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60 Responses to “Ambition”

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1. Faith wrote on June 13th, 2006 at 6:25 pm:

   [...] Comments [...]

2. 한RSS wrote on June 14th, 2006 at 3:38 am:

   [...] It looks like I will be giving the closing address at the Games for Change Conference, which is taking place on June 27th and 28th, in New York City. If you’re going, maybe I will see you there! Ambition Raph 2006-06-14 07:10 작성 | Games [...]

3. Ambition on Raph Koster - MMOz wrote on June 15th, 2006 at 7:29 am:

   [...] Ambition on Raph Koster Ambition on Raph Koster Quote: [...]

4. Raph’s Website » From the mailbag: fan mail, UO, ideas wrote on June 16th, 2006 at 10:18 am:

   [...] So it’s really great getting letters like this, especially during the debates on overreaching and ambition. But I don’t want to turn the mailbag only into congratulatory emails, either, so from now on, I probably won’t post emails like these. Raph, I recently have been talking to ______ about a console/game idea of mine and she told me you would probably enjoy getting some feedback on it. So here i am!! I would love to run this information by you and see what you think. I’ve talked to a few game/console companys (Blizzard, Inde, Cryptic,ect) and they liked the idea but they said it would be to much work for the size of there companies. I really feel this is goin to to be huge (Revolutionizing Huge) Please just let me run my ideas by you and then you can be the judge on where this might lead. I have somethin golden i just dont know how to get to the next step. Please sir it would only take a few minutes out of you schedule and then who knows from there. Thank you, David [...]

Reader Comments

1. Morgan said on June 13th, 2006 at 3:35 pm:

   Being in Idaho for the last week until tomorrow, I’ve not followed the Why Don’t Our NPCs… discussion, so I don’t know what prompted this topic; however, I’d like to say, “Here! Here!”

   As one of my little nephews asked, “Why do people say ‘Here! Here!’?”

   In the context of this topic, I agree with the notions that being reasonable is good while being realistic is bad. Reason and realism are different in my opinion. Realism is looking at a given situation and asking, "What can be done with the available resources?" This is unfairly limiting. There’s certainly creativity involved with arranging available resources into something, but realism doesn’t involve creation — realism doesn’t involve innovation. Realism results in failure more often than not.

   Reason is looking at a given situation and asking, "What can I do to complete my objectives? What do I have available to me? Do I need more? If I need more, how do I get what I need to do more?" Reason is forward-looking. Reason involves innovation, but not dreamy innovation. Reason also involves risk-taking. Some risks have bad results, sure, but the best risks yield the greatest rewards.

   When confronted with the topic of intergalactic civilization, the realistic person will respond, "We can’t do that because we don’t have the technology!" The reasonable person will remark, "Well then, dummy, how do we get the technology to do what we want to do?" Most realism-oriented people will shy away from answering, "Hey man, I’m just being realistic." Yeah, great, not very helpful. Bye!

   We don’t have to be realistic about what we can get done. We shouldn’t be realistic! We shouldn’t focus on resources! We need to be reasonable. We need to focus on initiatives, goals, dreams, and assume a practical approach to accomplishing our objectives. We shouldn’t gaze downward at the ground below our feet. We need to look forward, look upward, and start moving. If we sit around waiting for the perfect situation to make our move, we’ll never get what we want.

2. Orrey said on June 13th, 2006 at 3:42 pm:

   “stuff that doesn’t have a purpose” doesn’t mean anything. This isn’t a negative it’s a positive. By this I mean unless the code is completely invisible to the players someone will notice it and appreciate it. I think every game design team should have a member “in charge of useless stuff”.

   Its all the supposed useless things that make a game work for the large amounts of time your just playing, hanging around, being in the world. This was a major difference in games like UO and SWG vs. the WoW, EQ school of big raids, hardcore play. Not that you can’t play either one, either way, but they are slanted that way.

   It’s a world immersion thing. You can just be there and experience the world hang out and talk, cruise around your house or town, when you’re not interested in a big raid or quests.

   I guess I’m coming at this from an explorer type player – but that how I play them. I would have loved it if I was 10 miles outside of a town on some back water world in SWG and the stuff around me was doing “useless things”. Like spawns triggered that just went through something like herd behavior or alerted on a predator and moved away. Browsed on some spawned bush just for the purpose of adding “useless” background and depth.

   Sounds, encounters, simple things like a hermit you run into that tells you about something “useless” that happened to him a while back. An ecosystem that runs even when no one is looking. Sure its labor intensive to code a bunch of dialogue and vignettes.

   But its the difference between a online game with a lot of other players getting in the way and an online world with a lot of other interesting people that play it also.

3. Jare said on June 13th, 2006 at 3:46 pm:

   I think striking a balance of realists and reasonables. Pushing too much often ends up wasting everyone’s time, effort and energy. However, creating a dynamic where those pushing the boundaries can get a reality check, while those striving for the safe bet are kept on their toes, tends to work better. If it can be made to work, that is. Success on either side can lead one of the “sides” becoming arrogant and dissing the other, destroying the dynamic. I’ve seen this happen too many times to believe that Blind Faith conquers everything.

