[MUD-Dev] New Bartle article

[Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu 
> [mailto:mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu]On Behalf Of
> msew
> Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2001 9:56 PM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu; mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] New Bartle article
 
> One of the things with EQ right now is:
 
> lots of my friend are NOT quiting the game even tho they are not
> really play.  And often find themselves coming back to it.  But
> there is a growing amount of them that are deleting their character
> SO they can quit.
 
> With PD it might make a bunch of the people that have been lucky and
> have survived a long time, just quit the game if they are killed.
> Losing 100+ days of time and effort of creating a persona and
> acquiring items and skills is a HUGE hit to take.

In a commercial subscription game, when you see someone post, "I am
closing my account," you know they'll probably be back. When you see
someone post, "I deleted my characters and I am closing my account,"
you know they are quitting for real. It's because they are consciously
severing the emotional bond.

Losing the in-game things to which you have an emotional attachment is
the opportunity for exit (in fact, any moment where you have reduced
emotional attachment to something in-game--eg, when you are a newbie
versus a well-established character). The more emotionally invested in
something the player is, the less likely they are to actually leave
and quit paying.

Logic says that you should

  1- try to get them emotionally invested as quickly as possible
  
  2- remove every feature or activity that could reduce emotional
  investment

As far as #1 goes--this is why it's probably a smart idea to let them
build something very early on that they can make theirs and
emotionally invest in.  This could be a character but probably isn't
since it's likely that they can see the long stretch of character
advancement laid out before them, and they will be aware that the .1%
of advancement they did in the first session isn't significant. They
won't invest that much in it. Personally, I kind of like the whole
player-owned bits of map thing myself. Might be best to just give them
a spot when they start so they can immediately invest in it.  In-game
pets, as in the Tamagotchi/Black and White example, are good too.

As far as #2--all of the following seem to me to reduce emotional
involvement in the game, provide "pause" or stopping points where you
can evaluate what you've accomplished, and (deadly thing) deem it
"enough." I don't want players ever getting that contemplative and
thinking "that's enough, I've done what I wanted to do." I want them
looking for new things to try and do so that they stay
subscribers. Given that premise--which may not be shared by everyone,
of course--the following would be Bad Things:

  - having to start over to try a new mode of gameplay.

    This includes classes, races, selection of initial stats being
    deterministic of future career paths, selection of starting
    location being deterministic of future career paths, etc. All of
    these things mean that when you decide to change careers (which
    you likely will at some point, particularly if you are a GoP
    player) you have to voluntarily drown the Tamagotchi egg in a cup
    of coffee in order to do something different. But as you do so,
    you're also severing the emotional tie you have to the game, which
    was embodied in your character.

  - having to start over because your emotional involvement is taken
  away

    This includes permanent death, having all your possessions taken,
    having your guild leave the game without you, theft, or having
    your mud invaded by k3wld00ds. A recent UO example would be the
    abortive replacement of all the fictionally-written messages in
    the game with generic (more easily localizable) text strings
    ("enchanted silver blade of vanquishing" became "a magic sword:
    5/3/4/1"--it didn't stick, players complained in droves).

Yes, there's a class of players for whom the risk of permadeath
increases their emotional involvement throughout the game. But then
they die. Even for them, that's a good stopping point. As the quote
that was flying around earlier states (paraphrase), "every good heroic
myth needs to have the hero die at the end..." Key part of that
sentence is "the end." Do we WANT end points in these games?

-Raph
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