Lost Rambling

I haven't disappeared.

2007-04-15T01:42:00.000-05:00

It has been busy at work, but then again it always seems like that.

I have been working on a program (non-game) that I originally thought of two years ago.

Why the long break on the program? At the time I felt that it wouldn’t be accepted even if it was finished (plus I was told it was being worked on), so I burned what I had done to a CD and set it aside.

So why start again? Because it is two years later and same problem is still there and as far as I can tell there has been little progress on addressing the problem much. At this point I’m working to get a simple version working and present it to the “right” people (or just put it in front of a lot of people until I find the right one). If nothing else it is improving my programming skills, I seem to spend more time reading about design and about programming, then I actually spend programming. Also it probably earn me a few brownie points for trying to solve the problem, even if the program I come up with isn’t adopted.

I have to admit that I’m happy that I kept the old code (even as poorly written as it is), because I’m using a free library as part of the program and it saved me from having to re-figure how to use it purely off the manual pages (which aren’t bad in documentation terms, but they lack examples).

I have gotten the basics all pretty much in place and with a much cleaner programming style. Now I have the hard part of me, making it do what I want it to do. ;)

Why the vagueness on what the program will do?
There are a few reasons:
    First: I really don’t want talk in to much detail about work here. *See earlier posts*
    Second: If the program is adopted, it would leave a trail here.
    Third: I don’t want someone taking my work and beating me to it.
    Fourth: If I can’t do it and scrap the whole thing, no one will know I was working on it in the first place. ;)

When I open my mouth, I manage to insert my foot.

2007-03-07T12:24:00.000-05:00

A reposting of comment that I made at Terra Nova

Given Al-Qaeda's very nature/principal of being against western influences on the Islamic religion/nations/culture. I find it hard to believe that they would use Second Life, which its core embraces the counter culture. And only goes to show how unknowledgeable people are of the beliefs that these people are willing to kill and die for. We want/need to demonism these people in order to make sense of it, believing that they will do anything to meet their goals, while forgetting that those goals are based on extreme fundamental beliefs. That is not say it isn’t possible that they would use it to hide their activity, just highly unlikely.

As suggested by others, there are more secure ways to communicate the same types of information (private server in friendly/weakly policed country). Also as Dr. Cat said "Any transportation or communication technology is potentially usefully..." and should be part of the discussion "the use of the internet" for terrorism.
As to the money laundering, this could be said about many games. While it might have been slowed by the changes in eBay policies, there would be nothing to stop me from buying X amount of gold in UO/WoW/EQ/etc and giving it to another who then resell it for cash to be used for terrorist activities.

Focusing the spotlight on Second Life as the next hotbed of terrorist activity is short sighted and a case of using the current media/public scapegoat.

I'm not a fan of Second Life, but the original subject matter just short sighed.

Who am I?

2007-01-15T22:53:00.000-05:00

Who am I? I couldn't resist after seeing Damion's post.

You are The Joker

The Joker		45%
Dr. Doom		42%
Two-Face		41%
Riddler		40%
Magneto		33%
Mr. Freeze		32%
Venom		31%
Dark Phoenix		31%
Green Goblin		29%
Lex Luthor		27%
Apocalypse		27%
Juggernaut		25%
Mystique		25%
Catwoman		18%
Poison Ivy		13%
Kingpin		13%

The Clown Prince of Crime. You are a brilliant mastermind but are criminally insane. You love to joke around while accomplishing the task at hand.

Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test

I would like to thank....

2007-01-11T00:03:00.000-05:00

I would like to thank the Acad.... err Nerfbat for this award, you know, we are a little bit out of touch in blog land every once in a while. I think it's probably a good thing. We're the ones who talk about..... *crumbling paper*. That’s the last time a ask Clooney to write an acceptance speech for me. ;)

It would be easy for me to jump on the band wagon of beating up Second Life, I feel that is no need for me to jump into that ring. There are plenty of others more than willing and able to do that. As I said on Raph’s blog, “In theory Second Life is great, but in practice it is …. well…. I don’t know.”

I want to look at subjects like these (and others):
Cruise said:

The more I see suggestions like this, the more I move towards the “current MMO's are glorified chat rooms for single player content” camp - while they appear massively multiplayer at first, in comparison to what they /could/ be, they fall well short.

and a deeper look at Mike Rozak’s “Interactive fiction equation” (once I have been able to completely digest it).

So I'll close with displaying my award.

Happy New Year!

2007-01-01T14:42:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas

2006-12-25T21:56:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas.

Has it been that long?

2006-12-06T22:53:00.000-05:00

I always seem surprised at the amount of time that passes between posts (could be in part due to more poor sense of time passage).

