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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!
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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
.sig
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.
[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.
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.
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.
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'
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
I think you have to expand your paradigm a bit. For example.. do you truly object to 'Permanent Death'.. or are you really objecting to 'Replaying the same content again'?
I believe he's really objecting to 'Replaying the same content again', which makes him fall under Bartle's #3:
Point #3: Players judge all virtual worlds as a reflection of the one they first got into.
In many games, PM would lead to replaying content, but that doesn't make PM an inherently bad thing. Actually, most of the posts so far that object to Bartle seem to fall under #3. They object to PD, no teleportation, and no instances because they imagine what it would do to the games they know, not what it would mean for a New And Better Game (tm). And that would make that New And Better Game fail, which is Bartle's point.
This is not a sig.