   I think the choice of words is a bit biased; mind you, I’m a reasonable realist.

4. MikeRozak said on June 13th, 2006 at 3:53 pm:

   “well, that’s too hard,” … When do you push at the boundaries?

   Alternatively: “What boundaries do you push?”

   Sometimes, when people hit a brick wall of “stuff that’s too hard to do”, they focus on perfecting/augmenting the known.

   For example: Many in the IF and MUD communities are very proud about their command parsers that allow users to type, “Drop all my equipment except the red and white books.” Yes, it’s an impressive bit of parsing, but (IMHO) it doesn’t really add that much to gameplay.

   This also happened in text IF and MUDs in the 80’s when you’d see stuff like “20,000 rooms”, “5000 weapons”, “154 races”, “634 skills”, “3743 NPCs”, “1243 quests”, etc. advertised.

   It’s happening today, with 256 sq. km. of (empty) world to wander over. You still see 5000 weapons, 154 races, 634 skills, etc. advertised… Much ado about nothing.

   Intelligent NPCs, or ecologies, and/or other new technologies/directions, produce substantially different player experiences. A game with 5000 weapons isn’t very different from one with 500. Same goes for visibility of 40 km vs. 4 km. Or orcs vs. robots, as generic enemies.

5. Michael Chui said on June 13th, 2006 at 4:26 pm:

   I only push at the boundaries when I care about something beyond that boundary directly. For instance, I’ve spent the last two days trying to figure out how to use Google Web Toolkit. (I wasted my entire afternoon because I didn’t read five letters correctly!) But am I going to push the boundary of what can be done with it? No. Am I going to write widgets? No. I don’t really care. I want their functionality, but I don’t want that extra step.

   On the other hand, I’ve been mentally working on a system model for a virtual world that I plan to put down on paper some… time… today… *innocent halo* It has some stuff I’ve never seen before in MUDs, stuff that I have, but needs severe improvement, etc. (I know I’m being purposefully vague.) But I care about it, so I’m pushing those boundaries.

   When I don’t care, I do stuff mostly because I know it can be done because someone’s done something reasonably similar before. When I do care, I do it because I think I can, and I want to.

   I got tired of the Interesting NPC thread very, very quickly and stopped reading more than superficially once I realized I wouldn’t be able to say anything that didn’t qualify as trolling.

   “Why do people say ‘Here! Here!’?”

   Oh, and I always thought it was “Hear, hear!”…

6. Raph said on June 13th, 2006 at 4:40 pm:

   I do believe it’s “Hear, hear!” There’s the “Oyez, oyez” variant heard in court as well, which means the same thing.

   Put it there with “mute” points, “wa-lah!” and other such misheard phrases.

7. Darniaq said on June 13th, 2006 at 5:17 pm:

   As I’ve migrated over time from designer to producer, I’ve become immersed in that interesting gulf between artistry and execution. What I’ve found is that people respond to delivery.

   That’s pretty vague, but on purpose. Gamers measure results first. Those who can’t get past executional issues simply continue their search for a dream game. This seems to be the foundation of why the same core design philosophy continues to be so iterated.

   I personally feel it’s time to push when you know that the core system is deliverable and scalable into the truly creative. I also feel it’s time to push when you understand the sort of audience that will be receptive to it.

   As the barrier for creating and publishing continue to lower, more companies are able to give this a shot. It’s already to the point where no single list of all MMORPGs in the world is 100% accurate, such is the amount of people in the field. In a sense, this success can result is true artistry returning to the genre. We don’t need six or seven mega publishers controlling who delivers what to who, as long as the developers properly scale their business to their expected level of success.

   Artistic pursuits into new realms is not something for mass exposure anyway. You normally have to grow into something like that anyway.

   I generally find punditry pretty conservative, as normally they’ve become pundits by understanding what is. But they’re generally responding to a few generations beyond the original visionary executions anyway, so will be around years later when today’s creativity has become tomorrow’s conventional wisdom.

8. magicback (frank) said on June 13th, 2006 at 5:42 pm:

   On a side note: the industry will always need big publishers because in an industry where the profitability “hit rate” is low (say 10%), the industry will need big publishers to take on the risk that 90% of games will not be profitable.

   Back on topic:
   I see pushing the boundaries and ambition from the financial portfolio management perspective: expanding the efficient frontier. The marketplace have found the efficient sweet spots for certain types of games (which I’ll termed Corners). WoW, Eve Online, SL, etc all can be called the current Corner games. So pushing the boundaries are usually benchmarked against those Corners.

   To push beyond the WoW and SL corners will require lots of capital, but pushing beyond Eve Online and more towards SL or WoW may not. So one perspective is to determine what boundaries we can push within budget on Eve Online? Do we have more quests like WoW or more user-customization like SL?

