[MUD-Dev] GDC articles

[Koster]

These are the articles I have found thus far covering the online
worlds discussions at GDC 2002:

  http://www.joystick101.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2002/3/28/82435/1986

Caveat: Goodwin appears to have misspelled Jessica Mulligan's name
in multiple different ways, and the list of credits as to who worked
on what seems a bit wrong. All in all, though, it's a fair account
of the "Next Generation of Massively Multiplayer" panel.

start quote--->
  GDC Day 5, Developers on the Future of Online Worlds  		
  By jongoodwin 
  from the go IU department, Section Articles
  Posted on Thu Mar 28th, 2002 08:24:35 AM 		
		
  Although I enjoyed every day of the GDC, the last one was my
  favorite. It was a little less crowded, but the speakers were
  still top notch. Although I saw several sessions this day, I'm
  going to concentrate coverage on two amazing sessions. The first
  was a panel discussing the next generation of online worlds.

  The session was scheduled to be a virtual "who's who" in
  MMOG's. Raph Koster (Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies), Rich
  Lawrence (Air Warrior Series, Ultima Online), Jessica Mulligen
  (Neverwinter Nights, Skotos, and Warcraft 2 Online), and Gordon
  Walton (Ultima Online, The Sims Online). But before the session
  started I introduced myself to the guy sitting to my right who
  happened to be the producer of Dark Age of Camelot. We talked a
  bit about his launch (which the panel discussed later on as one of
  the few success stories of the year), and all of a sudden I heard
  a familiar voice behind me talking about architecture. Turning
  around I noticed it was Will Wright sitting behind me. That's what
  I love about this conference, you have the opportunity to spot and
  even chat with your favorite game designers - who are usually very
  approachable and friendly. After each session I attended, every
  designer stayed to meet the participants who wanted to chat. If
  you're a game fan and have the opportunity to attend I highly
  recommend you register for next year's confernece.

  At 10:00, the session began as Raph Koster, Rich Lawrence,
  Mulligon, and Song sounded off about their field, which they
  quickly differentiated from traditional games. Everyone seemed to
  agree that the service nature of MMORPG's made their product more
  like a cable company than a game.

  The session started with the question, "What is wrong with the
  current games out there?" Mulligen was quick to state that there
  were too many moving parts in the current crop of
  videogames. Games are too difficult for non-gamers to get
  into. Those that play the games are overwhelmed with the vast
  number of packages, and the difficult installation
  procedure. Those that do sart the game well after the launch have
  a much more difficult time with the game. Koster countered that
  the games aren't complex enough. Games aren't complex enough to
  meet consumer expectations. He said that games were too
  repetitive, and that there should be a way to overcome the quick
  consumption of MMORPG content. Hours after a new area comes
  online, people have it quickly mapped, and there are lines to
  collect the new items. Rich pointed out that perhaps the biggest
  problem is that games aren't matching the customer's expectation
  of service when they pick up the phone.

  The next question asked where the next generation of persistent
  worlds would go. Koster, perhaps the one with the most persistent
  world experience thought that user content would be the next
  generation, if developers and lawyers would let users get away
  with it. He also thought that dynamic content and better AI were
  key for the next generation of online games. He also pointed out
  that their new worlds would stop being referenced as games and
  become fully immerse worlds where perhaps users could have actual
  citizenship.

  Jessica mentioned that she thought that there wouldn't be a
  revolution, and what we'll really see is an evolutionary change
  giving players a world where voice communication would replace the
  keyboard. Also she described a Majestic-like scenario where you
  would get paged if your guild was being attacked. Rich also echoed
  Raph's call for user generated content where the audience could
  better design their own experience. He also expects that patching
  will be replaced soon. He thought that their distribution method
  is pretty weak, because the repeated patching necessary for
  content updates makes it difficult to get new users up to speed.

  The session really heated up with the Q&A. There were some great
  questions and responses. One of my favorites came from a
  participant who asked how MMORPG's could better appeal to
  women. Jessica pointed out that some games as high as a 50% gender
  distribution. She reiterated, "Women want to escape to a new place
  or time just like men... In RPG's they become leaders and guild
  members, men tend to kill more." Koster quipped, "If you want more
  women to play you could start by not showing naked breasts on the
  boxes."  "Everyone should play a woman character on an RPG and not
  just to get free stuff.", he challenged. "Experience for yourself
  sexual harassment, that everyone expects you not to know anything,
  and get propositioned every hour." Everyone on the panel nodded
  and the audience clapped as Raph sized up the experience.

