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."

Comments

Yeah, okee

[stratjakt]

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.

Massively Multiplayer Online Games

[Antonymous Flower]

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.

Argh

[daeg]

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.

Re:Gordon Walton.. Customers come first

[grazier]

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.

more charts for those that like charts

[bartash]

There'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.

Mailing Lists

[pdamoc]

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

thesis project from 1999

[hin72]

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.

Re:Gordon Walton.. Customers come first

[drew]

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...