Unfortunately PAX is the same weekend, so I won't be seeing a lot of people who might otherwise show up. But, if you're going or in the Atlanta area and want to meet up, drop me a line!

Dragon*Con hadn't invited me to speak for a few years. But, closing down NDS got me in contact with someone who runs the MMORPG track and helped me get invited this year.

This is one of the few conferences I'm going to this year. The downside is that I haven't been able to chat with people I usually meet at conferences. The upside is I'm saving money. (But, even though I'm getting a free pass I'm springing for the (pricey!) hotel and travel myself. Ugh!)

Of course, posts will probably not happen while I'm there. I'll be too busy talking or looking at the skimpy... I mean, tasteful outfits. ;)

Anyway, always nice to meet others when I do venture outside of the house, so drop me a line. :)

Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:

I’ll be at Dragon*Con

Let's look at some of the problems with finding fun in a game.

Individual types of fun

Another big problem is that fun has no universal definition; it tends to be a very personal thing. Yes, some mechanics are generally accepted as being more fun than others, but this is not universal. My personal theory is that a lot of what is considered "fun" is a matter of fashion: some genres fall in and out of favor as time progresses, and people will tend to play what their friends are playing. The current trend is for social games as the darling, but I suspect that's mostly because the social network framework that supports them makes it easier to see what is popular and trendy.

There's also the truth that people are just wired differently. I've mentioned before that my brain loves inventory management puzzles, even though I know a lot of people see that as extreme tedium. (I think this is one reason why LotRO's vault change is going to be frustrating for me, because I can't organize the way I want to!) Or, to point out someone else's quirk, Ferrel likes slaughtering/camping monsters. (You can see another example of Ferrel's view of fun if you're curious.) But, it's hard to say that a certain set of mechanics is fun. I think it's more accurate to say that the mechanics are popular because a large number of people find it "fun".

The fun of the new

A large part of what makes a game fun for some people is the newness of the experience. When we first get into a type of game, like MMOs, we fall in love with the game because it's like nothing we've experienced before: Character advancement! Quests! Other people! Raiding! Auctions! Then, we get used to the details and it becomes old hat. In MMOs, this is the point where people complain about things like "the grind" in a game. Remember how WoW was cherished as the game with no grind? Questing was so much better than camping monsters! But now, even after gaining levels has become so much easier in WoW, people are still complaining about the grind. The core gameplay didn't change, the tolerance of the players did because the gameplay is wearing thin.

What makes things new enough to be exciting again varies. It's a lot like building up a resistance. At first, you become immune to a single thing; in the case of gameplay, running another "gather ten rat tails" quest might be the first thing you grow tired of. But, something else catches your attention: a new quest only requires you to kill ten rats, not gather their (randomly dropped) tails! Wow, this is so much cooler! But, that wears thin in short order. Eventually you need something radically different to overcome that immunity: Perhaps a focus on dynamic quests instead of the same static quests.

This seeking out of new thing is one of the reasons why players ask for "innovation". They want something new that they haven't seen before. But, as I hinted in that linked article, there's another force at work: familiarity. While most players like new things, they also cherish some familiarity. Trying to immerse a player into a completely new game will likely just leave them confused and frustrated. So, while players want something new, that doesn't mean they want to abandon the old completely. Finding that balance is tough; anything too new and different is doomed to failure, but simply cloning what came before is no guarantee of success, either. We've seen a lot of both in the MMO space.

Going from fun to fun

This concept was discussed by Will Wright in one of his talks. He had a great graphic, but I can't find it. Since I'm a word guy instead of a pictures guy, I'll paint you a verbal image to illustrate this point.

Let's pretend that you are traveling around an area, a vast expanse of land with hills and mountains of different sizes covered in picturesque mists and fogs. You have barophobia, the fear of gravity, and being up high lessens the sensation of being trapped by gravity. Since it's foggy, you can't always see very far and you always head upward if at all possible because you know that will take you to a higher elevation. You easily reach the top of the hill, but through the fogs you see a shadow, and wonder if that's actually a taller hill (or even a mountain!) that would help you. But, to head in that direction to find that possibly higher altitude, you have to go down from your current position.

This is the problem with finding fun in a game. Once we find a mechanic that provides what seems to be a maximum amount of fun, we're often stuck there. Heading off to find another mechanic that could possibly be more fun, we generally have to abandon that existing mechanic. For example, let's say we want to improve character advancement in games. Maybe we want to look at replacing levels as the measurement of advancement. Maybe there's something more fun than levels out there. The problem is that most people are so familiar with levels that removing it is a shock. The reality is that the replacement might not be as fun in the short term as levels were, but perhaps with some work it could end up being more fun. But, without support, it can be hard to explore a new mechanic enough to see if it can be fun. Worse, the demise of a game exploring that new mechanic due to lack of support can taint the view of the mechanic; an example of this might be public quests as we saw in Warhammer Online, although some people are mentioning it as something worth investigating further.

As a developer, it's just really hard to find those other higher peaks. Large companies prefer to avoid risks and will only hesitantly explore for other peaks. The most successful companies are the ones that look at the maps of previous explorers and add a pile of shiny rocks on top of an existing tall hill. The big companies could use their resources to build a teleporation machine to move them around faster, but those things are notoriously hard to calibrate and might cause one to crash and burn instead of landing safely on the top of a taller mountain. By contrast, the indies have to trudge their way there, but often nobody cares because chances are they'll die of starvation before getting there because nobody is buying their game.

So, what do you think? Do you find something fun that doesn't seem to be in fashion or very popular? Is it worth forcing yourself out of your comfort zone to find something new to keep you entertained? Are you willing to put up with something that is a bit less fun in order to have the possibility of finding something that is a lot more fun?

Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:

The quest for fun

Cyberpunk is a terrible genre for an MMO
Cyberpunk is a terrific genre for an MMO

Since these are arguably about MMO development, I figured a few of you might find them interesting.

Some more developer-specific thoughts for the audience here after the jump.

Note that I posted the "terrible" version first. I wanted to spur some discussion, and there's nothing like a bit of controversy and contrariness to draw people out of the woodwork. Obviously, people who care enough about cyberpunk (and likely MMOs) to read a site like that are going to come to the defense.

The first interesting thing is that there are a few opinions about what cyberpunk really is. I advocated that cyberpunk is essentially dystopian in nature, and a few people disagreed. (I later wrote a comment that postcyberpunk (like Ghost in the Shell) is often not dystopian, but at the core cyberpunk itself is a very depressing setting.)

The other interesting thing is that people were ready to say that these were challenges, not really reasons why it's a bad idea. While I appreciate the enthusiasm, and while I don't necessarily agree with my "terrible" reasons 100%, I think one needs to be careful here. Saying that obstacles just need to be conquered may lead to not taking those obstacles seriously. Now, obviously, I'm not going to get strenuous arguments from the readers about why cyberpunk is a terrible setting for an MMO, but a good designer does need to put some critical thought into the negatives as well as the positives of a design aspect.

Anyway, if you have thoughts about cyberpunk as a setting head over to TheInternetCrashed.com and leave a comment. For this blog, let me ask this question: What do you think would be a difficult literary or cinema genre to translate to an MMO? What would be the biggest obstacle? How could you work around that obstacle?

Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:

Cyberpunk as a setting for an MMO

One of the most interesting things about this, however, is that it means players do tend to invest something of themselves into a game. In MMOs, this means that many people get heavily and personally invested into a game. What is really interesting is that this tends to hold a mirror up to the person looking at the game, whether they realize it or not. One's actions and perceptions in the game tend to reflect as much if not more about the person as they do about the game or even the game's creators.

