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Bartle to MMOG Players - Newbs!
Gamasutra (registration required) has begun running an excellent column called "Soapbox". The first article up on the site is penned by Richard Bartle, one of the gents who created MUD1. Why Virtual Worlds are Designed by Newbies [non-reg alternate] is a great look at the lessons of past games and the foibles of designing a new one. From the article: "Virtual worlds are being designed by know-nothing newbies, and there's not a damned thing anyone can do about it. I don't mean newbie designers, I mean newbie players - first timers. They're dictating design through a twisted "survival of the not-quite-fittest" form of natural selection that will lead to a long-term decay in quality, guaranteed."
It's gotten so bad in the virtual worlds that I've given them up and have been forced to take up exercise and reading. God, I'm getting smarter and healthier, someone help me!
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Are you telling me they can be designed with PHP?
Regisitration Required
How lame...Why on earth do "we" even bother reading slashdot anymore. The editors might as well be (un)trained monkeys.
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Feel free to hijack this thread to complain about how slashdot is going to the dogs these days... I remember the good ol' days when they used to run real live interesting tech stories...not some
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The article has a summary:
Point #1: Virtual worlds live or die by their ability to attract newbies
Point #2: Newbies won't play a virtual world that has a major feature they don't like.
Point #3: Players judge all virtual worlds as a reflection of the one they first got into.
Point #4: Many players will think some poor design choices are good.
iCLOD Virtual City is based (remotely) on a real city. It is turn-based and time-based so that players won't be affected by different time zones and there are enough objectives to keep everybody occupied.
But like the article stated, it's pretty hard to keep everyone happy because they all want something in the virtual world to suit their abilities to win.
Additionally, newbies are always lost in the first instance they arrive in the city, so it requires a lot of tutorials and guides to get them settle in in order to introduce the real depth of the game to them.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
It seems strange to crown it an excellent column if this the first article.
Just my opinion.
Who is General Failure, and why is he reading my hard disk?
PS: Is it just me or is Slashdot REALY slow today?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
[Author's note: What I'm calling virtual worlds, you might call MMORPGs or MMOGs or (if you're a real old-timer) MUDs. Macro replace with your preference accordingly. Got that? Then I'll begin...]
Introduction
Virtual worlds are being designed by know-nothing newbies, and there's not a damned thing anyone can do about it. I don't mean newbie designers, I mean newbie players - first timers. They're dictating design through a twisted survival of the not-quite-fittest form of natural selection that will lead to a long-term decay in quality, guaranteed. If you think some of today's offerings are garbage, just you wait...
Yeah, yeah, you want some justification for this assertion. Even though I'm in Soapbox mode, I can see that, so I will explain - only not just yet. First, I'm going to make four general points that I can string together to build my case. Bear with me on this...
The Newbie Stream
Here's a quote from Victorian author Charles Dickens:
OK, so maybe he didn't actually write that last line.
What Dickens was actually saying is that, so long as you don't lose more than you gain, things are good. In our particular case, we're not talking olde English money, we're talking newbies, although ultimately, the two amount to one and the same thing.
Now I'm sorry to be the bringer of bad news, people, but here goes anyway: even for the most compelling of virtual worlds, players will eventually leave. Don't blame me, I didn't invent reality.
If oldbies leave, newbies are needed to replace them. The newbies must arrive at the same rate (or better) that the oldbies leave; otherwise, the population of the virtual world will decline until eventually no-one will be left to play it.
Point #1: Virtual worlds live or die by their ability to attract newbies
Newbie Preconceptions
Another quote, this time from the 1989 movie Field of Dreams:
Well, maybe if you're an Iowa corn farmer who hears voices inside your head telling you to construct a baseball stadium, but otherwise...
A virtual world can be fully functioning and free of bugs, but still be pretty well devoid of players. There are plenty of non-gameplay reasons why this could happen, but I'm going to focus on the most basic: lack of appeal. Some virtual worlds just aren't attractive to newbies. There are some wonderfully original, joyous virtual worlds out there. They're exquisitely balanced, rich in depth, abundant in breadth, alive with subtleties, and full of wise, interesting, fun people who engender an atmosphere of mystique and marvel without compare. Newbies would love these virtual worlds, but they're not going to play them.
Why not? Because they're all text. Newbies don't do text.
Newbies come to virtual worlds with a set of preconceptions acquired from other virtual worlds; or, failing that, from other computer games; or, failing that, from gut instinct. They will not consider virtual worlds that confront these expectations if there are others around that don't.
Put another way, if a virtual world has a feature that offends newbies, the developers will have to remove that feature or they won't get any newbies. This is irrespective of what the oldbies think: they may adore a feature, but if newbies don't like it then (under point #1) eventually there won't be anyone left to adore it.
Point #2: Newbies won't play a virtual world that has a major feature they don
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I, for one, welcome our new newbie overlords...
That is perhaps the most draconian registration process ever. Feel free to use my info:
user: numlocked@gmail.com
pass: 78b9602a
2+ ghz processor... check ... check ... check ... check .. check ... check ... Check?
$160 video card
17 inch monitor
512mb + of ram
Screamin' Soundcard
Highspeed cable modem
Telnet client
Conenction to MUD that's been running since 1990... CHECK?!
The implications are correct, the best games have been around for years, designed and maintained by old hands... and they're text-based.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
The first multi-user online "Dungeon" wasn't bartle's MUD. It would have either been Empire on Plato, or the People's Computer Company's "Public Caves", both from the late '70s. The latter wasn't concurrent multi-user, but operated as a bullten board rather than a chat system (as did most online sustems at the time), but the interactions between people were very similar to the ones on MUDs.
The author repeatedly uses the phrase "virtual world" as if MMOG's are the only type of virtual world that exists. Please keep in mind that there are many virtual worlds in existence that are not necessarily games.
Sorry but I had to laugh at this article. Newbies, real definition - players, are ruining mmorpgs with their demands.
Get real.
Many MMORPGs succeed. There are just many more that will not. This is not the fault of the players. What this ranter totally missed out on is the fact that players are no longer accepting excuses.
Look at Horizons, look at AC2, or look at original AO. Simply put, if you try to pull one over on the users you will get caught and they will punish you for it. Funcom made right, Turbine and Artifact Entertainment never did, those two deluded themselves into believing they were right and the players were the issue.