To a certain degree I have been trying to find my inspiration/motivation again and dealing with work.

I will end this post with pointing out this post by Scott Jennings: “I Paid For This Chat Channel!” Which closes with this which blunt, but so true.

Because I’ll just come out and say it - over-regulation can very easily choke the MMO industry in its crib. No company is going to operate an entertainment business with anything close to the liabilities being bandied around. It simply will cost too much. No sane MMO publisher will fund a project that requires more lawyers than world builders. Thus, no MMOs, as we currently know them, will be published.

And that will definitely settle the argument.

Pointless Killing

2006-11-13T23:09:00.000-05:00

The other day fortunately for me, Dr. Richard Bartle posted “Pointless Killing”. While I would like to think that Dr. Bartle had read my post suggesting that I feel that current MMO game design isn’t ready for dynamic content. But my head isn’t that big and the inspiration is more likely his on me (as I have commented before that I hold Dr. Bartle’s writings in high regard and that they have influenced many of my opinions).

In the comments, Bart Stewart mentions “Marc Miller's Traveller RPG”, which honestly I haven’t heard of before or had much time to research. But it does sound like an interest gaming system where players start at an advanced point and are able to skip ahead to what is most often the “fun” part.

Many other people warn of trading one grind for another, which is something that I’ve warned others of also “What's in a name? That which we call a time sink by any other word would take just as long.” Yes I’m strange, but it still amuses me.

But this still leaves the burning question. What core game gaming system will give a sense of advancement without feeling like a grind and will be able to adjust to a dynamic content world?

The certainly are some interesting ideas.
* Monsters and players would maintain the same hit points, but would increase in abilities based on levels. (I can not find comment to credit it right now)
* A complete social based rating. Pemberly Online (Pete Border)
* Exploring bonus’ (Brian “Psychochild” Green)
* Many citing Eve Online game play system.
* Various training methods (David (Talaen))

Clearly sticking all these ideas in a blend and hoping that it comes out perfect is silly. Still, the right blending of ideas such as these will most likely be a huge success.

Also while you are visiting Terra Nova, I suggest reading “Superstition” (Small note: The original post should have been wisps, not ghosts in its UO ref.)

Just a matter of time?

2006-10-16T22:27:00.000-05:00

Raph posted this today "Here come the tax men!" With this with this from the Yahoo's article.

"Right now we're at the preliminary stages of looking at the issue and what kind of public policy questions virtual economies raise -- taxes, barter exchanges, property and wealth," said Dan Miller, senior economist for the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress.

While I'm no fan of RMT, it does make me wonder what steps developers will be required to take in order to help collect or at least reporting. It seems that Second Life will be the first to face some of these issues (including Bragg v. Linden), but I'm sure they will not be the last one.

The biggest loss, in the end will be for the player. As the world of fantasy is stripped away and replaced with tax codes and property rights. *sigh*

Watch what you write, the internet takes a turn for the worse.

2006-10-12T09:57:00.000-05:00

This is a real story, I couldn't make something this silly up (maybe I should consult a attorney before calling it silly).

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - A children's services referral provider was awarded $11.3 million in damages from a mother who posted critical Internet messages after seeking her advice.

The defendant, Carey Bock, called Sue Scheff a "con artist," "crook" and "fraud" in messages posted on a site used by parents with troubled children at boarding schools.

The award for Scheff, founder of Parents Universal Resource Experts Inc., is among the largest for a lawsuit claiming Internet defamation, according to legal analysts and an attorney involved in the case.

Moral of the story. Buy yourself a shredder, write those naste things down on a piece of paper and then shred said piece of paper. That is a lot cheaper way of venting than having to pay 11.3 million.

Dynamic content, what will it require of game design?

2006-09-24T12:35:00.000-05:00

I haven't had much chance to post anything as of late. Things at work have been pretty crazy, then again it could be questioned if it was every sane to start with, but I digress. ;)

Brian “Psychochild” Green has thrown down the gauntlet (so to speak), to find “some of the biggest challenges facing online games right now” and “Bonus points for thinking of something that hasn't already been discussed to death yet.” With that in mind, along with my own desire to head down the path less traveled.

Fortunately for me Ryan “Blackguard” Shwayder recently had started a blog/thread asking “What 10 features would exist in your ultimate MMO?”. From that thread I’m going try and focus in on one area.

Raging Newie wrote:
1) A Dynamic world that is influenced by the players actions. A static world is doomed to ultimately fail.
Blackguard wrote:
I can't argue this one. It's very difficult and might even be a bad idea in some cases, but I agree with it.

