[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN} Who to design for?

[Mike Sellers]

Sean Howard wrote:
>  "Damion Schubert" <dschubert at gmail.com>  wrote:
> 
> > 1) Your game design should have a central theme or activity that
> everyone
> > gets and understands.
> 
> I agree with the central them - big fan of strong backbones here - but I'm
> not sure I understand the "everyone gets" thing. I'm not sure everyone
> "gets" the average MUD or MMORPG unless they've already played one. I
> don't know, maybe that's the main obstacle against adoption.

It is.  If you're interested in this sort of thing, I recommend highly the
classic "Crossing the Chasm" and even more, "The Secrets of Word of Mouth
Marketing."  Excellent books that are applicable to a lot more than
marketing.  The kind of things that Damion is talking about here fit right
in there: evangelists, early adopters, pragmatists, skeptics, and laggards.

> > 2) Your game design should have appeal to the hardcore, which is usually
> > done by taking the central theme as far as it can go (raids and sieges
> in
> > most classical MMOs), with higher time requirements, etc.
> 
> No way. Screw those hardcore bastards. Those guys are absolutely the
> single greatest threat to the long term viability of MMORPGs that we have.
> Right now, the industry can't seem to ignore them, but with stuff like the
> Wii and casual gaming becoming a VERY big market, I don't think we'll have
> to give in to their demands much longer.

The hard-core tend to also be evangelists for a given product, so they make
a natural first set of customers.  But you have a point about catering too
much to the core in a way that limits our designs -- a point I think we're
at, or past, with a lot of fantasy MMOs.  Finding other ways to attract
potential evangelists (with a clearly crafted message, as Damion says) is a
key task for anyone making next-generation games.  

> I stand by the cookie analogy. Hardcore gamers want cookies, and we just
> keep giving them cookies - soon they start to think they deserve cookies,
> that they are entitled to all cookies, all the time. They are capable of
> eating other foods, and I think we should force them to eat some
> vegetables every once in a while to put them in their place. They'll be
> better people because of it.

Hmm.  If you're making a product for people to buy -- *especially* an
entertainment product -- it's not really your place to "force" people to do
anything.  I mean, you can try, but people tend not to agree to being forced
into activities they don't find enjoyable.  

> > 3) Your game design should have casual appeal, which is usually about
> > ensuring that the central theme or activity is not alienating to the
> > casual player the first time he logs in, and is actually easy and fun
> > without unnecessary roadblocks.
> 
> I think you've already got the casual gamer by the time they've bought the
> game - it doesn't matter what's actually in the game.

That's assuming they've *bought* the game, which is increasingly a poor
assumption.  Even with games downloaded online, you can't assume you have
someone when they "get" your game.  Daniel James said that of all the people
who start the download for "Bang Howdy", only 8% actually play the game.  If
you're talking about a game bought at retail, you probably lose 90% or more
who never even leave home for the store to buy it -- if they even know it
exists.  

> It doesn't matter
> what the controls are like, or the difficulty curve is like, or how easy
> it is to set up. Casual gamers don't download demos from FilePlanet. They
> don't try before they buy.

That's really not the case.  There are many more casual gamers trying and
buying games online than there are core MMO players altogether. 

> I think you can sell very complex games to casual gamers. It doesn't have
> to be easy. Chess isn't easy, it's not fun (in the traditional sense), and
> with specialized pieces with non-standard movement and capturing
> abilities, there is quite a learning curve.  Chess (or even Monopoly or
> Risk) is far more complicated than something like God of War, and yet,
> everybody has played it. This leads me to believe that the difference
> between a casual game and a hardcore game is nothing more than flashiness.

There are a whole lot of other and more important differences than just
flashiness!  One of the biggest is the degree of aggressiveness in the
gameplay (despite its theme, chess is not inherently aggressive in its
play); another is the degree of psychological exposure -- is it "you" in the
game, or a clearly differentiated character?  

Casual gamers tend to play non-aggressive games where there's a
psychological distance between themselves and the play field or theme, where
their time investment is very low ("I can quit whenever I want to"), where
the probability of embarrassment is non-existent, where relationships rather
than dominance are thematically important, and where the play is as
important if not more important than the score, standings, or level
achieved.  

Many core/achiever gamers find this difficult to believe or internalize, of
course.  

> > 4) Your game design should result in a culture where hardcore players
> are
> > evangelizing the game to casual players.  WoW's success comes largely
> > from classic EQ players finally being willing to recommend an MMO to
> > their wives and girlfriends.
> 
> I think you've got that backwards. You need the non-hardcore (not casual,
> but somewhere inbetween - maybe a hardcore gamer who grew up and had a
> family and still tries to keep up with gaming) to evangelize a game to the
> casual player. WoW's success didn't come from Everquest. It came from
> Diablo and Warcraft II - two games which breached that gap before. Once
> you have the hardcore talking about a game, they talk about the wrong
> stuff and put the emphasis on the wrong things, and it will do more harm
> than good for casual players.

You have a good point about the Warcraft brand already having reached out to
non-hard-core gamers, but Damion's not wrong: according to the Daedalus
project (http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001335.php) 40% of women
playing WoW were introduced to it by a romantic partner or family member,
while only 8.4% of men found the game that way.  Clearly there's a lot of
evangelizing of gamers to non-gamers in WoW's success.


Mike Sellers