We no longer have to accept half-assed attempts because we have so many more choices. We are also seeing some big names getting ready to debut in this arena (well FF is already out) and it will prove that games that are developed by professionals (read: they don't have a preconception that they are godly - and they have expereience in writing WORKING software) can and will succeed.
Blaming the users, hell I am surprised he doesn't work for the Themis group.
While I am on MY soapbox. Here is one other thing that kills game, designers holding discussion sites hostage. This happens extensively on VN (IGN) boards as Turbine requires VN mods to remove messages that criticize Turbine or its people. Its good to know mods who can pass along policies, it provided a better insight into the reasons behind my problems with VN and those of others who went through similar abuse.
Combine with fake interviews where developers require questions to be preapproved, IRC chats that only cover inane questions, and you have many of the issues that cause games to fail.
In other words, its not the players, it never was.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I agree with some of the points made in the article, however, I have to disagree with the opinions expressed regarding permanent player death. I tend to get very attached to the characters I roll in MMORPG games, and I would likely cancel my account if a character I had invested 8 months of time developing was permanently killed due to a bad sequence of events.
--It's Pimptastic!--
For more about Prof. Bartle check his site. He knows what he's talking about and "Designing Virtual Worlds" was thoroughly informative.
It'll be interesting to see how Roma Victor turns out since he's apparently involved in that, among other things.
They're designing a world that allows for players to coexist and thus increase their revenue.
Highly competetive games, especially shooters, are always being outdated by newer games and technology. Why frag (or be fragged by,) someone in Quake II when you could frag someone in Unreal Tournament 2004.
At the same time, in order to be a top player in any of those games, you must have devoted a large amount of time to being good at it. Natural coordination and skill not with standing.
However, in these "newb" MMOG's that are less competetive, and allow for less dedicated or skillful players to still perform and play with the others, the designer's guarantee a player base which will migrate less easily. Thus, in the long run, increasing their revenue.
The aforementioned decay in quality is a side effect of this shift. But if you're not a power gamer, this decay might not be easily perceived for some time.
But you're not going to have any impact in a non-instanced world either.
You interact with people in the instanced universe the same way as you do with the rest of your groupmates when you're doing something grouped in a non-instanced universe.
The only difference is that when you and your groupmates/guildmates decide to Whack the Foozle of Bigness, you actually get to whack the foozle, rather than stand in line for six hours waiting for your turn to camp the spawn. (Or worse, stand in line for six hours, only to find that you've had your chance to WtFoB stolen by the group standing in line behind you.)
No disrespect intended, Bartle -- but you're wrong on this point. Maybe you're right for a game with 500 players, but spawn-camping doesn't scale. By the time you've got 5000 players in a world, instancing isn't a noob-friendly thing, it's a veteran-friendly thing.
Where's the sense of achievement? It's in the loot, badge, bio entry, or shared experience that says "We whacked the Biggest Foozle In The Game" Not in "We camped the spawn for three days before getting a chance to whack it."
If a game sucks so hard that the only sense of accomplishment for veterans comes from having the patience to camp the spawn for three days, rather than actually doing the goddamn quest, then that game sucks.
And if any MMORPG developer is put off by the corollary to "We whacked the biggest foozle in the game" (which is "...so far, and now the Developers have to give us something new to do"), well, tough. If you want me to pay you $10/month for a year, then by God, you'd better give me a $120 worth of new foozles to whack over the course of that year.
Whacking bigger foozles is boring? Hire a writer to make it interesting. Single-player RPGs can give me 20 hours of enjoyment for $50. Most of that cost is sunk into developing the engine, not writing the story. If you're a MMORPG developer, hire a friggin' writer. Soap Opera writers write banal stories that seem to be able to draw in viewers for periods of time measured in decades. Why have MMORPG developers (who have access to better tools and far more interesting universes) failed to achieve "soap opera" level of literary ability?
I think MUDs still have appeal to old schoolers because we grew up on the dos promp and the pong paddle. eye candy was when you got a balloon to move across the screen after 6 hours of typing Poke and Peek commands on your trusty C64. MUDs work, because they focus was a story. Deep, rich, and twisty. That was their only outlet for creativity. The visuals were left to your imagination. Pen and Paper D&D was/is the incarnation of the MUD. Every now and then, you will find a game that breaks the mold through and through, and resets the bar a notch higher. But those are rare, and more and more gamers are becoming more and more jaded in their expectations. A classic can be made in a week (ie. Bejeweled) and a bomb can take years to pop (ie Daikatana) so what do we know... Tastes are transient, technology moves on, but a good story is always a good story.
We controlled our own expansion sprinkled constructive input from players. Players did not dictate our design. Of course, we were "free" to play so nothing was owed to the players. This is perhaps the key difference - not having to catering paying customers. So, while I agree partially with Bartle, I disagree that there is nothing we can do about it... make your MMOG games free. :)
Speak truth to power.
I've been MUSH*ing since 1995 or so,which makes me... well, not all that much of a newbie (though neither am I really a vet, compared to some others I know :). And this is my view of things, directed mostly at MU* community (text-based one). MUSHes are relatively easy to set up these days, and not terribly difficult or expensive to run- text-based games have low server requirements and free off-the-shelf systems such as PennMUSH or TinyMUSH are quite simple to configure even for newbies.
What does that mean? That means there are no real barriers for any n00b wishing to try his hand at MU* administration - if you want it, you can do it. And then, everything comes down to creativity, imagination - and lots of patience. I've seen great MU*s created by a handful of newbies - they were sufficiently down-to-earth to create a small gameworld to start with, paying attention to playability and setting. And then there were others (i.e. me) who decided they want to turn their fave P'n'P RPG into a MUSH (I tried creating Paranoia MUSH, followed by HOL. Disasters both, to boot.) However, as opposed to (semi)professional graphic MMORPG designers who frequently are not too familiar with RP concepts, most of people trying their hands at MUSHes do have at least some amount of tabletop roleplaying experience.