For the purpose of this post I’m going to avoid the technological problems for dynamic content and focus on problems that dynamic content could/will mean for design.

Advancement system:
Levels? Skills? If the content is changing/moving, this is going to make it difficult/frustrating for players to find the appropriate monsters that they need to advance.

If we want to continue using levels/skills. Maybe we can have island chain worlds where similar difficultly monsters are located and the dynamics are limited to that island. While this might be a solution, it isn’t a very good one and defeats the reason of have dynamic content.

Or maybe it is time to throw both out the window and find a different system to measure player success. UO uses a fame and karma system (along with skills), could something similar be used as the primary measurement of advancement?

Quests:
Static quests, even “deliver quests”, will be challenged. What happens if the city that the player is to deliver the package to is destroyed/abandoned? The standard quest of “Kill X of Y” monsters will also struggle. What if a group of creatures is completely wiped out before the player is able to complete their quest?

Clearly any quest system within a dynamic world will need to be much more flexible to handle changes that happen.

Just how dynamic should it be?:
As I suggested in the quest heading, should we allow players the ability to wipe out a monster group? Or wipe out/destroy NPC cities, player housing/towns? And if we do put in limits, will players feel cheated by these limitations?

Closing:
While some of this does touch on technology, but I feel that these design issues that need to be decided in order to know what technology will be needed.

Add another growth ring.

2006-08-01T19:34:00.000-05:00

So today/tonight has been guilty pleasures.

After monday’s misery of heat and humidity, also the that I had the day off and didn’t want to melt into a puddle of sweat in my apartment, I turned on the air conditioner. 8) Another one of those guilty pleasures, tv and watching Rock star: Supernova.

If you are wondering why I have a tuesday off (even if you weren’t), well I’m another year older. Nothing like a birthday to cause you to reflex on what you have(n’t) done. So I’m committing myself (no, not that type of commit, albeit there might be some that suggest that would be a good idea) to getting more done, programming wise. I’m not suggesting a complete finished/polished game, just that I need to do more to work towards that goal. Along those lines, I have also been reading about writing novels and also about myths (Joseph Campbell’s - The hero with a thousand faces. Inspired by Richard Bartle’s view/writings about it in his book), to help build a better fiction for a game (and if do fail in my own attempts in to program it, there is always the chance of writing my vision into a novel and trying to work from that direction).

So I might not be posting as much here, so that I can focus on programming more (some of my posts take me a very long time in fine tuning my thoughts). Hopefully over the next year I might even post some pics. 8)

Horizons sold! (again)

2006-07-24T12:59:00.000-05:00

Sherman: "Gee, Mr. Peabody did we travel back to October 2005? I just heard someone say that Horizons was sold."
Mr. Peabody: "No Sherman. We never stepped into the WABAC machine, Horizons has been sold again."
Sherman: "Oh..."

I'm not that old, but I'm sure many of us have seen the cartoon at some point and this popped into my head.

Also the image three guys standing around with t-shirts Artifact Entertainment, Tulga Games, and EI Interactive. The first two have red/burnt hands and are trying to cool them while a hot potato stamped Horizons flies to open hands the EI.

I guess that I'm glad that my credit card expires this Sept, saving me the hassle of closing the account.

Don’t poke the bear.

2006-07-16T15:15:00.000-05:00

I have tried to keep my blog game related, but this is something I felt that I wanted to write up and it is at least internet related (somewhat).

At office there are a few people that I don’t always get along with and they do things that I find really annoying/lazy, I would often joke that I wanted do a little something to discourage theses habits. My then boss Keith (who has moved to a biggest office within the company) would often tell/warn me “Don’t poke the bear.”, because theses same people could really make my job miserable if I provoked them and it wasn’t worth the cost.

Well this time the shoe is on the other foot and frankly this foot is made for kicking. The other day I ordered some books from Amazon and from the (re)sellers. Now I don’t check my email very often, but I do check the Amazon page when I have open orders. So I was a bit surprised when I checked my email to find that one of the (re)sellers had sent me an email saying the they had refunded the order cost because they couldn’t find the book and were not going to be sending it (aka I need to order it again and begin the waiting process over). Now since the Amazon page still open, I had the opportune to leave this person feedback. Now Amazon on their feedback page says “Please contact fast__shipper to try to resolve any problems before submitting feedback.”, given the email that was sent, this chance to resolve the problem was taken out of my hands, so I don’t feel my feedback was unwarranted.

1. (Awful)
Disappointing and Unreliable. I think theses quotes from the email seller sent says it all. "This notice serves as confirmation that we have initiated a refund.." "Thank you for your purchase but we're unable to find this book.."

