[MUD-Dev] On socialization and convenience

[Auli]

Koster, Raph wrote:

> How much time do you think the average player should spend
> socializing in SWG?  Meaning, as opposed to "playing" however you
> define that--killing things, crafting, whatever. Chatting while
> recovering from a fight counts; chatting while forming a group
> counts too.
 
> Got a number?

There is no number.  The answer is 'as much, or as little as he/she
wants.'  No less a cop out in the answer than in the question.  You
are right, there is no correct answer.  You are going to have a
fundemental problem with this though.  You are better off having
people socializing and forming social groups offline, it saves
bandwith costs.  You realize you have conflicting design objectives
yes?

> So numbers we arrived at among our team ranged from 3% all the way
> up to 50%. I think it mostly reveals things about how different
> people play the game--and also about how people define
> socializing--and also about their memories (I flat out don't
> *believe* the 3% people--that's a total of a few seconds every
> HOUR spent chatting with people, on *average*. My take--nuh-uh, no
> way. :) For the record, I was a 50% guy).

Interesting how the game dictates this.  In The Realm I was probably
a nearly 70% type.  In EQ much, much lower.  Definately a major
contributor was how long it took to get to the 'end game'.  The
sooner that can be done, the more time spent merely socializing.
Not the only factor, but a major one.

> Why do I ask this? Because we have contradictory goals for the
> game. We want to reduce downtime. But people get to know people
> during downtime. That's when they socialize. That's when they make
> friends. In fact, I'd go so far as to state that it is a Law of
> Online World Design: Socialization Requires Downtime. The less
> downtime, the less social your game will be.  And we ran headlong
> into this while discussing interfaces for common municipal
> structures.

There should be considered two types of downtime, forced and
unforced.  Forced downtime is not often a good thing, players resent
it.  If you can channel it into socialization, less players will
resent it, but many still will.  Unforced downtime is a good thing
simply because it is almost always a social experience.  Many will
(and have) claim that time spent socializing is not downtime at all
but a normal process of the game.  Given that the terminology
migrates from 'adding downtime' to 'increasing social time'.  It is
an elusive thing to build into a game, but 'social spaces' (more
below) help immensely.

> A second key philosophical question--I asked the team, once we'd
> argued these points for a couple of hours, what their preferred
> metaphor was for a town in the game--player-run or not, really,
> though we focused mostly on player-run.  Many different answers
> came up--what sort of organization or community do you see that
> feature of the game as being most like?  Ponder that one for a
> bit.  Got an answer?

I have an opinion based on EQ.  In game buying and selling items from 
other players is not fun.  It is my least favorite part of the game.  If 
NPCs would pay half of what players would for items I would never do 
it.  Some of us just don't WANT to be merchants.  I would love to see 
some sort of consigment system whereby I could give another player a 
commision for buying and selling for for any major purchase I had.  Hmm, 
a fencing skill that some players have that allows a limited cross 
faction economy?  Put me on record for preferring a mostly NPC based 
economy, (and thereby town structure).  Sacriledge in today's MMOG 
design philosophy, but there it is.

> Here's some examples from other games:
 
>   * blacksmithies in Ultima Online.
>   * banks in UO. 
>   * town fountains in Diku muds.  
>   * spawn points in EverQuest. 
>   * safe zones in EQ.
 
> I have many fond memories of hanging out at town fountains in Diku
> muds.  

fountain and a square?  How about creating beautiful spaces just for
their own sake?  The best social spaces are hybrids.  Create a
compelling, asthetically pleasing space that is also part of the
traffic route, a recovery space, a staging area, or a pit stop and
you have a key spot for social activity.  The more hot spots you
hit, the more popular the space.

> Usually they were set in a town square, and the structures to the
> sides of the square were key to gameplay. The newbie hall, where
> everyone first entered the game, opened down onto this square. The
> inn, where everyone came to log out, and from which everyone
> logged in, was on one side. The guildhall where you had to come to
> advance a level was there. As a result, there was always a knot of
> people swapping stories about where they had just been, and making
> plans about where to go next. It's hard to imagine a more
> welcoming environment for a newbie to step into.

See what I mean :)

> Spawn points in EverQuest are of course a much maligned source of
> downtime.  But many people attested to the idea that that was
> where they chatted and talked.  But the fact that the downtime was
> a barrier to further gameplay in their eyes (meaning, they were
> camping so they could get some piece of armor or a weapon that
> they saw as necessary to continued enjoyment of the game) led to
> resentment of the enforced downtime and appears to have harmed its
> value as a social space.