And I've digressed and started losing my thread. Anyway, my ponit (if only I can remember it):
Experience does not a RPer make - although it does improve one. There are people who've been MMORPGing for years, and they're still as clueless as they were in the beginning. And then there are newbies who will give you some truly great RPing experiences. Contrary to the featured article's statement, newbie-created MMORPGs don't necessarily repulse players - to the contrary, they're often refreshingly new and original, and a newbie is far more likely to accept creative input than someone who considers himself a badass old gamer. And then there is the matter of evolution - old and experienced players have, frequently, set-in-stone ideas of how setting and gamesystem should look - they had years of playing to develop their preferences. Newbies, however, are not so adamant. As a consequence of that, newbie-run MMORPG is far more likely to evolve through player input, changing into something closer to players' wishes, even if glitchy, whereas veteran-staffed MMORPG might posess a very detailed setting and glitch-free gaming system - but be a far cry from what players actually want.
--
*MUSH = Multi User Shared Hallucination (more RP-oriented offspring of MUDs)
'...computers in the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons...' Popular Mechanics, 03/49'
telnet://mud.arctic.org:2700
You are absolutely right!
Take a look at SWG or any other sony MMO game, they're released when they still have a long way to go to get out of beta and there are enough MMO's out now to where we as players don't have to put up with half baked MMO games.
It isn't the players! And you don't have to be a 20 year MUD vetran to make one. SEE: WoW
But I don't think the user is being blamed here; at least, that's not what I got from the article. It seemed more to me that the problem is that the game developers must respond in sometimes less-than-ideal ways to cope with market pressures. These pressures do come from the users, but it's not their fault. They're just consumers.
He suggests several ways of reacting in a way that is beneficial for the game as a whole, also; something no MMORPG has been good at (yet).
I played EQ for about four years before recently quitting; and many of the symptoms of decay Mr. Bartle enumerates are easy enough to see, at least in my experience with that game.
The author is guilty of exactly the same things that he blames the newbies for, and his arguments are anything but airtight.
1) Permanent Death. Okay, the author is convinced that permanent death is better. I'd like to see an example of a permanent-death game that did better than one that didn't have it? He can theorize all he likes that it's better for game design, but the simple fact is that nothing has yet shown that it in fact is.
2) Instancing. Again, the author is convinced that instancing is evil. A lot of people might agree. However, "instancing" is a very, very big concept. One can argue that the separate servers in mmorpgs are all "Instances", but that's hardly something most people would call particularly harmful. There's a whole range of instancing from one-person-per-instance to hundreds-per-instance.
The author never manages to show that he's doing anything more than what he accuses newbies of, since while he claims that there are things that are long-term-bad that he likes, he doesn't actually back up such assertions. Then, as above, his examples are ridiculously under-supported.
The ringing of the division bell has begun... -PF
The entire article tries to take on a position of authority on the subject, but provides no concrete proof for any of its assumptions, and it makes many assumptions, and only manages to come across as elitist.
For example, the author describes permadeath:
Nevermind the fact that in a modern, treadmill-driven MMO, adding permadeath would also lead to in-game cowardice (because no one wants to lose the character they spent the past 6 months building up), much grief (because no one wants to die to the lowbie mob that aggroed them while they had a lag spike), and makes the assumption that players need to have their characters forcibly changed so they don't grow board and leave (many people actually like their characters, and grow attached to them over the bazillion hours they spend playing them).
What's even more absurd is the assumption that killing off a player's character and forcing him to play the same content over repeatedly is somehow preferable to one, constantly growing character.
Here's a hint: if people want to replay the same content from a different point of view, they can make a new character without having their old one killed off.
No doubt, there's some truth to his points, but the way it's presented, the author comes across as a troll.
The article has quite a few objectionable "truths". For example, permanent death might be nice for the economy and the world itself but it's f###ing frustrating for the player himself. MMOs are timesinks, to particxipate in the endgame you need to spend months as an average player. Losing all that progress because one day you overestimated yourself and got killed is REALLY frustrating.
Or teleporting. Sure, encouraging people to make new friends is nice but the main problem is that spending hours running from one point on the map to another just plain out isn't fun. Instancing is important because virtual worlds have an extreme overpopulation of adventurers and there just can't be enough dungeons for everybody (and even if, people would restrict themselves to two or three that give the best "loot").
Fun and world integrity don't always go hand in hand and instead of looking at things from a global perspective, try to look at how the player perceives the world because a bad perception will result in a bad reaction. Make sure the downtimes are short and the players have fun, fun should be the first goal of any game.
Many MMOs tend to neglect the beginning, pretty much telling you to work until you are someone. That's a harsh welcome. Why should I spend days to reach an adequate level in an MMO when there are games available that allow you to jump in and play? A game must be fun from t=0 if it wants to attract newbies.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Hrm.
On the one hand, he says that Instancing is an example of a short term good, long term bad design decision.
On the other hand, if you disagree with him on this, then it's clear that you're one of those players who can't recognise a bad design feature. Yet he fails to satisfactorily explain why Instancing is actually a bad design decision.
Nice argument there, Bartle.
I personally think Instancing is a good thing all round, if it's used wisely. City of Heroes does a good job there, and I can think of ways it could have been used effectively by other MMORPGs (Star Wars Galaxies spring to mind).
-EvilMagnus
1. Permanent Death
I disagree that it is a given that this is a naturally good thing. I do agree that there are some players who prefer to play this way, and while I'm not one of them, I can understand how that could be a thrilling experience. I, on the other hand, am looking to enjoy myself and experience the content. He claims that by adding permanent death content would be more replayable because we'd see it through the eyes of man characters instead of uber-character. Like I said, I think there's a case to be made for a permanent death option, but please, this is not it. It's precisely because I don't want to repeat the same damn content over and over that I don't want permanent death to be a fact of life. He overlooks the simplest answer of all: have both options available, a la Diablo II's Hardcore Mode. Mark these players out as special somehow too, so we can marvel at their Hardcore-ness if need be. I don't mind. But don't prevent me from seeing the cooler upper-level spells and areas because you think non-permanent death removes your eliteness.
2. Instances
I'm not sure what he was smoking on this one. Instances are fine. I've been playing WoW for three months and I've rarely ever gone into an instance with the same people even twice. I meet random people and head in. Instances prevent a far, far worse concern that he completely ignores, namely the camping of quest-integral mobs and items. Because yeah, it's FUN to hang around at the end of a dungeon for 8 hours for that rare boss spawn. Just ask old-time EQ players.
