[MUD-Dev] MMORPGs & MUDs

[Michael Tresca]

Koster, Raph posted on Thursday, January 03, 2002 6:58 PM

>> My argument is that big, graphical MMOs are artistic in their
>> implementation.  They are beautiful.  Impressive.  Massive.

>>   They are not:

>>     1) conducive to role-playing

> I agree so much I made it a Law. :)

> I also think that judging virtual environments on their
> suitability for roleplaying is a huge misstep. Roleplaying is one
> possible use for a virtual environment. Might as well judge them
> on their quality for being a classroom or a writing group. Putting
> roleplaying in a position of primacy is just revealing biases,
> IMHO.

Well, okay.  That's if you view role-playing as an art, really.
That is, I paint houses -- but just because I have a brush and paint
doesn't make me an artist.

Actually, I don't paint houses.  But if I did I think the analogy
would apply.

Here's my theory:

Role-players are not a unique, insular group of sorry sacks.  They
are an advanced level of gamer. That means they're on the same
continuum of other gamers.

My theory is that as gamers mature, they seek richer content in
their games.  So the younger set enjoys (and indeed, sees nothing
wrong with) playing Buttcheex the naked elven maiden.  It's funny.
It's goofy.  It's whatever.  To the immature gamer, he's not
particularly attached to the image he's choosing to represent
himself with.  He doesn't have a vested interest, a stake in the
game, so to speak.  He treats his female elf like he treats playing
the Valkyrie in Gauntlet (dating myself, I know).

And of course, what else does he have to "teach" him about content
rich environments?  Why, less content-rich environments of course.
He has his twitch-fire games.  He has card games with limited
interaction.  Oh and he has his cartoons, in which he passively
watches an event.

As gamers mature, they seek a richer experience.  Richer experience
= richer content.  The problem of course is that while a griefer's
experience is not actively harmed by someone seeking richer content
(who cares if the guy is in character, he dies like everyone else),
a gamer seeking a richer experience CAN have it ruined by a
griefer. Why?  Because new players ARE content.

Now factor in a new, media-rich technology.  At first the population
doesn't have the capacity to comprehend what's a "good" vs. a "bad"
game because the technology is still new.  They're still ooh-ing and
aah-ing over the neat graphics.

Two years down the road.  They're pissed about AOs and WWIIOs.
They're seeking something substantial.  Of course, there'll always
be a plateau for some gamers.  But not all of them.

Four years down the road, those gamers who have broadened their
playing styles are not interested in MMORPGs in their current state.
They want role-playing richness, to adventure with their heroic
allies (who share their gaming style), and their idea of fun takes
on a higher level of sophistication.

If you haven't guessed it yet, I consider role-playing to be an
expression of that "richness" in gaming style.  There are others --
extreme technical detail, the challenge of a million possible
factors (thus the allure of Magic: the Gathering), to name a few.
But I think it's a mistake to assume that the RPG populace is teensy
and to be ignored.  Even if MMORPGers are not actually role-playing
table-top games, they are ultimately growing older and becoming more
selective in their gaming preferences.

That said, if any MMORPG defined their target audience as being
12-year-olds, there's no reason to judge them.  They're achieving
their goal.

But they aren't.  MMORPGs are trying to be all things to all people.
And the newbies are everywhere.  And they PAY.

So.  Even if a game does not have folks role-playing on it, I
consider the ability to effectively role-play as a style to be a
measure of the richness of a game's content.  If it can't
accommodate that, it ultimately is not going to appeal to gamers who
are looking for more.  It will make money.  But it's not a game I
want to play.

>>     2) conducive to long-term gaming styles

> How so?

How not?  A gamer seeking media richness (and note, I'm making the
argument that many gamers will start looking for more as they mature
and are exposed to other games) will move on.  The cycle I've
witnessed by many gamers is a "game until the next best thing comes
along" process.

The social hubs remain the same.  Clans play across different
MMORPGs.  They then pull up stakes and leave when the next game
comes along.  They do it in large groups too.

This means that MMORPGs are not actually capturing long-term player
loyalty.  When clan loyalty, outside of the game, is more powerful
than the appeal of the game itself, MMORPGs are not retaining that
long-term gaming style.

>>     3) conducive to creating social groups

> Again, how so? Are you referring to *single* social groups? If so,
> I'd agree. But based on *quantity* of social groups I'd
> disagree. But perhaps you mean *quality* of social groups, which
> is rather hard to assess...!