This is an old concept from the old days of EQ.  The world is much
bigger now.  A 'camp' in EQ now is generally accepted as a place
where a group can fight non-stop, or as close to it as they can.
Back in the days where there was no place for the highest level
players in the game to go but SolB and Lower Guk this was
true. their weren't enough creatures to support 130 people in these
areas.  Sadly very little socialization takes place even at spawn
points now as there is very little downtime once a group reaches its
chosen hunting spot.

> Whereas safe zones in EQ were seen as staging areas. These are
> places of lower risk in the midst of dangerous areas. As natural
> gathering places, these locations became places where you bumped
> into people with common interests (killing whatever was nearby)
> and of comparable skill (since they were likely to be in your
> level range). It was where people retreated to to rest up and
> heal, and it was where they started a big foray from. A base, so
> to speak.  With these examples in hand, we classified the types of
> social spaces into three: STAGING: these are places where you form
> a group, find a friend, and decide what to do.

Staging is good.  Limiting travel forces these spaces into
existence.  They are rarely asthetically pleasing and people tend to
want to leave them as soon as possible, they are staging areas after
all.

> PIT STOP: these are the obligatory stops you make before you get
> to have fun.  RECOVERY: these are the places where you go after an
> adventure.

Aren't these the same things?  The reason for the pit stop is most
often caused by your last adventure and thus a recovery area.  What
else forces a pit stop?  Even if you are selling your crafted items
in this space it seems to me this is recovery from a playing session
(crafting), and not a result of downtime or socializing.  Either way
players are used to them and don't resent them much.

You missed one in my opinion:

ECONOMIC: these are the places where you go to participate in the
player run economy.

You may not plan these places in SWG, but they certainly exist in
other games.  Placing crafting assets nearby your mythical square
with a fountain my well turn that area into a hotbed of economic
activity.  Try limiting official economic communication to that
square (buy/sell chat channel if you will) and you can almost
guarantee it will happen.  Other methods can work, your town can
have retail zoning for instance.

> Here's a third touchstone question that emerged. Recovery
> areas--what are they FOR? Think hard.
 
> Got an answer? OK.

They are for overcoming obstacles placed in the game for the sake of
realism or limiting (oh thats harsh, how about toughening)
advancement.  Things like item decay, replacing consumables, and
healing are examples.  Even a place to sell crafted items works as
that is part of recovery for a crafting session.  Its simply a place
to undo the negative effects of a play session.  A better question
is 'what function does a 'pit stop' serve that a 'recovery area'
doesnt.'

> We were divided on this one too. Many of us saw them as obligatory
> character maintenance--the place to go when you need to heal
> up. We also saw them as rites of passage--the place to go to level
> up, learn your skill now that you have the achievements,
> whatever. But the third big thing we identified, and the thing
> that some of us felt was the most important thing, was that they
> were opportunities for mythologizing. The chance to retell the
> story of our adventures to ourselves, the chance to establish a
> consensus history, relive the incidents, and weave a narrative out
> of what were in fact very disjointed moments with no storyline or
> structure to them.

Ummm, no.  That is what you would LIKE them to be, and what they can
become.  Lets assume you must, or it is highly advantageous to go to
a cantina for healing.  Lets also assume this costs you credits as
I'm sure it will.  If you then design a space outside the cantina or
even 'entertainment zone' that is asthetically pleasing people will
have a good chance of turning that into a social space.  Many are
going to resent 'Cantina Time' because they will see that as
obligatory so YOU are obliged to minimize it to a certain extent.
On the other hand many who have just finished an adventure are not
yet organized and ready for the next so the area outside, not inside
might become a social space.

People are not going to mythologize inside your cantina unless you
are really, really clever.  They won't do it unless its free,
perhaps making it free after all healing benefits are gained, but
thats kind of artificial.  They won't do it if there are any other
barriers either, crowding comes to mind.  A good example of this is
the bank in Thurgadin in EQ.  For many its the only place to bank on
the continent.  It is a crowded, claustrophobic place.  People tend
to gather just outside of it, not inside.  Had the designers put the
'monument area' in Thurgadin as a park just outside the bank it
would have been a wonderful social space and I think many more
players would gather there.

> An interesting case was the blacksmithy in UO. Clearly a pit
> stop. But since it involved a player service, there was a human
> element to it that was missing from the bank or the spawn
> point. Waiting for another player is more palatable than waiting
> for the server to do something for you. So pit stops don't have to
> all be bad.

