[MUD-Dev] Re: MMO Communities

[Freeman, Jeff]

From: Michael Sellers
> Jeff Freeman wrote:
>> HRose wrote:

>>> Here we are considering the subscriptions numbers at an high
>>> level. Not many peoples play with one or two friends.

>> Seems fairly common, to me.

> This shows the danger of reasoning from our own preferences and
> experiences to those of hundreds of thousands or millions of
> others. I can tell you instance after instance of people who have
> stopped 'playing' an MMOG and yet who continue to pay and visit
> because of the social connections there.

Now, I think I'm being taken out of context here.  I never said this
wasn't the case.  I said that the 'partner syndrome' seems fairly
common to me.

That said: Yes, I design games based on my own preferences and
experiences, not based on how I think a million other people might
feel.  I'm going to be fairly unapologetic about that, too, because
I think game designers who design purely via survey results and data
collection make crap for games.

> I believe Amy Jo Kim's research some years back showed the same
> thing.  And I'd be willing to bet that Raph's empirical data shows
> this as well.  Whether Raph or Amy or I happen to play that way is
> pretty much irrelevant.

Agreed.  "I hate this game, I'm just here because my friends are
here" is a real common response.

However, *increasingly*, I'm seeing game-spanning meta-groups emerge
that allow people to switch games without losing their friends /
leaving their community.

It's probably safe to ignore that for a while longer.  Or if you
don't work for Sony, ignore it forever.  What do I care, right?

> There are no doubt those who play for a long time and don't make
> significant new social bonds; but these are by far the exception
> and not the rule.  If retaining more subscribers for longer is a
> goal, one of the best ways to do this is to provide an environment
> that strongly encourages social interaction and bonding.

What forced grouping *is* good for is to make a game that appeals
primarily to people who love to group.  By forcing all the other
players to group with them, it's easier for them to get what they
want.  They'll even complain "no one ever groups with me!" if you
don't occassionally force people to group with them.

But it has some down-sides to it, such as instantly making the game
a hard-core lots-o-time-to-kill players only sort of thing, and
there are other ways to strongly encourage interaction and bonding,
scarcely explored.  "Let's just force 'em group" is sort of the
cave-man approach to encouraging social interaction.  To me it's
just thinking along the lines of "All the data supports the
conclusion that we should just keep making EQs."

And it can even fail to encourage social interaction, if the game is
too fast-paced to allow anyone time to chat, or too shallow to
provide anything to chat about.  Ah, but the closest we get to
pacing is "socialization requires downtime" and no one ever talks
about how important depth and complexity is to social interaction at
all.
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