I really don’t think this was unfair of me nor was it rudely written, since as I said in the feedback I was quoting directly from the email and that was the bulk of my comment.

Seller Response: "Unfortunately, this book wasn't in stock so a full refund with an explanation email was sent to the buyer right away. We don't really understand why a 1 rating (worst possible rating) was given when the refund was full and immediate."

Ok fast__shipper, you have poked the bear. 8Þ

"Unfortunately, this book wasn't in stock”
So it is not your fault that you listed that you had it available to sale?

“full refund with an explanation email was sent”
So, I should thank you for not keeping my money and not sending the book?!?!? I have suggestion, the next time you go to the store and buy only a gallon of milk, at the checkout thank the clerk for not charging for you for the 3 dozen eggs that you are not getting. If that sounds ludicrous, then you should reread what you wrote. Also in my feedback I cleared mentioned the fact that you gave a refund and it’s not like I made you out to be a thief.

“We don't really understand why a 1 rating”
What do you think you deserve? Based on the feedback scale?
5 (Excellent)
4 (Good)
3 (Fair)
2 (Poor)
1 (Awful)
I think that it’s fair to say that 5, 4, and 3 completely off the table. Given the fact that I now have to mess around reorder and start the waiting over again, awful fits in my opinion.

Now I’m not saying that this person is not be a good seller they probably are and given the fact that they have 5200+ (at the time of writing this) and most are positive. But I use the rating and amount of ratings to help me choose when I’m using a new (re)seller (at least new to me) and I will pass up cheaper (re)sellers for one that has a long and clean track record (as I’m sure many people do).

Up until now I have been reluctant very much (if at all) to talk about my job, since it isn’t in the game industry at all and really doesn’t have much of a place here.

The company I work for is a very service based business which provided support for law firms (and I have no legal training, so no free advice or suggesting that I be in the 100 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean *old joke*). Where our clients are very/insanely demanding in both deadlines and quality. And in the time that I have been with the company going on 12 years now (*cries a little*) and our prices haven’t gone up in that time, in fact in some cases they have dropped some (what have you bought lately that has stayed the same price or even dropped in the same time frame?). And there are times when we do make a mistake or late on a deadline that we will discount the charge or even give it to them for free. And keep in mind that in most cases (no pun intended) the cost of our services are passed/billed to their client (with a markup I’m sure) and I very much doubt when we give a discount that it is pass along to the firm’s clients.

So that said, I think that I know the value of feedback and good/quality service. Personally if I was a (re)seller on Amazon while trying everything to avoiding this even happening and it did, I would extra eat the cost and order a new copy from Amazon to be shipped directly to the customer along with sending an email to the customer explaining that was a mistake but it was handled and wouldn’t effect them (cost or time). Then I would find the person at my operation in charge of inventory and smack them in the back of the head and tell them not to let it happen again. But then again I’m old fashioned at times, I remember when I was young (late 70's to early 80's) that when you went to a drive-thru and the (at the time) rare case you had to pull into the lot and wait for your food, they would often throw in something for free (extra fries or a dessert).

So do you think a 1 was to harsh?
or
All that thought over a book? Man, Lost you have some anger management issues.

What I've been up to.

2006-07-10T21:49:00.000-05:00

Again I've fallen behind in posting. So in an attempt catch up I've decided to post my comment from Evan Sampson's blog, “But Wait, There's More!” Which is a responce to Craft Thoughts. Which I admit that I should have read both entries a bit better from the start, but that aside here are my thoughts.

I think that it is a bit clearer as to what you are shooting for. Along with going back and reading social-whittling post with more care. I’m also going to take this opportunity to say that I got my feet wet in the MMO with UO. Which had very little to offer in terms of quests or mini-games, which I can’t say that was disappointing in my view (who knows the concept social-whittling might be left over from that time/player/designer base).

I think that if you want to design a viable social and active crafting, they both have to have their place within the game as a whole (which I might or not made clear, so I’ll expand on it some). I’m reminded of a quote from Richard Bartle’s book “Players will spend a lot of time being miserable if the reward is high enough. They’ll mindlessly click on the same “mining” icon for three hours, hating every moment of it, if the result is that they find the diamond they need to make a arrow of dragon-slaying.”

The real question/debate could be in evaluating each system on their own merits for the entertainment value of the player (which I attempted to touch on in my “RMT and game design”). While there certainly does need to be a “speed limit” to protect parts aspects of the game, such as the economy, are we trying to build a road with speed bumps or a 50 degree incline mountain road to climb? What value does long crafting/item creation times add to the entertainment value of the player? While it could be debated that it adds realism value, but that is hard position to support when the time it would take to make a sword in the real world would be much longer (even when converted into accelerated game world time).