   Ambition, which was noted in the title, but not discussed in the comments, is a key motivational factor.

9. Morgan said on June 13th, 2006 at 5:51 pm:

   What boundaries do you push?

   The answer depends on your expertise.

   Since I’m in marketing, I see a lot in the business of game development that troubles me and that which has obviously regressive effects on innovation. As a member of the IGDA, I’m positive that the boundaries that must be pushed are those on the business side, such as bottom-line thinking and MBA-style human resources management. The cost focus can be blamed on the realists. We need to shift to a profit focus. We need to discard the product orientation and embrace the solutions orientation. As the phrase goes, "Think global. Act local."

   Many people complain about the cost of developing any new game, but as far as a virtual world goes, the cost of development is a startup expense. That’s the best place to spend a lot of money. We’re dealing with subscription systems at the MMOG level which means that we should spend the money and the time and the energy developing state-of-the-art systems that not only attract subscribers but systems that also replenish the numbers throughout the PLC.

   The problem we’re seeing is developers from the "old world" of the business of single-player games trying to apply the same business models to online interactive entertainment. This is a different business. This is a different environment through-and-through. Out with the old, in with the new, because we need to encourage innovation to bring about effective business models and consistently rewarding games that retain subscribers as much as they attract subscribers.

   Once we resolve the business issues, I’m confident we can jumpstart and facilitate innovation in the areas that directly affect the entertainment experiences this industry provides. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much public discussion about renewing and refreshing the business of games… People in this industry tend to concentrate on how to work around problems instead of trying to solve them.

   Somewhat OT: The Web has certainly changed a lot. Here in Idaho, there are Starbucks franchises in small towns of 1,000 people and less. People are connected. There are people in these small obscure towns who are on MySpace. It’s really quite amazing to see so many big-brand ventures, such as Wal-Mart and Subway, out in the middle of nowhere.

   … and other such misheard phrases.

   I don’t think it matters. Outside of a context, both phrases (i.e., “here here” and “hear hear”) are nonsensical.

10. Matt Mihaly said on June 13th, 2006 at 6:46 pm:

    Raph wrote:
    
    But something precisely targeted to excite the audience — sorry, I believe audiences are generally smarter than that. You create something because you think it’s cool, and it’s the coolness that ultimately drives the audience.
    
    I can list a ton of popular phenomenons that would seem to fly right in the face of this. For a start:
    * Most Saturday morning/weekday afternoon cartoons (which are just cynical advertisements for merchandise).
    * Romance novels.
    * Sci-Fi channel’s current, successful spate of horror in the “mutated/huge animals attack” vein (one of my friends is a writer, and they know -exactly- what audience they’re targetting and why. He doesn’t give a flying crap about the content itself.)
    * Neopets.

    –matt

11. magicback (frank) said on June 13th, 2006 at 6:51 pm:

    Hey for everyone looking at interesting developments, take a look at an user review of Wurm Online on F13.

12. Amaranthar said on June 13th, 2006 at 7:33 pm:

    I’m not in your industry, so forgive me for replying here. But it’s all in the attitude, if you ask me.

    I used to work for a man who always pushed the limits in his business (completely unrelated industry, but that doesn’t matter.)
    He didn’t do it to push these limits, he simply did it because the opportunity presented itself. This man wasn’t held back by what others thought, he was seemingly completely insolated from what other people expected, or what experts said, or for that matter anything outside of his own view. A truelly self propelled individual the likes of which I think is only found among the “highly innovative”.

    It wasn’t like he was going to go climb a mountain, rather it was that there was a mountain in his path, so hey, we’ll just climb it.

    He told me once “it’s really not that hard”. “You can always sell people on the standard stuff, but if you can offer them more, you won’t sell it to all of them, but I’m better off if I can sell some of it to some of them.” From there it was just a question of recognizing potential, recognizing what some people will want.

    He always far surpassed his competition. He was always the trail blazer that others followed, usually much later.

13. Abalieno said on June 13th, 2006 at 9:29 pm:

    When do you do stuff that you have no idea if there’s an audience for it? When do you do things for the love of it?

    I agree with everything beside those two lines.

    I just cannot conceive to do something I don’t expect will be appreciated and that I’m not absolutely convinced it can have a great appeal.

    When do you do things for the love of it?

    When you strongly believe in them. They come from a *need*.

14. Michael Chui said on June 13th, 2006 at 10:53 pm:

    I’m not absolutely convinced it can have a great appeal.

    I’d be satisfied with great impact; appeal is less important.

15. Psychochild said on June 13th, 2006 at 11:31 pm:

    Or, one really loud-mouth developer questioning if it is worth it.

    When do you push the boundaries? When there’s a good reason to push the boundaries. Now, “good reason” can vary a bit depending on who is judging. “Because it’s cool” can be a good reason to chase down an idea at the prototype stage. “Because it will help the game retain 20% more players” is a good reason when trying to convince managers of your plan.

