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Developing 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.
I never actually played Everquest. I just read the Cliffs Notes, and talked about it in chatrooms.
"...and then move on to fun questions like how to make a online game compelling for achievers, socializers, killers and explorers."
It's called Grand Theft Auto 3. Now if they'd only make it massively multiplayer on-line, then the holy grail will have been achieved!
What we really need to know is how to make a decent game without doing any programming, merely posting a bunch of unrealistic demands to a web forum that lets us make cool icons and signatures!
This is the real signature
(Beats those shadows on the cave wall, don't it?)
Stop right there mister! This kind of talk could lead to a technical disscussion that has merits! Better to talk about "design issues", EULAs, and other stuff that everybody understands, too much code or science talk will just confuse the important "design issues"!
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
when reviews give away the plot...
From what I've seen, they way to capture an audience is to make them wait for hours before spawning a monster, let high level characters be able to farm, and have little to no support.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I forgot what really is important when desinging games.
Thank you for bringing me back into the light.
Uncle Thursday
---Who wouldn't ever dream of talking about issues with merits...The EULA is obviously the most important thing.---
You realize what this means? I've been playing /., and I still have at least two years left.
Am I the only person that finds irony in the last name "Mulligan" for an author of game design books?
Yeah, I know a few Girl GamerZ who can kick serious ass in FPS and RTS games.
This past New Year's I saw the side of a few girls I didn't even know existed. All of them attractive and in their 20's...playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Their sole intent in playing? To kill as many people as possible, in as many ways as possible.
One girl found the 'bail' button while driving, so she would purposefully wreck her car until it was on fire, then aim at a large group of pedestrians, at full speed, and bail. I've never heard such gleeful laughter.
And she seemed like such a nice, sweet girl otherwise. I guess I'll just have to keep my hand on the door latch if I ever drive with her. ;-
Uncle Thursday
---Attracted to Women GamerZ...especially Geek Women GamerZ---
I learned most of what I know from a web site
:)
I learned most of my karate skills from karate Kid.
I learned most of my doctoring skills from watching ER.
man
No manual entry for
Easy to do... make it text-based :-)
If you need to be more bandwidth-friendly than that, compress it!
All I want is a kind word, a warm bed and unlimited power.
I hope I'm don't come off as intolerant, but this got me thinking: Is this a coincidence? Or maybe it's just that video game programmers (or programmers in general) tend to be dissatisfied with their lives, and thus more likely to try something extreme?
Yes, we're sure to see Joan Carmack in a decade or so.
"Are you a game developer?"
"No, but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night."
All I want is a kind word, a warm bed and unlimited power.
I see my reputation preceeds me.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. At least you'll all know who you're dealing with. ;-
Uncle Thursday
---Cuses! Foiled again!---
Who's with me?
Anyone?
Hello? Is anyone there?
Uncle Thursday
--Listening to the crickets chirp.---
I kill me.
-- (Score:i, Imaginary)
C++ also includes tail recursion, standard temples,
;)
I stopped worshipping at the standard temples long ago. They take anybody...
I mean, you can kill a monster 100 times in a row... and nothing happens.
:-)
You're wrong.
You...
gain a level!