And please note that I’m not completely dismissing the idea of active/mini-games crafting, I’m sure that there are people that enjoy them and would miss them if they were not there or worse they would view a “lite” crafting system as shallow. The primary goal should be to provide entertainment value for the player’s time. Much like any other form of entertainment (TV, movies, books, etc) what one person sees as great, another will think is mind numbing *cough American Idol cough ;)*. I personally envision a more streamline game and of course streamlining comes with its own pitfalls and challenges, but that is another story for another day ;).

Crafting and MMOs

2006-06-26T20:26:00.000-05:00

Massively Multiplayer Online Round Table has an interesting set of articles about crafting within MMOs (I use “set” since the articles were written independently of one another about the same subject).

I have to say that all three are worth reading and have caused me to rethink my own view on crafting within MMOs. It is not so much in questioning the value that crafting brings to the game, is mostly based in my distaste for “Item-centric: A game that focuses on the acquisition of items (in which such items affect your avatar greatly).” (as defined by Ryan). Which you might think would make me a great supporter of craft based systems, but the problem is that you rarely have just crafted items only within a world (Horizons tried this, but later added limited use drops). So you end up with a competing system of dropped items vs crafted items, which is nearly impossible (if not completely impossible) to balance it to make either side happy.

As always, I don’t claim to know the right answer. But I do enjoy being challenged to reevaluate my views on MMO design, because without being able to see both sides of the discussion you will not develop any new ideas.

Mixed reactions.

2006-06-21T06:09:00.000-05:00

Ultima Online will soon begin testing PunkBuster in order to head off cheating.

Needless to say reactions have been mixed. While most want to see hacks and cheats out, there has been enough of a reaction that UO quickly posted this.

This is my gut reaction:

What I don't understand is the whole idea that EA can't manage what is going on in the game themselvies (sorry if I expect to much from the people that created & maintain the client)?

Why isn't EA the ones that "should" be the ones to know what would be an advantage within the game and know where to look? The should have people different teams try and think of ways to "hack/exploit" others ideas/designs. *flash back housing deeds and factions comes screaming to mind*

Or *GASP* some reseach and reviewing logs of current players and logs of thoses that have been banned in the past when caught (if a player is having skill checks for lumberjacking or mining for 18 hrs straight, or having an abnormal amount high deposits of insurance vs insurance withdraws either might be a good place to start).

Short term it might help, but in the long term I don't see it solving the problem. People will find a around it sooner or later and around the patchs that come out for that new one.

IMHO, EA is trying to deflect the hacking and lack of stopping it, problem off onto someone else. It's easier to have GMs and developers say "I can not help you with that, please file a report at (insert url here)". Sound familiar?

Maybe I'm over reacting. As I've said before, I really don't play UO anymore but as a player and armchair designer I can't avoid the thoughts above.

Raph's blog and what he is saying.

2006-06-11T20:52:00.000-05:00

How I forgot to have Raph Koster’s blog listed eludes me. But recently he talked about the ecology that was originally planned/attempted in the early UO and the reasons that it didn’t work (Part 1, 2, 3).Which is very interesting to me, since I have been reading up what I can. In a strangely related piece UO had helped me while reading “Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity”. In the preface Dr. Holland uses the word “untrammeled”, which is a word that I never expected to see in print and only know the meaning because of the facet debates (putting it nicely). Someone had found and listed the definition of trammel: literary restrictions or impediments to freedom of action and is the name of the non-pvp facet in UO (I can only guess that the designer that came up with the name might not have liked the idea of non-pvp facet). Side note, the book is pretty good, but it can be hard reading for a layman and probably a bit deeper than what could be workable for a game setting.

Raph also has a great write-up about NPC’s. Where he compares them to “pellet dispenser”, which isn’t far from the truth. Also nothing breaks the suspension of reality when you have a NPC with a big green “!” above their head.

I can only hope that the right people are reading Raph's ideas (despite my desire, I don't kid myself about being able to build something so complex). Who knows, maybe someone with lots of money to throw around could get Raph and Richard Bartle together to design a MMO.

Lack of something to say.

2006-05-30T21:43:00.000-05:00

I haven’t had much to say as of late, not due lack of sources of things to comment on, between announcements, E3, and who can forget some of the stupid comments made. (*cough* $600 is to cheap or NCSoft questioning returning to next year E3 *cough*) But Woody at GUComics does such a good job it’s hard to add much other than have a good laugh.