    My biggest issue in the NPC discussion is that “because it’s easy to implement” is not a good reason. Even if it’s easy to implement, you have to consider other issues: is it easy to maintain? Is it easy to expand? Is it easy to modularize from other systems?

    Now, I admit that I come from a unique perspective here. Few developers have spent as much time as I have supporting a game. So, my mind tends to wander into the realm of “maintainability” a lot more than the average developer.

    But, in the end I’m trying to find the real reason why the idea might work. I want to see that the effort that goes into implementation is worthwhile. I want to see why, given examples to the contrary, this iteration will succeed where others have failed. Once we have the reason why this is a good idea, then we can talk more intelligently about the cost-benefit trade-offs and why the budget and/or schedule should include this.

    I admit, I may be a bit rough in my criticisms with you, Raph, but this is for two reasons: 1) I expect more out of you, and 2) I know you can take it. Just like my feelings aren’t hurt when you call me to the mat like this. I’m just as excited to see cool things happen as anyone else here, but in my current situation I have to be super-practical about it all.

    When do you do stuff with no obvious audience? When you don’t have to worry about making a return on investment. Unfortunately, that’s not very often. Making prototypes or allocating already sunk resources are about the only times I can think of.

    When do you do it out of love? When you decide you don’t want more money. I saved M59 and relaunched it out of love. I don’t regret a moment of my work on M59, but I won’t pretend that I’ve maximized my resources. My life might have been a bit more comfortable if I had been more ROI-focused, but perhaps not as worthwhile. We’ll see.

    My thoughts.

16. Pahon said on June 13th, 2006 at 11:46 pm:

    This topic could not have come at a more appropriate time for me personally. Not more than 48 hours ago I went back to school after a 6 year absence. My field of study? Game design. As I expected, the majority of conversation between classes was about gaming. The thing that scared the hell out of me was all of the “Im gonna make the next great(FPS,MMO,RPG,insert genre here)” discussion. Now, I understand that most of the people I am going to school with are a decade or more younger than I am and look at life a little different than I do. In fact,
    I was reminded of the generation gap when a fellow student asked me,” Did you actually get to play Pac-Man in an arcade?”. Anyway, the point of this rant is how scary the lack of imagination I witnessed. I hope when I get to the point that I am actually creating games, instead of telling myself that Im going to make the next great whatever, that I’m thinking about making the FIRST great something. Just my two cents.

17. Raph said on June 14th, 2006 at 7:23 am:

    Brian, having done tons and tons of the “little touch” sorts of things like the bootblack example, I can tell you that they are extremely maintainable. Because they are one-shot small behavior scripts, there’s no real practical way for additional behaviors to be layered on. If anything, the maintainability issue is that you just end up with a lot of them.

    The bigger things like the shopkeeper memory are indeed more intense and should be treated as a system addition. But most of the examples weren’t of that sort.

    I think the others in the thread are largely making the case on the cost-benefit tradeoff, so I’ll leave it to them to say why they want it in the games.

    Oh, and my comment wasn’t really directed at you or anyone in particular; rather, it was an open question.

    I can list a ton of popular phenomenons that would seem to fly right in the face of this. For a start:
    * Most Saturday morning/weekday afternoon cartoons (which are just cynical advertisements for merchandise).
    * Romance novels.
    * Sci-Fi channel’s current, successful spate of horror in the “mutated/huge animals attack” vein (one of my friends is a writer, and they know -exactly- what audience they’re targetting and why. He doesn’t give a flying crap about the content itself.)
    * Neopets.

    I think you have to take all the stuff targeted at kids off the list; we know that they are far more suggestible and less experienced in the ways of media manipulation. It’s not really a fair comparison. With more experience, they see through the marketing too.

    On romance novels, I think you’re betraying a lack of knowledge and experience with the romance novel market. Yes, there’s a bunch of boilerplate stuff churned out, just as in every genre. There’s also some writers who are passionate about what they do, love it, tweak the genre’s conventions, and so on. Believe me, my wife tells me all about them.

    Lastly on schlock horror — that’s an interesting one. I would be very surprised to hear that none of the folks working on those for the Sci-Fi Channel are schlock horror fans in the Forrest Ackerman mold, with statuettes of swamp monsters on their desks or movie posters from Them! on the wall.

18. Janey said on June 14th, 2006 at 12:06 pm:

    Put it there with “mute” points, “wa-lah!” and other such misheard phrases.

    Not to hijack the comments or anything, cause I think they’re pretty great, but ‘misheard phrases’ make me really happy, in a giggly sort of way.

19. Zell said on June 14th, 2006 at 12:50 pm:

    If you will forgive a melodramatic answer…

    Projects interest me more the more aesthetically pleasing they are, really. I enjoy rewriting a dry algorithm because I can make it much more elegant, or much more efficient. I enjoy prototyping a procedural texture hack because the results are stunning, implementation regardless. When proper things come together, they form quality, and it’s the best feeling. People love quality.