Let's take a closer look at this, shall we?

Now, let me give the caveat here that I'm not a real psychologist. I'm basing this on my own observations and readings. With luck, maybe a real psychologist will chime in.

Games as tools of the fascists

One of my local (print) newspapers carried a slightly abridged copy of an article entitled Virtually Conservative that got me thinking about this topic again. The summary of the article is that games are inherently "conservative" in nature in that they encourage domination and order, allowing the player to accumulate stuff and eliminate obstacles often by violent means. The breakout text on the page says, "Video gaming is about control. Your participation is restricted to steering and maintaining the narrative flow, altering the course of the story, eliminating hindrances (monsters, or human antagonists) and generally being the only significant individual anywhere in the game." The author claims that progressive, egalitarian themes are missing from games.

As hard as it is to take an article that mentions DOOM (without a sequel number) seriously, it's interesting to really think about the deeper meaning here. Game developers, overall, tend to be more left-leaning in their politics as you would expect in an industry that predominantly has younger employees, with some libertarian types (as you find in many technological industries). Very few, if any, developers working directly on a game tend to be authoritarian or traditionally conservative. So, how do these messages get slipped in?

And if you gaze for long into an abyss...

A clue can be found on the site's about page.:

In These Times is a nonprofit and independent newsmagazine committed to political and economic democracy and opposed to the dominance of transnational corporations and the tyranny of marketplace values over human values.

Suddenly, this position makes sense. If your mission is to fight an enemy, sometimes you start seeing enemies everywhere. If you want to fight against the dominance of transnational corporations, then it becomes easier to see them and their philosophies lurking in the shadows. A game that restricts control and limits the player could be seen as supporting such an agenda.

But, let's have some fun and take a look at how games actually support socialism!

1. In many games, the player(s) is(are) the only one(s) capable of performing the task required. In DOOM, your character was the only one tough enough not to get slaughtered by the demonic forces and it falls to you to clean them up. In RPGs, one everyone relies on you as the most capable to go defeat the big bad. "From each according to ability..."
2. You usually acquire resources at about the rate you require them. In a FPS game, health packs are ideally placed in a level at about the location where you will need it. Before a big fight, you'll often find a big supply of ammo. In MMOs, they are designed so that you will earn about as much money to pay for a big expense like training skills, etc, when you need it. "...to each according to need."
3. Most of your basic necessities are taken care of for your character. There is often no intrinsic need to eat or take shelter in games. Buying a house in MMOs, for example, tends to be a luxury item, but priced in such a way that nearly everyone can afford one.
4. Acquiring excessive wealth tends to be relatively meaningless. In most RPGs, eventually money becomes useless and while shops still charge you, most other NPCs seem unconcerned about acquiring more wealth. In fact, if you need money in an MMO there are usually subsidized tasks (daily quests) that you can perform for a set amount of cash. There is no formal system of interest and there are increasingly few regular expenses that correspond to rent or free market wages.
5. Many MMOs have economies that are monitored and controlled by the developers. The developers set the prices NPCs will buy and sell at, and they adjust the economy to ensure that everyone has a fair chance. This central control is similar in structure to the planned economies that form the basis of many socialist concepts.

So... are games the tools of the transnational corporations looking to oppress the workers, or are they the tools of socialists looking to undermine free market capitalism and declare a communist utopia?

Who's in charge here?

The answer, of course, is "neither". The offline world isn't simply black and white. Even the U.S. isn't a purely free-market capitalist economy despite the general preference for this economic model. Games are no different. You'll be able to find elements of almost any philosophy you want if you look hard enough, even without making much of a stretch. Does a game with avatars and no permanent death (reincarnation) advocate Hinduism? Again, probably not, although one could see how a Hindu could use this as a way to explain elements of the religion.

It seems that what a person sees in a game might reflect more about the person than the game. It serves as a Rorschach test, giving a glimpse of the person who is observing and describing the game. As above, someone who writes for a website dedicated to fighting the encroaching power of transnational corporations might choose to focus on the elements of games that could be seen as relating to that focus. Or, an economist might see a lot of economic elements in a game that are worthy for study.

Of course, this doesn't mean that there might not be elements in a game. Obviously Castronova's work dealing with economies of MMOs is measuring something that actually happens in our games. Game creators also do have their own agendas, and they might use the medium of games to encourage people to support their worldview, just as an author might write an essay to persuade the reader. But, I think it's important to take a look at the person identifying some element.

Beating a dead hooker...

One of the more colorful examples of this bias was the coverage about hooker NPCs in Grand Theft Auto 3. People were aghast that players could not only engage in simulated sex with a hooker to regain health, but then the player could then kill the hooker to get his money back. What kind of moral depravity do these games encourage?

However, as Raph Koster has pointed out, gamers generally focus on the abstract layer instead of the concrete layer when in a game. "Paying for sex to heal up" was more exchanging one resource for another, similar to buying a healing spells in a fantasy RPG, but with more complex graphics. The concrete representation did have meaning, but it was a game action with gameplay consequences that made it meaningful within the context of the game. The fact that it also dealt with a taboo subject likely made it a bit more exciting to some players as they were definitely doing something "naughty".

However, it's interesting that people fixated on this aspect so much because it was one fairly minor part of the game. In a game full of shooting and vehicular mayhem, it was notable that prostitution was the aspect that made people most vocally upset. The game does not require the player to engage in prostitution to heal; in San Andreas there was a detailed eating system where players could eat to heal, but eating too much or too little would affect the character's physical attributes. (See? Eating too much fast food IS bad for you, even in video game land.) The game also did not require the player to shoot a hooker to get back money, that was a choice made by the player.

So, why did people fixate on that one particular aspect? Primarily because it was an easy way to demonize video games as a whole by selecting an extreme example. But, this argument often ignores the fact that engaging in prostitution and then killing the hooker requires player choice. Simply because the option exists doesn't mean that the game is encouraging this behavior, especially since the game does not require it to progress. This is also sexual in nature, and we know how Americans feel about sex. But, I think there's also an element of discomfort with people looking at their own attitudes here. Just as those who prefer to legislate morality often fall prey to that form of "moral turpitude", people pointing out sexual content often have ulterior motives. (Note to Republicans: yes, the Democrats are just as hypocritical, but it's usually not quite so obviously related to morality as in this glaring case.)

Virtual Hatred

Before I get into this next part, I just want to take a moment to say that hatred is a very real thing. Human nature, unfortunately, encourages us to shun that which is different from ourselves. Racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, and other forms of hate are alive and well in our world, and games are no exception, especially when it comes to the sorts of things that random people will say in public chat channels in MMOs. My point here isn't to say that these things do not exist in games, they certainly can, but pointing out examples you've noticed isn't the same as proving that there is systematic behavior on the part of the developer.

A post caught my attention recently, and reminded me of another post I read. The first post was by a WoW blogger discussing examples of sexism in WoW, specifically misogyny. To be honest, some of the examples are pretty damning, such as how some of the female characters have been given diminished roles potentially contradicting the lore that has already been established. Some of the examples, however, seem to be a stretch; after complaining about how some female NPCs wear (the same) skimpy outfits, the author of the article tries to dismiss examples of male partial nudity by explaining, "...there isn’t the same sexualisation of those [male] characters going on." (Does anyone sane really look at Sylvanas and think, "I'd like to get into those skimpy pants!")