  My favorite question came from an audience member who asked how
  designers should deal with user generated content when 99% of it
  would be crap. I was lucky enough to try to record it with my
  laptop. Here's the audio file
  <http://educlass.ist.indiana.edu/~jagoodwi/Authorship.wav> to hear
  the response (1 meg), sorry about the quality - my built in mic is
  pretty pathetic... For those of you without audio, I was most
  impressed by Koster's response. He said basically that all the
  artistic types should "get over yourselves, the rest of the world
  is coming", their self-expression is what's most important. He
  said the challenge was to give players the next generation of
  "legos" to facilitate easy creation and self-expression. If you
  have a decent connection, I recommend you try to listen to the
  full audio - because Koster can say it better than I can summarize
  it.
<---end quote

A transcript of that snippet since it's pretty hard to make out
(thank you, SoundForge, for rescuing it!):

start quote--->
  Question: How do you make it so that if other people want to start
  playing in that, either it works out, or it's a good story,
  or... what do you do?  Gordon Walton, panel moderator, exec
  producer The Sims Online, former Tyrant of UO: I want to
  paraphrase this, let me paraphrase this. What are we going to do
  when these unwashed people actually start, you know, putting stuff
  in front of us and you know, spoil our beautifully crafted world
  to hell. But uh, so that's the paraphrase, the one paraphrase. The
  other is, how are we going to get over the 99% of everything
  that's crap. Right? So that's a real problem, if 99% of everything
  is crap, and most people, you know, have the desire to be
  creative, but most of them don't have the actual skill to be
  creative. It's a real challenge, I think it is a real
  challenge. Why don't we see it today? That's probably a big part
  of it.

  Raph is dying to say something... this is probably the last
  question, so start filling out your little forms, you know, and
  mark 'em "1" for Jessica.  [rest lost in laughter--Jessica
  Mulligan was one of the panelists, and I kept contradicting her,
  and it had turned into a running joke. Basically, Jess said a
  dirty word, and I said, "Shame on you, now that's on tape!" and
  she said "Yeah, like they never heard that word here..."].

  Me: Let me say, sir, that I really sympathize. I'm an artsy type,
  as Jessica is fond of reminding me, and you know, I have an MFA. I
  spent much of my life training to write crafted
  experiences. There's an intense amount of learning and craft and
  skill that goes there, and I hate to say this to say this to all
  the film directors, writers, poets, um, painters, and everything
  else out there in the world: get over yourselves, the rest of the
  world is coming. Okay? People value self-expression. Is story
  going to go away? No.  Is careful crafting going to go away? 
  No. Are the professionals engaged in that going to go away? 
  No--well, except that IP, the concept of intellectual property,
  may; but that's a whole other side discussion.

  The thing is that people want to express themselves, and they
  don't really care that 99% of everything is crap, because they are
  positive that the 1% they made isn't. Okay? And fundamentally,
  they get ecstatic as soon as five people see it, right?

  So we can move to a meta-level of crafting experience. We can try
  to take a step up and say... you know, we can do what Lego did,
  which is give them the building blocks, so that they fundamentally
  can't make something so screwed up that everyone ends up
  leaving. Okay? And that's a different level of authorship than
  what we are used to, but it's a really exciting area of
  authorship.

  It's all them, guys, and fundamentally, authorship is about
  us. And it's the wrong medium for it--it's not what the medium is
  for.
<---end quote

http://www.gamespy.com/gdc2002/mmog/

This article is built out of several different sessions, including
the "Laws" session run by Anthony Castoro, the "Future of Massively
Multiplayer" roundtables run by Bernie Yee, and the above referenced
panel discussion.

start quote--->
  What's This World Coming To?
  The Future of Massively Multiplayer Games 
  The industry's most experienced world builders hash out what happens next.
  By - Dave "Fargo" Kosak 

  Of all the games in the world, the group loosely classified as
  "massively multiplayer" or "persistent world" games have the most
  unexplored potential.  They're among the oldest of multiplayer
  games; the very first networked computer users played adventure
  games similar to EverQuest, but comprised entirely of text. And
  with the advent of graphical interfaces, these massively
  multiplayer online games (MMOGs for short) may someday change the
  way we live and communicate online!

  ...at least, that's the promise. In the meantime the genre is
  trying to find legs. Are these products games or are they
  services? Should they be complex or simple? Should they cater to
  niches or mainstream audiences? How should people access them? The
  Game Developers Conference gives game developers the unique
  opportunity of stepping away from their current projects for a
  couple of days to put their heads together and hash out the
  answers to these problems.