Even his arguments against make little sense: that it will fence players off from each other. Moronic. Again, in WoW, there is maybe one, sometimes two such instances in a zone. Instances probably make up, what, 4% of the game's area? You spend maybe 5% of your total playing time in one? And this fences you off? Or, we could let everyone camp mobs, and a fun dungeon experience could be ruined by group of asshats spamming "You are teh sux0r" and corpse camping you. Yeah, that's fun. His four points about newbies may be true. I can see some truth in his argument. But he still can't use that to prove which features are inherently good or bad. That's ridiculous. Of course, since I'm disagreeing with him, I'm almost certainly a 'newb'. Well, he can think what he wants, just like I will think what I want.
Wood Shavings!
- Godai
The article is full of interesting issues and correctly points to the problem of bad design.
The real issue is Implementors and how they react to the inevitable whining by the players. No matter what you do, players will complain about something.
Here are the reactions from implementors:
1. Ignore the Whining
2. Attack the whining player back
3. Carefully consider the players complain and act or
4. Ignore everyone and do it your own way.
I mention these because A combination of 3 and 4 are the most effective way of creating and maintaining a game.
Now lets delve into the truth of reality.. and fantasy. No matter how great your graphics are they cannot compare to the ability of the mind(imagination). Text based games are much more "graphical" than any true graphical game due to the amazing brain. It will take many decades before graphics can come even close to matching the brain in processing.
What does this mean overall? It means that you should find a Good text based game with Implementors willing to listen and come up with original ideas.
I recommend The Mage's Lair at www.mageslair.net port 7060 as it has been around many years.. and yes.. like the article said it does not lead to many muds as people tend to stay around.
Spend money or play a better type game in Muds.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
Take Everquest for instance. This game has been running so long that the people in "one age" aren't the same people in "the next age".
In the beginning the imfamous idea foisted by the creators was called "The Vision". It was basically a creedo of how they thought the game should behave in form and function. It wasn't perfect (for instance non-magic classes were left devoid of any extra skills) but it was a solid framework to start from.
But as time moved on, these people who created "The Vision" left to do other things and this was slowly dismantled. Each expansion that has come afterwards seems to have gotten more haphazard with adding features. Things are added to the game by designers who have little knowledge of the hsitory of the game (or possibly don't care) which turns the game into a hodpodge of skills and monsters that don't grow with time.
Although showing its age and probably on its last legs, Everquest at this point is shaken ever expansion due to this effect. Designers only seem to know or care about their current creation instead of creating a solid and sound system that will stand the test of time.
It isn't so much that MMOGs are designed by Newbs. They are designed by people who probably aren't going to be working on the same project a year from now.
Okay, so for us MUD-less ones, how do we get started? What are some popular MUDs? Or is that even the right question?
I think part of the problem with MUDs is that there's a larger learning curve than for getting into Everquest or FFXI. So, would some MUD veterans like to give some suggestions on how to reach MUD enlightenment?
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Time-base skills..
The main example I know of is a game I play eve-online..
Basically it is real-time skills with levels, each level of each skill is progressive in taking a longer amount of time.
Some users choose miner/builder skills and go that route, other go solid fighting. But you do cap-out and because the times are progressively longer to train everyone at a certain point reach the same level (basically, but in their respective/specialized fields..)
After playing some of the others like Lineage and EQ etc.. I think this way is better..
For some skills at huge level they can take days and days to train up (in many cases as long to train up the all the prior levels in that skill).. The game does not require constant play to stay competetive which for me as a programmer is beautiful because I get obsessive over games but still need to maintain a real life.
A new player can come in and be competetive (except actual player skill) with an oldtimer within four months.. Which in other games with players years old is just not even remotely possible..
Anyway, good game
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
I agree with most of this article, but I think that even experienced players drive bad design in MMO games. The reason is that almost all players will prefer a feature that helps them over one that makes for a good world.
Player death is a good example - I can see how it would make the game world better, however the idea of continually accreting power is incredibly seductive. Of course, the root problem may be the huge range of powel levels in these games, if I have to play for months just to get to a stage I can challenge any interesting monsters I'm certainly not going to accept player death.
Nuclear War Mud
/. not like me much anymore... *sigh*
http://mud.astrakan.hig.se/index2.html
Cyberpunk type mud... old and established and has an automated tour guide if a live one is not available.
If you want a head start on the mud experience, start spending 14+hrs a day at the computer, ignore friends and family, and leave your phone off the hook (flashback to dial-up days) so nobody can reach you.
If you are a student, drop all your classes as well. They get in the way of real mudding excellence.
Posted anonymous, cause somebody at
For many years, I played a small MMORPG called Drakkar. Drak had a couple hundred players, a well established social structure, and in general a great community of people to play with. There was great respect for the few players who had the dedication to master the game, and these players generally acted in an honorable fashion to inspire others to do the same. The game went through several changes of hands, as with such a low subscriber base it was far from a money maker. Eventually it wound up back in the hands of its original creator, who had become an EQ addict since selling the game off. He saw the success of EQ and saw dollars and cents, so started changing the game. Balances were destroyed, characters were nerfed, advancement was greatly speeded, massive sections were added to the game...
And it no longer "felt" like Drakkar. Old-time players left in droves. Players who had been dedicated to this game, building characters for YEARS, left in disgust. The Drakkar community now had quick turnover, rude players, no social structure... everything that made it a great game was gone. Yes, there were more subscriptions, yes it might have been making money, but the game itself started to suck. Now, people start and might play for six months, then get bored. New players are the only thing keeping subscriptions up, and as the graphics and engine become more dated and bloated, the game will undoubtedly die. If it had kept its original flavor, I have a feeling the old-time dedicated players, such as myself, would have stayed with it for many years to come, and while not profiting, the game would have survived as an example of the really cool communities that can develop on the internet. Now, it's just another example of a big pile of filth thrown out there to milk a percieved cash cow. Shame, really... it was a great game, once.
A lot of what he says in the article applies to all on-line communities. Prodigy, Compuserve, AOL, they all suffer from this ebb and flow of oldbies and newbies. One case in point is this community Gaia Online. It's a simple world built around phpBB with some clever avatar scripting built in (among other things). It's currently still in beta but has suffered through various periods of transition where oldbies will up and leave, exhibiting the same behavior as the author stated in his article.
