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IGDA Persistent Worlds White Paper Released
Elonka writes "The Online Games SIG of the IGDA has released the latest in a series of White Papers on the online computer gaming industry. The 2004 Persistent Worlds White Paper (80-page, 457K pdf) had several contributors from across the industry, and gives general "developer to developer" advice, covering everything from a quick overview of major products, to design considerations on multiplayer gameplay and dealing with online communities, to technical considerations, to some stats about the international marketplace, including the rapidly-growing Asian market. Editors included Daniel James of Three Rings Design, makers of Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, and Gordon Walton, VP and Executive Producer at Sony Online and presenter of the Ten Reasons You Don't Want to Make a Massively Multiplayer Game talk at the 2003 Game Developers Conference."
The one feature I have enjoyed the most in any multiplayer game has been the ability to ignore other players. A simple /ignore #playerID and all the n00b, j00 suX, ph33r m3, 1337 bs get's flushed down the toilet.
That's in the white paper, right?
RIGHT!
-Teiresias
Gordon Walton, VP and Executive Producer at Sony Online and presenter of the Ten Reasons You Don't Want to Make a Massively Multiplayer Game
Reason number 11: There ain't enough room for both of us. You just might take business away from EQ, and we'd have to send an army of IP lawyers to bring you down.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I haven't read any of the links but I feel this is a good place to provide my personal feedback on MMOGs. I am just a player.
MMOGs are addictive. The psychological gratifications that normally stem from social interactions in meatspace can be obtained through these online games. Similar gratifications can also be acheived in these games. Consider the team who works on a space probe, launches it and is able to explore a new world. Teams in these games band together to overcome challenges and are rewarded mostly only by the accomplishment. This was my favorite part of Everquest and, in my personal opinion, the redeeming factor of these games. Many who ascend to this level of gameplay eventually become distraught, though. It is my observation that these people don't hate the game. Rather, they are no longer challenged and are no longer exposed to this very satisfying "team accomplishment gratification." They all eventually try other games, find themselves unimpressed by the already-been-done game mechanics and discontinue play of the new game. Many game developers realize that there will always be a 'casual' gamer to cater to in order to secure profit. However, if they only cater to these casual masses their game will just be another lump in the pile. If you please these "hardcore" players who want to be challenged you will be rewarded with their loyalty. Your success as a game designer/developer is only limited by your imagination in game mechanics.
It's pretty common to distribute white papers in PDF format.
An HTML version would have been nice, but it's not completely unexpected to see something like this as a PDF.
Sinch
I am bloody sick of the MMOGs as of late. I want some decent single player games that don't suck. I have enough FPS games to last until the draft of WWIII, where are the cool RPGs and innovative games?
I would consider playing an MMOG if it had a "single-ish" mode. I don't want to be disturbed by others, 90% of them are children anyway. Unfortuantely, they are necessary to support MMOGs as the primary clientelle.
Skimming that paper made me dislike MMOGs even more. Bravo, if that was the intent.
There's some real truth there. But many of those reasons are addressed by the open source model. It's just a pity that there aren't more OSMMOGs out there. Tried out PlaneShift the other day, but while it's really neat in a lot of ways, it's got a ways to go in development.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Except that:
"'Is there any upside here? NO,' Walton grunts. It's simply a necessary (and frustrating) expense."
Is in reference to having to retain lawyers to fight the lawsuits that are filed against the company. It is NOT in reference to customer service.
G
"Plurality should not be posited without necessity." - William of OccamThere's a great chart on page 8 of TFA which shows the number of subscribers to the major MMORPGs. I was curious and found the source of the charts, it's Bruce Sterling Woodcock's site and there's a newer version of the chart I liked here, and there are lots more.
Read Epic the first RPG novel.
Mailing Lists are THE best MMORPG.
Pros:
* They are free...
* You get to choose from a multitude of roles: "programmer", "translator", "artist", "docwriter"
* as in all MMORPGs you get to make new friends.
* you get to use really big tools like Google and SF.net
* sometimes you might even get a real job out of this game where someone pays you to play all day.
Cons:
* graphical quality varies with the level/character...