    It is an article of faith with me that when something is sufficiently pleasing to me, it will also please others. So my ambition is not much concerned with extremes — I would just try to follow my very instictive nose for what feels right, and were I do that well I would be satisfied. Sometimes it pays the bills.

20. Morgan said on June 14th, 2006 at 3:14 pm:

    Abalieno wrote:
    I just cannot conceive to do something I don’t expect will be appreciated and that I’m not absolutely convinced it can have a great appeal.

    Psychochild wrote:
    When do you do stuff with no obvious audience? When you don’t have to worry about making a return on investment.

    With that attitude, you will never be successful with the creation of something truly innovative. Simply put, the truth of the matter rests in the difference between market-driven and market-driving. By default, innovation is market-driving. Markets are created for innovations. Innovations are not created for markets. Many of the most successful, most lucrative, and most socially powerful products conceived were developed for markets that were created specifically for those products.

21. Allen Sligar said on June 14th, 2006 at 3:50 pm:

    Besides being a complete noob (well except for playing games for a very long time) about the “industry”, and besides completely agreeing with Morgans comments (also because I have an MBA hehe) I will answer based on my previous experiance:

    When do you push at the boundaries?

    Boundaries? Sorry I dont believe in those, small hurdles perhaps, and social constructs maybe. I try and do what I want while doing no harm. The only hurdle I’ve encountered repeatedly is the “convincing people there are no boundaries” hurdle. You cant bend the spoon because there isnt a spoon…

    When do you do stuff that you have no idea if there’s an audience for it?

    Currently Im attempting to bring to reality (Gamemarketmetric) something where there may or may not be an audiance, for the gaming community. This is soley based upon my perception of there being a huge opprotunity to provide a service to an industry I know only from the outside looking in (motivation) and to see not only IF I can do it (challenge), but how fast I can do it (Time to market) how big I can make it (ambition) and how financially viable it will be (risk). The upside is I know the principles inside and out, and the only barrier is porting them to a new industry. Downside is it takes a bit of time.

    Its not the first time Ive created something out of nothing, and it wont be the last, its just the first time Ive decided to apply my professional skills to what has been until now my hobby and passion. I believe there are different types of creativity, I cant render a 3D model, but I know can create a business model and viable company from motivation and passion, based on my prior experiance

    People in my experiance on a personal, or community level, react to others passion, creativity and love for thier work, audiances tend toward believeing in those who do things from the heart, who take a risk, because they followed thier gut. Not because some focus group told them to proceed. Passion begets innovation, which begets financial rewards. Is there risk? Yes. Do you fall on your face? Yes? Will those who are afraid, who lack vision or wont take a risk be the first to laugh and mock you? Yes again. But quite frankly who cares what they think. They’re roadkill on the freeway of acomplishment. And I happen to drive a Mack truck….

    When do you do things for the love of it?

    I think one can do things out of duty, because they are required. But higher pursuits and ones life work should always be done out of love. And while this may seem like a thin skinned soft northern california response. In my experiance financial reward follows from ones passion/love of thier work.

    I guess thats about it for my diatribe. Sorry for the ramble…

    Huzzah! (always wondered where that came fom? since we have vague stuff floating around this thread)

22. Joe Ludwig said on June 15th, 2006 at 8:07 am:

    Pushing the boundaries is a great thing, but you have to be careful to pick your battles. Many of the failures in MMOs happen to teams that bit off more than they could chew. Sometimes that’s because they couldn’t handle making any MMO at all, but usually it’s because they tried to push too many boundaries.

    To make your game stand out you need to pick one or two major things that you will innovate on and be sure to start those early so that you can recover when your first attempt fails spectacularly. In our case, that was the ship to ship combat system that has now been through 4 complete revamps with only the last couple being any fun at all. Unless you have infinite resources it’s probably a bad idea to stray too far from the well-understood approaches to the other 1000 features you have to have in your MMO at launch to avoid being laughed off the shelves. The pie in the sky version of these feature is going to take more time to spec and require much more iteration time than the well-understood version, and most teams don’t have that kind of time.

    Raph writes:

    So it’s not a waste of time to spec an ecology system even if it will never see day.

    Well “waste of time” is a somewhat loaded term, but at some point it IS a waste of time to spec systems that will never be implemented, let alone shipped. There are a limited number of hours in the day and a limited number of months until launch. Precious designer time can be spent waxing philosophical about “wouldn’t it be nice” features or it can be spent crunching through beta feedback trying to figure out how to fix the features you already have and KNOW that you’re going to launch with. Sometimes that requires wholly new systems, but usually it means the much less exciting process of replacing existing components of existing systems.

    Ambition is a powerful force, as long as it’s coupled with focus. Without focus, too much ambition will just doom your project to cancellation or, worse, to launching a terrible game that you have to shut down in embarassment a year or two later.