  Over the course of the weekend I attended several presentations,
  talks, and roundtables headed up by leaders in the industry. How
  often do you get the lead designers from Star Wars Online,
  Asheron's Call 2, EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, Lineage, World
  of Warcraft, and other games together all in the same room? 
  Hearing them talk not only illuminates the current state of the
  genre, it points at the road ahead as well.

  Here are their observations, organized into rough categories. I
  tried to spot and identify overall trends -- talk frequently
  meandered, but kept coming back to a few key issues I've written
  about below. Read on to see where the genre is headed! [Or skip
  ahead to the forums to see what people are saying.]
  
  A Controlled Environment
  
  Star Wars Galaxies: a meticulously crafted environment in a galaxy
  far far away... Everyone at the conference was intimately familiar
  with the Disneyland analogy: the school of thought that says a
  massively multiplayer, online world should be just like
  Disneyland, a "controlled environment," built for the
  entertainment of guests and with all unsavory elements
  removed. Others referred to this as "a fascist state," and not
  always in jest.
  
  Primarily this is in response to so-called 'grief' players, who
  thrive on making the game miserable for others. "One bad player
  can affect hundreds of others," said Anthony Castoro, lead systems
  designer for Star Wars Galaxies in one roundtable discussion. How
  can game designers deal with what another developer called "the
  pull to supervillainy?" Most developers agreed that in small
  communities you can rely on the user base to police itself. But
  large-scale games with tens of thousands of users logged in at any
  given time can't be counted on to effectively
  self-manage. Conclusion? Control the environment. Just as
  Disneyland keeps its attractions clean and ejects any
  troublemakers from the park.
  
  A major part of establishing a controlled environment revolves
  around managing user expectations, a phrase that came up again and
  again in several sessions. Most designers agreed that to date many
  games have done a poor job of letting the user know up front what
  kind of world they were stepping into and how conflicts were to be
  handled. Laws, and the enforcement of them, would have to be
  clearly outlined in order to maintain strict control of the game
  without a bunch of upset or confused players.
  
  While most developers seemed to agree that a theoretical "online
  Disneyland" was a good way to create a world enjoyable to most
  players, a tightly controlled world unfortunately comes in direct
  conflict with an even stronger sentiment shared among the next-gen
  game designers. They wanted more dynamic worlds, not less, and
  more power for the users to shape those worlds. And that's the
  subject of our next topic...
  
  User Content: Making Your Mark On the World
  
  A panel of experts debates the third generation of MMOG
  games. From left to right: Raph Koster (Star Wars Galaxies),
  Jessica Mulligan (formerly of Ultima Online), Jake Song (Lineage),
  and Rich Lawrence (Sony Online Entertainment) Rich Lawrence, the
  Director of Development at Sony Online Entertainment, was pretty
  adamant about it. "You need to create a presence for yourself in
  the game," he said at a panel on third-generation online games. As
  a player you should be given the tools to determine "the world you
  live in, and the laws it's governed by." There was muttered
  agreement all around.
  
  In fact, one of the few things that all these designers could
  agree on was that players needed a way to make these worlds their
  own, to establish belonging and permanence. It's the best way to
  get a player to stick around: Allow him or her to build something
  that lasts or make a meaningful change to the game
  world. Something personal.
  
  Of course, user-created content has a lot of sticky issues. Raph
  Koster, former Lead Designer for Ultima Online and current
  Creative Director for Sony Online Entertainment and Star Wars
  Galaxies, expressed the problem without mincing words: "Our
  corporations are terrified of this."  Intellectual property,
  ownership, and copyright issues are just the beginning of the
  uncharted territory. More importantly, how can a game design
  rationalize the desire to give players creative power with the
  need for a controlled environment? Are the two mutually exclusive? 
  Solving this problem seemed to be the top agenda in the next
  generation of games.
  
  Are developers worried that empowering users to create things will
  just result in massive worlds packed with low-quality (read: crap)
  content? Of all the people I spoke with, this didn't seem to be a
  concern. Most consider it imperative to allow users to create
  lasting things in the game world, and the only issue was how to do
  it elegantly while maintaining the integrity of the world. Koster,
  in fact, saw it as sort of a crusade. Speaking on the
  aforementioned third-generation games panel, his message to
  elitist writers and artists was this: "Get over yourselves! The
  rest of the world is coming." He said that games will want to move
  to a 'meta-level' as content aggregators. "We can do what Lego did
  and give them [the players] the blocks," he explained.
  
  Is It a "Game?"
  
