Do Licensed MMOs Inherit A Disadvantage?

Thanks to Stratics for its editorial discussing the problems faced by the licensed massively multiplayer game. The author points out: "Star Wars, The Matrix, Middle Earth - these are just some of the pre-existing worlds that are making the MMOG leap", and goes on to lament: "One of the problems is that you have to create an entire believable, explorable world. This is hard enough as it is, but then you have to cater to pre-existing notions of that world. Fans are your main target group here, and they have that world all locked up tight in their heads. Prepare for Foaming-at-the-Forum disease, my illustrious developers, prepare well." We've previously covered other aspects of this dilemma, but do licenses bring excessive expectations to a persistent world where everyone wants to be the hero?

Comments

intellectual property owners have the last say.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to add that very often developers don't have a choice with what they can do with a licence.

As an example, look at the licenced properties in racecar games. Until recently, licenced car brands weren't even allowed to *take damage* in a race. The car companies thought it was bad that the representations of their products might get broken when the player ran into a wall at 150mph. The car companies have now started to lighten up as they get used to working with developers - but it's a similar thing with MMORPGs - or any other game that uses licenced intellectual property.

The owner of that property doesn't want it acting in any way that would be contradictory to their valuable image. This inherently hurts any game that you try to build using the licence. You can't do anything unpredictable, and certainly can't kill off a well-known non-player character for the sake of furthering an original plot. For example, say you were adapting the Lord Of The Rings to a videogame. Here's my take on it:

Act 1, Level 1, prelude cutscene: Sam dies and nobody cares.

I think it would make a much better *game* to eliminate the whiny characters to build dramatic tension (or comedic relief), but the licencing rules would probably say that Sam must make it through to the end of the game because the story has to follow that of the book and movies. And in a MMO game, it gets worse. Because:

(1) There was only one Han Solo - duplicate characters are kind of stupid. If there were thirty people walking around all claiming to be Darth Vader it would just be silly.

(2) Even if I could play Han Solo, I'd want to hunt Ewoks - but this goes totally against character. As such, George Lucas would not want to allow me the choice of doing this because it will tarnish Han Solo and just look wrong to the eyes of the other players.

So if you cut out the major characters, this leaves you with playing the background characters that nobody really cared about in the movie. You've got the world - environments, cultures and the physics of how that world works - but that's pretty much it.

Not just with licenses

[MMaestro]

do licenses bring excessive expectations to a persistent world where everyone wants to be the hero?

Yes and beyond that. Technology today is allowing people to do things in games better than we could've imagined. Nowadays simple press releases have to be carefully worded since the simple mention of an "online world" could mean MMO, or "mature theme" could mean a survival horror type game. Its not just video game licenses that can be tagged with huge unattainable expectations, a company could also generate the same (or more in some cases) amount of hype which ultimately leads to a bad game or bad reviews.

Re:But they are the shape of things to come.

[Dragoon412]

The problem with the idea of just selling boxes for an MMOG is the cost inherent in developing the game.

I don't have any hard numbers to support it, but it seems to be that with development times on MMOGs taking so much longer than other games, selling them at the same price point, which is the current practice* as other games would mean less profit, or possibly even taking a loss per unit sold.

And I know, more box sales will ultimately lead to more subscriptions, but at this point, the MMOG market is largely cannibalizing itself. The market for MMOG games with non-skill based combat systems that require hundreds upon hundreds of hours of tedious monster-slaying, with game engines that handle like a 14th-hand rip off of Chainmail is completely saturated. To that end, I think the idea of pulling off what SWG did is only going to work for huge titles. Middle Earth Online may be able to do it too, but aside from WoW, I really can't think of another title that's even been announced that'll have enough clout to pull that off.

The future of MMOG design is going to change drastically. There's an absolutely massive untapped audience of more casual gamers that want more action-based games and don't have thousands of hours to invest in a game, and don't want to be alienated from their friends because they went to bed early one night, missed an awesome experience grind group, and now they can't group anymore because there's a 3-level difference.

