Koster's Laws Of Online Gaming Revisited

Thanks to F13.net for its article attempting a re-appraisal of the original 'laws of online gaming' document, as first posted by Raph Koster and others starting on October 9, 1998. The curmudgeonly analysis includes rebuttals of original laws such as "No matter what you do, someone is going to automate the process of playing your world" ("There's a very simple fix for this. Dump the treadmill, dump the numbers, and make gameplay fun"), and there's an equally tetchy rebuttal of the rebuttal at F13, suggesting: "Any amount of development time spent making the game more realistic or lifelike is wasted development time, stolen from useful tasks like making the game fun."

Comments

Couldn't agree more!

[Apreche]

I used to be able to play games like Final Fantasy 6. And I still think that FF6 is the best one of them all. I love the plot and the music and everything. But I just can't go back and play it anymore. The game has no intellectual stimulation for me. It's just a leveling treadmill. Push buttons to continue the plot. Imagine if you went to see LOTR and they made you figure out a correct button sequence to make the movie continue playing?

I'm tired of fancy graphics. I'm tired of treadmills. Nowadays I live only for the kind of action that a zelda game or a quality fps can provide. Either skill based gameplay where the best gamer wins. Or lots and lots of riddles and puzzles to solve, by thinking.

I wrote about this awhile ago in my /journal.

City of Heroes

[Winterblink]

There's a very simple fix for this. Dump the treadmill, dump the numbers, and make gameplay fun

City of Heroes is an interesting case for MMOs, because it literally is nothing but a treadmill. There's no other style of gameplay in the game other than combat for levels, yet somehow it's ridiculous fun and addictive, moreso than many other MMOs on the market today.

Personally, I think this can be attributed to the fact that they focused on this singular gameplay element and refined it so well that you never really notice that you're only ever doing one thing during your entire time playing. With a good group of strangers or good friends the hours can fly by like nothing, all the while everyone's having a pretty darn good time of things. I think that the level treadmill, when done right, can be a respectable tool for advancement in the game if the situations involved are balanced and challenging.

Re:City of Heroes

[Winterblink]

Admittedly I've cancelled my CoH account a couple of weeks ago, for partially those reasons. Mostly though it was the fact that their last patch completely destroyed any group fun I was having with the group of friends I was playing with. It's interesting you use the phrase "reduced game". That's definitely a relative term to each person as an individual.

For instance, content is usually a decent indicator overall for MMOs. CoH doesn't really have a LOT of content, but is decently fun overall. Fun enough to warrant paying monthly for it, for a lot of people. EVE Online has an insane amount of content and detail in it, but doesn't instantly reward the player as games such as CoH do. For me, I've played EVE since beta, and already cancelled my CoH subscription, because I prefer a more hardcore detailed experience that games like EVE offer me.

Definitely sounds like you and I had the same overall experience with CoH (I had less than 24 hours to go before my first official monthly payment).

Here is where I stopped reading the rebuttal

[Durindana]

I'll go ahead and say that the right rule here comes from Kelly Flock, when he noted that players "just fuck us up." Players know shit. Especially not players who are bitching about the game on message boards. And Especially not players who are bitching about how they want PvP. Look, I know I'm going to get ripped by any PvP enthusiasts who are still here, but let's be honest. 95% of people who want PvP in a MMOG should be banned from MMOGs, and preferably from breeding.

I don't care nearly enough about the whole meta-genre of MMOG design to go deep into this, but frankly I hold precisely the opposite view. The thrill that most MMORPG players get from leveling, crafting, exploring, etc., I find a symptom of a socially debilitated person. PvPers, on the other hand, I feel largely have their heads on straight in reality and merely seek a greater challenge and greater exhilaration than any PvE design can give them. Much as can be found in the real world.

Griefers, on the other hand, are the fault not of the PvP playerbase but the game designers. Real unnacountable griefing shouldn't be possible. "Griefing" as in messing up your fun on a limited basis, on the other hand, is what comes from playing with people instead of playing with yourself, as in PvE.

Example: I play Shadowbane. PvE is an afterthought (or more accurately, a mostly-brief pre-requisite to getting a character in shape to fight other players); the real fun to be had is fighting other people, either singly, in raiding parties or in enormous city sieges.

There is really no unaccountable griefing in SB, because political dynamics hold players accountable for what they do. Some few players enjoy lurking in the shadows, with no group to defend them and nothing to lose, but they are the distinct minority. And "griefers" have no advantage in PvP, indeed they have the disadvantage of having no one to help them when you come to kill them.

For my purposes, PvE treadmilling is brain-dead. So are the people who want to bake bread or whatever. Unless it involves engaging in combat or negotiations or meaningful dialogue with other human beings, why is it worth checking out of reality? One of the linked articles suggests to stop thinking about games as "working from 9-5 at Initech (nice Office Space namecheck) and working from 6-11 farming some rare form of copper." PvE games will always face this dilemma of uselessness, because your accomplishments and explorations are meaningless without any human context. That's fine, but why not play Civilization instead? Or better yet, re-engage with the human race in brutal combat.

Agreed wholeheartedly, and...

[Mongoose Disciple]

Disclaimer: I'm tres biased, but I think I still have some interesting points. You've been warned.

It's all just a side-effect of society, really. (Isn't everything, but...)

We live in a society that praises the achiever/PvEer mindset, and, importantly, recognizes its goals as valid. For achievers to function, there must be others who recognize their achievements, and agree with the "rules" of the game in which they're achieved. That's not to say that everyone who wants a big house in a good neighborhood, trophy spouse, expensive car, prestigious job, etc. etc. etc. wants each of those things solely to impress others -- but an awful lot of people do, whether they admit it or not. If having a luxury car had the same functionality as it does in our world, but for some reason everyone thought they were dumb and that it was anything but cool to own one, they'd sure sell a lot less of them. This holds for any of the achiever goals.

Society rewards the killer/PvPer mindset to a point, but it generally doesn't overtly encourage it. There are definitely rewards to be had by going out in business, life, etc. and simply just beating everyone else, but don't expect to make a lot of friends doing it. Expect to hear a lot of complaints about being mercenary or unfair. Especially expect people to hate you if you fuck up their proverbial achiever cabbage patch.

In a lot of ways, I think the people who fall deeply into MMORPGS or other achiever games are people who are, at their heart, achievers but are unable to succeed in the traditional achiever rat races. If you can't be a captain of industry or marry a supermodel, well, maybe you can be the leetest guy on EverQuest. Maybe in your success of nightly level-grinding and monster farming will serve as a nepenthe to ease the dull ache of your failures in the great achiever contest that is life.

Re:Soooo these games suck - got a better idea?

[Teppy]

That's good! No, wasn't a rhetorical question at all. I often ask people that, and I try to identify the parts of games that I like. Usually when I ask they'll ignore the question and tell me that travel takes too long, or they're sick of glassblowing, or whatever's frustrating them at the moment. (All examples from ATITD, and true) But occasionally I'll hear something like "seeing what comes up when I crossbreed two roses", and so I'll go and code something that sort of has the same feel, but maybe from a different angle.