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How Gamers View Their MMOs
GamerDNA is trying out what they call their Discovery Engine, a system that uses metadata from users to classify games and identify which have similar traits. Massively describes it thus: "Once the gamerDNA community continues to contribute to something like this, it builds up an enormous database of terminology based on actual player knowledge, not just shiny PR words thrown together to promote a game. These search terms can end up being unique to a specific genre, and ultimately lead gamers to exactly the types of games they're looking for." GamerDNA tested the system out on some of the popular MMOs, and they've posted the results. They look at how MMO players identify themselves within the game, how they describe the setting, and what basic descriptive phrases they use in reference to the games.
You're in a giant wheel inside a cage. You paid $50 for the wheel, and it costs you $15 a month to rent the cage it's in.
Alongside you are other wheels inside other cages, and attached to each wheel is a pulley system which connects to a hook, dangling a bucket of food. You run forward and the pulley moves and the bucket drops, and you reach inside and grab some food and eat it. But now the bucket is lighter, and so it swings back up on the arm it's attached to, and it's a bit higher than it was before.
You just ate, but since you're running so much in this wheel, you're hungry too, so you run a bit faster and sure enough the pulley turns and eventually the bucket comes back down and you eat some food. You feel a bit stronger now.
Hey, that guy in the wheel next to you has already eaten three times. You'd better run faster to keep up. There... now you're not hungry any more. But again, all that running to get the food has made you hungry again. And that bucket is higher now, almost out of reach. You'd better run faster to get it down here so you can eat again.
Maybe some day you can pay for a new wheel that faces a different direction. That would be AWESOME.
P.S. Also there's some pictures of elves or something on the wall in front of you. Maybe space.
You should have spent more time grinding refreshes.
While it sounds like an interesting idea, I'm not sure how it'll compare to:
google reviews
I can't personally see myself searching for:
A post-apocalyptic fun fantasy featuring an unlikely sexy hero fighting other players in space
But I guess somebody else might.
Disclaimer: I am a former WoW player and a current EVE player. I am not employed, nor am I (beyond the extent of being a player) affiliated with the makers of any game.
It's interesting to see how EVE is distinct and separate as compared to the other games. This is for a number of reasons, the first of which is the learning curve, but there are other factors. The learning curve tends to weed out teenage WoW players; being accused of engaging in anything but PvP leads to the derogatory label of "carebear". The focus on PvP coupled with the harsh punishment of failure (ships do not respawn, they are lost when they are destroyed, and all ships are player-manufactured) is enough to scare away some players that are able to overcome the learning curve. The game is not for casual players, but it -is- fun. If you haven't played, please give it a shot, there are trial periods available.
Obviously, EVE is going to be a bit unusual here, given its non-fantasy setting. But the thing I find interesting about the EVE numbers is that EVEâ(TM)s players did not get creative with the traits. 91% said the setting was âoespace.â Everyone else said âoesci-fi fantasy.â The end. No long tail of craziness, no outliers, no one guy putting down âoegay.â
I think this reflects on the player base. I've never played Eve, but I have a feeling there's no equivalent of "Naked dancing mailbox elves" or general immature mischief.
A tiny handful of WAR players chose âoemassively multiplater,â but when I say tiny, I mean less than 1%. WAR players went overwhelmingly with RVR, with 45% of players choosing that trait.
Yes I think I would agree with them that I would prefer RvR over any type of Massive MultiPlater.
The Long Now Foundation
MMO Focus: Traits of Popular Subscription Games
The BlogPost is first of all presented with colours that make it hard for some of us to read. White on Black text causes me, and others like me, physical discomfort and can lead to migraines. Something several websites have yet to acknowledge. But be that as it may.
For something called MMO Focus it seems very unfocused at times, riddled with generalization, non-objective and unsubstantiated statements.
Simply put, there are a crazy number of people who boot up a game in order to play as a soldier. Sure, that's a reflection of how many games there are where the main character is a soldier of some kind, but the games wouldn't be produced if there weren't a tremendous hunger to portray that archetype. Interesting, given that our culture does not encourage people to become actual soldiers.
Okay. What culture are you speaking of here? MMO players hail from many different nations, and cultures, across the world and as such their views upon different "archetypes" could vary.
