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[General Article] General: Dave Georgeson on Creating New Worlds
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
All games are hard to make. But when ranking my own personal experiences as a dev, I’d say that single-player games are the most straightforward and predictable of projects (relatively, of course), rescuing failing projects is vastly more complicated, but building MMOs from scratch is the most challenging of all.
Read more of Dave Georgeson's Creating New Worlds.
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Comments
Thank you for the soliloquy.
It's too bad some people run MMO's like casinos, and not like games. Oh, I think I heard that somewhere before.
But, hubris aside considering the context of what is being said and by who, this is a great article. Thanks for the enrichment, Dave.
You lost me at "win". I won't want to play the games you make. If you create games for people who want to win and brag about it, then you'll get people who want to win and brag about it, and that's fine if that's what you want (and certainly the raiders and PvPers are the life of many an MMO).
If you ask me what my favourite game is, and I told you Planescape: Torment (I don't have a real top game, but that's one I liked a lot), is that because I was good at it (whatever that means), or is it because had good story, characters and interactions. Was City of Heroes my favourite MMORPG because I was good at it, or because it had neat stories and a wide variety of characters I could create?
MMORPG players aren't all out to win. Some want, you know, to experience the RPG part. Some want to explore a world. If I stayed with CoH and left EQ2 it was not because I was better at CoH, but because EQ2 had less story content. If I was more of an explorer, on the other hand, I might have preferred EQ2. And what I did like about EQ2 never amounted to winning or bragging.
It's possible that designing a game for those who like to win and brag can bring in more money, but I personally hope that few game designers take that advice to heart.""Additionally, core gameplay has to be buttressed and interlaced with humanity (as in “reasons for players to act like humans instead of anonymous accounts with no culpability”) for it to stay interesting and engaging as a long-term world.""
So very true.
Most mmo devs are tragically masochistic egomaniacs.
Devs spend way too much time on coming up with other reasons for players to interact and socialize.
Everquest had one goal: advancement. You grouped, socialized, and grew as a guild because everyone had the one singular focus in mind. If you didn't participate, you didn't advance.
UO it was about survival. DAoC and WoW followed the EQ model with advancement. DAoC did it through RvR, Darkness Falls and realm orbs. Classic WoW it was about grouping and raiding to advance.
Today's MMOs are too diverse with far too many objectives. Take a game like Guild Wars 2 which suffers tremendously from a lack of identity. You have PvE, SPvP, and WvW and within these branches there are numerous subgroups. WvW has people that play for points, play for zerg fights, play for small fights, duels, achievements, etc. All these subgroups hate each other because they're not playing for a singular purpose and often times one group is directly hurting another group by playing it's preferred style.
Games need focus and purpose to get people to communicate towards those goals. They don't need to be a giant dartboard of shallow ideas that often compete with other shallow ideas at the detriment of the gamers.
I really liked this post and wish there was some sort of way to up-vote it. While I *do* like to run smaller raids, what keeps me coming back to a game is more possibilities and options with characters (like CoH did so well and Rift does). Probably what I miss most about CoH was the ability to put together almost any eight people and just go do stuff. You could figure out which pieces of your team's powers fit together best like a mushy jigsaw puzzle and just let it fly.
Release of dopamine... It is really all about feeling good.
Games are just ways to trick the brain into releasing this, since at the end of the day, you have accomplished nothing of value. (Value being a relative term).
That's what keeps me leveling and grinding those horrible quest hubs. The community is what creates prices and keeps me around.
When I heard the bragging rights philosphy explained by Georgeson in a EqNext developer video a few years ago, it was the one thing that gave me high hopes for EqNext. Finally a dev who gets it, who understand what a mmorpg gamer wants (Even those who wont admit it), who said exactly what I felt so many times in Everquest.
Funny that is is actually not as much as the "bragger" the real value lies, and you know it .. bragging is not you telling others you are good, it is others telling you. Showing off and bragging are a bit negative charged, but that is only if forced upon you by the achiever; and those you ever looked up to (game or rl) actually never did that.
What bragging has done to me so often mostly in Everquest but also other games, is to look at a player and seeing a weapon or armor piece you don't know, and then asking the player or others about how it can be obtained. First you might get a story from the player itself which is socializing and community creating itself, then you want to get that weapon yourself and tell others that you will. The game will become much more interesting because you got goals, you got reasons to do your gaming thing. When you finally reach one of those goals, you get a great feeling of accomplishment.
You may say that bragging or showing off is not why you play, and for a few that might be true, but mostly it is because you don't want to be connected with the negative charged words, or maybe you just never thought about the deeper reasons why you play. Showing off should not be taken literally, it is like "I got this piece of armor, I know what it took to obtain it. I don't need to tell you, because you know it as well" - non active bragging. Achieving stuff and letting people know about it is a very strong motivator, for you, for other players, for community and socializing, and eventually for a games' survivability.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
Arywinn @ www.paxgaming.com
I think some people reading this article look at the word "win" and think combat. But that's not the core of the game for many. And while he does talk about capturing the playing experience in the first 10-20 minutes, that experience is going to be different for each person playing. For some, it's spending time at the character creation screen. For some, it's seeing splendor the world for the first time. For some, it's running out of town as quickly as possible to find something to kill. What people are grasping onto in that first 20 minutes will vary depending on the person.
