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

[John Buehler]

Mike Rozak writes:

> Why do people forgoe the "massively" part of these games?
> 
> Here's my opinion:
> 
> Most people WANT to play a single player game. Or, they want to play a
> game with their close friends. Only a minority of the population wants
> to play in a world with thousands of other players (for PvP, raiding,
> trading, or other reasons). I wrote about this a few years ago in "The
> player pyramid."

MMOs are primarily about the pursuit of individual goals.  If that's the
sort of game that developers build then that's the sort of person that they
will attract.  If I was pursuing my personal goals, I sure wouldn't want a
bunch of strangers around to trip over.  I'd either go solo or I'd be sure
to bring friends with me who were interested in the same goals.

> Which leads me to conclude, the "massive" part of MMOs is going away.
> The dinosaurs are shrinking to chickens.

I think the Massive part of MMOs hasn't even begun to be explored.  The
shift that needs to happen is to dump personal goals and to create community
goals.  That aligns the players to use their characters to address the same
issues.  The personal aspect is retained because individuals can still
pursue those goals in personal ways.

Personal goal: kill monsters to gain levels.
Result: Player characters scatter to the four winds, looking for monsters
that they can kill for themselves.

Community goal: clear the castle of monsters to free the monks to gain
skills
Result: Player characters converge on the castle, killing monsters side by
side (loosely or closely) so that everyone gets the monk instruction

Instead of an MMORPG being a whole bunch of single-player RPGs interwoven
and repeated, create an RPG where the entire player community is treated as
a single player.  The entire community performs an action and the entire
community gains a reward.  I believe that will be the beginning of the
Massive RPG.  I think that a big reason that it has not been pursued is
purely technological.  It's too difficult to have hundreds of players in the
same space doing active things.  But we're getting there.