One thing MMO people do that isn't done by players of other genres is to identify very closely with their particular classes. This habit tends to fragment their "playing as" trait participation, since each game has multiple classes, and often unique names for the classes.
Really? Some do, some don't. Unless you provide some actual data substantiating this; it's just perception and generalization.
"Massively multiplayer" didn't even make the How It's Played list for EVE. The top How It's Played trait for EVE was "complexity" with 24%. A tiny handful of WAR players chose "massively multiplater," but when I say tiny, I mean less than 1%. WAR players went overwhelmingly with RVR, with 45% of players choosing that trait. 32% of LOTRO players selected "massively multiplayer," but almost as many (31%) chose "story." 29% of WOW players chose "raids" for How It's Played, a trait that doesn't appear in the lists of the other three games in our sample at all.
Okay... could the information here perhaps be presented in a way that is understandable?
WOW players are completely bonkers. They have given forty one possible options, at first glance. On second glance, the problem is getting them to agree on terms. LOTRO players, for example, all tend to simply say "NPC" when they mean any kind of non-player character, from monster to humanoid to instance boss. WOW players are moreâ¦creative. Terms include undead, demons, monsters, mobs, NPCs, elementals, murlocs, goblins, aliens, epic bosses, dragons, and more are all on the list, and all in statistically significant numbers, too. Once you lump them all into a single NPC category (and consolidate "alliance" with "alliance scum" and so on), you get a slightly more rational twelve traits.
I guess the amount of people playing WoW over the others dosn't affect the variation in their answers? And calling WoW players Bonkers is distracting and not helping presenting the "data" at all.
This time, LOTRO and EVE players are both tightly focused, and both WOW and WAR players canâ(TM)t seem to agree. Again, that's not a disadvantage in an MMO â" you want to appeal to as many people as possible!
Again, size of player base perhaps affecting some of these findings? The larger the base the more diversity.
Good luck with the project as a whole, though I feel you might want to reconsider your approach to how you interpret the data before you make it a fundament for any type of larger project.
The Long Now Foundation
Funny how the site chose four western MMOs (three of which are 90% the same old mainstream fantasy cliche stuff) and are basing their conclusions on that.
No big Korean, Chinese, or Japanese MMOs on their list. No free-to-play ones either. No browser-based, 2D or text-only MMOs.
Great way to show the whole internet you fail at statistics, guys. Here's a bit of help for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biased_sample
I have played almost all the MMO's that have existed up to Burning Crusade. I cannot honestly fathom what posessed me to play those games. I took up guitar (not guitar hero, the real thing with strings) and spend more time playing with my kids. I tried to play WoW again a month or two ago and before that temporarily reactivated my LOTRO account, and I honestly do not see what is supposed to be fun about those games. WHen I get the bug to do some gaming I fire up the Xbox 360. No need to wait for a group to form and no worry about leaving early if the mood strikes to go play the guitar or the kids get bored with what they are into. Even better I save about $45 per month on no game subscriptions (used to play three or so of them at a time, or at least pay so I could). EVE online sounded really cool, then I logged in and it was just so ridiculously boring. Last log in for WoW I walked across a piece of Shattrath City and cancelled the account before I could even make up my mind where to go. The old school games seemed to have a lot more challenge, or maybe it was just that they were new. Anyone else find that they were once hardcore MMO fans and now totally do not play them?
We had to imagine the wheel, the bucket, the pictures and the cage cause it was all text.
And we could only play on weekends cause there was no staying up late or sleepovers on a school night.
And our parents drove us to the place where we would imagine all that.
And it was raining. And we were cold. And hungry. All of the time.
And we LIKED it!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I love how everything like this ignores the #2 (sometimes #3) MMO, Runescape, because it isn't as easily classified.
No character classes, skill based leveling, etc. Of course there is a giant base of 12-16 year olds that play it, but there are some "real people" too... not to mention it is one of the oldest surviving MMOs.
They put up some pretty useless graphs with very little information about how they arrived at those numbers and how they interpret them. It's worthless to make any inferences about all gamers without explaining their data.
First of all, they provide no checks for problems such as autocorrelation or multicollinearity between their various survey categories. That aside, it doesn't look like they even did any regression analysis at all. They, in effect, said "duhh, this is 10% of all the answers so it must mean something!". Bull. Just because the response rate for a particular category is 10% doesn't mean it is statistically significant in the academic sense.