AnimeNEXT anime convention
The examples reveal this guy to be just as tainted as the gamers he disdains. Let's run it down:
Permanent Death
He lists all kinds of advantages of a Permanent Death world, and they are real and worht considering, but he conveniently ingores the downside: PD discourages risk-taking. Once people play a character long enough, they become invested in the success of that character, and want to keep playing it. Therefore, they will avoid any challenge which they are not certain to survive. Fantasy adventures are supposed to be about getting in over your head once in a while, not simply chopping up little bunnies with your sword often enough to be called a hero.
Instancing:
He laments that this will make you feel like you are not interacting with the world, but how is that any different from "monster farming", where you are still making zero impact on the gaming world. Raid the orc city as many times as you like, and wipe them all out including the king. In five minutes, they will all still be there. Instancing reduces lag and allowes you and your team to go on small adventures where your characters are the sole heroes, and return to the main gathering places as champions who went off and did something where help could not be called for. It works remarkably well, unless you have been trained to believe that this is not The Way It Should Be.
Teleportation:
Anybody who traveled by foot and boat from Erud to Kelethin back in the early days of Everquest before 'ports became easy to come by will be able to tell you that teleportation is a TERRIFIC idea. Few things in a Graphical MMORPG can possibly be more boring that running, by yourself, across miles and miles of terrain which you've seen before. You can't even get up and fetch a cup of coffee while doing it, as you need to be careful to avoid running into unwanted conflicts. This is Not Fun. Why would anybody want to play a game which is Not Fun?
Banks:
In any convincing reality, people should have places to keep stuff besides their pockets and backpacks. City of Heroes has "guild halls" planed for this purpose, which will even be exposed to the chance of burglary raids by PC super-villians, adding yet another dimension of interesting game-play.
This line was telling:
Player: You don't have teleporting! How can I rejoin my group if I miss a session?
Designer: Well gee, maybe by omitting teleportation I'm kinda dropping a hint that you can have a meaningful gaming experience, without always having to group with the same people of the same level and run a treadmill the whole time?
Look, I have often enjoyed meeting somebody from Bumblefuck, Egypt and striking up a friendly conversation followed by a couple hours of gaming together, but most of us play multi-player games for the sake of enjoying the company of steady associations, either among friends from outside the game, or among a tight group of friends who meet in-game (which is the whole reason people form guilds in the first place.) Anything which makes it more difficult to team up with people you know and like being around should probably be considered a design flaw.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Bartle mentions there.com as an example. When I was feeling restless at my job, I interviewed at there.com. During the interview they asked me a bunch of simple programming questions and then they asked me if I knew perlDB, I asked them if they were really designing a MOG or just some small scale accounting software (at this point I knew I did not want to work for this clueless company). MOGs are notorious for high load on resources (especially at peak times), using anything less than C/C++ with thin layer DB client (DB in at least a small cluster to start) is just asking for trouble.
:)
I asked them what they thought of the Bartle book (Designing Virtual Worlds one) and the guy never heard of it, nor did he hear of the mud-dev lists. From what I understood, they had marketing and sales tightly involved in the design process. I got out of there as fast as I could. It's like you are rocking on a chair and you lean just a little too far, that's how it felt.
Their highlight: They offered in-game items for sale for real money, however most you could buy was a dune buggy and some flashier clothes that you could use to impress members of the opposite sex (who were most likely members of the same sex). Youcan do this in real life and actually have a slight chance of getting laid.
Me> Hi, I'm new here, I don't know anything about MUDding
Old Timer> Okay, well it's pretty simple. Just follow me.
> (Old Timer) Exits.
Me> Where did he go? How do I follow him? This sucks.
Likewise with instancing, if instead of letting a party kill a monster in their own space on the server, simply design the content so that the resources don't need to be campped. Come up with some completely different solution.
The arguments I've seen against perma-death and for instancing all seem to assume that a game that chooses to implement these features differently from the mainstream would still make the same fundamental design mistakes that require you to spend 2 years of mind-numbing tedium to build up a character. If you can have fun with the character right off the bat, and camping resources were effectively impossible, then perma-death becomes a lot more acceptable and instancing becomes unnecessary.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Great, so he argues that the designers should force me to experience the things that I hate the very most about MMORPGs. I love being able to play with just my friends, because in my experience 90% of other people on a given online anything suck. Occasionally I will attempt to group with other people, and occasionally I will find a good one, but good god, don't force me to play with B0N3D3WD and PL4T3D00D.
I like teleportation because I really don't want to waste my real time spending a half hour running across a massive continent to get somewhere (maybe the first time, okay) just because you really want me to have to see the trees that you placed out there and you want to slow down my consumption of content with another useless treadmill.
The funny thing is that I mostly agree with his 1-4 premises, but then he just uses those to justify lazy designer/implementer decisions. If I read him correctly, City of Heroes sucks horribly (and just happens to be fun as hell) and Star Wars Galaxies really is a much better game (that just happens to be a tedious grind).
Let's not forget what I want here. I want long term gratification through increased skills and bling bling, but more importantly small chunks of immediate gratification. I don't have time to devote eight hours a day to an MMORPG. If you insist on making my hour of play unfun because of your silly ideas of how I should be playing, I will indeed cancel my subscription.
Disclaimer: I am NOT an expert on MMORPGs. I have never designed a MUD, or even played one for very long. I have never tried EverQuest or any other pay-per-month MMORPG.
/specifically/ to create a character and keep it, and watch it progress. For these people, the goal of the game is to steer their character to success in life by (completing all the quests / gaining an honorific title / becoming a PvP champion / whatever). Does that make them permanent "newbies"? Does that make their decision to grow a single character a "wrong" decision? No, it means that they aren't the same kind of player with the same goals as Bartle.
/he/ cannot design a viable, long-term world with non-permanent death does not mean that it's a bad idea. It just means that he cannot reconcile it with his idea of what an online world should be.
/excellent/ online world for people who viewpoints similar to his. But there's a universe that's a lot larger than his world, despite the fact that he can't see it.
This article looks like nothing more than whining from the old guard. Bartle talks about "a virtual world" as if there is some set idea of what this thing should be, and that there is a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it.
Bullshit. There are as many kinds of players as there are individual people on the Earth. Bartle thinks that everyone wants to play the same kind of game that he does, and he's embarassingly incorrect.
For example, perma-death. Bartle argues that it is a poor design decision, and that people who have gotten attached to their characters are only attached because of the game's poor design. Bartle has obviously never heard of The Sims.
