Yes, you might be playing, but to play a game, you need others.

[...] Check out what Raph Koster says about this. [...]

[...] MMORPG°¡ °ÔÀÓÀΰ¡(MMORPG ¡Õ °ÔÀÓ/ MMORPG ¡õ °ÔÀÓ)¿¡¼­ºÎÅÍ Ãâ¹ßÇØ¾ß µÉ ¹®Á¦ ¾Æ´Ñ°¡ ÇÕ´Ï´Ù. http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/01/29/are-mmorpgs-games/ [...]

I do agree that the subsets of the game have to stand alone as games in their own right. Back to the tennis analogy again…

A tennis tournament is in itself a game. However, if the individual games of tennis weren’t fun as a game in their own right, the tennis tournament would not exist – or if it did it wouldn’t be enjoyable.

Such composite games don’t work if their components are equally un-fun.

I like the line of thinking this argument entails, even if I don’t agree with your conclusions. Still the same reasons as I mentioned above.

For one, SWG wasn’t representative of this line of thinking (which is more recent). For another, the failings of that game don’t have much to do with this line of thinking, either. (What does whether it’s a place or not have to do with a lack of content?)

What thinking this way does is make you pay more attention to whether a given game within your world is actually fun enough to stand on its own as a game. Otherwise, it’s all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that it’s a good enough game because of all the attributes that a space happens to give. For example, making do with a combat systems or a crafting system that taken in isolation, isn’t a fun game at all, but that we let slide because it happens to connect up with the larger game world.

When you start saying things like this, this is when you know you’ve completely lost touch as a game designer.

This attitude explains only too well how Star Wars Galaxies became the empty and lifeless experience it is today and why players have abandoned it in droves for games like World of WarCraft and Guild Wars — games that never forgot they were supposed to be games.

[...] Are MMO’s Games? – Interesting editorial on MMO’s [...]

I’ve seen them, but Mud-Dev hasn’t been letting me post for something like two years, and I haven’t really found time to go asking around to figure out what’s going on there. I tried to respond to your comments on voice chat in October, for example, but my message just disappeared into the ether.

I agree that a lot of rules are just implicitly assumed without being stated, and I agree it’s a good idea to explicitly state them… because that’s frequently the only time you can tell when something is very, very wrong. There used to be a general assumption that a video game went on forever, and that difficulty was increased by making the game faster with each level. When you say that out loud, it sounds pretty silly, but as long as we just accepted it as how things worked… well, just look at the number of games that worked this way.

[...] February 3, 2006Blogged Out: Locking the Door to Your Virtual WorldWelcome to ‘Blogged Out’, the news report that looks at the world of developer blogging and the conversations being had with the community at large. This week we look at �interactive entertainment environments�, OCD, and DRM. C�est nes pas un jeux Are MMORPGs actually games? Raph Koster took some time to answer this oft-discussed question on his website this week. He thinks, rightly, that MMORPGs aren’t games as such, even though there may be games within the environment they create. What is important, though, is to make sure that the games embedded within the virtual world aren�t simply propped up by the wow-factor of taking place in a massively multiplayer environment. Koster: �I believe that regarding virtual worlds this way opens up the door for a very different outlook on how to design them; the spread of possible worlds becomes much wider. If we let go of the notion that virtual worlds are games, not only will we get better virtual worlds: I believe we will get better game worlds too.� What is also important is to recognise that online games of this kind are increasingly social spaces, and what really matters is not �game� in the sense a ludologist would understand, but rather the methods and processes by which the MMORPG allows players to act, co-operate and compete within the social space. Getting the balance right, of course, is the real trick: just look at how many people are put off Second Life�s lack of �game� for evidence of this. [...]

http://www.pathguy.com/ofs.htm