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New Issue Of The Daedalus Project
Nick Yee writes "The Daedalus Project have new findings and a news survey. The Daedalus Project is an ongoing online survey study of MMORPG players that started 5 years ago and has surveyed over 35,000 players. Some highlights of this issue's findings: While the media likes to talk about how "virtual" relationships in MMOs are, about 80% of players actually play with someone they know in real life (a romantic partner, a family member, or a friend). PvP servers attract younger players as well as more men than PvE servers. This has implications for gender-bending rates. On PvP servers, female avatars are much more likely to be played by men. 22% of respondents said that they had purchased virtual gold. On average, these players have spent $135 USD on virtual gold. While older players are more likely to have done so, there were no gender differences."
I was thinking the other day, one of the basic things that is missing from a MMORPG that you get with a tabletop RPG is personal touch of a dedicated Game Master. I can remember playing MUDs where I actually had the freedom to change the world because a GM was there to review what I had done and keep things "in check". This is taken to the obvious extreme with tabletop RPGs where you can do anything after negotiating with the GM. Of course, in a MMORPG there's just way too many other players for you to have a relationship with a GM. In fact, it's almost always company policy that GMs remain out of the game, otherwise everyone will want access to them. Personally, I think that's the wrong way to go. Instead of hiding the GMs the company should be offering their interaction for a fee. To really do this well the development team needs to supply the GM with simple but powerful scripting tools. I'd imagine a conversation might go something like this:
Player: My enchantment resistance is low and I keep losing rolls against Paladins, what can I do?
GM: Well, you could go see the Enchantrist, she can probably supply you with some boots that will boost your enchantment resistance.
Player: Where's the Enchantrist?
GM: Heh! I can't tell you that. But if you ask at the bar in town you're bound to find someone who can.
Player: alright then!
The player then runs off in the direction of town. Meanwhile the GM starts writing a script for one of the bar characters which responds to the keyword 'Enchantrist'. If he gets writers block halfway through writing the list of challenges the player is going to have to face to meet the Enchantrist he can always send some ghouls to intercept the player and delay his arrival at the bar.
Eventually the player gets to the bar and asks around for the Enchantrist. The character planted there by the GM gives the player the instructions and the player sets off on his quest. The quest may have been a pre-existing one or the GM may have coded it up just now. With a library of sufficient content and a simple scripting language, it should be easy for a GM to give the illusion of an exciting dynamic world.
How we know is more important than what we know.
That's a worryingly high proportion of players who've engaged in real-world currency trading, particularly as there's no doubt a further margin of people who have also done this trading, but won't admit to it. I play FFXI myself and I'm fairly sure that a few of the people I know in-game have bought gil before, but it is, of course, nigh-on impossible to prove (unless they do something really stupid, like being broke one day and buying a peacock charm, kraken club and scorpion harness +1 on the Auction House the next - and I only know of one person who was dumb enough to do something like that).
To be honest, I'd have thought it would be pretty easy to identify and close down the accounts used for real world currency trade. The game always tells you who has sent you currency, unless it's via an auction-house purchase. Reading IGE's (the largest currency trading site) website, it sounds like they just send gil directly to the recipient. All the GMs would need to do would be make a few purchases (spending maybe a couple of hundred dollars total) and close down the accounts that the gil came from. Rinse and repeat a few times and you'd have made the whole business deeply unprofitable. I'm almost tempted to take matters into my own hand, make a few minimum purchases from IGE, get screenshots of the gil in my delivery box and report the senders to the GMs. Sadly, I've a sneaking suspicion that all this would achieve would be to get my own account suspended. So I won't.
On the topic of PvP, I think the article is right in broad terms about the demographic involved, but perhaps goes a little too far and risks being a bit unfair in the stereotype it builds up. It's true that in the days before FFXI had any PvP at all, the vast majority of the players who were demanding it were immature 14 year olds who wanted to get revenge on somebody who'd annoyed them a week before. Once limited PvP appeared, in the form of ballista, and people realised that PvP works both ways and that immature grief-kiddies tend to have far smaller social networks to call on for backup than the more rounded players, most of the clamour vanished overnight. Ballista these days tends to be played by people who are pretty dedicated and specialised. It's not my thing and I doubt I'll ever be any good at it, but kudos to those who are.
I've played World of Warcraft and while I think it's vastly inferior to FFXI in most respects, I do like the way it's managed to integrate PvP into the game-world without turning it over to the griefers. Having the two major game factions in a de facto state of war, with their own towns and territory, is great for encouraging people to blend the social/organisational challenges of traditional PvE combat with the more tightly defined skillset of PvP. I think that's definitely the model that future MMORPGs (hopefully ones with a bit more depth and challenge than WoW) should be looking to imitate and build upon.
Finally, on the gender issue. I always assume that any character in game is played by a male, no matter the gender of the avatar or anything they say in game, unless I have met them in real life. I do know a couple of women in real life who play the game - they both use male player characters, simply because while the hassling that female pcs get in-game from male teenagers is flattering (and occasionally profitable) at first, it gets old real fast.