The Game Crafter -

To recap, my thought process runs like this:  There mmorpg game itself is repetitive, sometimes story driven for entertainment flavor, has components of finding items, creating a unique avatar (to greater or lesser degrees of success), engaging in the same types of behavior over and over again with little variance.  Once you reach the pinnacle (if you can last that long), then you drift to another offering looking for that elusive “something” and you start the process all over again and at least to date, cannot find.  Those games that players tend to “stay with” and hang on to, tend to be socially strong in that somehow players bond with other players and create a social network that create psychological ties.  It is these ties that keep people together and playing a game, not the game itself.

My contention is that the game can be vastly improved to raise the interest in the simulation so that it does not become repetitive, and that the social networks that keep people in the game can be vastly improved as well.
 

 Today I am focusing on a design element of guild interaction, or the role of player created organizations and how they can be improved.  As previously noted we talked about creating the “guild” or player run organization and giving it deep hooks into the game system/simulation itself.

I am playing a small browser based game right now called AstroEmpires, where thousands of players play against each other in a multi-player environment.  It is out of Portugal , and it is very simple.  I know in real life several people who play and the general consensus is that it is like playing a game with Excel.  It is simple, (too simple) has a poorly designed end game, yet… tens of thousands of people play. 

Today it dawned on me why.  The very topic we are talking about here, the guild, has slightly deeper than normal hooks into the game system and that the players are allowed to be creative with their guild and empire biographies.  A strong forum system is in place for the guild, battles against the guild are posted in the combat reports section, there is a forum for news, trade and announcements as well and a large area for the guild owners to be creative and post additional information about what they do and how they do it.
 

This has the effect of allowing players to effectively band together, communicate, become part of an organization greater than themselves, and act as a larger game entity. 

This is the half step in the right direction, and it is a welcome innovation. 

Yet this is not enough.  The guild structure is still too unstructured, no in-game direct benefits are built into the simulation that facilitate and empower the guild. 

The goals would be to create a list of empire and guild bonuses that can be applied either to a single player, or to a guild.   Let me give some examples of this line of thought.
 

Create a formal treaty system that gave bonuses for specific activities, such as a trade treaty, preferred trade partner, Non-Aggression Pacts, Alliances, War etc.  The effective “stance” of the guild towards other guilds yield bonuses to player activity.
 

Create roles inside the guild that were given game bonuses, which in turn can be modified by the guild owners so they can customize their internal structure and provide incentives for member engagement.  Roles could then generate in-game events or bonuses based upon their actions.  Example: The Guild Leader’s fleets can give a x% bonus (depending on the ability), to offense and defense for guild members who have fleets in the same sector.
 

In MMORPG speak, this means effective that the Guild provides the player members special in-game abilities that are made available to members at the discretion of the guild leaders.  Imagine for example that a guild has attained a 10% combat bonus in melee combat.  The leaders can associate that special ability to various titles they have created for their guild.  This gives the leaders tools to entice player members to perform specific activities to the benefit of the guild. 

This should be a no-brainer.  We are empowering the key players in the game (guild leaders), to help keep interest high in the game by giving them the tools to be successful with the simulation.    More later.

It has been put forth that the main difference between man and animal, is that man is better at adapting to his environment and that man strives to make sense of his actions in some greater context other than himself.  There are many studies under the heading of sociology, philosophy, and psychology that help define personal and cultural needs in the desire to understand the meaning and context of mans actions.   There are more works on this subject than can fill several libraries.  One important set of works are the studies by Carl Jung that despite culture, there are a handful of universal archetypes that prevail across cultural barriers that manifest themselves in literature, lore and religion.  Another aspect of this puzzle rests in the fact that there are underlying needs that people have that are filled by actively or passively engaging in recreational activity of this nature. 

These needs can be broken down into several distinct categories and are the same measures to determine behavior in the workplace.  These needs interrelate among themselves and those activities which promote the widest breadth of these factors have the widest appeal to the consumer market.

Achievement:  This axis relates to the recognition of work and awards for performance.  The rewards and recognition are almost always intrinsic.
 
Power:  This axis relates to the ability to be safe.  Power is power over your environment and with that power, the ability to meet challenges that threaten safety. 

Acceptance:  This axis relates to the ability to socialize with other people and gain a measure of acceptance and a sense of self worth.

People learn and adapt either by their own actions or by watching others perform actions.  Literature in the form of books, plays, stage, television and films offer a passive approach to gaining experience.  We all watch these forms of entertainment and gain insight into how other people under interesting situations cope and deal with problems.  I am not diminishing the artistic aspects of these endeavors, just brining up the underlying psychological needs that are being played upon when we engage in such activity.

