[MUD-Dev] Retention without Addiction?

[Paul Schwanz]

A couple of years ago, in regards to getting players to play less
(though at the time, the discussion arose for financial moreso than
social reasons), Dave Rickey said the following:

     There's a truism in commercial fiction that every time a reader
     sets down a book, there's a small but finite chance he won't
     pick it up again.  And if he does put it aside unfinished, the
     odds are he won't buy the next book from the same author.
     That's why many authors write novels without defined chapters,
     others write chapters only a few pages long, and most try to
     make the end of a chapter the last place you want to stop
     reading.  You want the reader to keep reading as long as is
     possible, setting the book down only if he must.

     Every single time a player logs out of an online game, there's
     a small but finite chance that will be the *last* time he ever
     logs in.  Make your game so ephemeral that players will log out
     simply because there doesn't seem to be any point in playing
     any more that night, and he's going to start wondering if
     there's any point in playing (and paying) at *all*.  You can
     reduce average hours per player only at the cost of increasing
     churn, if at all.

I thought the quote made a lot of sense.  In fact, that's why I've
remembered it and have used his thoughts, if not his words, to make
similar points in similar discussions.  Over the last couple of
years, however, my thinking has changed a bit and the ongoing thread
regarding Korea's struggle to define online world responsibility has
caused me to reevaluate this issue yet again.  I think there may be
good financial and social reasons to explore methods for encouraging
repeat customers instead of addicted customers.

The more I think about what Dave has written above, the less sense
it seems to make for an author to write a novel without defined
chapters.  Unless the novel is rather brief, I would think that the
reader *will* have to set the novel aside at some point.  When the
reader does this, it seems to me that having no chapters actually
introduces two things that work against the reader picking the book
back up.  Actually, the first is more of a missed opportunity to
employ a device that Dave mentions.  If you have no chapters, how do
you encourage the reader to stop at a point where she doesn't want
to stop reading?  How do you encourage her to put the book down
where suspense is highest so that there is an increased chance she
will pick it back up?  Secondly, it seems to me that the reader will
feel pressured to set aside a larger amount of time to read the
book.  I would think he would have a feeling that a greater
investment was required and this could actually diminish his desire
to continue reading the book.

Not only do many best-sellers and real "page-turners" have chapters,
but the most popular entertainment pastime is also episodic in
nature.  Television uses ongoing story-lines, suspenseful endings,
and quite a bit of advertisement to convince viewers tune in again
for each new episode, and even the episodes are interrupted by
commercial breaks.  While the passive nature of television already
lends itself to a lower energy investment, it is interesting to note
that sitcoms typically restrict themselves to 30 minute episodes to
further lower that investment in order to convince viewers to watch.

When I contrast these approaches to entertainment with the
"lewt-n-level" paradigm which predominates current MMORPGs, it makes
me think we might be missing something.  The fact of the matter is
that players *will* log out.  While doing so might mean that there
is a finite chance the player will not log back in, I believe that
finite chance can be enhanced or diminished by other design choices.
It seems to me that the lewt-n-level design may acutally increase
the feeling that a higher time and energy investment is required to
log back into the game and this will actually push players away from
doing so.  In a recent discussion on a game developer forum, one
player described the lewt-n-level paradigm with adjectives such as
sweat, toil, boredom, and work, and he was actually arguing *in
favor* of the paradigm.  I searched his post for any sort of
indication that he found the activity *fun* or *entertaining* but
came up blank.  So what is the purpose of this paradigm?  Is it
merely an addictive feedback mechanism designed to try to convince
the player to stay in the game long enough to actually find
activities that *are* fun?  So far, I've not been able to find
anything in these types of games that I consider worth the sweat +
toil + boredom + work + *monthly fee*.

It seems to me that a better paradigm is possible.

I put off or otherwise try to avoid cleaning out my cat's litter
box, but I look forward to Christmas morning.  One I find tedious,
but the other I find compelling.  Imagine a paradigm where the
character did a lot of the sweat, toil, and boring work offline and
I, the player, got to log in and enjoy the fruits of his labor.
Imagine if I got advertisements in my inbox telling me about the
wonderful item my character just made or the skill points he'd
accumulated.  I think that at this point, logging in would feel more
like Christmas morning and less like cleaning out the litter box.
Once I logged in, I'd use those items and skill points to go on fun
quests, which, upon successful completion, would open up additional
options for items or skills that my character might pursue.  This
would give more of a flexible episodic nature to the feel of the
gameplay.  Of course, we tend to value items based upon the work
needed to aquire it and this new paradigm could indeed cause players
to value possessions or skills less.  However, I don't believe that
the entertainment needs to suffer greatly, especially in light of
the fact that TV can be very entertaining with very little
investment.  Additionally, less presure to spend time "skilling"
could lead to a sense of greater freedom to socialize, which would
also benefit retention.

In any case, I think its time we looked at replacing the addictive
feedback mechanism of the lewt-n-level treadmill with something that
requires a bit less investment, is more episodic in nature, and
results in greater entertainment with, perhaps, benefits to
retention instead of the predicted increased churn.

--Phinehas


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