[MUD-Dev] Codename Blue & Facets - Nick Yee's new studies

[Sasha Hart]

Nick Yee:

  "In particular, it was found that DAOC players would keep their
  accounts active for significantly less time when compared with EQ
  or UO players (p<.001 for both)."

This is minorly interesting to me. One could always go for assuming
that it was the specific game. But isn't it possible that by now EQ
and UO populations have bled off the people who were most prone to
dropping the game? Seems just as plausible to me.

[Raph]

>  Most specifically, the number one reason why online games turn
>  out to be addictive, according to Yee's study, is NOT "Skinner
>  box" achievement ladders. It's other people. "Addictive" behavior
>  is strongly correlated with the Relationship motivation.

Yes, there is a correlation in the facets article: "It was found
that the Relationship motivation was the most correlated with hours
played per week (r=0.24)." (n.b. .24 is not a strong correlation at
all; maybe enough though).

But the exact same level of correlation exists with the grief scale,
and greater for achievement, in the code blue article: "The
addiction scale correlates positively with the Achievement, Grief
and Relationship factors (.32, .26, and .26 respectively)."

If anything achievement wins out. And grief is head to head with
relationships. Better get on designing "greater annoying racket" and
"power word: instant permadeath" spells. ;)

> And DAoC, which shows evidence in the study of having the poorest
> likely retention, is actually the top game for Achievement.

Confounded with newness of the game. If it weren't a pretty neat and
workable story (e.g. that people who leave soon left soon earlier in
UO and EQ's cycle) then I would give this up. Is UO losing players
overall (scale of months/years) or gaining them?

>  Lesson for us developers: Build relationships. Not teams, and not
>  advancement ladders.

I hope you are right. At least I would prefer that people believed
it when designing, and quit doing things like removing 'tell' to be
'more realistic.'

Sasha


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