[MUD-Dev] Retention without Addiction?

[Tom Hubina]

At 02:44 PM 12/2/2002, Paul Schwanz wrote:

> 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 every day was Christmas. First, it's impossible to sustain
that kind of feeling because every day the presents would have to
get better and better ... but even that would quickly become boring
and pretty soon you'd just skip the Christmas tree and go right for
the coffee.

Now, imagine that you were cleaning your cat's litter box and much
to your surprise you found a nice crisp $100 bill! Wow! Now imagine
you learned that every time you cleaned that litter box you had a
chance to get another $100 bill. It would happen fairly rarely, but
it _would_ happen. Every morning you'd pass that litter box and
think, "Damnit .. I hate cleaning that litter box, but it sure would
be cool to get that $100 again!". You might even start looking for
other litter boxes to clean ...

This is analogous to camping a rare spawn in Everquest for 12 hours
straight. It sucks, but when you get the drop you're looking for its
precious to you because you earned it, and precious to others
because they know how much work it takes to get one.

> 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.

The things you get would have no value. You didn't "earn" them so
they're fairly worthless to you. What does it matter if you log on
today? If you wait and log on tomorrow you'll still get it? Or maybe
something better ... after all, your character is sweating and
toiling for an extra day right?

> 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.

Nah ... it'll feel like spam ;)

> 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.

Perhaps ... but why does a person have to log off in order to get
these items? It seems like an incentive to leave the game, which is
pretty backwards.

> 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.

Exactly ... there's zero effort to get anything, so people don't
lose anything if they quit. There's no incentive to stay.

> 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.

It's a different form of entertainment. It's always "new" (jokes
aside) ... when you get bored you chose a new station ... shows that
don't do well get canceled and replaced .. etc. Basically, it's
similar to your every day being Christmas metaphor, except you have
TONS of advertising dollars providing money that is then used to
generate TONS of content. I don't think it's possible to have a
persistent world where you're able to create enough content to have
the Christmas every time they log in.

> Additionally, less presure to spend time "skilling" could lead to
> a sense of greater freedom to socialize, which would also benefit
> retention.

IMO there's three reasons why people keep playing a MMOG for such a
sustained period of time:

  1. The game is still sufficiently interesting that it does cause
  them pain to play.

  2. There are friends that they've made in game that they feel they
  would lose or miss dearly if they stopped playing.

  3. They don't want to lose all the work they've put into their
  characters. That's a huge investment to walk away from.

For me it's #1 and #3 ;)

> 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.

I think providing alternatives in the world to the lewt and level
treadmill is very important. Trade skills are probably the biggest
thing we've seen to date on this front, but I'd like to think there
are even more things out there that are possible. I think it's
possible to develop more activities for people to pursue in the game
that reduces burn out on the lewt and level treadmill. I also want
to come up with additional ways for people to "play" without being
in the full game. For example, I think it would be cool if people
with Everquest characters could buy/sell in the Bazaar, chat, and
work on trade skills through a web interface.

Tom


_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev