise and updating of Dr. Bartle's now-classic Players that Suit MUD's, the touchstone for every theory of player motivation in online games, and continues into a description of the properties and dynamics of the communities that form in and around the worlds.

Where most of the first three chapters are a primer -- containing the base knowledge needed to understand the whole field in functional terms -- the 4th and 5th chapters focus much more on the worlds as games. The mechanics of game systems, the structure of "advancement" systems and the psychology that makes them run, all of the myriad elements that make a virtual world a game.

Chapters 6 and 7 take a more academic overview of the field, discussing the "why's" of the worlds, what they are, what they may become, and what other fields of human endeavour they are most similar to and therefore may have lessons to offer. Chapter 7's effort to establish the academic and artistic "legitimacy" of virtual worlds was the main source of my disagreement with the book: I think that virtual worlds are entirely capable of standing on their own merits and do not need to be considered credible by the academic arts to be worthy. But this is the "almost theological" issue, and although significant to myself and a handful of others in the field, it's not something that should be counted against the work as a whole.

Chapter 8 focuses on the fact that as virtual as the worlds may be, the people in them (and therefore the relationships) are real, and therefore certain ethical factors normally not considered an issue in game design become much more important. Added to this are questions of "ownership"; if there is no game without the players, but the operator has a finger on the power button, who is in control? Who should be? The book doesn't solve many of these problems (every solution is likely to be unique to a particular setting), but does lay out where most of the fracture lines occur.

What I liked: The book establishes good points and brings the reader up to date on the known principles of the field, with copious references to other writings on the subject provided in the footnotes. The general focus on the "players eye" view is a very important attribute: too often, discussions of virtual worlds have the "God's Eye" designer's view from orbit, and forget that in the end it's the ground-level "fun or not-fun" experience of the players that makes or breaks a design.

What I didn't like: Dr. Bartle is much more broadly educated than I am (they don't give out any titles for an Associates degree in electronics), and tries very hard to make a case to the academic community that virtual worlds are worthy of consideration as serious works of Capital-A "Art." Since I am not concerned about credibility with the dilettantes and dabblers who make up most of academia in the Arts, the repeated references to the Hero's Journey and the effort to define a dramatic theory of online games in Chapter 7 distracted and occasionally annoyed me. But those interested in such things will probably find his efforts there as workmanlike as the rest of the volume.

Summary: This book is a must-read for anyone who works in the field of online games, and highly recommended for anyone who wants to understand the theory and structure of the systems that make them run, or to effectively discuss them with the teams that work on them.

You can purchase Designing Virtual Worlds from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

hergin writes "In his recent column, Engines of Creation, Dave Rickey reviews Richard Bartle's new book on online game design and questions many of the basic precepts: 'I believe that if [a theory relating to a game mechanic] isn't testable and disprovable, it's not a theory, it's simply an argument.'" The article goes on: "It is possible to create meaningful social theories and test them, through online games... Handwaving in the direction of 'game experience as Hero's Journey' (as Dr. Bartle does extensively) may be an intellectually satisfying exercise, but how can it be tested?"

peterwayner writes "If you're a bit tired of programming books, API descriptions, tables of keywords, and arguments about which data structure is buzzword compliant, super-mega-efficient and intuitively easy to grasp, turn to Developing Online Games , a book that seems to have very little interest in many of the traditional challenges for programmers. The authors spend four lines discussing the best computer language for the job (C/C++), conclude that objects give "far more flexibility in design" and then move on to fun questions like how to make a online game compelling for achievers, socializers, killers and explorers. This book is a wonderful psychoanalysis of the gamer's mind and it should be the first and last book read by game developers about to start a quest to capture the hearts, minds and subscription fees of people on the Internet." Read on for the rest of Peter's review. Developing Online Games author Jessica Mulligan and Bridgette Patrovsky pages 495 publisher New Riders rating 8 reviewer Peter Wayner ISBN 1592730000 summary The Sociology of building online games.

The book's strength lies in the deep experience of the authors and the efficient, occasionally gimlet-eyed voice they use to analyze their collective addiction. Jessica Mulligan's bio lists work on more than 50 online games like Ultima Online, while Bridgette Patrovsky's includes time building games for Electronic Arts, Sony and Interplay Online Services. If you believe that Online games are the latest thing, Mulligan would like you to know that you're wrong. She wrote a column celebrating the 30th birthday of the Online game in 1999. Rick Blomme wrote Spacewar back in 1969 and Dave Arneson started an RPG named Blackmoor in 1970 or 1971. It was so long ago, he can't be quite sure.

All of this experience weighs a bit heavily on the authors. The book is more of a core dump than a logical progression and that means we hear bitter echoes of the past. One section is entitled "Yes, it really will take 2-3 years to complete" and another is called "No, More Programmers Won't Make it Go Faster." These sections don't add much to the usual literature about herding cats, but they do offer a strong reminder that this isn't a task for slackers who never could get around to forming that garage band.

The better parts are aimed at the design of the games themselves. While game players are slaying monsters or saving Princesses, game designers are questing after a full Player Satisfaction Matrix. Good games sate the player's need for socialization, accomplishment, discovery and conflict as they journey from the state of confusion (0-1 month), on to excitement (2-4 months), glide through the state of involvement (5-48+ months) before landing in boredom (until VH1 starts making "Behind the Game" documentaries). The trick to good design is making sure that there's plenty to feed the player's involvement.

For instance, you may be driven to create a new persistent world that emphasizes socialization because you're tired of all that death. The authors gamed that scenario and decided that "killers do have a positive role to play from the point of view of the socializers." Good can't exist without evil acting as a contrast and besides, players can usually find some other passive/aggressive technique for stabbing each other in the back even if knife objects aren't instantiated.

The authors tend to view the online realms as ecosystems. If you want to "increase the number of achievers," then the authors advise that you "reduce the number of killers, but not too much" while maybe "increas[ing] the number of explorers." I suspect that these recommendations are to be taken with a grain of salt, but they do reflect the observations of people who've spent a long time managing these games. I'm even tempted to develop my own Sim Sim that lets you simulate the process of crafting a simulation.

Ultimately it's hard for the authors to offer much more than these recipes and matrices. The details about the management, the strategies for stopping cheaters, and the intricacies of player relations are essential parts of the journey, but those are only half of the battle. Making the characters sing and the world come to life is a job for the artist.

This book is like many of the simple guides for writing a screenplay. They talk about arcs, hinge points and beats, but end up counseling that the screenwriter should aim to make each of these "good," This book can't tell you how to make your characters "good," but it can give you much insight into how others have done it before.

You can purchase Developing Online Games from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.