[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Spore and MMOs

[Vincent Archer]

According to Aurel Mihai:
> There's a lot of good to be said for massively single player gaming.
...
> However, that leads to the issue of how a player chooses where to step
> into the gameplay. If he wants a top level command position (the
> 'chess' model), can he just pick that? Does he have to earn it through
> lower level command? Through some sort of FPS squad leadership? In
> that sense, is there a grind to get to where you need to go? That
> could be a problem, but it would also be a bad thing to let just
> anyone control where the battalion marches next..

That depends on the concepts below the association between massively
and single-player (or group-play). Many people, for example, consider
Guild Wars being a Massively Group game - except for social hubs
(cities), all of the gaming activities are done in small instances.
In retrospect, it's the same as the Diablo 2 Battle.net, except
that GW's chat is far more immersive than the avatar gallery of D2.

A couple of examples, putting some of the existing game models in
massively single/group player:

Halo (the original concept). Take the Halo Ringworld, cut it into
virtual "sectors", and tag those sectors as red (Covenant-controlled)
or blue (Earth-controlled). When you start an online Halo battle, you
pick a sector. The controller is defending, the other side is attacking.
The result of the battle changes (if the base attack was succesful)
the online color.

Voila. You have a massively online game, with almost no investment in
infrastructure, and no pressure from the player's part. And you can
always choose private games, which don't "take place on the ring", and
have no influence.

Another example, closer to Spore. Take a classic 4X space game (Master
of Orion/GalCiv/Space Empires series). One of the characteristics of
those games is customizables races. Various racial characteristics, and
the like. As the massively single player part, you can design and
register a race. As you play, the game takes notes on your gameplay:
how you tend to design ships, what research areas you focus on, the
colonisation focus/speed. This gives "experience" to your race. Once
your race is experienced enough (i.e., the game has a rough profile
on how you play it), it becomes available on the net, and people can
pick "Net Races" as their AI opponents. Add a success rating to the
race (how well does it work as an AI opponent), and the player is
now involved in the gameplay - even if he does nothing at all anymore
except look on the on-line ladders.

> On a different note.. the current trend of MMO gaming seems to be
> bigger is better. WoW certainly sees this effect with its huge raids.

Actually, WoW's raids aren't huge. EQ was the king of the huge raiding,
with it's 72-player model (and prior to PoP, it wasn't even limited,
but then, there was no concept of "raid" as a game entity, it was
a meta-game organisation). WoW shrank that raid to 40 people, then
to 25 in its first expansion. Most games have settled on a 24-25 people
raid, depending on their primary group size. Smaller, and you run into
the problem of class balance (when your raid feature "usually" 2 or 3
of class A, you run into problem as soon as 2 people of your raid just
happen to be away at the same time). Bigger, and you have logistics
and organisational problems.

> Furthermore, what's going to convince developers that this is the way
> to go? Spore is a great experiment, but nobody besides Will Wright
> seems to be taking that kind of risk in game development nowadays. If
> it's not a sequel or an expansion pack, it's got to be a stale,
> recycled, tried and true formula for any major studio to take it on.

Common theme around the list too. Alas :(

-- 
	Vincent Archer			Email:	archer at frmug.org

All men are mortal.  Socrates was mortal.  Therefore, all men are Socrates.
							(Woody Allen)