  This question is more than just semantics, and it's one that's
  still open for debate. Raph Koster made his feelings pretty clear
  in more than one session: "It's a medium, not a game." 
  Representatives from Asheron's Call 2 agreed, acknowledging that
  calling these products "games" was too self-limiting. Of course,
  the current crop of products can hardly be called anything but;
  players still "play the spreadsheet" and try to gain points and
  items. "MMP game design seems to be rooted in Wizardry I online,"
  said Bernie Yee, former EverQuest developer and Vice President of
  Publishing for newly-founded En-Tranz Entertainment. He described
  "harvesting," where characters are encouraged to "go out into this
  field of experience points and cut something down." Social
  structures seem to evolve in spite of this system, rather than
  because of it. Another designer wished that MMOG game design could
  be more influenced by Will Wright (creator of The Sims) than by
  Gary Gygax (creator of Dungeons & Dragons). [[That was me
  too--Raph]]
  
  Of course, while everyone wanted to build more interesting systems
  promoting different types of play and social interaction, nobody
  could agree on how exactly it can (or should) be done. Giving
  people the tools to create player content (as described above)
  looks to be one of the first steps.
  
  The root of the issue is that players will do whatever they're
  rewarded for doing. And it's easy to reward monster-bashing; it's
  a simple, elegant system that's worked in games for decades. It's
  much more difficult to reward other kinds of activities without
  players abusing the system. An example that someone brought up:
  they tinkered with the idea of a "chivalry" system, where players
  could give "tokens" to other players who helped them out in the
  game. The problem is, how do you prevent players from hoarding
  tokens with a hundred of their friends? How do you prevent such a
  system from, in the lingo of the developers, "getting gamed?"
  
  Another option was to encourage and enforce player behavior
  through direct interaction. This works within a small community,
  but doesn't scale to huge games. Most designers were skeptical of
  this, anyway. There has to be a more elegant solution than spying
  on the players and rewarding them whenever they do something
  interesting.
  
  Of course, if anyone in the room had any clever ideas for
  rewarding constructive/social types of behavior, they may have
  chosen not to speak; trade secrets and all. But judging by the
  amount of discussion, this remains a hot topic in MMOG design.
  
  Complexity, Time Spent, and Ease of Access
  
  "We're building games with too many moving parts!" exclaimed
  Jessica Mulligan, MMOG columnist and former events and volunteer
  director for Ultima Online. "Hideously complex games that are
  impossible to balance." Her argument ultimately wasn't that games
  should be simple, just that they needed to be elegant and easy to
  understand.
  
  Most of the discussions I sat in on at the convention seemed to be
  in agreement. With the exception of a handful of hardcore
  niche-focused game developers, most people wanted to broaden the
  pool of potential players. And that meant a lot of things. It
  meant simpler game mechanics that don't take a doctoral degree to
  demystify. But it also meant different ways to access the game.
  
  "The PC is really our only delivery platform right now ... and it
  sucks," said Rich Lawrence, Director of Development at Sony Online
  Entertainment.  For people to be computer literate, own a PC, own
  the proper hardware, and to have broadband installed (since many
  games are modem-unfriendly) is too much of a "coincidence." It
  narrows the available playing field. Consoles are a possible
  distribution method. (And, to that end, I noticed one of the Xbox
  engineers sitting in on one of the roundtables asking pointed
  questions about what it would take for developers to feel
  comfortable with the Xbox platform. With integrated broadband, the
  Xbox seems like a likely MMOG target.) Also, better distribution
  is necessary; the "patching" process is extremely lengthy and
  obtrusive. There's got to be a better way to distribute new
  content to people!
  
  Along with new means of distribution, Gordon Walton -- Vice
  President and Executive Producer of The Sims Online -- wants to
  see additional means of entry. What about accessing the game world
  via your handheld or cell phone?  For example, while riding the
  bus on your way to work, you could check your in-game messages or
  manage your character's general store from your Palm Pilot. Walton
  also insisted that there needs to be a portable game client that
  people can mail to their friends ... an intuitive sampling service
  to get people hooked on the game world. "Like liquid crack," he
  said.
  
  And finally, from an ease-of-access perspective, another issue is
  the amount of time required on the part of the player to have a
  meaningful interaction with the game. In the current crop of
  products, rewards are distributed in direct proportion to the
  amount of time spent online. As Yee said in the roundtable he
  hosted, "How do you make a player who spends five hours a month
  [playing] still feel relevant to the game world?" A majority of
  the developers agreed that this was essential to broaden the
  audience, and one answer to the problem goes back to allowing
  users to build something permanent in the game world to call their
  own.
  
