[MUD-Dev] Casual Crowd vs.Time Rich Crowd [was: Time Debt]

[HRose]

Raph Koster wrote:

>> Players don't pay for a game they don't play.

> A disturbingly large number of them do, actually. Not all,
> obviously, but still a significant percentage. If you look at
> "unique player logins in a month" it just about never reaches
> 100%, nor does it match the churn rate (in other words, the people
> who do not log in also don't all quit). I don't have monthly
> figures handy, but you can have a game that shows 70% of the
> userbase logging in every week, and not have anywhere near 30% of
> them quitting--in fact, not even a tenth of them will quit.

I know this. In fact I'm subscribed to FFXI even if I don't log in
from months. But this doesn't disproof what I wrote. The fact that
I'm not playing the game makes me a lot more near to the decision to
cut it. What you are doing here is the most common mistake. You
observe a behaviour and draw a completely wrong rule. We were
considering the design. I simply think that is overly stupid to
develop a game that doesn't want you to play. For obvious reasons
(look at the last line of this message).

My line you quoted there is surely wrong if you take it in its
absolute meaning. But the fact is that you cannot read it, prove
that it is wrong and so demonstrate its contrary: "you can design
successful games that incentivate players to stay offline".

Both in what I write and what you write there's a sub-text.

  1- "Players don't pay for a game they don't play" has the subtext
  "incentivate the players to play because here is the success"

  2- "A disturbingly large number of them do, actually" has the
  subtext "the success of a game isn't tied to the fact that players
  use to play it"

This is what I mean. It's true that there are players that don't
play but pay. But this isn't useful to draw a positive design
strategy. Designing a game for players that don't play not only will
make you loose those who play. But also those who don't.

There are peoples that buy cars and then don't use them. So you
think that you can develop a successful car that doesn't move?

P.S.

  And let's focus on the content and not on the form. The line you
  quoted is "truth" if you consider the context of my message,
  "false" if you isolate it, like you did. At the other side your
  message here is "false" if we consider its context, "true" if we
  consider it isolated (since I cannot argue nothing that you wrote
  here). What I did in this message is to provide back the context
  to mine and your message to demostrate that mine is true and your
  false.

  You win on the form, I win on the content :)

P.P.S.

  I want also to add that the title of the message isn't its
  topic. The problem of the casual crowd, and so the mass market, is
  WAY more complex than a simple issue with the time you have
  available. In fact a casual player can still love single-player
  games that are excassively long, just by playing them at the
  "pace" he chooses. The problem is simply inherited by the fact
  that time and play puts GAPS between the players. The issue is
  originated by the structure of the treadmill, where "young"
  players cannot play with older ones.

  I have many design ideas on how to solve the problem about "Casual
  Crowd vs.Time Rich Crowd" and they are along the lines of creating
  different structures inside the game where different players have
  different roles and goals. Where casual players have a specific
  role and goal and where time rich crowds have another. And the
  *key* is about giving them different roles but making they play
  *together* with the same general goal.

  Separating them with different personal goals and roles and
  pushing them to play together for a communal goal. I'm cooking an
  article about this.

-HRose / Abalieno
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