Many people play online games
There is also an interesting (and dangerous) psychological aspect to permanent death. Virtual avatars are a way in which people express themselves. A player may build up a character to specifically match some aspect (or desired aspect) of his or her real life. For example, someone might role-play a flirtatious character because he (or she) feels socially rejected in the real world. What do you think the effect is when that character dies in a permenant and irrevocable way?
Perma-death is just one example, of course. But Bartle doesn't back up any of his claims with anything more than "that's not the way I think it should be done." Just because
And comparing the sales figures for The Sime to the total subscription count of every MMORPG / MUD in existance, I think that Bartle is strictly in the minority. I'm sure that he's capable of designing an
The problem with MMORPgs and "poor feature creep" and "newbie dominance" is that most companies that are putting MMORPGs on the market want to invest in the engine, and then have the game sit in maintenance mode for 5 years while people pay a monthly fee.
OF COURSE this is going to lose to newbies as the people in it the longest get bored and technology marches on making the engine seem dated. The traditional response to this is "expansions" to try and milk the existing infrastructure for more than it's worth by providing something for people who have already done everything they care to do in the original game.
If MMOs had a 1-2 year lifecycle target (about the development time for a major game these days) instead of these 5 year business plans, you wouldn't need to worry about getting newbies in while retaining the veterans and constant grief/nerf patches and confusing expansions. You would just say "Look, here's the game. It has a scripted timetable and is designed to play through month X of year Y, after which we will phase out support for a new game." Now this will obviously draw heat from "Well what if I didn't get on when the game started and now it's half over it's not fair!" Well there's lots of competition in the market now. Some people want to jump onboard early to become major powers. Others don't care as much and just want a game that they know is stable and has good content, so they'll wait a bit. I'm sure there'd be enough to go around for everyone as this would create more games in the market at once.
People will go buy your new game if your old game was good. This is proven over and over. Gaming is becoming more like hollywood in that gamers are becoming sensitive to the names behind the product and following the ones they like. You don't need to design a game to last forever hoping to keep people, what you need to do is design another better game with the things people like and improve upon it. Then people will buy the new game.
Also, it's about time we need to see MMO games adopt more flexible pricing structures. If you're an addict with no job, school, or life, then $14.95/month is a pretty good deal for 1000 hours of play per month. If you're a "normal" person who can only play an hour a day and maybe 5 on the weekends, then it's not such a great deal. If you're someone who's gotten talked into trying it out by your friends and only want to log on for an hour on saturday to see what everyone's up to, then it sucks. We need to see things like price per game hour plans, or limited time per month plans. Things like $3.99/month for 3 hours/day max, or $4.95 for 50 hours of gameplay whenever you get around to it. Yes the unlimited pricing is good, but you'll attract a whole new class of people if you make the pricing more attractive for the casual gamers, AKA newbies. Also, trying to do this per game is taxing on people playing multiple games from the same studio. If I want to play everquest and starwars galaxies, I should only need to pay one monthly fee. It's pretty obvious I'm not going to be playing both at once, I'll haeve to split my time between them. MMO monthly fees should be company-wide. The price per game hour plans would negate this issue and make pricing fair for players of multiple MMOs.
Also, seeing MMOs take advantage of the tendancy of people to sell off their stuff would be interesting. Instead of banning ebay in the license agreement, why not embrace it and have your own in-game market where you take a percentage? Alot of people have money but not time. Right now they're at a huge disadvantage to those with time but not money. If I work full time and my friend doesn't, I can't keep up with him in game. If I could buy my way up then it wouldn't be as much of an issue. If people could sell their high powered characters and equipment then they could probably fund their entire experience with some effort and not have to pay monthly fees they might not be able to afford. Second Life does something like this now, and it seems to work.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
It doesn't work in a massively multiplayer setting, because:
In a P&P game, you're only playing for a few hours every week, and even those few hours are 10x slower than an MMORPG. If you speed it up to MMO speeds and consider that people play every day or every other day, you'd be dying at an incredible rate.
This doesn't even take into account the fact that in P&P games, you have a human controlling the other side, who can back off if they're leniant and don't want to wipe out an entire party - and can create an encounter to directly match your party strength from the start.
In a P&P game, the DM has the luxury of providing new content every time the group plays, whereas a MMORPG doesn't.
"It lets them play from other angles" is just plain designer railroading, forcing them to see the same content over and over again because, hell, you spent a lot of work on it! Everyone should see every nook and cranny of your work.
How about no? If I want to see it from other angles, I'll create multiple characters.
The 'default fiction' for real life is dying if you don't eat and drink in a few days. The 'default fiction' for the middle ages is that you die if you get any kind of major wound. These things aren't fun, which is the reason we play games.
While I agree that Player Death in MMORPG's at the moment leaves something to be desired, saying "These noobs have no idea, back in the day..." isn't a valid solution either.
There's this new idea in the software community called User Centered Design. Professor Bartle might find it a bit radical. It revolves around the idea of actually identifying what potential users want out of your product, and what the most natural method of achieving these requirements are for your portential users. A big part of UCD is knowing when to ignore your users, but to claim that it is an inherent property of users to always want what they don't really want is a pretty big leap. It is an arrogant claim that merits more serious justification than the axioms this article tries to pawn off on its audience. I'm not being entirely fair with the above. I think there is a definite place for virtual worlds that explore the ramification of world laws that might never be accepted by commercial audiences. Hobbies and Academia are wonderful things.
"They're dictating design through a twisted "survival of the not-quite-fittest" form of natural selection that will lead to a long-term decay in quality, guaranteed."
Bullshit. guaranteed. Just having newbies in and of themselves dictate design won't kill a MMORPG... The first and formost benefit I see in doing this is a more common sense-centric game. One that can easily accept new players as well as seasoned veterans... Unless, for some reason you consider yourself gaming's elite and shun growth in your MMOOMOROOMPG world. If that's the case, your an elitist primadonna and the game would probably be better without you anyway, especially if you've forgotten you were new once too.
Now if they were given carte blanc authority over the entire design, I would tend to agree that this would be a bad move. The developer's original vision tend to be key to the success in any game made, but simply getting noobs to help make the game? Personally, I'd take the opposite tact-- It means they want to make the game as approachable as possible for new members that continue to revitalize the game.