In that post, one particular quote stuck out: "[There are] groups of NPCs with no female model at all – ogres, kobolds, furbolgs, Gronn." An interesting observation, although I'm not sure how one sexes (definition six, perverts) a Gronn to determine that they're all male. But, this reminded me of a quote from another article about sexism,

If anything the developers at Blizzard have bent over backward to give females in Azeroth positive images and in many cases have minimized negative ones. Here are some examples: [...]What about the ogres? Again no female ogres. I guess male ogres just hatch by themselves.

Interesting that two different people can see the same thing (no female models for some races) and come to different conclusions: a woman sees this as one example of a bias against women because they aren't included, while a man sees it as an example of men being demonized and the only proper sex for villains. Which perspective is right? I don't think there's a clear cut answer, and both posts make good arguments. Again, we see that the observer brings her or his own perspective into an observation of what message a game is trying to portray. The "Rorschach test" of seeing no female models in a game and the posts people make tell us more about the individuals than it likely does about what the game creators intended.

The monsters making the monsters

A wise man once mangled a famous quote and said, "Game design is the art of the possible." Game design is a immense and complex thing, where the designer not only has to attract and keep a player engaged, but also do things like tell a coherent story and possibly even create a whole world to explore, while maintaining this mysterious state called "fun" for the participants. It's a huge task, and some designers certainly do take intellectual shortcuts to make the process easier.

What about in the specific case of no female models for some of the monstrous creatures in WoW? Ultimately, it was probably more of an issue of allocating limited resources than any honest bias. In the case of ogres, I'm sure that having fat, ugly female ogre models would likely result in some more unsavory comments by the less mature elements of the WoW community. Given the alien physical nature of the kobold models, it's hard to see how they could be made more feminine without falling back on silly and potentially insulting stereotypes like making them wear dresses, giving them monstrous (heh) breasts, or adding a hair bow. Ultimately, the time it would take to make a good effort to make a proper female model was probably not available to the developers, so the variation wasn't included for fear of not wanting to do something sloppy and potentially even more insulting than simply not having the models.

Again, this isn't to say that some subtle sexism (misogyny or misandry) can't possibly exist in games, rather that people pointing out such flaws need to understand how their own biases influence their observations, especially in an interactive medium like games.

Moving forward

Even if the developers aren't guilty of sexism, let's look at what can be done to improve the world. Addressing hatred requires, like most design problems, that we not just point out the problem but also the solution. Looking at Pewter's post on The 'mental Shaman, I'd really suggest concrete ways to address issues of misogyny that may appear in WoW. I think it's also important to understand the consequences. Would adding female ogre models really help the cause of sexism? Or, would it encourage more crude behavior from some players? Sadly, I suspect that it would cause more problems than it addresses in this case. But, having a list of proposals would go a long way to really addressing the issue rather than just stirring up a hornet's nest.

I think it's also important to address the idea rather than attacking individuals. For example, I admit I'm a white, almost middle-aged male. Using that to attack me for "not understanding" doesn't address the issue, it distracts from it. I shouldn't have to trot out my marginalized person credentials in order to address the issue.

I'll also make this friendly warning, as owner of this blog: hateful comments will not be tolerated. I don't expect this to be a problem for most of you, but please be thoughtful as you respond lest I have to become a harsh authoritarian, as all game designers secretly are. ;)

Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:

Games as a mirror

Tobold wrote about this topic, looking at why MMOs don't have more sexually-themed content. He points out that in the U.S., the porn industry is bigger than the MMO industry. So, why don't we dip their chocolate in our peanut butter and get two great tastes that taste great together?

Damn, just about any metaphor I might use is going to sound dirty, isn't it? Ah, well, let's take a look at the problems of translating sex to games and MMOs.

It's been done before

What most of you probably don't know is that I was actually an adviser on a porn-themed MMO that never saw the light of day back in 2006. A major pornography website wanted to branch into games, and a lawyer I know introduced them to me. They had chosen a web developer to develop the game and were having some troubles. I was supposed to see what was causing the delays and help them get back on track. I'll not go into details except to say it's not (entirely) my fault. But, it introduced a lot of the problems with translating porn into games.

I also wrote a review of Playboy: the Mansion for a game site. I actually played the game and took a look at what it offered and what it lacked. So, let's say I'm not exactly a prude when it comes to sex in my games. Like most guys, I have a healthy interest in games.

The idea of mixing online games and sex isn't new. Richard Bartle designed a sex-themed text MUD back in 2000. I've heard that Second Life has a thing or two relating to sex within it. And there are some sex themed games flying under the radar for years. (Note that they charge $15/month plus an item shop. You can also buy per week. I'm surprised they don't have an hourly rate...) It's just that there's been no big-name game with sex in it. Which makes sense... how many pornography companies are household names, besides a few big magazines?

Brenda Brathwaite has given some great conference talks and even wrote a book on Sex in Video Games. It's worth noting that she was the designer of the Playboy game I previously reviewed.

"You want to put what in my what?!?"

And by that I mean put "sex" in "video games" you pervert.

The first problem is that games are still seen as something for children. Therefore, sex isn't seen as an appropriate topic for the media of computer games. To take a glimpse at what happened last time sexual themes were introduced to a "medium for children", do some research on the history of the animated movie Fritz the Cat. Even though the movie wasn't intended for children, one of the main problems people had was that it was a cartoon with sexual themes. The "X" rating for explicit content rubbed some people the wrong way, even though there had been other movies with explicit content.

We have the same problem here. Putting sex into a video game means that it's intended for children. "Think of the children!" the social conservatives will cry. Not that kids should be wasting their time playing those shooter games when it's a perfectly nice day outside anyway!

S-e-x in the U.S.A.

Now that we're done thinking about children in a completely innocent way, let's look at how sexuality is treated in the U.S. to really understand some of the core problems with trying to put pornography into an MMO. As Tobold points out, the U.S. is the biggest producer and consumer of pornography. This isn't because we have a healthy attitude toward sexuality or our open attitudes. In fact, it's mostly because of the exact opposite: most people feel sex is a shameful thing and should be hidden. As people joke, if a kid sees someone get blown away by gun violence on TV, that's fine; but a split second of Janet Jackson's nipple during the half-time show of the Super Bowl? HEADS MUST ROLL!

Sexuality just isn't something we discuss with others. For example, note that there are an estimated 71.5 million results for "talking about sex to your children" on Google; it's so awkward that a ton of sites are out there to help parents work up the nerve to discuss it with their kids. For most people in the U.S. the topics of sex, sexuality, and pornography are private. Of course, this comes with a healthy dose of hypocrisy, where we tolerate rather blatant sexual themes in our advertising. From jeans to alcohol commercials, we see very sexual images paraded before us and before children. But, it seems people are fine with this level of titillation, or if they don't like it they aren't upset enough to do much about it besides grumble to themselves.

Sexuality and Privacy

This attitude toward sex is one of the main reasons why an MMO wouldn't work, because most people in the U.S. really don't want to share sleazy pornographic ideas with others, especially not a rotating group of strangers you'd meet in a game. Insert your own joke about "soloing" here.

But, let's face it, an MMO about sex is going to be, uh, about sex. Let's add voice chat, video cameras, etc. I've heard rumors that people will expose themselves on the internet in front of strangers, so let's accept that this will be part of any sexually-themed MMO. So, what happens when someone's evening as "DANJUAN6969" gets posted up on YouTube for his boss to see? Or what about if embarrassing/incriminating photos get posted up on Facebook? Thought that drunken party pic was your worst fear? Wait until the co-workers find out about that diaper fetish.

Speaking of Facebook, why not add a social network to the sex MMO? Mix in a little dating site with your sex game! Yeah, don't laugh.... that was what the game I advised wanted to do. I raised concerns about privacy issues, but let's just say they were noted and not acted upon.