How not?  Be wary of giving MMORPGs credit for social groups that
would arise out of a million people getting together.  The odds of
social groups arising is pretty high.  The retention of said social
groups is key -- if they pull up stakes and leave to some other
game, you never really had those players in the first place.

>>     4) discouraging griefers

> Agreed, for many reasons which I have written about extensively on
> this list, including lack of peer pressure, difficulty of
> information dissemination and inconstancy of information, etc.

Whew, we finally agree on something. >:)

>>     5) rewarding non-griefers

> One more "how so?" Surely the things that a given mud explicitly
> rewards are a design issue unrelated to scale. Now, scale can
> certainly affect the things that are implicitly rewarded. But
> there's things I consider pernicious that are implicitly rewarded
> by small muds too...

Here's an example:

Buttcheex gets experience points and gold by slaughtering people and
animals and insects.  Since he's still in high school, he has LOTS
of time to play.  Buttcheex spends all day and all night killing
monsters.  It's all he does.  When he talks, he talks about his
girlfriend.  When he trades, he uses abbreviated speech.  When he
gets mad, he makes personal threats against players, not their
characters.  After a few months, his Buttblade becomes a +50 weapon
of destruction.  Buttcheex then goes around killing dragons and
bragging to his friends about it.

Bob, on the other hand, decides to name his character Patronymus.
He develops Patronymus' background because the game has that
function.  He decides his character doesn't like to fight women and
patently refuses to battle a female giantess.  He has a signature
color, fuchsia (which the game allows him to create), and Patronymus
is always color-coordinated.  Patronymus likes to be unique.

Then Patronymus gets PKed by Buttcheex.

Who won out here?  Who succeeded more?  Buttcheex used the game's
legitimate style of gaming, but so did Patronymus.  Patronymus may
never be even seen, but people joke about "the guy who always wears
fuchsia" and some people log in just to meet him.

Is Patronymus going to be better off in the game than Buttcheex?  Is
Patronymus playing the game the "way it was intended"?  If so, why
does it seem Buttcheex is the more powerful of the two and, at the
end of the day, can more easily murder the guy who was "acting like
part of the game."

>> My argument about art vs. entertainment is that, from a player's
>> perspective, he doesn't necessarily even perceive art.  He knows
>> what he likes.  It's a basic shameless, selfish need.  He's going
>> to do "what's fun."

> Yep.

> Of course, there's lots of people who perceive different things as
> fun, and there's no shame in targeting a particular group of
> them. There's also no shame in leading a player to particular
> aspects of a game--just about every game does it, via choosing
> which elements of the game to reward.

Great!  Then you agree with me that MMORPGs must tighten their focus
so they know who they're targeting.  Because as of right now,
MMORPGs are not targeting a particularly specific group -- it's
rather far ranging in scope.

>> Developers worry about much more than fun.  But insofar that I've
>> seen the concern over the inner workings of MMORPGs, the
>> intricacies seem wasted in light of more basic social
>> functionality.  Who gives two figs what color map is used for an
>> umber hulk if you can't create a game that people play "as
>> intended"?  That's the art side.

> I think "playing as intended" is overvalued--*except* insofar as
> it means that players play longer or get more enjoyment out of the
> game or do not ruin the enjoyment of others.

Well at base, I believe players failing to play as intended ruin it
for everyone.  Because players are content.

> Players will do things that are not fun, because we the designers
> reward them for doing it. And then they bitch mightily. But if we
> reward them enough, they keep doing it. Even when we tell them to
> stop and go *have fun* they won't, by and large.

Yep.

> So if people aren't playing as intended, it's because your game
> mechanics are broken. You'll just have to assess whether the way
> they *are* playing is more or less fun than what you had
> hoped. Often, it's MORE, in which case you should embrace it. I
> think that The Sims is practically a poster child for this.

Well, the argument that's come through loud and clear here is that
quite frankly, FUN is not what it's about.  The gamer who is not
playing the game as intended is paying just as much as the gamer who
is.  I think The Sims is a fabulous example of targeting the
audience correctly: most of humanity understands HOW TO PLAY BEING
HUMAN.  THAT is a very wide target audience.

>> I believe that MUDs have a valuable, non-tangible lesson that has
>> yet to be learned by MMORPGs.  It's a lesson in human dynamics.
>> MUDs are managing to generate fun without graphics and have been
>> doing it for over a decade.

> Many many muds have failed to do so, too. :P

Uh huh.