Many of these forms of entertainment are social in nature, watched or consumed with a group of friends or peers together or individually.  After the event, we often engage in behaviors that reinforce the perceptions from the experience.  This re-living of the events are highly social in nature   In western culture the social aspects of these shared experiences are widely embraced by females of our society.   The social aspect of entertainment and shared activity is on the whole, generally more important to females than the power or achievement aspects.

Western Men on the other hand, are generally more interested in western culture for either the power or achievement aspects.  The younger the male, the more power is of importance as the need to “Prove” oneself is a forefront of thought.

These observations should be understood to be group averages and behavior, and not necessarily applied as a hard and fast rule to a single individual.   Every aspect at one time or another will play an important role for a single person.  Also regardless of gender or culture, there will be people who outside of the norm.  There will be young males who are more interested in the social aspects of play, and there will be females who will exhibit the need for achievement or power over the social aspects.   Many of these concepts have been brought forth and discussed in minute detail by academic thought leaders in this field.  Please reference http://terranova.blogs.com/. For much more detailed analysis of this topic.

 Now, this has been an interesting diatribe in academic understanding.  How does that translate to designs and how does it solve our problems?

In short, we play for the experience.  When the experience becomes redundant, repetitive, and “Been there done that”, we lose interest.  In other words killing 3rd level Rats is the same as killing 30th level Desert Rats, we cease learning.  There is no “Unanswered Question” or alternative method or information to gain.  However, there is a big BUT.   If we have made social contacts in the virtual world, and those social contacts provide us value then we will find ways to stay with the simulation until such time as the value for the social interaction falls below the threshold of acceptance.  In other words, the boredom of doing the same things over and over again exceeds the value we gain from the interaction with the social group.

I believe that we can keep the virtual world from becoming boring or redundant, and at the same time strengthen the social bonds that exist.

The question again is: How?

The first part is accomplished with a true dynamic game environment.  Imagine a virtual world where what we encounter and deal with is determined in part or in whole by the actions of other players against the simulation.  It changes and creates it own content as part of the simulation.  It never stays the same, and morphs constantly providing new challenges and new situations.  I will say now that this has already been done in test environments just to put the nay sayers who believe that the technology does not exist for this concept, at east.  I will get to this in great detail in future posts.

The second part is accomplished by taking the “clan” or “Guild” ie.. the player run organization and plant it deeply into the game simulation itself.  Expand this where the player run organization is part of the game.   Think of this as a shared character class.  Imagine a Fantasy type virtual world, where the guild created by the players have special abilities and game bonuses that are given to the players who are members.  Imagine then that these abilities are purchased or created by various players based upon actions that are relevant for their individual level.  For example, imagine that we accumulate “Guild Points” for lack of a better term, by fulfilling quests or defeating NPC’s (MOBS).  One point for a single similar leveled character.  If a character defeats a NPC of lower or greater than 2 levels, then nothing is gained.   Thus a 3rd level character can generate the same amount of “Guild points” as an elite 80th level character.  The contribution to the Guild to purchase and maintain it’s bonuses are the same. 

Suddenly, we now have parity between the casual gamer and the hard core gamer, where they can become relevant to each other.  This strengthens the bonds and social ties as everyone is now working towards a greater goal that helps everyone in the guild directly. 

This also now does something very interesting.  It creates a true Multi-player experience, instead of a single player experience set against a static setting with other single players.

Next post will expand upon this concept greatly.

You may be wondering what all this history, and perspective has to do with solving the problems of the MMORPG’s.  Well, to be blunt, unless you are ready to ask the right questions, the answer is meaningless and will create more confusion in the already noise ridden confusion of this industry.  We must set the basis of understanding and bring forth all the factors that play into the formation of the question.    Please bear with my dialogue, and in the end it will be worth your time. 

So, to some meat:  What are the problems?

Actually it is one problem, and what follows is a dissection and inspection of the same problem from a variety of viewpoints.

The problem is from four perspectives

Investor Problem Statement: How can I invest in a game company, get stellar return on   investment, and reduce substantially the risks associated with these types of ventures.

Producer Problem Statement: How can we create an entertainment offering that will keep millions of customers paying every month to participate for a period of many years, in a cost effective method that does not tie up full development teams and associated costs?

Designer Problem Statement: How can I design a game that will keep players playing?

Customer Problem Statement: Where can I go to play a great game, never get tired of it, provide constant challenge, and that does not adversely affect my real life in terms of personal relationships and responsibilities.