* some level/character combinations might be a little bit boring
My undergrad thesis with a colleague of mine, back in 1999, was essentially a very, very simple realisation of persistent worlds. We created a three-dimensional version of Pong where all activity in one-half of the arena (in our case it was a cube) was handled by one machine. The other half was, obviously, processed on the second machine. The communication between hosts only consisted of periodic heartbeats and the movement deltas of the paddles. Rendering, I/O, physics and the predictive calculations were all done locally (i.e., the machine on which the person was controlling his/her paddle). When we took one machine offline, the user on the still-active machine was notified but was permitted to simply bounce the sphere against the interior of the cube until he/she got bored.
Our game was written in C using Mesa (a 3D graphics library with an API which is very similar to that of OpenGL). Our development machines were IBM boxes running RedHat Linux 5.x. We got the rendering code all working on Solaris machines too. For networking we used UDP and referred to the Stevens book alot.
The ultimate goal of our humble project was to split our arena into octants. Once all eight (8) machines were online we would remove N < 8 machines from the cluster and see how the remaining machines handled the loss of nodes. Because the network is no longer receiving heartbeats from a given machine, another machine would take responsibility and inherit all the process duties thereafter. Ideally, this transfer of duties is totally transparent to all who are watching and/or playing the game.
What drove our desire investigate persistent worlds back in 1999 was my interest in Quake 2 CTF and deathmatch. To hop from one server to the next the user had to explicity exit the server and reconnect to another. I would have preferred if I could seemlessly "walk through a doorway in the game world" and find myself in a different environment. In the background, of course, all network traffic came from a totally different host running a Quake 2 CTF / deathmatch server.
While there is no doubt that lots of problems can occur in these games, and that Customer Service tends to lack in its quality in most if not all of them - particularly on response times for instance, its also true that the players of many of these games seem to have unreal expectations concerning them.
:)
These are the most complex computer games currently being devised. Balancing all the issues and features involved to try to produce something that feels fair to all players has got to rank up there with some of the more complex projects ever undertaken in programming. Players blame the developers when they can't resolve a balance issue, but they never take into account the complexity of those issues (because they lack the knowledge to undrestand them no doubt), nor the fact that for every single developer involved there may be 20,000 players out there generating problems or uncovering bugs while they play.
As well, these are now the crucibles for the new type of social interaction that is possible online - and many people elect not to act in a socially friendly manner but instead in a socially offensive manner due to their internet anonymity. As a result many of the complaints sent to Customer Service are in fact complaints concerning the actions of other players, not problems with the game. The games need to punish anti-social behaviour in the same manner that society does I think, and its going to take a while to develop models that let that happen. Most people are not into open PvP, or permanent death for characters although those features would resolve many problems if combined in a game
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
this might be insightful except for the fact that he took quotes from two separate reasons and put them next to each other. He does go on to say after the first quote that supporting the customer is essential to success with a subscription based model.
then he goes on to the next reason, which is that you need to retain a lot of good lawyers to run a mmog. it discusses lawsuits in small claims courts from players regarding hacking, cheating, etc. as well as the commonly disputed issue of who owns all of the virtual stuff. in the game.
in short, retaining lawyers is a necessary (and frustrating) expense, not supporting the customer...
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
I agree that it could be stronger in lots of ways, and the technology section is deliberately low-level. Frankly I'm not sure it's useful to even have a technology section, and came close to killing it, but remember our focus; independent developers who are thinking about going into MMPs, not big-co's and experienced MMP developers.
And yes, there are ommissions. Volunteer to contribute to the update and next year's paper!
I'm not sure what you mean about naive economic discussion, though.
The issue with a bounty system is it's exploitable.
Joe Griefer griefs Newbie Dude. Newbie Dude puts bounty on Joe Griefer. Bill Cohort is a friend of Joe Griefer. Joe Griefer flies a newbie ship, drops all his equipment or just picks a generally convenient time to die and lets Bill Cohort kill him. Bill Cohort and Joe Griefer split the bounty.
There are certain situations which eliminate this problem, but it is not a very flexible system and thus not widely applicable.
~Lake