    Maybe I’ll feel differently when I’m working on my second or third MMO and not in the trenches trying to launch my first.

23. Morgan said on June 15th, 2006 at 10:02 am:

    Pushing the boundaries is a great thing, but you have to be careful to pick your battles.

    Battles, pfft! You have to start a war and write the rules.

    Many of the failures in MMOs happen to teams that bit off more than they could chew. Sometimes that’s because they couldn’t handle making any MMO at all, but usually it’s because they tried to push too many boundaries.

    Certainly, many failures in product development occur due to overreaching, but that overreaching happens long before any attempt at pushing boundaries is made. Teams that overreach their capabilities in regards to innovation are often narrowly focused on differentiation through incremental innovation. A unique ship-to-ship combat system is nice, sure; unfortunately, unless that unique ship-to-ship combat system changes the way the entire game is played, the associated team should have low expectations of success. Are you selling a unique ship-to-ship combat system or are you selling Pirates of the Burning Sea? There’s differentiation and then there’s innovation. Differentiation is not innovation. Thinking small is an attribute of incrementalism. The product needs to be considered innovative in its entirety. To consider the entire product truly innovative, you need think beyond differentiating features. You need to innovate the total experience.

24. Joe Ludwig said on June 15th, 2006 at 3:14 pm:

    Morgan wrote:

    There’s differentiation and then there’s innovation. Differentiation is not innovation. Thinking small is an attribute of incrementalism. The product needs to be considered innovative in its entirety. To consider the entire product truly innovative, you need think beyond differentiating features. You need to innovate the total experience.

    Well depending on whether you subscribe to the “it’s a game” view of MMOs or the “it’s a place with games in it” view. I’ve generally been believing the former, but now I seem to be thinking more in terms of the latter. If you’re actually building several games with a shared world to live in, you can innovate an entire game without innovating the world much at all. If that game is a significant part of the world (as it is in ours) your innovation will have a significant impact on the user’s experience. That you not need to innovate the entire experience is exactly my point.

    Of course I don’t actually care if anyone regards the game as innovative. I care that they enjoy the game and find playing it interesting enough to keep playing. Hopefully we will accomplish that by concentrating most of our innovation in the areas that are appropriate to our setting and our game, and by leaving much of the rest of the game alone. If we can execute on that, we will do just fine.

25. StGabe said on June 15th, 2006 at 4:25 pm:

    At the same time, I worry about the natural reaction, “well, that’s too hard,” or “it’s not what players want,” or the ever-pernicious “well, there are other things we should be spending our effort on.” And the reason is that it usually leads to not trying. And down that road lies derivative work for everyone.

    A statement like, “well that’s too hard”, might well be an excuse not to try something. Assuming that “this is just an excuse” can, however, be an excuse to not let go of an idea that is unrealistic. Generalizations here aren’t useful. What is important is: can it be done or can’t it?

    I am not trying to put down those who are trying to be realistic; in general, when I consider doing something, I usually try to think about it from the perspective of “were I coding it, how long would it take me?” I am not a great coder by any means. If I can look at a system and think about a reasonable way to implement it, it’s not rocket science programming. Nonetheless, I overreach regularly.

    “Could I code this” is, IMO, an unrealistic way to look at things. IMO it greatly oversimplifies the complexities of developing such a large project. “Can it be coded” is often the least of concerns. The more pressing concerns are:

    – Is the result likely to be usable and worth the time invested?
    – Can we spare the time or do we need it for other things?
    – How much will this complicate the rest of the project?

    My problems with the ecology are not that I don’t think it can be coded as stated. My problems are that:

    – I think that the initial implementation will fail and you’ll likely end up implementing it not once but 10 times and probably still not be happy with it. It is too complex/ambitious at the design level and implementation is the least of your concerns.
    – In order to give it enough resources to have any chance of success it will be a huge time-sink that, with a realistic MMO schedule, you won’t have any time left over for a core game.
    – It will add many complicated moving pieces to an already overly complex machine magnifying the difficulty of implementing everything else for the world.

26. StGabe said on June 15th, 2006 at 4:35 pm:

    Or, one really loud-mouth developer questioning if it is worth it.

    I think there’s been at least two of us. And it looks like we’re saying the same things. It’s not just whether it can be coded but whether it will actually work and be maintainable.

    Yes, some of the flavor stuff is “maintainable”. There the issue is simply whether they are worth the time. With 3 years to do an MMO do you want to have a dog that chases a cat or an extra week of tightening the core systems? Maintainability becomes a large concern with a system like the proposed resource system or any AI that is more than just a script.

27. Morgan said on June 15th, 2006 at 7:09 pm:

    Well depending on whether you subscribe to the “it’s a game” view of MMOs or the “it’s a place with games in it” view.

    When I say "game", I’m referring to the total interactive entertainment experience. "Pirates of the Burning Sea" and "World of Warcraft" are the games — the total interactive entertainment experiences. When you focus on the games within the "place" while losing focus on the "place" itself, that’s the same incrementalist approach as those who narrowly focus on gameplay mechanics and components.