In moderation, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this approach and frankly, the writers of that story sound like jaded elitist gamer bitches.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
did you actually RTFA or just skim it?
his main point seems to be a fairly articulate position that features in virtual worlds are not selected on good long time design merits, but rather on short term individual wants.
I have quite a bit of experience of this sort of world evolution from the rubber sword wielding Live Action Role Play communities in England. As most of them started very small and grew in dribs and drabs, it is fair to say the systems owe more to evolution than overall design.
To take the first point Permanent Death, you are absolutely right that people dislike it because they don't enjoy losing their investment, and i have seen many LARP systems with quick and permanent death evolve into Nerf love fests by the players (who are also the monsters in their spare time) because of precisely that reason, players hate to lose their investment, and so no one ever gets killed. The bitter twist however that those systems become very dull and because there is no real risk, and with no risk there is no sense of achievement.
Other systems that have a more gradual Perm Death System (three strikes and you're out - type affairs) don't tend to have the self-nerfing evolution, and such systems have more achievement and excitement because characters perm die.
the reason i think is simple... people choose what is good for them, not what is good for the game, and so if they have the power they will actually destroy the game they are playing...
(btw the games you designed were they stand-alone or MMOGS? I ask, because he makes the point that the design evolution of the two are quite different.)
Unfortunately, your response suffers from similar problems as the original article. Fewer, but nontheless.
1) Your argument assumes that player improvement is constant and content increase is not. This is not, in fact, required to be the case. Now, in current MMORPGs the rate of expansion is significantly less than the rate of player improvement, and this is dictated by economics to some degree. However, as long as we're talking about theoreticals, here...
Consider how MMORPGs actually work. You start off at the beginning of the game, and you're working your way toward a mythical high point where you've done it all- except that, of course, that's not actually a place you want to stay. At the same time, a return to where you've been before is also hardly what you're interested in. What players want is a permanent existance in the "in-the-process-of-winning" state that they played in between levels 1 and MAX_LEVEL. Permadeath is a "hack" to achieve this- if you keep resetting to 1, of course you can't hit MAX_LEVEL.
Permadeath doesn't actually *solve* problems, though. All it does is reduce the number of people willing to take a risk-free path long enough to reach and stay at the top. Unfortunately, most players don't find the risk-free path particularly interesting. There needs to be risk, as always... but if the risk is too big, and for most players permadeath is almost always too big a risk, then people will avoid the risk if there's anyway around it. And since quitting is always an option...
2) Instancing. Your leap from quests to quests causing instancing to quests are bad is, quite frankly, fully of a few too many holes. The cause of instancing is, quite specifically, having too many players for a given amount of content. Take content A, which can support at most Y players, and must have at least X players to be "interesting" in a game that's intended to be group oriented. If the number of players is below X, well, there's not much anyone can do about that except find ways to draw more people there (possibly causing the same problem elsewhere, but that's another issue). However, if the number of players is above Y, we have two options, at least we have two that have been used thus far: instance content, or add new content. Designers of course attempt to go for new content when possible, as it improves player retention (and makes for a better game, who would argue that?). The problem is, again, one of economics: instancing is much better "bang for the buck". Assuming sufficient content to keep players *interested*, if there are still more players than the content will support, instancing assists in that regard. Especially given the knowledge that player population fluctuates during the course of the MMORPG lifecycle as the average level increases and lower zones become less crowded, instancing can help alleviate the problem of having too few players for a set of content by merely reducing the number of instances of that content.
As for quests being bad... I don't think you know what you're arguing for there. What you want constantly dynamic content and quests, which is a great idea- except for infeasibility and player annoyance at not having a chance at content, as I posted about elsewhere. Quests only give the game linearity if you force them to, doing one quest, then another, then another, in a perfectly linear sequence ad infinitum. That's hardly the only way to play a game, thouogh, and personally I find that the occasional quest adds some spice to the game. If you'd like to read every spoiler site out there so that you know every quest backward and forward, then sure, everything becomes robotic. Spoiler sites are hardly required reading, however.
Also, quests hardly cause the game to have an end. Player improvement outrunning content addition causes the game to have an end. Quests really have nothing to do with it except that they are part of that content.
A note on emergent gameplay. There's a limit to how much of this will occur, and developers know this.
The ringing of the division bell has begun... -PF
The biggest problem that I find with perma-death is the concept of 'doing it again.' Especially when even doing it the first time wasn't that much fun. Most MMORPGs are played for the destination, not the jouney. Perma-death compounds that by making you play this unwanted journey over and over. Before I'd fully recommend perma-death, I'd have to make sure the journey is fun.
I still think, when it becomes feasible that perma-death is a 'better way.' But there's no chance I'd want it in todays MMORPGs.
""The cause of instancing is, quite specifically, having too many players for a given amount of content.""
Exactly right...and the cause of that is not having enough content. So, what you need is content that dynamically expands as the number of players expands. The best way to do that is to have the players create the content.
The reason quests are bad isn't that they give you something to do. It's not that they don't 'add spice to the game.' They are bad for the sole reason that they are designed by the developer.
There is no way the developer can hand-tailor enough quests to satisfy an ever growing population. It takes longer to design a quest than to do it.
AO, CoH, and some others tried dynamic quests...a quest generator machine. Instead of dynamic, the result was random and repetative. (CoH is actually just repetative gameplay...they tried VERY hard on their stories.)
The real answer kills two birds. Player generated content. A way for players to generate their own quests.
Look at the quests in MMORPGs. "Kill 10 frogs and bring their skins." "Fetch me some yellow chalk." "Take this package to Fuzzle" They actually have names. 'Kill tasks', and "Fedex quests." Is that what you really want?
There there are occaisional 'epic quests,' which are basically combinations. "Get the magic stone from Listerine, (by killing him) and then get the magic scepter from Gargle (by killing him) and take them to the magic mountain guarded by Rinse, (by killing him) and make the "SuperWand" and bring it to me." That's the 'spice' you were talking about. (And I actually agree.)
But think of this...
Players need yellow chalk, and they can't always go get it, or don't always know where it is. Instead of an NPC sitting around asking for it, if there was a way for a player to make a 'quest' for someone to bring them some, two tasks would be fulfilled.
Players need frog skins, or they need a monster slain (guarding a resource node or something.) They could design a 'quest' for this.