Planetside, conceptually, was a great stab at that market. Unfortunately, the fuckups at SoE mismanaged it into the ground. They ruin everything they touch...

Anyways, without getting into a rant about what's wrong with MMOGs, just watch: the first person to make a more skill-based MMOG (be it FPS-style, or more sim-ish) that appeals to casual gamers (i.e. no systems like "levels" that only fragment the player base, or absurd time requirements to advance) will be a very, very wealthy individual.

While I was unemployed, I actually wrote up some design documents for such a game... got a 'real' job before I had the chance to pitch it, though, and I haven't had time to work on it since.

*At least until they realize they're about to tank and start offering free downloads of the client online.

Licensing can suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Licenses also work against games that I'd otherwise play, but hate the license.

I was looking for a good RPG to play a few months ago, right around when KOTOR came out. I absolutely despise Star Wars, so I didn't pick it up until just recently. And, barring all the Star Wars crap, it's pretty good.

Resident Evil

[ronfar]

Resident Evil was an unlicensed video game adaptation of Zombie which, I believe, is the overseas name for Dawn of the Dead (the 1970's version). The creator acknowledges he was inspired by Zombie but of course the idea of zombies are in the public domain and he didn't have to have any kind of IP license from the people who own Dawn of the Dead. (Who would have had less chance of prevailing in court than Universal did when they took Nintendo to court for the similarities between King Kong and Donkey Kong.) Now, if they come out with a video game based on the remake of Dawn of the Dead it will have limitations that Resident Evil didn't have to put up with.

Resident Evil has all kinds of stuff that wasn't in Dawn of the Dead, Hunters, zombie dogs, sharks, ravens, etc... If they had had to follow the movie license exactly, they wouldn't have been able to put all that stuff in there.

Re:But they are the shape of things to come.

[Anonymous Coward]

And perhaps... because of Planetside's fuckups... no publisher is all that keen to go close to another MMOG that tries to appeal to the casual gamer.

It's a cut-throat business, and nobody wants to back a loser, and it's easy enough to site Planetside as being a reason *not* to invest!

Just don't be the hero.

[LNO]

It sounds so simple, doesn't it?

I currently play SW:G with two good friends. We group together occasionally, and they're steadily grinding through professions to unlock their force-sensitive slot (that is, to have the ability to make a Jedi character). Being a Jedi holds absolutely no interest for me.

I can't be Han Solo, and I knew that going in. Instead, I'm Jawbone Mandible, owner and proprietor of McJawbone's Golden Mandibles, fast food to the galaxy. I can't even kill a crippled Ewok, but I can whip up some bio-engineered food that's in high demand. Want to take absolutely no damage from the next five attacks? Drink some Flameout; I'll sell you a glass of 6 drinks for only a couple hundred credits.

There are many players who desperately want to become the hero, have their lightsaber, pretend to be Darth Maul that they spend hours grinding boring professions to do it. There are those who want millions of credits so they can buy their way through some professions, and so they try to sell food at inflated prices.

I'm able to undersell them (fun for me!) and get a pile of money (more fun still!), and since I have absolutely nothing to do with it .. I've hit a wall.

If I wanted to be a Jedi, I'd burn through those tens of millions in a heartbeat. Since my friends want to be a Jedi, and they gave me some seed money to start when I created Jawbone, I give them a couple million credits apiece each week as 'investment dividends'. With the rest of it ...

Well, want 100,000cr to jump into the Sarlacc pit and take a screenshot? Here ya go.

1,000cr for each second you can spend alive within melee range of a Krayt dragon?

500,000cr to the first player to race from Mos Espa on Tatooine to Jaxian Bay on Naboo, get an item from my friend acting as the relay point, and get back to me?

The list goes on. Basically, if you want to rewrite the saga, it ain't gonna happen. Everyone's gonna want to rewrite the saga. Barring a player lottery in which one lucky person gets to be Main Character Foo, you're relegated to a background character. Make the most of it, or play a different game.