    If that game is a significant part of the world (as it is in ours) your innovation will have a significant impact on the user’s experience.

    If the ship-to-ship combat system is central to the Pirates of the Burning Sea total experience, then obviously innovating the ship-to-ship combat system will effect the end user.

    That you not need to innovate the entire experience is exactly my point.

    Innovation does not only come in the form of features. From a feature perspective, World of Warcraft is not an innovation. But why is the World of Warcraft successful? In fact, the World of Warcraft total experience consists of common features found in many games and combines those features to provide a particular experience to a particular type of player. Contrary to SirBruce’s market share graphs, the World of Wacraft total experience is not directly competitive as a product with many other MMO games, and vice versa. Blizzard created, controlled, and monopolized a market erected specifically for the World of Warcraft total experience. Those who desire to compete directly with Blizzard must enter that/their market as a direct competitor and attempt to establish market share; unfortunately, such competition breeds incremental innovation which directly impacts value, revenue, and the capability of the company to innovate and sustain brand equity.

    Of course I don’t actually care if anyone regards the game as innovative.

    Innovation is not a matter of concern to players; although, being innovative does add value to products and their associated offerors. Innovation, however, is a business issue that should concern business leaders as well as everyone in the industry. A lacking of innovation is what this industry and everyone involved is experiencing. Many of the hurdles and problems encountered on the business side of game development stem from this deficiency. You might be interested in this recent interview with Chris Crawford, whose basic message is "video games are dead". I’m more optimistic.

28. Raph said on June 15th, 2006 at 9:36 pm:

    Hmm, I have to admit that my immediate reaction, Gabe, is “it’s worth more than a week extra on the combat system.” For one thing, the combat system is dull as dishwater anyway, most likely.

    But I know that’s an overreaction. Rather, let me say that the thing that is disheartening is that the naysayers have yet to propose anything exciting or interesting. Instead, it’s a litany of “unproven, unmaintainable, do the basics first.”

    To start with, there ARE no real basics to the gameplay. There are only conventions. There are basics to things like connectivity, absolutely. But you’re not going to be sacrificing server uptime to a few lines of NPC interactivity.

    What is really being said by you & Brian is “make sure you nail the core gameplay,” which is basically also what Joe is saying, only in his case, PotBS is actually taking the central mechanics of the Diku-style game and tossing it out the window. Incremental, it ain’t.

    When “nail the core gameplay” is used as an excuse to avoid putting in all charm and personality into a game, the result is still usually an unexciting game. People respond to passion. Workmanlike execution is not what makes people fall in love with a product of any sort. An NPC who remembers you is.

    Similarly, it’s all too easy to use this logic to avoid doing anything but derivative incremental work. You say there’s lots of better places to spend the effort, but all you’ve alluded to thus far is places that everything else offers. That’s undifferentiated and uninspiring. What’s the magic sauce?

29. StGabe said on June 15th, 2006 at 10:48 pm:

    When “nail the core gameplay” is used as an excuse to avoid putting in all charm and personality into a game, the result is still usually an unexciting game.

    Like I said, it goes both ways. Are you making excuses or am I? Isn’t saying, “that’s just an excuse” really just an excuse not to listen to criticism of your ideas? This is a very dangerous type of argument that tries to refuses to listen to the other side even before the other side speaks. Really what’s important are the facts of the matter, not the perceived motivations of either side.

    What is really being said by you & Brian is “make sure you nail the core gameplay,”

    I think we’re saying more than that. “Make sure you nail the core gameplay” is only relevant to one of my three objections/questions: is this worth the time that could be spent on other things. And actually it is the objection I am least concerned about. I think at this point we’re talking past ourselves a bit. What I think is unrealistic and has no compelling supportive argument is all of this talk of vast game ecologies and extensive AI. Having buried my head in that hole (or at least a very similar hole) for a number of years I think it’s just a waste of time for now. I think Psychochild is also responding to these more extreme examples a lot more than he is talking about adding a script to make a dog follow a cat.

    Rather, let me say that the thing that is disheartening is that the naysayers have yet to propose anything exciting or interesting.

    See that’s the thing. There are no easy answers but that doesn’t make it wrong, or a character flaw, to point out what isn’t the answer.

    In past discussions I have written a lot about where I think MMORPG’s can and will go. I think that WoW is, more or less, the wave of the future for the mainstream audience. MMORPG’s have already captured the vast majority of hardcore players who want complex narratives and still hasnt’ been able to deliver that. Those entering the genre now are more casual and want much more tailored experiences. We talk about the casual game market and those players playing MMORPG’s but I think many gloss over the fact that casual games are incredibly directed, simple experiences lacking all of the complexities and hard choices that come up in discussions like this. Just look at how many Match-3 games are on the market and you will start to think that MMORPG combat systems are surprisingly unique. Casual players will not want to be confused by complex gameplay. They will want to log in, play the same old Match-3 clone for a while, gain some experience and save up for a new outfit next week. Not tromp through a wild and unpredictable jungle that they really could care less about.