I did notice something when I was making my first post on GUComic’s forums, I was going to joke about how long it would take before Dark World Online (Tulga’s newest announced game) had it’s own fly and was going to join the Horizons fly when I noticed that it may have already zapped (the comment of this fact disappeared from the thread *sigh*). The web site along with the press release are gone, also gone is any mention of it from Istaria.com.(edited in: The site is there now and I can only guess it was an issue with changing servers and it hadn't updated completely when I checked. But I do believe that they removed the release from Istaria.com and there is nothing about it on Tulga's site)

I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t disappointed in Horizons given the high expectations they set,also the fact that so many people cite it as this ground breaking game (which it isn’t, I played it from the release and can’t say that I ever saw it). Needless to say I have become much more cynical about the claims that are made in the PR drives and I believe that most companies have their own version of the Tulumellonator sitting in the office. But I have to think that Tulga is most likely past over stating and now they are quickly coming up on bold face lying.

Which this might be the real reason why I haven’t had much to say about "industry" news, because I don’t buy into all the hype. While I understand that companies need to create interest for their respective games, so much of it boarders on hmm.. well... see the Tulumellonator.

Real money transfers (RMT) and game design.

2006-05-07T21:21:00.000-05:00

It doesn’t a lot of time or effort to find game items/accounts being sold for money, most notably on Ebay (Ultima Online, Guild Wars, Worlds of Warcraft and Everquest II *despite SOE strong stance on RMTs*). Even Richard “Lord British” Garriott said in an interview with the The Escapist "I buy virtual gold all the time," he says, adding, "I have no problem with it. I'm a supporter." While I am not a supporter of RMT and I could give many reasons and links from others that feel the same. That is not the reason of this post, this post is intended to explore why current MMO design has created the RMT market.

One thing that strikes me when reading the disclaimer in the EQ account sale is that “You are bidding on the time spent playing these accounts only.”, while I full know this is just a way/tactic to try and avoid SOE polices, it does help draw attention to the primary factor of why the RMT is so large: Time.

Looking at the “market” of UO items, mainly because there is such a wide range you can buy materials, gold, housing, accounts, rare items, armor, and weapons can in one way or another be boiled down to an investment of time.

While the argument can be made that without the time investment to acquire resources, items, and levels/skills that players characters will be all the same and boring (a.k.a. if everyone is “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound”, then Clark Kent would be just a man and not Superman. I will just argue that is what RMT is doing that now.)

The current model is to give players goals that require this time investment in order to reach the end game or at least what the player sees as the end game. From Richard Bartle’s paper: The Newbie Induction: How Poor Design Triumphs “If evolution is not the answer, perhaps revolution is? Innovation could be the savior we’re awaiting. If a virtual world appears with a unique selling point that doesn’t map onto any player’s experiences, then perhaps newbies and oldbies alike might chance it?” (I strongly suggest reading the whole paper.)

I believe that designers should be gearing the player’s time in towards entertainment value, not just towards a series of long grinding goals. Also from the Escapist article

Robert Garriott said: "So you play it, you like it, you stay for ten months, and then you leave," he says. Rather than fighting what they saw as an obvious industry trend, NCsoft decided to go a different way and embrace it. "As games become more casual, churn rates go up. So, we knew the churn rates were going up, so we started saying, well, how can we make churn our friend? Because there's nothing we can really do to stop the fact that churn is going up. Interestingly, if you're a single product company, you can never make churn your friend," because people leaving your one cash cow undermines your entire company.

While “embracing” churn might be an overstatement (also given the growing budgets for MMOs leaves me skeptical about “embracing” it), but accepting it as a fact is pretty encouraging and could lead to the innovation we seek. I do not claim to know what “the” innovation is that is need. But I do know that if we aren’t willing to throw out some of the old ideas the innovation may never come or be possible. The player’s time shouldn’t only be seen a means of keeping them paying a subscription, but more as their valuable entertainment time being fulfilled.

*disclaimer Ebay being an auction site, some or all of the above links could be useless in short time. And to the people selling on Ebay, I consider the information on Ebay “public information” that anyone can access and I’m not disclosing anything that could not be easily found by others. Therefore I am not responsible for an actions taken against you or your account by above listed games or their representatives.*

House Keeping

2006-05-02T21:17:00.000-05:00

No “major” post today, just a little house keeping like alphabetizing blog links along with adding “Deeply Random Thoughts” (I’m not sure that it is truly what you would call a blog, but some interesting reading), also added “Indie” links of projects/developers from GameDev.net. (Quick note, it’s nothing personal if I don’t have your blog or project linked, odds I just haven’t gotten a chance to read/see it. If you have suggestions on blogs/projects feel free to leave them as a comment and I’ll make a point to check it out. As it is I spend way to much time reading blogs.)