It's not good to be uncanny

Another big issue is what Tobold discusses in his article: the uncanny valley. This was one of Brenda Brathwaite's main points about why sex doesn't work in games; in her conference talks she has some hilarious slides showing what are intended to be romantic scenes, but with robotic, or even stiff (heh) zombie-like avatars in the screenshots. It's not sexy, alluring, or even arousing... it's just scary. It illustrates perfectly why a sex-themed game won't work too well, despite it seeming like a natural fit.

It's going to take big bucks to put the resources behind this type of game to make the characters look like actual people. Unfortunately, a big company with those types of resources are unlikely to touch such a project because...

I've got a reputation to protect!

In an industry where we're worried about moral obligations and the darker side of metrics-based design, sex is a touchy topic. I've made the joke before that my mother tells people that I'm a drug dealer because game development just isn't cool. Now imagine trying to tell your parents that you're not only a game developer, but also a pornographer. There's a reason why I don't advertise the fact that I worked on a sex-themed MMO, because it might color some people's perceptions of my quality as a game designer. I don't quite have the long history of successes that Brenda Brathwaite has in order to talk about sex in games quite so openly.

But, could you imagine a large company making a sex-themed game? Disney Interactive? Absolutely not. EA? Activision? Blizzard? Yet, this is the size of the resources that would be necessary to not fall into the uncanny valley. Without large resources, all we are going to get is games with frightening visuals. Mmm, hope you're a fan of robot zombie sex!

There's a reason...

So, there are plenty of reasons why a major sex-themed MMO hasn't been released yet. "Protecting" children, attitudes toward sex, privacy concerns, poor presentation, and professional reputations all conspire together to keep porn-themed games obscure. The reality is that we simply won't see a big porn-themed game anytime in the near future. But, you can still do a Google search for "blood elf porn" if you need to sate some unnatural sexual craving, just like Tobold did! ;)

Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:

Blood Elf Porn

I can't help but think about this quote often in the game industry as new fashions are introduced. There tend to be two camps: one that clings to the old ways while fearing the new, and one that rushes to the new claiming it will wipe away the old. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between, but the game industry sure does like its extremes.

So, with this in mind, I want to take a look at social games and metrics-based game design, two more recent fashions to hit the game industry.

This look was inspired by an article by Erin Hoffman on The Escapist entitled, "How Social Games Ate Our Lunch". She rightfully points out that the industry has a habit of ignoring things that don't originate within the industry itself. We've seen this many times: traditional developers thought MMO games were a fad. Western MMO developers ignored Asian MMOs because they couldn't be measured in the same way. And, yes, many game developers ignored social games and wrote them off, too.

(A digression: it also cuts the other way, however, as the game industry also picks up on some poor choices. For example, how many terrible FMV games were released in the 1990s? for something more modern, does anyone think 3D gaming is going to have staying power? Personally, I doubt it; I accept that I may be hoisted by my own petard in the future....)

The problem is that Erin's article then goes into the other realm of foolishness, where the new has to be better. (Now, I've met Erin in person at a few conferences and know she's a smart game designer, so I expect that some of this is exaggeration to draw attention to the problem from people who are still too dense to notice the change. Or, perhaps to draw interest in hiring her services for lucrative social gaming companies. ;) Her article is a breathless exultation of the virtues of social gaming and one game design change it has made higher profile: metric-based game design.

Now, I've written about "social games" before. My current assessment is that this is mostly just the continuation of trends we've seen before, not some kind of completely new and unexpected form of gameplay, which is why I said that social games are mostly "hot air" at this point. The real innovation here has been the medium of delivery: social networks. The ability to spam.... I mean, offer nice gifts to your friends, has encouraged people to play these games. And, I suspect Erin is right, in that these games have helped some people reconnect, giving them a reason to chat with each other about something other than the banalities of daily life or the local weather. I'm not sure, since social networks don't do it for me, so I haven't been very "social" when trying out "social games". Ultimately, I'm not sure that "social games" will survive what the social networks are trying to do to the games. As I wrote in my previous article, the nature of publishers is to squeeze the margins for themselves and make themselves the gatekeepers of to the audience; it's the same thing we saw with portals and casual games and there's no reason we won't see the same thing with social networks and the way they treat social games. So, eventually, the unbound creativity and newness of the experience will wear off, giant corporations will just acquire large companies who acquired smaller companies, and the same old system will be in force. (But, hey, congrats to all the people I know who had the foresight and commitment to profit from "social games" so far!)

But, let's look at the other element covered in the article: metrics-based design. This is something that MMO developers have been doing for a while, but it's come to greater attention since Zynga started championing it as part of their design process. There was some backlash. Erin dismisses the critics as people who are only looking out for the job security, those who believe that humans are still important to the design process. Well, sure, nobody enjoys automation that pushes them out of their job. But, is there more to it?

Let's take a little test. There are two design options presented to you with some metrics. Which do you choose?

Option A: Players spend an average of $3 per month.
Option B: Players spend an average of $4 per month.

If you said either, you're wrong, because you don't know the whole story. What if option A increases player retention by 30%? What if implementing option B on a wider scale would cause a major PR problem? One problem with metrics is that it's easy to fool yourself into thinking you have enough information when you don't. Not to say that game designers are infallible and always right, especially when they work on "gut feeling" instead of data, but sometimes they can see flaws that your collected data may not demonstrate immediately. At worst, it can lead to some wrong-headed thinking; As reported by Soren Johnson:

Zynga’s Mark Skaggs, formerly of EA, praised metrics as the answer to most game design problems. Much has been made about their discovery that pink was the best color for advertising Zynga’s other games, but the telling point was when Skaggs said that “if a player repeats something, it’s fun.”

(Any MMO designer or player can debunk that last statement easily enough.)

The other question is: what is the ultimate purpose of collecting metrics? The trend recently has been to focus on generating income, of course, as that's how you keep the investment money flowing. Now, I'm not exactly an anti-capitalist and I did help write a book about business issues in the game industry, but I'd like to think there's more to games than extracting the maximum amount of money out of players. (This likely explains why I'm rapidly approaching middle age with no retirement savings, of course.) There's the element of fun that can be important for games. And, while we can try to quantify fun in different ways, I'm not sure that counting clicks is necessarily the most effective way of measuring if a player is having fun. Not to say that you shouldn't create metrics, but keep in mind what the limitations are. I worry that the goal has been merely to get the games to become habit-forming rather than really providing a great experience for the player.

Let me share a bit of Babylon 5 to demonstrate the problem with metrics. (Special thanks to Sara Pickell for reminding me of this scene.)

In other words, be careful not to confuse the tools you use to search for fun for what creates the fun.

What do you think? Are social games the bright new star that people are overlooking? Are they the doom of the game industry? Or are they just a different expression of games on a new platform? What about metrics? Bane, boon, or just another tool?

Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:

Two kinds of fools

My thoughts have turned to funding lately. Now that my focus is entirely on my own projects, I've been considering options on how to keep myself fed while completing a project. Most of you enjoy seeing a glimpse behind the curtain, so here are my thoughts about funding a smaller project.

First: I know this is a long post, and business makes most people's eyes glaze over. But, I think this is an important issue. If you're in a hurry, take a look at the last few options below, starting with "Community support". These are probably the parts most readers are going to care about.

I'm a fairly rare beast: I'm an independent MMO developer. MMOs are a niche within the game industry, and independent developers are another small niche; the intersection of the two is pretty tiny all things considered. And, given news that Blizzard keeps spending more and more on games, the thought of doing a game for "only" a few hundred thousand dollars, especially an MMO, can be daunting. But, that's my lot in life.