For instance, in most games I play, the core of the game is customization, lore, and exploration. And so "winning" for me is finding every nook and cranny in the game, finding those beautiful out-of-the-way places that few will ever see. Or talking to every NPC and reading every book and examining every carving in every ruin, in order to be immersed in the history and culture of the world. Or spending hours in the character creation screens, making the perfect look for my character, and then going out and finding all the best costume pieces or armor, and always refining them so they fit the vision that I have in my head. To me, all those things are "winning" at the game that I am playing. And I most certainly do "brag" about them, in the sense that I always want to show off my characters, I'm excited to share the hidden places I explored, and I love talking about the game's lore at the drop of a hat.
What I'm drawing as my personal core experience may not be for everyone, and that's fine. But I have plenty of friends who love listening to my tales or seeing my characters, who couldn't care less about dungeon speed runs or being the first guild to complete a raid. And when a developer is creating the MMO experience, they're taking more than just damage rolls into consideration.
I agree that this philosophy is valid... I also believe that it has been undermined by developers making the game too easy. Sure, people get to progress quickly and accomplish lots of 'stuff' and initially it seems like everyone is doing great, and happy about the progress... until they realize that it was all worthless. The value of an accomplishment is in direct proportion to the difficulty of achieving it. If anyone can do it quickly/easily, it has no value.
The most basic accomplishment/brag that people have in MMORPG's is their level. The fact that you have been able to progress is generally accepted as an accomplishment... or it used to be. Now, the fact that you can level quickly, with no skill or hard work means that the primary achievement in most games is worthless. Once people realize this, they move on, as they realize that they have wasted their time. If the game had presented more of a challenge, they would have stayed, because the would have felt that they got a good return on their investment (time).
You missplaced "extremely long and tedium and generally easy" with "hard" (leveling in old school MMOs) sitting in same grinding spot all day long grinding mobs was NOT hard
And thats exactly what most achievements in todays MMOs are.
About sticking to the core idea. I think it can be extremely hard to keep the core game idea true when you are knee deep into the dirt, working your craft... Everyone is hammering away on the great building, and finding out new ways to build doors, stairs and windows along the way.
Things change without you noticing it, and suddenly you see that a core wall was changed, but it is too late to turn back now as the next floor is already being build on top of it. It seem like decisions are never change in software development, good or bad, although changing direction is costly, sometimes it is more costly to continue in a wrong direction.
Seeing what changes will affect the core and which are just great features and part of the iteration process, and then actually make people do the right things and also believe it is right so they don't loose their enthusiasm, while trying to keep the budget on track and a million interested parties satisfied ... what a job, it really takes a strong person, hard work, the right team and some luck on top. As a minor indie dev I already got a tiny taste of this, and I assume on a huge project that will be a thousand times tougher.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
I think leveling in some old school MMOs can be labeled hard (challenging, difficult), not because of the grind but because leveling efficiently required a party or at least a buddy or two. Being in a party can be challenging because you are relied upon to perform your role to the best of your ability and you are relying on others to do the same. And anybody that leveled in FFXI before Abyssea would tell you that playing your job well in that game was not a given, you had good groups and things went smoothly and you had awful groups where things fell apart. Was it time consuming? Yes. Does a rigid party sytem have drawbacks? Also Yes. Was it grinding? It could be. Was it always easy? No. And until Abyssea being lvl75+ was an achievement and having multiple jobs at cap was a big achievement. That game did a great job of giving you a sense of accomplishment, until they threw it all out the window with power leveling, huge level cap increases, and eventually ilvl BS.
I agree with his assessment however there is obviously one exception to the rule and too many point to that exception withotu realizing the WHY.
WOW failed that CORE game and with flying colors,so much so that nobody talks about it ,ALWAYS end game this or raid boss that.Wow created a core game that had zero versatility,every player followed the exact same path,can't be less defining as a game than that.However the big WHY,they got away with it?Super easy,90% of those players had nothing to draw comparisons to,so it WAS THE game so they thought.Then gain some friends,spend countless hours and they are never looking back.
Since that time really every single game aside from a handful have copied thta game design and i would have to admit done it worse,so i can see why they still think Wow is THE game.
However the few that did not do it in a SIMPLE fashion the way Wow was designed,are imo vastly superior.Then we have the two games that are similar that are imo identical but have a few bonuses and better graphics,that being EQ2 and VG.
My point i guess is that as witnessed by the two superior products EQ2 and VG and yet they did not have that "FIRST game" experience for gamer's they could not survive the same as Wow did.That is why it proves that design really does NOT work,the ONLY success stories have died off rather quickly after launch because all they do is get the BORED gamer's jumping ship to ship.
What i don't agree on is the difficulty in saving a game or bringing a game back or even creating these games,imo it is ONLY the budget that holds back superior game design.Instead of countless features and content ideas,instead we get ONE idea for game play,you guessed it ,chase around yellow markers over npc heads,that takes what all of 5 minutes in the board room to draw up that design,been there,done it,seen it,not interested.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.