I'm still missing pit stops here.  I suppose the key is the rate of
Item decay.  If items decay relatively fast then going to the repair
shop is recovery because the result of your last adventure is that
you must go repair (The Realm was like this).  If decay is
relatively slow and you only need to repair occasionally it could be
seen as a pit stop.  Don't, however, rule out players tendancy to
min/max.  If my blaster is down to 95% efficiency and I pay for
repairs by % I'm going to have it repaired.  However if 'blaster
tuning' is a flat rate I have an economic incentive to hold off.  In
a mature economy as shown in most MMOGs to date (ie there is a large
amount of currency available) even that incentive may be gone.

> Lastly, staging areas seem plainly vital, because you need to have
> places where you form your party or group.
 
> But here's the rub. We had eliminated almost all of this stuff in
> the name of convenience. You don't need to visit the bank in SWG
> if you just enter town and transfer credits. To pick up gear you
> go by your house, which means your group scatters to the four
> winds before setting off. You don't visit the blacksmithy to get
> your weapon repaired--you drop it in a hopper and pick it up
> later. You get a mission on your datapad. You don't need to go to
> the town square to get your mail, you do that on your datapad too.
> In fact, the more we talked about it, the more we posited that if
> there WERE key structures (like needing to visit a shop to pick up
> your fixed blaster) they'd be placed on the edge of cities, not in
> the center, so that you could "bounce" off of town as quickly as
> possible.

Obi-Wan had to go to the cantina to find a transport.  Quai-Gon had
to go to a parts dealer for a hyperdrive core.  Luke apparantly sold
his speeder in person (though not explicitly shown).  Its no stretch
to believe Han didn't get his missions personally from Jabba.  I
certainly don't see how you would be breaking fiction having more
personal interaction.  Getting a little OT for the list so I'll stop
there.

> Even our recovery areas suffer from this. Yes, we pretty much make
> you go to cantinas and taverns, because you need to heal
> wounds. But that means that the only people whom you will meet in
> cantinas are wounded people and healers. And maybe a
> bartender. That leaves out a lot of types of player--the
> politicians, the crafters, the farmers and the animal trainers.

So don't place your these areas on the outskirts, combine them.
None of these areas in and of themselves will become catalysts for
social interaction.  No one gathered in the Newbie Hall, the Guild
Hall, or the inn in Diku-MUD did they?  They gathered in the spaces
adjacent and it is THESE spaces that are important and often
neglected.  Combining many of these essential areas with an
asthetically pleasing space with easy access to transportation and
you have a social space that works.

A great example is where I live, Savannah GA.  Savannah's city
center is made up of numerous squares with parks inside the squares.
The squares aren't surrounded by any one type of structure.  There
are retail spaces, churches, apartments, and clubs and taverns.  It
is very easy to see that the more diverse the structures that
surround a given quare are the more people that use the park.  I
worked in a government building on one such square, there was also a
post office, some professional buildings and the like.  The result
was that park wasn't used much.  One block over the square was
bordered by clubs, a bank, and retail spaces and on a summer day
you'll find many, many people there including street performers, old
men feeding pigeons, etc.  It is a more vibrant place because of
what surrounds it.

> Online games have the opportunity to offer microcommunities,
> tight-knit groups of people working towards common causes. This is
> something that most of us miss in our daily lives, and it's
> something that is very woven into human nature and life, and has
> been for millenia. We speak of the dehumanizing pace of life in
> the cities, and the ways in which we tune out people in
> crowds. That's why I can speak so nostalgically of the small town
> experience. A large part of the attraction of online games is, to
> my mind, recapturing that sense of community.  If we make life
> online overly convenient, what we may end up doing is merely
> recreating the experience of being a newbie in New York City.
 
> But I could be wrong. And that's why I pose the question to you
> now again, after you've read this very long rambling post.
 
> How much time do you think you should spend socializing? And
> where? When does convenience become dehumanization? And
> fundamentally, just how much downtime are you willing to take? 
> Because it's evident that some needs to be there.

I don't think you can force people to socialize.  That sounds
simplistic I know, but I think its true.  You can certainly
encourage it by providing community spaces for it.  The one thing I
didn't touch on was ease of travel to and from these spaces.  They
MUST be easy to get to.  Even better if its easier to get from one
to the other.  Building these spaces close to transportation centers
is a must.

Dwayne A. Hall









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