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The Destiny of Online Gaming

As I said in an earlier post I’m reading a book about ARG’s at the moment and as I read Raph Koster’s keynote speech from KGC 2005 I couldn’t help but twist the two together.
I’ve banged on to many people about the &#822…

One of the common elements about the non-social games in that list is that they have very open PvP and very “worldy” worlds.

I have one really great experiences with “user-created” content in a MMORPG. That is in Asheron’s Call playing on the DarkTide server.

To give a little background I got introed to this game from a friend while it was in open beta. This pretty much started my MMO addiction from this point foward. I started playing Asheron’s Call by playing on a non-PvP server during beta and gold release for the first three or so months. I got bored with this game rather quickly, and decided to go back to my original addiction at the time (StarCraft). After about a month and half break from the game, I somehow got convinced to reroll on the PvP server known as DarkTide.

Now I am not sure if anyone is familiar with the game design on DarkTide, but it was probably one of the harshest PvP servers to date. Basically there were no rules, PvP was in a FFA type mode, where newbies spawning points were regularly patrolled by RPKers anywhere from level 20-30 which basically meant insta death. The only exception is that once you were killed you were given a 5 minute “grace” period were you were non-PvP (otherwise known as white).

So where I am going with this? Well there really wasnt a “goal” in Asheron’s Call. Yes the monthly content was great, but if you were not in the level range or had the time to investigate what was going on you were kinda SOL. So basically you were left with a skill driven system. You would grind to get xp to spend on skill points. Gets boring real quick, hence why I left in the first place.

What kept me around was the “user-created” content that DarkTide players were generating on a daily basis. The system of monarchies present players with choices. Those choices were generally between RPK guilds (encouraged random player killing guilds) Antis (against RPKing in general and defended newbies from getting RPKed) and your neutral and/or trade guilds. Also you could also play the role of lone wolf if you so choose which would allow you to choose who you were enemies with and who you were allied with.

Because the world generated was so huge in Asheron’s Call this allowed players to settle in towns and “claim” territory (otherwise known as LifeStones). This in turn allowed players to “claim” dungeons that their guild or allies could use to gain skills in order for the betterment of the monarchy. The opposing force would then “raid” these dungeons and towns for various reasons such as crippling their leveling efficiency, general harrassment which could some times cause turncoats to switch allegiances, and the overall fun of raids in general.

Without making this a 10 page essay, the politics and territorial intrigue caused in DarkTide from the above were truely more engrossing than the game itself at times. Guilds like Black Rose, Blood, The-Feared, (some of the anti guild names escape me at the moment) that were involved with teritorial deals, declarations of KoS (Kill on Sight), betrayels were a story folded inside of the ongoing monthly updates.

My point is the users themselves created the history that DarkTide is steeped in, and it was then a far more interesting place to play than the other servers. If it were not for the harshness of starting a character in DarkTide it probably would have been a far more popular place to play.

I am suprised more devs have not looked at AC DarkTide model as a good starting point for allowing players to generate content/events on their own.

I hope that’s true. “What I Want In A Game” has changed quite a bit since 1998, when I was pleading for new shades of green. Now the questions I ask are something like: Can I play with my husband? I forgot to tell you that he’s on a Mac — can I still play with him? And can we play for about 2 hours every 3rd night and still have an enjoyable experience? Can we have a small expense for this enjoyment ($40/month being much too much)? The answer to each of these questions is Yes, as far as NWN goes. I think it is quite possibly the world’s most perfect online game. The user’s only fee is the box, and any modules s/he decides to buy. User-created content is (can be) free. It works on multiple platforms, and can be played via LAN.

B and I have the Platinum Edition on our Christmas List. He likes to play a Paladin. I’ll let you know how it goes.

BTW, I do think that NWN (well, NWN with all the glorious hacks that have been layered on it) and SL and the LiveJournal RPGs are harbingers.

It’s not about hooking up WoW to SL… it’s about connecting my “weblog” to “the blogosphere”… in Immersive style. My backyard is connected to my municipality, etc etc etc.

I really enjoyed seeing your presentation and it did raise some interesting points.

I think there are at least three different issues about the structure of online games in the future that you are combining which need to be separated in some sense:

1. “Portable Presence” – Persistance of identity across multiple games and services. This is an intriguing idea, but given the lack of real momentum for strong identity systems and players’ desire for anonymity, I just don’t see this happening. My current “void” presence (excluding all of the marketing cookies that follow me around) seems to be a best case scenario. Interestingly, I raised the importance of this from a company perspective during my talk at the conference. Companies should want this… players, not so much. As interestingly noted in an article I read recently, Snow Crash was fundamentally in error for the basic model of the Internet – there is no geography & therefore no “Bar at the Center” – hyperlinks and browsing have destroyed any shared notion of a “metric space” for the Internet.

2. “Portable Characters” – The notion of moving a character from game to game is kind of intriguing in theory, but a disaster in practice. Years of D&D and other games have shown how poorly this works… the uniquenes of the game master’s (or, for Online Game’s the developer) world view would make such portability virtually impossible. Even a shared game/play/economic engine would not make this work.

3. “Rich Gaming” – We seem to be at a crossroads where computer games are getting exponentially expensive to make even as the power to distribute and play them has plummetted. This is the opposite of what we are seeing with traditional board and card games – a renaissance of independent publishers and innovative titles. Pretty much all of the of the other creative arts are also seeing a rise in creativity and lowered cost of entry. Casual games are rapidly suffering from the bloat of other computer games.

Something is horribly wrong with how the industry is structured and operated. The art of computer gaming is rapidly degenerating into the shape of the US auto industry.

Steve

Now please explain how I have completely misunderstood your premise.

Fundamentally, widely-used online services require two components — inexpensive and reasonably easy-to-use access, and compelling content that it’s worth obtaining access to.
Some of that content will be user-created and other content will be commercially-created.

In order to have user-created content, you must have stable and inexpensive technical platforms for hosting content, as well as easy-to-use tools for content creation — preferably tools that provide near-instant gratification. Moreover, you must have open standards and interoperability.

But it’s also worth thinking about the history of MUDs — an increasingly large number of users created increasingly sophisticated games that drew ever-shrinking and ever-more-fragmented audiences, and few games managed to achieve critical mass. Multiplayer environments are dependent on communities that exist in real time. “Long tail” multiplayer content nonetheless has to gather sufficiently large audiences to form a critical mass for real-time community.

I think the Web equivalent for virtual worlds lies in the future, but it’s going to be a long time in coming.