I’d also like to thank Ryan from NerfBat for the link. It wasn’t until I read the post describing each blog that I noticed that I was the only one with no tagline. Not to fear, as I was reading my review (for lack of better term) one part jumped out at me and reminded of a phrase that I heard more than once in school (and I’m sure I’m not the only one that heard it.) and that seemed like a perfect tagline. I always say you, you shouldn’t make fun of others unless you can’t make fun of yourself too. ;)

Division by expansion

2006-04-30T10:09:00.000-05:00

No this has nothing to do with “new math”. I have mentioned before that I have been playing Guild Wars some with mixed opinions on the game. This week the “Factions” expansion was shipped and gone live which I opted not to buy. Now I find that most of my guild mates are off exploring the new area and I’m left to struggle in missions by myself. I know that I could directly ask for help, I don’t want to take away from my friends fun/time by helping me in something they have done already. I had experienced this to a certain degree with UO from the other side, were I was the person that went out exploring and then had someone without the expansion ask for help.

So what is my point? While expansion help the company’s profits and maybe even draw in some new players, what does it do to those players that are on the fence? Also what impact does it have on drawing in new players when you consider how much they will have to spend so much to buy all the expansions just to get up to speed? I would be interested in finding out what type of numbers that a game like EverQuest II in truly new players, but I’m sure those numbers are well guarded and will not be released any time soon. This isn’t meant as attack on EverQuest II (I have never played it, I just know that they have had a large number of expansions over the years) or Guild Wars (given the lack of subscription fees, having to buy a expansion once in a while could be viewed as the fee).

In close I’m not going to say if expansions are good or bad. I just think that it’s worth remembering that they can create divides within the communities that occupy them and could have a long term impact on drawing in new players.

Maybe Dear MMORPG Industry?

2006-04-16T23:12:00.000-05:00

Let me start with quoting two other blogs, which I hope will help bring out my closing point(s).

From Jeff Freeman:
Tabletop RPG

"So I’ll backpedal a bit and apologize to Open Source advocates for saying ‘Open Source’ is killing the tabletop RPG market. It’s not Open Source, it’s this "let’s put all of our eggs in my basket"-strategy of the Open Gaming license. I’m sure it was good for the Player’s Handbook sales in the short-term to convince potential competition to make content for the d20 system, but in the long-term it’s bad for the entire tabletop RPG industry to produce content for a single product.

There are times when I fear the MMORPG industry is following the same path: making tanker/nuker/healer, level-n-class based systems that are all essentially the same game with a fresh coat of paint."

From Grouchy Gnome:
Casual Games Kill Hardcore Gamers

"Before I played an MMORPG with many casual elements, I didn’t care about them one bit. I was happy to type a line of text to examine an item, I was happy to type [a question] to NPCs to advance a quest, I was happy to sketch crappy maps on a notebook to get around, and I was happy to keep a spreadsheet to tell me what I had to do for the many quests I was on.

Now you may look at that and say, "no, you are stupid GG, those are not elements of a casual game. Those are, in fact, inconveniences that have been eliminated from MMOGs, and for good reason." Well, you might not state it exactly that way, but it’s a valid argument. I just disagree with it.

Casual games take the tedium out of everything you do. They make finding quest givers convenient, travel simple, they even the odds between skilled min/maxers and less experienced players. All the elements of convenience and simplicity combined make a casual game."

Part of a response that Grouchy Gnome made after other responses:

"Because the convenient features are just too convenient. When you know you can achieve the same "uberness" in a more casual game with significantly less investment, it reduces your drive to play the games that require the huge investment to become uber. The same thing with features. Now that I’ve played games that tell me where the next piece of a quest happens to be and has a journal showing me what I’ve done so far, I can’t go back to games that don’t include those features."

Whew.... with all that quoted out of the way, you might be scratching your head and asking what do these two topics have in common and why am I writing about it? (Even if you didn’t I’m still going to humor myself in thinking someone is going to read or care that I’m writing this.)

In my last post Dear MMORPG, I tried to touch on the infatuation period that is at the beginning of most MMORPG "relationships" which may mask some of the underlying problems that are there from the start (this also covers nerfs to a degree, since a nerf that creates problems in the relationship was already a problem in the first place in the overall game). "Hardcore" games tend to mask these problems longer with their complexity in driving the gamer in finding a way to over come them. I contend that casual games don’t kill hardcore players, it is the standard rock/paper/scissors, level-n-class, item driven systems that kill hardcore players. Casual game features are the flowers everyday that keep the relationship going despite the acknowledgment by the player that there is a problem in the first place. Which is the true reason that hardcore gamers are killed off. Casual games simply offer better relationship (albeit it is still flawed) than the hardcore games do, because while the player knows that it is flawed, they also know that the cost could be worse.