But, this can have certain advantages, too. MMO players tend to be online more and willing to form communities easier. An independent MMO developer can potentially tap into an audience easier through online channels.

In addition, I want to focus on a project that will potentially bring in money to live off of. Not to slight people who run small games as a hobby, but as Dave 'Over00' Toulouse is realizing, there's something really terrific about working on games for a living. I also tend to be the type of person who likes to hyperfocus, so working a "day job" would take a lot of my time and attention and leave little for working on something as large of an undertaking as an MMO.

So, keep this perspective in mind as we discuss funding. Also, this isn't intended to be an exhaustive primer. I wanted to cover some of the options I'm familiar with and options I'm considering.

Bootstrapping

I define bootstrapping as taking no outside money and investing primary "sweat equity" into a project. Initially, nobody gets paid in this model. It takes a team pulling together on a project they believe in to finish. The goal is to use the first project as a springboard for future projects through income, attention, and/or code that can be re-used.

The big benefit of this option is that it's very low risk from a financial point of view. The only thing you put at risk is your own time, which admittedly can be very valuable. It also allows you to remain the most independent, since almost no money is being poured into the project.

The biggest downside is that it can be very hard to find people willing to join you. I've had poor luck with volunteers in the past. While money isn't the only motivator for many people, it can be a powerful motivator to keep people focused. It seems some people don't quite understand the depth of work required to make a game. There can be problems with communication and conflicting goals as well. Not to say that you can't find good people, but good people who can commit to a project seem to be fairly rare in my experience.

The other problem is that some things require some amount of money. Effective marketing either requires a lot of time (as in, a very long-standing reputation) or a lot of cash. Sometimes you might strike it lucky (or perhaps have a blog that's been going for over 5 years), but in general you will need some money to not languish in obscurity. "Build it and they will come" is a nice sentiment in movies, not for building a business.

Self-investment (including personal debt)

This is related to bootstrapping, but it assumes that you have money to throw into a project. Now, the source of that money can be an issue. As I wrote before, I used credit cards to fund my share of the purchase of Meridian 59. This method definitely carries some more financial risk. But, some people might be in a good position to save up money and only risk money they can absolutely afford to risk.

Another option, especially if you're an experienced developer, is to work on a game but then do jobs on the side to bring in cash to fund the project. Of course, this takes time away from working on the project, which can cause some problems if your game concept has a definite "launch by" date or it becomes stale. There is also the risk that you (or the company you own) becomes known for doing contract work instead of original game development. I've read a lot of stories about companies who started out doing ports of games to pay the bills, but then the company just became known for doing ports and never got the opportunity to do their own work.

The advantage of self-investing is that you have actual money to spend on the company. You can perhaps pay for some art or for a contractor to help out with some part of the game. As pointed out, however, self-investing carries some risk. There's the risk of losing your own money or losing focus. This option also requires that you actually have money to spare, or are willing to go deep(er) into credit card debt. Currently, my savings is a bit thin and I've already been in the abyss of deep credit card debt.

Traditional game publishing

Yeah, go ahead and laugh. Traditional game publishing agreements aren't really an option, especially if a developer wants to remain independent. But, let's take a look at this option anyway.

The advantage is, of course, that you get money that may be more than you can personally invest. Most publishers, however, will want you to have some skin in the game, so you'll probably have to fund a prototype or even the start of development yourself. You can also, theoretically, tap into the expertise of the publisher to help you confront problems during development.

The big downside is that you're going to lose a lot of control. Most publishers won't give you the time of day if you aren't willing to give them your intellectual property (IP) in exchange for funding; retaining your IP is the best way to make sure your company stays profitable in the long run. Even if you do retain your IP (or if you believe you can still build a business without retaining it), the publisher will still have a vested interest in trying to ensure that your game returns the maximum amount of profit for them. This means making changes based on their feedback, including creative decisions. Additionally, it will take a lot of time and effort. First you need to spend time finding a publisher who will work on an agreement, then you will spend a lot of time reporting back to the publisher to give updates and demonstrate milestones. Doing a dog and pony show in front of different publishers eats up time that could be used for developing.

Also keep in mind that publishers will only invest in projects they understand. Something new or untested is hard to get interest in. This is one reason why we see a lot of clones and sequels in the game industry, because that's what publishers can understand. Ultimately they tend to chase fads (or "trends" if you want to be generous), so that limits your creative freedom even more.

Ultimately, the publisher's loyalty is to the project, not to your company. They will do everything they think is reasonable to ensure a certain level of success for the project, even if it means harming your business. In fact, it may benefit them to make sure that your company is struggling, because it gives them a negotiating advantage on the next agreement; if you're getting short on funds, you'll be more willing to negotiate the next deal fast and in the publisher's favor to keep money flowing. Many times publishers will require that part of the publishing contract gives them the right to acquire your company at a bargain price; this means that if you are successful, you might not see a lot of return on that success if your company is acquired.

Traditional investment

This is taking money from a venture capitalist or angel investor to fund your company and project. Again, it's hard to remain independent when you take someone's money because investments are generally made with the desire to make a return on that investment. In many ways, it's similar to a traditional publishing deal; for example, most investments will have no return, but it's the few big successes that cover all those failures. There are some similarities between this and the hit-based nature of publishers.

The advantage to traditional investment is that it's a well-established system. There are even ways for you to present your company in front of a lot of investors at once. Also, if you can find a good angel investor, they may be more willing to take a chance on you for the psychological benefit of supporting someone "artistic" creating games, even if your business plan doesn't promise big returns on investment. If you do end up selling the company, you will likely get a better deal on your stake in the company than with a publisher's contractual provision to acquire your company at a bargain rate.

There are still a number of disadvantages. Like a publishing deal, it will take time and effort to find an investor and then to maintain the relationship. You will almost certainly have to give up equity in your company to get investment of this type; eventually the investor will want to sell their stake for a profit, so you'll need an 'exit strategy' that usually ends with you either selling your company to a larger one (like EA), or doing an initial public offering (IPO) to create shares the investor can sell on the stock market for a big profit. Given how rare IPOs are these days, your investor will probably count on you getting acquired, and may force an acquisition you're not fond of.

Most of the venture capital firms won't invest in small projects. If they're going to go through the hassle of giving you $250,000, they might as well invest for a few million and expect proportionally larger results. This philosophy means that they will only invest in certain things, and like publishers, usually following fads/trends. A while ago I talked to an investor about a mid-scale MMO project. The investor wasn't interested in my proposed project, but I was told that social games were hot to invest in....

Another disadvantage compared to a traditional publishing deal is that you may not have access to game development experience like you would at a game company. In the worst case, you might have an investor who simply doesn't understand games, and therefore makes demands that just aren't feasible. On the other hand, investors usually know successful entrepreneurs, so you might get assistance on technical or business issues that the publisher might not be able (or willing) to give.

Project investment

This is slightly different than traditional game publishing, and is similar to how Hollywood movies are made. In very simple terms, a project is "owned" by a separate company, and investors get a stake of equity in the company that corresponds to a share of the income made from the project. All the major companies working on the project will get a share of this company based on negotiation. The project's company pays bills and earns profit from the project which is paid out to the owners, including the production company (the people usually making the movie), the publisher (distribution company), etc.

The advantage here is that it still allows outside investment without interfering with the company you own directly. Investment goes into the project company and any failure of the project does not necessarily harm your own company. (Harm to your reputation, however, is another matter.) It's also a very standardized procedure at this point, so it's familiar to most people, at least in the film industry.