Re:Just don't be the hero.

[b0r0din]

Being a Jedi holds absolutely no interest for me.

I'm glad you feel that way, but unfortunately you're in the minority.

If you ask me, there are two inherent problems with any MMORPG: the heroism dilemna and the villain dilemna.

How do you create a game in which each individual desires to be a hero? And how do you create a game in which villains are more rare?

Now as far as the heroism dilemna goes, it's very simple. You've got thousands of people on one server, the competition to be #1 or even legendary is very fierce. In a FPS, there's maybe 4-8 people in competition with each other, and it's more even a battle. In an MMORPG, you've got maybe 50-100 people all vying for top dog, all wanting to be the hero of legend, in some cases taking names like SirLanceslot or something similar. People want to be noticed, to be famous.

Well it's just not possible. Most (and not all, as in your example) don't want to be a simple security guard. They have those jobs out of game, it's called working in a cubicle farm or Walmart. They want to wield the sword of destiny or be part of a moving plotline.

Personally, I don't think MMORPGs will ever solve this dilemna. They can't devote enough time to be personal to each individual player and remain profitable. Possibly in the future, someone will come up with a ruleset that solves this problem, or maybe AI will become so good as to solve it. But I'm fairly doubtful. Smaller non-masive MORPGS would be ok, but we've yet to see a really good implementation. (I don't really consider NWN that although it's close, the graphics and worlds need to be better and less Lineage-like.)

The other dilemna is the villain dilemna. This one isn't so much a problem, it can be reasonably handled. But it applies to griefers. How do you prevent people from being complete jerks, stealing kills, killing other players in a PK environment, etc?

The answer is pretty simple: a self-policing society. But how do you self-police a society when everyone wants to be a hero and not a security guard? Maybe a few people would want to be the griefer-slayer, but not many.

Now, you could do a couple of things for both of these.

The problem with most people is wanting to be the hero without doing anything heroic. There's nothing heroic about slaying foo 20hrs/day like every other MMORPG that rewards the person who spends more time on the game. What is heroism, anyway? In the chivalrous sense, it's putting your life in danger for another. You have to risk something to be a hero. In a lot of examples, you have to die or be horribly maimed. Well, how to apply that to an MMORPG? Realism wouldn't hurt - or would it? Maybe people lose limbs, are horribly disfigured, or die regularly. Permadeath. Maybe that's what the society needs. That's skill-based, it forces players to be strategic and careful in combat. But it's not popular.

Now, let's use this in a society, let's just say medieval-fantasy since that is overdone right now. You are a local blacksmith. You don't fight, you just make really nice swords. You are rewarded for your swordmaking with lots of money from players who rely on your ability. You don't die so your skill level increases. Every once in a while, you make a masterpiece. Maybe only once or twice in the game, sort of by accident. This sword is so special that you can only give it to the right person. Maybe you're fitting into a bigger game plot that you aren't aware of. You're a part of that world's history at that point. You fit a niche. And you aren't dying.

Now, the other people who want to be heroes can go ahead and fight for fame and so on. But they die and permadeath takes hold and they don't retain their hero status. The real heroes would be revealed in this sort of society because of their skill. Maybe instead of level, there are certain incarnations of heroes. You may die a lot, but if you are smart and become a hero through certain deeds and then die, you retain some of what you had even though you are dea

Re:Just don't be the hero.

[miyako]