So in closing, maybe "Dear MMORPG" should have been "Dear MMORPG Industry" and written more suited to meet it’s name.

Dear MMORPG

2006-04-11T22:46:00.002-05:00

In my previous post, I had suggested that my "major" post was beginning to sound like a breakup/Dear John letter. With that thought floating around in the back of my head, I came on the idea of taking a tongue in cheek posting in keeping with Ernest Adams' Letter from A Dungeon and A Letter from the Cockpit. Drawing on my own experiences and from The Daedalus Project's interviews in Why We Quit and some Googled "Dear John" letter for templates/ideas.I give you: Dear MMORPG.

Dear MMORPG,

In the beginning, everything was fresh and new to me, you showed my things that I could only imagine. I can not even begin to count the hours or late nights that we spent together. Some of my family and friends didn't understand what I saw in you, but I always defended you no matter what.

Which is what makes it so hard for me to tell you this, but in the past few months, I have been seriously thinking about canceling my subscription. I don’t know when it happened, if it was you that changed or my view of you that changed. But I found that I had to force myself to login, the spark that had been there at the beginning was gone. Sure we tried new skills, trades, and even change of scenery to keep our relationship alive. But I finally realized how silly I was being, I can not force that spark to be rekindled.

I do not see this as losing something, but rather as having gained knowledge and wisdom. Out there is the perfect player for you that will love you and not find a single thing to criticize about you. And I hope that the perfect game is out there for me. Hopefully with the knowledge and wisdom that we gained in our time will help us both in that goal.

I think we both need to let go of the past, and be grateful for what we had for a time and move on from there. It is a little sad for me knowing that I won't be able to visit your world anymore, but I think I will be a better person in the end.

Next major post

2006-04-10T07:10:00.000-05:00

So I was working on my next "major" post and as I re-read it to keep it on topic, it became clear that it was a break up letter to UO. Describing what I liked only to tear it apart for how it changed. While it's not surprising given the amount of time I spent there. But given the time I've been away from UO, I would think that I would have moved away from it.

Profound posts or more the lack of.

2006-04-04T20:47:00.000-05:00

It feels like that I should have posted more profound by now.
I do have a write up/reworking/expanding on earlier "Suspending reality within RPGs & MMORPGs" in mind. But at the same time I don’t want to just rehash what we already know. Frankly I don’t know if I can write something that hasn’t already been worked on by multiple people, some of who have much more experience on the subject than I do.

Some history about me (at least in gaming terms):
Diablo:

Still have it installed and even had started playing it off and on again, now stopped.

Warcraft BNE:

Played it while waiting for Diablo II, I have played off and on since.

Ultima Online:

After giving up on waiting for D2 and permanently Blizzard, I played religiously everyday for about 4yrs. I still log in most every morning to get the broken chair daily rare on Baja and replace it with the much less rare daily tall candle *Yes I’m the sob that does that ;)*, but don’t play beyond that.

Horizons:

I was there from the launch, but after the first year or so my interest began to drop off and with friends playing Guild Wars I found very little interest in logging in. My account still active, but that could change in the near future.

Empire Earth II (demo):

Fun for kicks. I’ve never felt the need to buy the full version, other than having a wider assortment of units and much better graphics it might as well be Warcraft BNE or Starcraft.

Guild Wars:

I have been playing for the past few months. My opinion on it is are still mixed and I will leave it at that.

Quick changes

2006-03-28T23:16:00.000-05:00

Well I've already changed the template. The color of the other were easy on the eyes, but the code for editing the template is bit more than I feel like digging in right now just to add a few links.

Terra Nova: A great multi author blog that covers most everything that you can think of that is MMO.

Zen of Design: Pretty good blog, that is mostly MMO. But at time goes off the beaten path. ;)

Nerfbat: A good blog from what I've gotten the chance to read (I still need to read all the older stuff). What had caught my eye was Artificial Restrictions: Classes and Artificial Restrictions: Equipment which are both much more detailed than my GameDev.net post Suspending reality within RPGs & MMORPGs: (But I posted mine first. hehe)

First Post

2006-03-28T19:41:00.000-05:00

Having already started a journal (of sorts) on my desktop in a WordPerfect, it seems that I might as well post them in a blog as well (who knows, I might win a blog award).