[MUD-Dev] NEWS: Why Virtual Worlds are Designed By Newbies - No, Really! (By R. Bartle)

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

Richard A. Bartle's "Why Virtual Worlds are Designed By Newbies":

> Virtual worlds are being designed by know-nothing newbies, and
> there's not a damned thing anyone can do about it. I don't mean
> newbie designers, I mean newbie players - first timers. They're
> dictating design through a twisted "survival of the
> not-quite-fittest" form of natural selection that will lead to a
> long-term decay in quality, guaranteed. If you think some of
> today's offerings are garbage, just you wait

There will always be more coal than diamonds, but I think what is
missing here is that MMOs hardly seems to be designed for newbies at
all. If they were they would in general have made more of an effort
with the interface.

I also believe that quite a lot of players have experience with RPG
systems and single-user virtual worlds before they play their first
MUD. I am not sure if it is wise to dismiss their a priori
preferences as irrelevant.

> Newbies come to virtual worlds with a set of preconceptions
> acquired from other virtual worlds; or, failing that, from other
> computer games; or, failing that, from gut instinct. They will not
> consider virtual worlds that confront these expectations if there
> are others around that don't.

Mm... But even players who has played text MUDs do play graphical
ones. So why dismiss their preference for graphics?

> Point #2: Newbies won't play a virtual world that has a major
> feature they don't like.

I don't think this holds. They might be less inclined to play a
virtual world that has a major feature that affects them negatively,
but that is not the same thing.

> Players spend considerably less time in their second virtual world
> than they do in their first. Why is this?

Possible explanations:

  1. there were more attractive worlds to choose from at that point
  in time so they left earlier.

  2. they had more skills when playing their second one.

> light cast from their first one. They will demand that features
> from their first world be added to their current world, even if
> those very features were partly responsible for why they left the
> first

Are you sure they do? I think designers do this in order to capture
a bigger market, but are you really sure that all players who have
played EQ demand their next game to be EQ? That is not my
experience.

> world. They'll say they hate treadmills, but if their first
> experience was in a virtual world with treadmills, then they'll
> gravitate towards other virtual worlds with treadmills, all the
> while still hating them.

Yes, but couldn't this be explained with: treadmills are effective,
relatively easy to set up and alternatives are more difficult to
design.

> Why is this? I've no idea. Well, I do have an idea, but not one I
> can back up, so I'll keep quiet about it. The fact is, players do
> behave like this all the time, and it would only take a cursory
> scan of any forum after patch day for you to convince yourself, if
> you don't believe me.

People dislike set-backs. Set-backs rarely hit evenly, which makes
them all the worse... There is no mystery to it, I think?

> Point #4: Many players will think some poor design choices are
> good.

Often because they are good, for them. :-) If the crux of the
argument is that it makes the game less challenging and thefore less
fun then you have the counter-argument that some players do like
tradeskills...

> The normal rules of evolution by which computer games operate
> propagate good design genes from one to the next. Each generation
> of game takes the best mutations from the previous generation and
> adds to them.

Is this true? And where are the generations? Did the 2D games get
better when wrapped up in 3D?

> Virtual worlds also propagate good genes, but they propagate poor
> ones more readily. The best virtual worlds don't pass their design
> genes around much because of their high retention rate: "Why would
> I quit when what I want is right here?". Poor design genes cause
> players to leave sooner, so it's these features that wind up being
> must-haves for the next generation of products. This leads to a
> bizarre situation: for a new virtual world to succeed, it has to
> have the same features that caused its antecedents to fail..!

This makes no sense to me...  Where are these games that don't loose
players?

>   - It promotes role-play, because players aren't stuck with the
>   same, tired old character the whole time.

They aren't now either... The idea that PD in general promotes
role-play is rather suspect. Maybe a particular consensual
implementation would be compatible with RP, but anyone doing RP can
let their character die if they wish.

> Thus, instancing will get locked into the paradigm. New virtual
> worlds that don't have it will get fewer players than those that
> do have it, even though they have the better design.

Game mechanics of raid-type activities can benefit greatly from
instancing. Instancing can be done in a non-intrusive way.

> can't be undone. We're getting de-evolution - our future is in
> effect being drawn up by newbies who (being newbies) are
> clueless. Regular computer games don't have this problem.

I don't see how this argument holds.

> The market for regular computer games is driven by the hardcore.

And the MMO market isn't? Considering that it is near impossible to
play a MMO wihout being hardcore that seems a bid odd.

> implications better than newbies. They won't buy a game with
> features they can see are poor; they select games with good design
> genes. Because of this, games which are good are rewarded by
> higher sales than games which are bad.

Uhm. Deer Hunter? :-) Anyway, people buy on other peoples
recommendation obviously, whether that is friends, mags or trusting
the store. Same goes for MMOs. They are sold the same way.

Game designers copies features from the biggest successes, so do MMO
designers. Where is the core difference here?

Yes, the aesthetics of pure virtual worlds won't be seen in the mass
market any time soon. I wouldn't blame the users, I would blame the
subscription system and capitalism.

>   - Marketing. People can sometimes be persuaded to overcome their
>   preconceptions. Even a text-based virtual world could become a
>   monster hit if it had the right licence and was advertised to
>   the right group of people. Unfortunately, marketing costs money.

Get over it. If there was a market that was easy to address then
people would go over board to play single user text adventure games
too.

--
Ola - http://folk.uio.no/olag/
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