Disadvantages? First, most industries outside of the film industry are unfamiliar with this system. It can also be fairly complex to the uninitiated; there's a whole industry of completion bonds for film to guarantee that a movie can be completed and insure the amount invested into the movie. Guarantors are the ones that crack the whip in this scenario to keep the creatives on track, and they are the ones that demand the paperwork and updates to insure the investment. But, it seems that this does remove some of the incentive for the investor to inflict harm upon the developer (production company in the case of film) in order to get an advantage later. Finally, it still results in a lot of conservatism on the part of approving projects, as witnessed by the majority of films coming out that fit within a narrow formula.

Government Funding

Another option is to get funding from the government. The news has had information about tax breaks that the government might give to certain businesses. There can also be loans and grants.

In the U.S., government funding tends to be fairly restrictive. There is the Small Business Administration, but loans are fairly hard to get and require a lot of paperwork to even apply for. Last time I checked (and, admittedly, this was over a decade ago when starting up Near Death Studios), they focused more on businesses with physical locations like shops. There are also grants, but writing government grant proposals is an arcane art. "Serious games" developers usually qualify for grants since their games are often used to educate. You can also find grants for minorities and women intended to encourage them to get into business, so you might be rewarded for having a diverse group of founders.

The big advantage is that the money might be very cheap, meaning you will have a low interest rate on a loan or you might not even have to repay a grant. However, you will have to jump through some hoops in order to qualify. It could take a lot of time and effort to seek out and apply for the loans and grants. Your typical shoot-em-up game probably won't qualify for a government grant, sadly.

Community support

Now we're getting to the first of what could really be considered "indie" style fundraising from people other than the developer. In most of the styles above, you're still on the hook to an investor who wants to protect their investment. This means that they will usually want a degree of direct control over the project to ensure their investment.

One way to raise money with less of this problem is to go directly to the community for who the game is intended. These people have a vested interest in seeing your project succeed if you can present it to them well enough. The main advantage of this funding model is that it spreads out the risk between a large group of people. 5000 people chipping in $50 each results in a budget of $250,000, which is a fair budget for an indie-scale game. If the project flops, you might have a few people miffed at you, but it's not as awkward as facing one person who gave you a quarter of a million.

The downside is that you have to be a pretty good salesperson to pull this off; people are unlikely to throw fifty bucks at you without a lot of convincing. You might also have to promise something to the people who chip in, potentially creating a legal obligation. In fact, this whole system is fraught with legal peril if things are left too ambiguous. You also have to work hard to manage expectations for a larger group of people. Someone throwing in $50 is going to want to give you some feedback, and while this isn't quite as bad as a publisher making contractual demands, it's something that will still take some time to deal with properly.

Finally, the community might be more skittish than traditional investor. Someone who invested $250,000 into your project will probably understand the risks they are taking and might write you another check (if they can afford it) if you come along with another good idea. I suspect a lot of community investors will think "once bitten, twice shy" if the project isn't completed for some reason beyond the developer's control, or if it doesn't turn out quite the way they wanted.

Merchandising

This is another way to raise money, but you directly promise something to the community who sends you money.

We actually did this in the early days of Meridian 59's relaunch. We needed a quick infusion of cash, so we sold CDs with the client burned onto it. We also promised people a 3-character account on a server instead of the normal 2-character account, making it a bit more special. We commissioned some artwork for the CD and got 1000 CDs printed up. We sold about 700 of them at $35 each, making about $10 or so profit on each. Of course, it took a lot of work to get the CDs printed, and my business partner (Rob 'Q' Ellis II) and his family turned into a shipping station for a while as we worked to fulfill orders. There was also some issue with shipping the CDs to Canada due to customs issues, unfortunately. But, this gave us a nice cash infusion to keep us running for a few months while we worked to get our proper billing system implemented for subscriptions. This resulting in a lot more money than when we asked for donations from the fans.

A recent game to do this is Sanctuary 17, a free Flash game where you can buy a paper manual to support the developer. A clever idea, even if you might beat the game before the mail with your manual arrives. (Now, if they only had a referral program.... ;)

The advantage here is that it's a traditional transaction. No potentially empty promises, you send the user something or give them something in exchange for sending you money. People will also tend to appreciate getting something physical.

Of course, there are some disadvantages. The first is that sales of items can cause tax issues. If you live in the U.S. and will ship to people in the U.S., you're looking at sales tax issues, at least in the state you live in. You will be required to get a seller's permit to collect the taxes, and will have to file additional sales tax forms on a quarterly or yearly basis. As governments are looking for additional revenue, many are starting to look at the "lost" revenue from mail order and internet purchased items. There have been discussions about requiring companies to track and remit sales taxes on purchases even beyond the state they live in for many years now. Hard economic times is making this more and more likely. Also, as I pointed out above, it can be quite a bit of work to ship the goods to users. You also have the costs of producing the goods and shipping them. Outsourcing to a company like Cafepress is easier, but it reduces your potential income.

Specialty investors

This is a very interesting development. The current example of this is the Indie Fund, where a group of independent developers who have seen some success with their own work contribute to a fund that will seek out and invest in independent projects. Hopefully this is the vanguard which will lead to other similar investments.

The advantage here is that you have investors who understand your struggle and are likely to be patient. From the sounds of it, they're looking for a return on investment, but they aren't necessarily looking for the huge multipliers a traditional investor is looking for. Like a traditional publishing deal, you are likely to benefit from this fund's expertise. Plus, being indie, they know how important things like retaining the rights to your IP is, so they aren't going to take it from you in the name of profit. They also explicitly state that they want the project to bring something new to gaming, so they aren't likely to fund another clone like traditional game publishers are wont to do.

Disadvantages? It's still an investment, so someone still might exert some control to ensure that return. They also require you to have something playable, so you still need some way to get your game to a playable state to show that the core concept is good. The requirement of having a video seems to imply that the visual aspects of the game are going to be rated highly as well.

Miscellaneous

Of course, there are tons of other ways you can fund a game. Winning a contest, playing the lotto, working nights and weekends for years on end, releasing a game and getting financially rewarded when it manages to become a runaway success. Unfortunately, a lot of these options are hard to plan for, so I'm not spending a lot of time on them.

So, what do you think is a good way to raise money? For me, this is more than just an academic question. I'm thinking of ways to make some of the ideas in my head a reality. So, leave some advice for me to consider! :)

Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:

Indie funding

But, I think it's interesting to take another look at the issue from another point of view. RealID is all about this whole social networking thing. How does this intersect with gaming culture, a subset of geek culture? And how does this relate to introverts which traditionally make up a significant part of those cultures?

A summary of the RealID discussion

For those of you living in a cave, you can go read a good list of the RealID posts. If you want to know my take on things, you can read Randy Farmer's insight based upon his numerous years of experience with identity and community. For a in-the-trenches view from a professional community manager, you can see Sanya Weather's take on what the problems were. These good people posted so I didn't have to. :)

In short, Blizzard said they wanted to force people to expose their real names in order to improve the tone of the official WoW forums. Yet, as others have pointed out, there were simpler and easier ways to clean up the forums rather than requiring every poster to give up his or her privacy. But, A USAToday article reported earlier this year that Blizzard and Facebook have entered into a partnership; this means that Blizzard is probably going to be earning extra money by having people sign up with their "real names" and integrating with Facebook. As always, follow the money to see the real motivations.