I've been working on designing a persistant world for Neverwinter Nights, and I have been considering many of the points that you brought up.
The first thing I thought of was to get rid of the teleporting in the game. Town portal spells are ok, but general transit just takes away from the locales. Teleporting is definitely a double edged sword, I think the best way to handle this, and what I have been working on is to allow players to travel to specific locations they have already visited. Essentially the way I am handling this is that in most of the interesting locations, there are mages who run teleportation booths. Sometimes they are out in the open, sometimes they are hidden in secret areas. When you run accross one of them, you can buy a warp coin which will allow you to teleport back to that location a set number of times. The cost and number of uses depends on how exotic the spot is.
Creating seemingly personalized quests is at the top of the list of "Hard Things To Do", the trick I have been using is a series of branching quests to make the quests seem more personal.
While this might not scale well, in this persistant world which will have about 60 people max, there will be 3 or 4 initial paths that a player can start out on, depending mainly on their alignment. Within each of these paths, there will be some branching depending on what quests have been completed. For example, if someone has already completed the "Kill the bandits in the forest" quest (just an example), then the next player would find a "Kill the troll under the bridge" quest. The plan is to have these 4 main paths and their branches intertwine and cycle in such a way that what previous people have done will effect the game, and will start back at the previous point at such a times as the players who have already completed earlier tasks will no longer have much to do in the areas that the quests they completed are starting over in.
Timing is going to play a big part in this and will require a lot of testing, but hopefull it will end up working for most players.
Weapons and monster dropped items is another area I've had a large focus on. Essentially I plan to eliminate "random treasure" and focus instead of collecting sellable items. For example, if the party goes up against a pack of giant spiders, they will be able to collect venom from the spiders to sell to alchemists and potion makers, or to use in magically enchanting their items.
One thing I hope to do is add the ability for players to specialize in creating items out of some of these materials. For example a mage merchant character might be able to pay a group of fighters to escort him into the ruins of an ancient library infested with undead so he can obtain scrolls that will teach him to make a powerful bone wand out of the bones of a lich. Or perhaps a blacksmith character is willing to pay top dollar for junk parts of a mythril golem in order to forge one of a kind weapons.
I think though the reason that these types of things are not present in games like EQ is that companies looking to make money on a game are afraid to take a gamble that people will want to play the part of a blacksmith, or that people will get mad they missed out on part of the quest.

Re:MMO != best use of license

[Marc_Hawke]

This is how I feel. There were two things that made me never even concider SW:G.

1. The official site required you to make an account and log in just to look at the RESULTS of the poll on their front page. I can understand logging in to vote, or to post on the forums, or even READ the forums in extreme cases....but to log in just to look at the results of a poll was insane. I wrote to the webmaster saying that I would never go back to his site again. (And only broke that twice that I know of.) (I'll admit, I was being petty, but dangit...I'm allowed to be petty with my own time. :) )

2. The main reason I didn't care to follow SW:G was because it was Star Wars. The bits of information that I did glean sounded good. The artwork was excellent. It seemed like a high-quality product. BUT!! It was Star Wars. There was no way I wanted to spend my time with a million fruit-cake fans. The 'gamer maturity' (that has nothing to do with actual maturity, just with how well you play games and interact in a gaming environment) level was instantly cut by 75% simply because of that license.

Not to mention the message boards. There was ONE!! topic. There were 30 million threads, but ONE topic. "Being a Jedi" There were no other conversations. It was incredible. It was disgusting.

They should make another one. SoE should take the technology, the game systems, the CS departments, ie and make another game. They could use the same code-base, just spend a while making all new artwork and nomeclature, and make a new 'non-Star Wars' mmorpg. They could use the same CS staff, and the same infrastructure.

They should at least make a pretense of doing it as a different company though. Think of the money they'd save in development and maintanence. They'd also have much more freedom of expression on this 'alternate world.'

Anyway... It was specifically Star Wars that chased me away from SW:G....and I LIKE Star Wars.

Depends on the License

[NedR]

Whether or not a license would be more difficult to turn into a MMOG seems like it would sort of depend on the license. For example, take two different Sci-Fi licenses that are being turned into MMOGs; The Matrix and Dune. On the one hand, you have The Matrix, which is relatively easy to recognize, because it's based for the most part on the world we live in right now, with a few changes. Also, part of the beauty of The Matrix is that it's all about breaking the rules, and as a result, many of the smaller ideas are left to the imagination, and can be tweaked by developers for gameplay purposes.