Sorry, but as a professional data analyst, I get really pissed when people collect some (possibly non-random) data, do some half-assed analysis, post some pretty colors on a graph and say "Eureka! I haz solved wurld peez!"
The other day i was wondering where to ask gamers a question.
I'm on a budget so i play the old fashioned MUD's (google is your friend)
My favorite is Tempora Heroica
titan.ibiblio.org:2895
(Anyone remember telnet?)
Question is: how much more fun are the pay to play muds with the graphics and sound?
I have a good time just hanging out online, solving quests and teaming up.
Don't want to spend the money for the "newer" MMO's.
opinions?
Pretty much they're just putting it there to be interpreted as is. They're saying 'hmm that's kind of interesting how people categorize before dealing with correlation'.
This is pretty much all before actually correlating data and making actual meaning out of it.
It's essentially taking raw data and noticing a couple interesting pieces in it before you start to do anything with it.
Well, shit. If you have kids, then playing an MMO is pretty ridiculous. But, if you are a single, pathetic loser like myself, then MMO's make a lot of sense.
I'd still be playing WoW if I could forego the monthly payment and just pay for the times I actually login. But if I have a busy month it feels dumb to shell out 15 bucks for logging in twice to check auctions.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
I am a SPL myself, but MMOs still don't make sense to me.
What, you had _pictures_ on the walls? You young 'uns don't know how good you had it. Back in my day we just had the description. And were grateful even for that.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Why not just admit that you got sick of the same old bs? By nature people tend to get bored of the same thing day in and day out. Eventually we "wake up" and realize something was pointless. We do this with MMO's, we do this in relationships (cmon how many ex's did you walk away from and say to yourself, wtf was i thinking?), we do this with hobbies.. I'm sure some guy has gotten bored of the same old thing with his guitar and took up mmos.
Variety is what we crave...just, why look back on something that made you happy, with disdain? You were obviously happy enough playing every mmo under the sun for years... why say it was a waste of time? You were having fun!
I took a break from my gaming and did the same thing. I picked up a guitar (its collecting dust now, I should have taken lessons, self taught after 3 months I still couldn't play a song, just a few chords and a scale or two), learned to juggle, took up volleyball (still play), tried yoga, took a tai chi class, a bunch of things.
Lately though I picked up wow again, and trying to figure out how to beat malygos (damn phase 3), and took a break on those other things.
I imagine I'll pick up a lot of those things when I have kids and less free time (alllmost time to start that /hides) But besides the health benefits of the few things (need to do those more often :) ), I am still just as happy... just make sure you are doing what makes you happy, even if that is just running on hamster wheels.
The site is garbage, because the questions used to gather data are flawed. For example: one question is basically "which controller do you think is the best?" and the options are (again, paraphrasing): "A) joystick with 1 button B) NES controller equivalent C) modern dualshock equivalent D) mouse/keyboard"
The problem with this is, while I may have nostalgia for the NES controller, there's no way I'm going to claim it's superior to a modern Xbox 360 controller, and whether a controller or mouse/keyboard combo is superior is entirely dependent on the game being played. It then attempts to use this data to put you into a category for which decade reflects your "gamer heritage". Because I answered honestly, instead of trying to FORCE myself into the 1980's with selective question answering, it makes me look like a newb, when in reality, I'm superior to people stuck in the past because I'm willing to admit when a new tech is superior and adapt/adopt accordingly.
And it's not just this question, ALL the questions are like this. "Which is your favorite bit era? 8 bit, 16 bit, 32 bit". What a fucking stupid question. There were shitty games and good games in each "era", the number of "bits" in the hardware has nothing to do with the quality of the game itself.
If each question was prefaced with "Which of these things do you have the most nostalgia for?" it might make more sense, or might yield some kind of useful results, but as it is you just have a combination of honest answers, stupid biased answers, and answers where people were purposefully trying to get a specific "score" to impress other idiots on the internet.
And no, supporting Child's Play or any other charity does not give you a pass on being a fucking useless, shitty site.
Yeah I have to agree this is an article intended to be read by gamers and presents some initial data. It's not geared towards uptight stat folks. They don't have a statistician writing it, but an expert in MMO's, I don't think I would want to read it, if it was written by and for statisticians.