And finally...players need something to do. There are a great number of 'wanna-be' game designers who would love to make content for a MMORPG, (just look at the mods for other games.) If you provided a simple mechanism, you'd have people churning out 'epic level' quests that rival the best the developers could do.
Quests aren't a bad thing soley because they exist, quests are a bad thing because the developer is filling a niche that really they should have designed tools and allowed the player to fill them.
Sure you'll get some lemon content that way....but there are stupid quests already that the developers put in as filler. However, you'd never run out of content that's for sure, and it would be dynamic and follow the needs of the server, and congestion would clear itself up simply by supply and demand.
That's not to say the developer does nothing. They have to train the players how to do this. They have to get them 'started.' The developers become simply the catalyst. The players will take care of the rest.
That's why I said Quests were a bad thing. I agree that instancing is 'not enough content for the players.' (You said too many players for the content.) It's the developer generated quests that are causing that lack.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
Funny you mention SWG, as that's where I picked up opinons that completely agree with what was in the article.
Take the Jedi Problem, for instance. The SWG timeline is in a place where there should be almost no Jedi. If there are any around, they're in hiding from the Empire. However, players want to be a Jedi (point #1 from the article), for various reasons, so the developers made it possible to become one. Obviously, in keeping with this area of the Star Wars timeline, Jedi numbers should at least be kept low, and those that are should be in constant hiding.
Let's go over the orginal system for becoming a Jedi, just for review (this was replaced recently, but most existing Jedi right now became Jedi like this):
There are around 30 professions in the game. When your character is created, five of them are picked at random. You aren't told what they are. If you master all five, you open up your Force Sensitive slot and can work your way through the Jedi proffessions. To help this process along, 'holocrons' were added that would tell you one of the proffessions you needed. Master that, get another holocron, and then you get the second proffession, and so on. But you won't be told what the last proffession is.
Now, that's a daunting challenge. If I was a developer sitting back 1-2 years ago, before the game was even in beta, I would have thought that this, combined with permadeath on Jedi, would be plenty to keep the Jedi population low and in hiding.
But that's not what happend. Players complained that permadeath wasn't fair, so it was removed (see point #2 and #4 in the article). The developer's big mistake, and one that I would have made myself if I was a dev, is in underestimating the willingness of some players to be Jedi (which could fall under point #3, in that the game is based on a movie, and people want it to be just like their interpretation of that movie). Optimized grinds were created that would allow many professions to be mastered in a few hours--if you were willing to go through the utter boardom of sitting there, clicking the same blasted buttons over and over again. Someone with time off and enough drive and willingness to be board out of their skull could make Jedi in a week.
Thus, there are Jedi everywhere in SWG. Many of the non-Jedi complain about the large precentage of Jedi players, which also falls under our reinterpreted point #3.
More people complain, so the devs decide to do something about it by redevloping the Jedi system. The same people then complain about that (point #4), whining that the Jedi got two major game patches to themselves. But that's exactly what it would take to fix the system!
So here's my conclusion: The Jedi Problem is more the player community's fault than the devs. The devs made a system that, in all reasonableness, would seem to be able to keep the Jedi population low. They turned out to have missed a variable (the number of players determined enough to do the grind), and they were forced to conced the removal of a key design point (permadeath) or risk having lots of players delete their accounts and take the cash flow with them.
Not a typewriter
The general theme from the story I received was a MUD programmer who is bitter about the evolution of MMO's. I would even go so far as to say he is bitter about his lack of participation in this new market. That is merely an opinion but the feel of what he wrote is less of an observation and more of a rant.
Games progress to meet gamer demand. If this was not the case, Wolfenstein 3D would still be the hottest FPS to date. However when it comes to MMO's you need a story line to justify the world you are in.
It is a matter of who your target audience is. On my old server for EQ, only one member of our whole guild roleplayed. The rest of us enjoyed the social setting and general challenge of upper end targets and the strategies you had to employ. I wouldn't say the games are designed by newbies but they are designed to have large target audiences. No matter how you look at it, the company who invests 2 or 3 years of developement needs to make money in the end. To do that you need a game that is both appealing to a vast market of individuals and you need the game to have a long progression curve.
On his death idea or suggestion, that would be a game killer. Especially one you wish to make money off of. Lets use EQ as an example. That game in its prime took weeks if not a couple months to be a mid level toon. If you added a permanent death aspect to the game then you would have to drastically change the leveling speed in which players progressed.
High end raiding would never have been an employable aspect. Same can be said for soloing, quad kiting, swarm kiting, AE kiting, fear kiting and AE Nuke Groups. Many of the fun aspects that made EQ enjoyable from a solo, group and raid standpoint would be eliminated completely. What would be the point in playing since at some point, all your hard work is going to be erased due to an accidental death.
The death model may fit a fast paced MUD but for a game as large and as vast as EQ, it will not work.
I will give him credit when it comes to the story. MUD's pretty much own that hands down since pretty much the whole game relies on description and mental depth. You cannot argue that the Kunark and Velious expansions didn't have a story that was vast. Both employed an impressive model of lore. It was Luclin and beyond that basically sucked when it came to how far the rabbit hole would take you.
The problem is that it basicaly divides games into newbies and not-newbies. The truth is that you have two diferent kind of gamers:
a) Newbie (eye candy seeker) and old (limited spare time) gamer.
b) Hard core gamer. This one is no longer a newbie but still has plenty of free time.
The problem is that you can not have both. Either you catter to (a) knowing that they will leave once the initial thrill wears off/once they get bored or you catter to (b) that doesn't mind investing several days in learning the basics and several weeks in finishing long complicated goals.
You can't have tea and no tea
with no risk there is no sense of achievement
I don't buy this. There is certainly achievement without risk. In real life, when I complete a project, even a small one, I feel acheivement. What did I risk? Nothing. It was inevitable that I would finish, and I knew how long it would take, but I feel achievement all the same. In games, it's the same, only more fun along the way. If I reach some kind of milestone, risky or not, I feel achievement.
people choose what is good for them, not what is good for the game
There is no difference between the two. It's entertainment. If it's good for the players, it's good for the game. If the players are enjoying themselves, the game is going well. There is no other standard of measurement.
Live action is vastly different than computer games. Computer games are, by nature, far more limited. They don't lend themselves to evolution in the same way, because they follow such a very strict set of rules.