Considering introverts

Let's take a look at introverts. I've written about introverts and conferences before. The main thing to remember about introverts is that they get re-energized by quiet contemplation, whereas extroverts get a buzz from interacting with people. Introverts get drained when dealing with people directly, and extroverts get restless if they're left alone for too long. For this reason, introverts tend to have a small group of really good friends, whereas extroverts usually maintain contact with a much larger group of people that can change over time. It's important to remember that Introverts aren't (necessarily) shy or misanthropists, they just need some time away from others to recharge. In general, extroverts (who make up roughly 75% of the population) are better at charging forward and getting things done, whereas introverts (who make up the other 25%) are better at concentrating and contemplating. Ideally, the two are intended to work together: extroverts eager to get things done, while the introverts give the consideration to hopefully prevent rash action.

If you're interested in learning more, The Introvert Advantage is a great reference. As I've mentioned before, I'm an introvert and I learned a lot about myself after reading it. The book goes into a lot of scientific explanation for the differences.

Gaming (and geek) culture

Traditionally, gaming and geek culture have had a high concentration of introverts. Gaming culture can be considered a subset of geek culture, which is defined by intense concentration on a specific topic, usually involving technology. My personal theory for why gaming has has so many introverts is that a lot of games, particularly the old school Nintendo Hard type of games, required the type of concentration and dedication that comes easier to introverts and tends to define geek culture.

Of course, as gaming has grown and included the mainstream, there have been more extroverts involved. The shift from old-school styles like involved RPGs to more action-orientated games like FPSes and RTSes has heralded this change. The good news is that games have now gotten wider acceptance as the audience has grown. (Of course, some of us experienced games have had to start looking far and wide to find the old-school types of games we used to enjoy have fallen out of favor.)

The early days of networking

In the olden days of the internet, geeks ruled. Communities were small and tightly defined. The classic example was old style Usenet groups where you'd have a few dozen people posting and interacting back in the old days. People got to know each other pretty well and you could often learn to recognize a poster by their writing style or pet topics. You could get into vigorous debates, and while harsh words might seemingly be used, in the end things would likely go back to a steady state because everyone had to deal with everyone else in the community. After a massive flame war, it wasn't uncommon for people to kiss and make up (sometimes away from the public channel).

I think the thing that made Usenet work so well was that the majority of the posters were the typical introverted geek. Even though we feel drained talking to people, being online gives us the ability to withdraw from a conversation for a bit and get refreshed if things get overwhelming. Most of us took the time to really consider our words, especially since it was a text medium that required a lot of reading and writing. A lot of the rules of "netiquette" were about maintaining civility and thoughtfulness. Yes, sometimes people got a bit hot under the collar, but people would resolve differences.

However, as we later saw in gaming, the increase in mainstream acceptance meant that more people were introduced to the systems until, finally, the communities grew beyond their original scope. In the case of Usenet, this lead to a lot of people leaving because the community they had joined was no longer there. (See Randy Farmer's post above for a bit more information about this.)

As the extroverts took over, we started seeing a new form of community.

The rise of social networks

A funny thing happened to our communities: they became social. Okay, really, they were still social to begin with, but marketers needed a buzzword and "social media" was the winner, it seems. The old online communities were fine for introverts: we had our small circle of people we knew and we were fine with it because we didn't need to interact with a lot of people. For extroverts, however, this simply wouldn't do; it seems logical that social networks grew out of the extroverted desire to keep meeting and interacting with people.

Personally, I've not really found the new "social media" to be all that useful. I have a Facebook profile mostly so I could play games when they were all the rage in the beginning. (You can friend me on Facebook if you want, but it may be a month before I see the request, and I might not accept the request unless I'm pretty sure I know who you are.) I use LinkedIn to keep track of the myriad of business contacts I've made in the past. But, when it comes to truly keeping track of my friends I can do that easily enough. As I said above, an introvert usually counts a lot less people as really being "friends" out of the circle of contacts he or she knows, so it's not hard for me to keep track of them.

But, for extroverts who continually have to juggle a wide list of contacts and constantly need to go out and meet new people, social networks are a blessing, I'm sure. Less time trying to remember who this sales person is that emailed you when you can just go to Facebook and see drunken pictures of them to remind yourself of that last company party they were at during that conference. And, to be honest, LinkedIn has been useful for me to keep track of all the people I've met at conferences. But I think that's because when I meet people at conferences and want to keep in touch with them, I'm pretending to be an extrovert. There's a reason why a majority of the most successful salespeople are extroverts.

Of course, social networks have caused their own share of problems. For example, it's annoying when someone messages me over Facebook and gets upset when I didn't notice. I still primarily use email for online communication, so if you want to reach me send me an email. The constant issue of privacy is another big problem, where younger people get bit by the fact that all their interact is now online and easily searchable, not only by your friends but also by future interviewers, future dates, and by marketers. Finally, there's the problem of different parts of one's life bleeding together. As I previously wrote, I keep the "real" me and the "virtual" me fairly separate. (You only really get to see the virtual me on here.)

The real sin of RealID

Now we get to the real meat of the matter. Why did RealID cause such a backlash? After all, people put up fairly personal information for public consumption on Facebook, right?

Well, it goes back to the fact that a lot of the most dedicated gamers are old-school introverted geeky types. While I think that the majority of people playing WoW are probably extroverts, they have reached the mass market and brought a lot of non-traditional people to the game, I think most of the people who are really passionate about the game are introverts. If you care enough to write a blog about the subject and didn't abandon the blog after a few months, you demonstrate at least a tendency toward introverted levels of concentration.

The problem is that introverts really don't like being forced out into the open. Choosing to put information out is one thing, but when told that this is the only option, we'll get fighting mad. Especially if sharing information is the gateway to a text-based communication medium like the forums, which is one of the old-school forms of communication that introverted geeky types enjoyed. In essence, Blizzard told introverts, "Expose yourselves to others or we won't let you participate in something you probably enjoy." When it's put in that context, it makes sense that people would raise a fuss. But, I suspect that Blizzard hadn't considered this, and figured that everyone has already joined a social network and wouldn't mind.

Fixing the forums

This isn't to say that the WoW forums couldn't use some cleaning up. Most of the people arguing against RealID weren't against making things better on the forums, they just didn't want to expose their personal information before participating.

To be fair, maintaining forums is very hard. Even companies with years of experience find this to be a very hard thing. Sadly, the best way to maintain civility in a forum is to establish the ground rules early. Manage user expectations about what is appropriate behavior in forums. Give attention to people who follow the rules, and punish people hard who do not. Even if you do establish proper expectations of behavior, it still takes constant vigilance to make sure that people continue to follow the rules and that the community doesn't start to go down the wrong paths. Really, it takes dedicated forum moderators to keep things civil.

Given that WoW has been around for almost six years at this point, that boat has sailed. Blizzard has to swim against the tide to fix the problems everyone notices in the forums. So, they really do need to make sure they have dedicated and fair forum moderators. But, that's hard and costly, so Blizzard wanted to with the "quick fix" of removing anonymity because anonymous people are more likely to be jerks. (I suspect that "cleaning up the forums" was a reason conjured up to support an otherwise profitable integration with social networks, but let's not dwell that detail.) Unfortunately, this also struck introverts where it hurt. In the end, it's going to take hiring people to keep things in check if Blizzard ever wants to fix their forums.

So, what do you think? Do you seem to fit the definition of an introvert? Does revealing personal information set your teeth on edge? Do you think Blizzard was just chasing the almighty dollar?

Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:

RealID, social networks, and introverts

Go read it, bookmark it and/or put it in your RSS reader. Then come back and read a bit more about why that site matters to MMO fans.

This is the result of my asking for a literate helper a little while back. I found some good people willing to chip in to write about cyberpunk themes. At least a few of them have contributed multiple pieces, so I think it's time to introduce this to a wider audience. The goal is to cover all aspects, and focus on imagining a modernized version of classic cyberpunk.

