[MUD-Dev2] [Design] Dinosaurs evolve to chickens, MMOs evolve to massively single-player games

[Mike Sellers]

Mike Rozak wrote: 
> Most people WANT to play a single player game. Or, they want 
> to play a game with their close friends.

*Most* people want what they already know, if in slightly different
packaging from the last time.  They want cheaper buggy whips, crisper black
and white TV, better text games, or shooters with more textures.

(And I'll pause here to note once again that in terms of MMOs, we haven't
begun to touch "most people."  For a sense of scale, in the US there are
more active birdwatchers than there are people playing MMOGs.  Our "most
people" is far from a broad audience -- so far.)

A few people are willing to try something new, and sometimes that catches
on.  Even then, we're talking about varying degrees of presenting something
like what people already know.  


Beyond this though, I think you're seeing MMOs through a particular lens
that isn't entirely accurate.  Many people like playing "solo" in MMOGs, but
that doesn't explain the games' success.  It is the *potential* for
meaningful contact with others, even if it is for some people rarely
realized, that is part of the success of MMOGs.  

This has some common roots with how we watch movies.  Watching a thriller,
comedy, or romance by yourself does not have nearly the same impact that it
does when you watch it in a theatre full of people -- even if they're people
you don't know and will never really interact with.  It's even a different
experience from watching the same movie at home with family or friends --
all three provide a different kind of social experience that most people
continue to find compelling.  

In addition, I think your assertion about what most people want in an online
game doesn't stand up to experiences ranging from the sprawling and hugely
successful Chinese MMOGs -- where acting as part of a group is a necessity
at anything beyond the lowest levels -- to the more casual but nonetheless
compelling groupings occuring in many lighter games, from those like Mob
Wars on Facebook (extremely casual, dead simple gameplay, hugely
multiplayer, staggeringly successful commercially) to web-games like the
RPG/RTS-ish Ikarium.  That's where to look for how MMOGs are evolving, not
into re-treads of old concepts like Free Realms.


On that note, what I think your assertion most clearly points out,
interestingly, is that "what MMOs are" is not what they will be.  On this
mailing list, people have said things like "MMOs are basically combat
simulators" (Damion, I think, a while back) or "MMOs are primarily about the
pursuit of individual goals" (Joe Buehler, just recently).  Prior to the
unexpected rise of browser-based MMOs, people were (and many still are)
striving to create even more graphically heavy MMOs that were also about
individual goals realized mainly through combat.  

MMOs right now have the potential to become like the hugely popular
hex-based wargames of the 1970s and 1980s -- hugely popular, that is, until
they were supplanted by something that more people liked even better.  Will
they "shrink into chickens" and become MSOGs as a result?  Possibly some
will.  My bet though is that more people now have more avenues for
entertainment and socialization that grow beyond the current ponderous MMO
structures (classes, races, quests, defined combat roles, etc.), and that
these will become the next cool thing for playing games in online worlds
together (even if they're not called MMOGs).  

People in current popular MMOs "want" single-player gameplay because that's
what the games reward -- working with other people is just a way to achieve
individual goals (again, some of the Chinese MMOs aside).  This isn't
necessarily what people truly want; it's just a reflection of what current
games provide. Change the games, change the apparent set of "what people
want."

Mike Sellers