  Treatment of Customers
  
  Speaking on the panel about third-generation MMOGs, Rich Lawrence
  spent several minutes talking about the level of service present
  in today's games vs. where the genre needs to be. The game
  experience needs to stabilize, difficult as that may be for an
  Internet product. "They [players] have unexpected, unplanned
  events happen to them that aren't part of the game mechanics,"
  Lawrence explained, referring to network glitches, bugs, lag, and
  other frustrations. And it's hard to know what's supposed to be
  accepted and what isn't, or how to complain. He continues: "Users
  don't know where the parameters are of the service .... that
  uncertainty is unacceptable of a service."
  
  Gordon Walton agreed, stating that customer service needs to be
  integrated right into the game and placed into the game design
  from the beginning. In many games, customer service is tagged on
  at the end of the process, and "the seams show like Frankenstein's
  Monster," he says. Walton also says it's essential to move to
  virtually 100% uptime. "It needs to be more like the phone
  company," he claimed, wherein only an act of God will shut down
  your service and take away your dial tone.
  
  Solutions to this problem aren't merely technical. Again, it comes
  back to customer expectations -- lay out up front what's to be
  expected from the service and what to do when the service
  fails. This is a problem that may take several generations of
  technology to completely solve.
  
  So, what does this all mean for the games of the future? Read on.
  
  What Games Are We Going to See?
  
  All this talk was awesome, but ultimately the developers who got
  together for those few exciting days in March have to go back to
  their respective companies and actually put those theories to
  practice. Here's where this article gets speculative: What are we
  going to see in the years to come?  After a few days of trend
  spotting, we can make some assumptions.
  
  Most companies are going to strive to make gameplay more
  basic. That doesn't mean shallow! What it means is that they'll
  try to find simpler game mechanics that combine together in
  interesting ways. There's a difference between a simple game or a
  complex game that's simple to play. Think of The Sims: there's
  only a limited set of character actions and items available, yet
  they combine for all sorts of interesting effects. That's what
  developers are going to aim for in the future: a basic set of
  things to do that will nonetheless allow for continual character
  growth and plenty of interesting social interactions. Expect to
  see several games experimenting with gameplay formulas that aren't
  based on a D&D-style "experience-leveling" path to advancement.
  
  You'll also almost certainly see more opportunities to build onto
  the game world, or to change it in meaningful ways. That means
  more character customization, more item creation, more building
  opportunities, and more ways to get involved with the larger game
  world (building towns, being elected mayor, starting a war, etc.) 
  We'll probably see some simple building in the next generation of
  games, with more opportunities as the technology improves. Along
  those lines, sometime in the next five years, expect a couple of
  legal battles involving user-created content. If you create
  something spectacular within a game world, is that your property? 
  Or does it belong forever to the game publisher? More importantly,
  who owns your online persona? Chew on that!
  
  Service seems to be a major focus for games moving
  forward. Developers and publishers are realizing the escalating
  costs of managing a huge base of paying customers. It's uncertain
  what concrete changes we'll see, but it's likely that rates will
  be higher, more support staff will be available, and game designs
  will by neccessity become more robust (less downtime, longer beta
  periods, less bugs in the retail product.) At least, we can hope.
  Internet latency and the complexity of these games conspire
  against the ideal of flawless service...
  
  You'll also find that you'll be able to interact with online
  worlds in new and different ways. It won't require several hours
  of your time each day in order to build up a character who's
  important. You'll also be able to "play" through alternate methods
  -- instant messages, e-mail, and the like. The most important
  switch is that we'll see more console-oriented MMOGs, such as
  Phantasy Star Online (but hopefully without the cheating). As a
  proponent of console multiplayer technology, we here at GameSpy
  expect to see game worlds in the near future where an Xbox user
  can be playing on the same server as someone sitting at his or her
  PC.
  
  Lastly, it's inevitable that the people running online worlds are
  going to get more strict with their user base, reaching for
  tighter and tighter control of the user experience. You'll agree
  to certain terms when you enter the game world and you should
  probably expect a zero-tolerance policy for anything that would
  disrupt the experience for other players. Don't like it?  Hey,
  don't worry. There are something like seventy MMOGs in
  development, big and small, so you'll almost certainly find a
  niche somewhere.
  
  The future of massively multiplayer may be clouded by uncertainty,
  but it's certainly bright. The developer that finds the cleverest
  solutions to the above problems will have a phenomena on it's
  hands unlike any the world has ever seen.
  
  We're curious to hear your take on the present and future of the
  genre! Are we headed for true virtual communities or another
  decade of mindless spreadsheet-manipulation games? Speak out in
  this thread on the GameSpy Forums!
<---end quote
  
-Raph
  
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