New Technique To Help Develop MMORPG Content?

ShipLives writes "Researchers have developed a new method that can predict MMORPG player behavior. The tool could be used by the game industry to develop new game content, or to help steer players to the parts of a game they will enjoy most. I don't think it should replace user feedback, but it's a pretty cool data-driven approach. Ideally, it could help developers make good decisions about new games/expansions."

Comments

User feedback is overrated

[artor3]

Asking users what they think is generally a bad approach to game development. People don't really know what they want. Your questions are likely to be leading (you are not a professional pollster). They might lie about what they found to be difficult if they're embarrassed about losing, or alternatively they might demand that everything get simplified because they want to win, not realizing that it wouldn't be fun if it were too easy. And in competitive games, forget about it. Every class/weapon/tactic that kills them must be nerfed, whatever they like to use must be buffed.

It's far more effective to simply watch them play the game, without speaking to them at all, and see what frustrates them, what confuses them, what they enjoy, and so on.

Unfortunately, the method in TFA(bstract) seems to just evaluate player behavior based on what achievements they have. That will, apparently, tell you what aspects of the game they like best, but it's not going to help much with the small stuff. I suspect Blizzard is already gathering that data anyway.

Re:User feedback is overrated

[Rei]

But then you come to the balance between enjoyment and grief. Sure, you may take enjoyment from raiding a rival faction's cities, but at the same time, if someone raided your city and took your stuff that you had worked hard to accomplish, the shoe is on a totally different foot. The classic PK/Non-PK dilemma. It works for some, but most people get more frustrated with the loss than they feel the reward of the victory, especially when it happens multiple times in a row.

You're right about the "amusement park with security guards" aspect, however. The MMORPG addiction equation is about making the player feel that they're accomplishing something through their actions, the human delayed gratification response. "If I just do this now, I'll get X, which will let me do Y!" But then you get X, and there's a brand new X to get, then another, then another, etc -- and "Y" is usually just a means to get a different X anyway. But that doesn't mean that games need to be construed so narrowly, only toward that specific reward mechanism.

Another way to reward players is to let them feel that they're really having an impact in changing their world -- that they've modified something that others will experience in a durable manner. This could be anything -- tunnelling an underground palace, permanently wiping out a kingdom of orcs, inventing a new type of attack or spell that can be taught to other players, etc, etc -- the possibilities are endless. The ability to point to something concrete and say, "I did that!", is the same reward mechanism that drives the FOSS movement (among countless other endeavors of humanity ;) ). Making gaming world be able to be durably modified is often more difficult to code than "amusement park" style games, but is a worthwhile endeavor. Weaknesses to this system are that if making change in the world is too easy, it has no meaning.

Most games have some degree of involving a third powerful human reward mechanism: social interaction. But they can do way more. Look at how many people Facebook has sucked in. Ostensibly social interaction may be a secondary, tertiary, or whatnot purpose of the game, way below "saving the galaxy from aliens" or "keeping the zombies from overrunning the countryside". But it really isn't, and developers shouldn't treat it that way. The social networking aspects in the game should be well thought out and well developed. You want it so that when they disconnect from the game for several days, they feel disconnected. Note that the social interaction aspect is generally not something that will keep people in the game on its own; it simply amplifies the feeling of needing to return and helps make experiences within the game feel more meaningful.

There are a variety of other human reward mechanisms which can be exploited in various degrees, but usually only the first reward mechanism is stressed.