> And the ways in which they have done it are often
 
>  a) infeasible with graphics (no point in arguing about whether or
>  not one should go back to text, it's as silly as debating whether
>  studio multitracking ruined music)

Eeew, let us never go back to text.  To be clear, I am not stating
that MUDs are superior to MMORPGs.  I am stating that MMORPGs are
not taking advantage of MUDs as mini-experimental stripped down
versions that get to the core of what's fun in gaming.

> or

>  b) fun only to a niche (and often tired mechanics that we on this
>  list often decry, such as levelling treadmills. In fact, it's
>  interesting how quickly the graphical mud community has exhausted
>  the "level game" compared to the text community. Perhaps simply
>  because there's more games in text muds).

That's true.  Or, to use my language, MUDs know their target
audience very well, and MMORPGs act as if they don't have one (when
they most decidedly do).

You've summed up my points quite nicely.  MUDs went through the
"level treadmill" and already succeeded/failed because of it.
MMORPGs simply followed suit.  And yet they did not adopt the other
aspects of MUDs that have kept MUDs alive today.  Why?

> I think debating whether the current big graphical muds are fun is
> frankly silly, given the undeniable audience they have. It's an
> audience that is sticking, not fading away--it's not all
> fad-driven. UO's subscriber base did not plateau until fairly
> recently--for a game that launched in 1997. Based on text muds, it
> might well cruise along at a stable figure for quite a
> while. There've been a heck of a lot of text muds that have
> launched and closed between Sept 1997 and today. :P

I absolutely think MMORPGs can be fun to a lot of people.  But I
think the population is maturing and will want more from their
games.  If the target audience is ill-defined, MMORPGs don't know
why they have the audience they have.  When the audience's interest
shifts focus, as I believe it has been doing for the past two years,
MMORPGs will need to change their content to match.  But how do you
change your content if you don't have your target audience defined?

>> Instead of building on MUD errors and failures (a road littered
>> with the stinking corpses of a thousand ill-conceived MUDs),
>> MMORPGs are venturing into the universe of multiple players
>> unprepared because everyone thinks that it's a different gaming
>> paradigm.

> Well, it's not, and I know many, many, many MMORPG designers and
> developers who were mudders first and know perfectly well that
> it's not.

Ahem.  MUDders != MUD developer.  Playing a MUD and developing one
is a world of difference.

> But I can also tell you that it damn well IS a different ball game
> once it comes to issues such as policing the environment, dealing
> with issues with the playerbase, the level of technical complexity
> required, the level of engineering required, etc.

I agree with the level of engineering and technical complexity.  I
do not believe the level of people involved differs substantially
than any other people process.  I see MUDs as just a very tightly
focused target audience, not in a vacuum of other games, but as part
of a continuum.

>> It isn't.  It's just larger.  And on a larger scale, the small,
>> player-focused approach is critical in ensuring player loyalty.

> It would be very interesting to see the stats on loyalty for text
> muds. It's too bad that it's hard to obtain them. Is it typical
> for a text mud to retain half of all players who have ever logged
> in over the course of three years? What about a mud retaining 1/4
> of all players who have ever logged in over the course of 4? I'd
> bet it's not (in large part because the barreir to entry is low
> and therefore the barrier to departure is also low).

I can only speak for RetroMUD.  Here's the results of the informal
poll:

  Of 42 players polled, 36% had played for less than one year.
  7% played for one year
  14% played for two years
  10% played for three years
  7% played for four years
  7% played for five years
  10% played for six years
  7% played for seven years
  2% played for eight years

>> Flashy graphics, exciting gameplay, cool effects -- that draw
>> players.  Viable social communities keeps them there.

> I think the commercial industry agrees with you there. :)

Uh huh.

>> For my own curiosity, what's the average lifespan of a single
>> character (not player) on a MMORPG?  That is, how long does one
>> player play one character consistently before permanently
>> retiring them?

> I have no idea for a single character. The play patterns for
> players with multiple characters are something I should look into
> more. Do people tend to have a "favorite" and how much more play
> time does it get versus others? How many play multiples, and how
> many of those multiples are rarely played? Hmm.

> For players... A year, roughly. This is the average player. It's
> longer for some games and shorter for others, and has changed over
> time for some games and not for others. I can't go into further
> details than that.

> Back when I was working on text muds more actively, the average
> character seemed to drop out in three months. This still the case?

See my informal poll, above. I'm curious about the results on other
MUDs (especially the ones bigger than us).

Mike "Talien" Tresca
RetroMUD Administrator
http://www.retromud.org/talien


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