Even though the site isn't currently game-related, it's one part of a plan for a game I'd like to make. My goal is to try to gather an audience of cyberpunk fans to the site. I'm not going to use the site for pure marketing, the primary goal is to build a community of cyberpunk fans. But, once the game project gets going I will certainly post information on the site.

The other use for the site is to gauge interest in cyberpunk themes, which could be especially useful if I want to find some outside funding for a game project or want to attract other interested people to the project. So, if you want to see an indie cyberpunk MMO made, go subscribe to the site. Become active in the comments. Show that there's an untapped market for this type of theme and you'll help make it happen.

Please, go spread the site out as wide as you want. Pass it along to friends and encourage them to be active. Given that I have a handful of helpers, I expect that the site will be updated fairly frequently. If you're interested in contributing, write up an article and send it along to me. The more content, the better, right? :)

Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:

Do you like cyberpunk?

Identifying the problem

This round of discussion seemed to have been kicked off by the cheery Wolfshead in a recent post where he gets cranky about light death penalty, going so far as to point to light death penalties as one of the conveniences that replaced risk and therefore has emasculated MMOs.

Now, I will say that I think there is something to his core argument, since I've said that risk is a necessary component in our games. But, is a death penalty really an appropriate way to add risk?

Some people agree

Gordon of We Fly Spitfires says that he agrees that MMOs need harsh death penalties. He explains that playing EVE Online has given him something he hasn't felt in a while: fear. And that fear of losing something of value has enhanced the game for him. He mentions that he remembers every death he's suffered in EVE, mostly because it's can be a fairly crushing loss if you risk too much.

So, for some people, risk does add more excitement to the game. For an experienced MMO player like Gordon, having some risk does enhance gameplay by making victory that much sweeter. Even when bad things happen and he's penalized, a player like Gordon may viewsit as a story to share and a lesson to learn for next time.

A dissenter appears!

Larísa, the charming bartender at the Pink Pigtail Inn, says that death penalties really aren't necessary. To quote the title of her post, "the Defias were scary enough" to her, no need to add more risk to enhance that.

The problem, as I point out in the comments, is that there are a few different concepts being confused here. To quote from a comment I left:

1. Risk is what Wolfshead's article is arguably about. He's arguing that most modern MMOs lack as much challenge because there's less consequences for your actions. Dying is the canonical example: it used to be that dying put your whole character at risk. The original MUD had it so that if you died, the character was deleted. In EQ1 you could lose all your stuff. In most current MMOs (including WoW), you run back (or, better, wait for the healer to run back) and spend a bit more of your nigh endless gold supply that night.

2. Difficulty is what you seem to think Wolfshead was arguing for, making people work harder for their epics. Difficulty is different than risk. Difficulty must means it is harder to succeed, whereas risk means that failure carries a steeper cost.

3. Newness is what you're talking about at the end of your post. Experiencing something for the first time is mind-blowing. The first time I was on a text game, playing in the United States and chatting with someone in England, it was amazing. Getting online and seeing other characters in graphics. A lot of people would like to recapture that feeling, but it's almost impossible to do so.

Larísa's fear seems to be that this is just about adding difficulty instead of risk. She mentions that she had moments of fear while playing the supposedly emasculated WoW: the Defias bandits in an early zone chased her down in the newbie area. This was added to her unfamiliarity with the game and made for a very trying first experience. Therefore, she reasons that some people might be merely remembering their initial experiences and wanting to recapture those fleeting memories when they were inexperienced.

It's also important to know that Larísa is a less experienced MMO player. She just recently took a few tentative steps into LotRO as her second MMO. I suspect that risks like death penalties are definitely something that more experienced players want. Always make sure your design is appropriate to the audience.

What's the design problem?

So, let's dig a bit deeper and figure out what the design problem is surrounding a lack of death penalties. Elder Game has a great summary of death penalties in MMOs and how they affect players. The belief is that harsh death penalties will encourage grouping over soloing, provide more challenge, and also reduce the willingness of players to try something different.

But, let's take a step back and look at the larger issues. Some players will chafe at the idea of being punished in a game; aren't games supposed to be fun and carefree? Why does there have to be punishments in games? As I said before, though, risk can enhance the game because the troughs make the peaks seem that much higher. Winning a rare drop is much more exciting if you had to endure a lot of risk compared to simply putting in sufficient time.

The other important thing to note here is that punishment (and negative reinforcement) are great tools for helping people to learn. Punishment is a negative consequence for a undesired behavior, while negative reinforcement is avoiding a negative consequence through a desired activity (similar, but different). Only using positive reinforcement to help players learn tends to lead to diminishing returns, so these can be important tools.

Finally, I think that risk adds opportunities for heroism. Andrew over at Systemic Babble wrote about the story of a brave Canadian soldier who ended up throwing himself on a grenade to save his fellow soldiers. As I mentioned in a comment, we don't give players opportunities to do this in our games. The equivalent in a game, say that a DPS character grabs aggro off of a healer in a raid, is not necessarily looked on as heroic. Plus, the DPS character will fall behind on the meters, meaning that he or she needs to lrn2play noob. But, seriously, I think giving players the opportunity to do heroic things would not only make the games more fun. It woul also give people a real appreciation for what it takes to make such a sacrifice, more than the intellectual understanding we might have.

What's the design solution?

So, what's a good design solution to the problem. That's a Terrible Idea has an interesting proposal: don't have death. Instead of dying (or "being demoralized" in LotRO or whatever substitute for death you have), harmful blows reduce your combat effectiveness. This is potentially interesting, because there's still a penalty there: eventually you'll probably become completely ineffective at fighting to the point that you have to retreat and regroup. No silly "resurrections" at graveyards or whatever to "cheat death". I think it adds a level of storytelling in that a "raid wipe" doesn't have to be a complete failure, you could have the story about how most of the group gets knocked around, but then the group retreats, regroups quick, and springs on the encounter again before the enemies can fully recover. Dare we mention that this could also be an interesting opportunity for optional permadeath situations?

Let me point out a system I proposed in a comment to Larísa's post I linked above:

Upon entering a raid you get X soul points (depending on the difficulty of the raid, let's say up to 5). As you die, you lose a soul point. Once a boss is downed, any soul points are converted to favor points and a new batch of soul points are awarded.

What do favor points do? They increase your chance to find rare materials to make raid items (such items for flasks, etc.) Maybe also a small bonus to raid cash rewards and income from daily quests. The goal is that raiders would have to spend less time farming to get raid consumables the better they do.

Points might decay over time to encourage people to stay active. The exact bonus and maximum number of points would need to be balanced out. There would also need to be provision to prevent people from adding a new raider right as the boss is going to die in order to have the one "farming alt" that has the max bonus without the risk. Or, doing an "easy" raid to pad the point totals.

Of course, this still waters down the risk. But, again, it's something where it adds a bit of risk to dying (requiring more farming).

How does this system address risk? The player has a potential reward that comes from exceptional performance in a raid (not dying). The player has a strong motivation to perform well, but the consequences for failing aren't dire. The players are encouraged to learn their roles in a raid in order to help the group succeed. This doesn't not necessarily add any more difficulty to the encounters. Yes, it can be disappointing to lose the opportunity to get a bonus, but failing to get the bonus leads to players experiencing the same thing as people who aren't raiding.

I'll admit, though, it's not a great design. It's something I threw together in a few minutes to provide a point of discussion. Perhaps you can do better. What's a good way to increase risk without increasing difficulty? How can we manage player expectations to let them know that taking some risk might actually enhance the game?

Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:

Is a death penalty appropriate?