Dune is just the opposite. Frank Herbert meticulously built a completely alien universe from the ground up (though he borrowed liberally from many different historical periods). People who have not read the books and are just getting into it may end up a little overwhelmed, and even worse for developers (although fantastic for fan boys like myself), Herbert chose to write about almost every single aspect of the universe in meticulous, almost obsessive detail, meaning there's a lot that would have to be packed in to please nitpickers.

Re:MMO != best use of license

[t1nman33]

Sure, I know what you mean. I hung out on the SWG boards for a year or more, I beta tested, I signed up for a year and played the game pretty hardcore for awhile.

But in the end, the problem for me was that all the really exciting parts of Star Wars had to do with either grand battles or being a hero, and you have trouble doing that in an MMO.

Frankly, I get far more enjoyment playing Unreal Tournament and pretending to be part of an army fighting to capture power nodes than I did in weeks upon weeks of roleplaying and crafting and exploration in SWG. After awhile, all those beautiful trees and sand dunes and creatures just became eye candy with no real excitement or sense of accomplishment beyond grinding and the occasional interaction. And I find that I feel more interaction with members of a random team playing a round of Onslaught.

Re:But they are the shape of things to come.

[*weasel]

the box sales of MMOGs relative to their subscription numbers

This is the main support I keep coming back to. EQ is a multi-million selling box, but never got much past 400k subscribers. But perhaps the people who left were merely powergamers of a different flavor? Perhaps those who tried EQ and quit went on to be non-casual gamers in AC, DAoC, or SW:G.

Box sales vs subscriptions is strong evidence, but it's not quite conclusive. At this point, I think only the non-subscription rate for players who tried playing a persistent game casually and quit would be conclusive evidence. Of course, only a few big publishers would have that data (SOE, MS, EA), and they're not likely to share :)

However, SOE's focus on that potential market (with the friendlier-than-EQ Planetside and SW:G), and EA's focus (with the friendlier UO:X) are pretty good indicators for those of us without direct data.

MMOGs cannibalize each others' players

In my experience, (thankfully for the genre) this has not yet happened. Players come, players go - but no persistent game to date has stolen large numbers of players from its predecessors. DAoC has grown not by taking active players from EQ/UO/AC, but by catching the attention of players who had already left those games.

Are levels really meaningful? I would argue that they're not. They're shallow, contrived, and serve no real purpose.

Devil's Advocates have the advantage of asking the occassional loaded question :)

truly I agree with you: (time investment) + (repetition) != (meaning) || (achievement)

Still, there is no denying the attachment that hardcore players place on their irrationally-uber-characters. They will pay monthly fees for games they hardly play anymore due solely to the attachment to those bits. That's a dependable revenue source that I'm certain publishers consider when thumbing through design docs.

Lateral advancement is a noble goal - but how do we strike a balance between new and old players? What happens when a community of the 'old guard' suddenly encounters 'fresh meat', who very quickly, change the entire way the game is played due their new tactics and skill. EQ is largely future-proof in this regard, as player skill plays such a minor role.

A true multiple-axis advancement system would constantly be under fire though. Does the ability for a new Hero to spring up overnight lessen the feeling of achievement?

I tend to think not, but we don't exactly have a live example to study. ... the bar has been set so low for MMOGs that there's nothing compelling people who aren't already involved in MMOGs to try them.

This is certainly an accurate, albeit sad, assessment of the genre. New MMO players are joining the genre to be sure, but fans from other genres aren't. Perhaps it's because of how hard level-based design makes it to indoctrinate a new friend (picking the right server, levelling, etc). Or more simply: watching someone play EQ is less fun than watching paint dry.

It's about choice.

Adding choice, is turning away from the tried-and-true.

It's not that you're undercutting the fun people find in EQ - it's that a company has to be convinced to invest millions in a game targetted at an audience that arguably may not even want to play an MMO, instead of churning out an incremental improvement in the proven style.

As for action MMOs... there may yet be technical hurdles keeping publishers away. World War 2 Online has a distinctly non-massive 64 unit visibility limit, and Planetside does client-side hitscan (not surprising there are/were hacks).