    The future of diverse, complex worlds, IMO, will come about through very small ideas and changes in comparatively small worlds. Overly ambitious triple-A projects that attempt to create vast, flourishing ecologies will only further doom the idea for the mainstream (by proving to investors that putting money into such fantasies is a bad idea). Instead I think that games like EVE, ATitD and SL will sit on the fringe and make very slow headway occasionally spinning out ideas that get picked up by the mainstream. And hopefully, with time, we’ll see technology allowing a flourishing of even smaller worlds catering to increasingly specialized bases of players. I think we are talking about a long and slow process here, not an overnight revolution or insight.

30. Morgan said on June 15th, 2006 at 11:42 pm:

    Really what’s important are the facts of the matter, not the perceived motivations of either side.

    The problem with "realism" is that perspective inherently involves an assumption of reality. I think what you’re really trying to emphasize is practicality, not realism. I’m giving you leeway since emphasizing practical considerations makes more sense than believing you are thoroughly knowledgeable about the reality of any given situation.

    What is important is: can it be done or can’t it?

    What really matters is not possibility, like you claim, but rather practicality. There is little that cannot be done. Would investing some amount of time, money, and effort into a project present a reasonable return on investment? Take an educated guess and then "just do it" if you’re sufficiently ambitious. You can only do so much research. Even venture capitalists and financial analysts understand that forecasts are 99% soap bubbles. If you’re always waiting for the perfect scenario, you’ll never get anything done.

    I don’t know if you’ve ever been involved in business as an entrepreneur, Gabe, but as an entrepreneur, you would embrace the fact that there have been many successful socially powerful innovations that came about by defying the research, by defying "the experts", and by defying the status quo logic of the day. Heart surgery and human flight were unthinkable in the past. Today, they’re commonplace activities.

31. Mike Rozak said on June 16th, 2006 at 12:28 am:

    StGabe wrote:

    In past discussions I have written a lot about where I think MMORPG’s can and will go. I think that WoW is, more or less, the wave of the future for the mainstream audience.

    While I agree that simplicity is the wave of the future (with caveats), I don’t think the “dressing” of killing hoards of orcs is. Perfecting a combat system is just digging yourself deeper into a niche market. Ecologies, AI, etc. are about escaping from the combat-as-core-mechanic grave. They may not work, but either of them (or something else) could be a lifeline out of the hole and into a larger market.

32. ScottB said on June 16th, 2006 at 1:05 am:

    This is exactly the question I’ve been struggling with since I started my most recent project in a production/design role. My question is a bit different, but it really asks the same thing: “When do you decide that it’s more important to get the innovative/perfect result than ship on time/on budget?” If you look at what a company like blizzard has been doing consistently since their founding, they alway choose to put the game first, and that passion for the end product is apparent in every pixel gamers see. The developers knew what they wanted, and they did what it took to get the product they want to be played to the masses.

    So when you know you have a killer concept, but also know it won’t get done properly in the time you have, what do you do?

    I think too often people answer that question by looking to a safe alternative…something that is…adequate. From a bottom-line perspective, maybe adequate is okay. But most gamers I know don’t get excited about adequate games. they get excited about warcraft, shadow of the colossus, and any other labor of love they tell their friends about.

    I’ll get back to you on this one raph…but I think I already know my answer.

33. magicback (frank) said on June 16th, 2006 at 2:17 am:

    The point of ambition is to go beyond the standard “core”.

    Using the car metaphor, you can design a Civic, an Accord, or a Mercedes. They all get you from point A to B differently, but some designs are “ambitious” and hopefully successful.

    For example, Mercedes’ new 2007 S-class is “ambition” designed for people with disposable income. It’s got all the core components, but has the added ambitious features that people are willing to pay premium for.

    So, we can decide to design a Ford F-series (best seller) or a Porsche or Mercedes’ new S-class sedan. They all got all the basics right, but some got the extra “something” that people will pay a premium for.

    Now if the perspective is to compete with the F-series (or WoW), there is still room to be ambitious while focusing on the core.

    Frank

34. Michael Chui said on June 16th, 2006 at 2:31 am:

    “When do you decide that it’s more important to get the innovative/perfect result than ship on time/on budget?”

    I look at that as a PR question, not a design question. The design question is, “What’s our innovation?”; the PR question is, “It’s not working; what do we tell the customers?” As you say, Blizzard’s answer has traditionally been “Wait. We’re not ready, and we’re not giving you anything substandard.” It has to do with managing player expectations, setting up the community right, etc. It’s not a question of design; by the time you ask that question, the design is basically over.

35. Raph said on June 16th, 2006 at 7:14 am:

    Isn’t saying, “that’s just an excuse” really just an excuse not to listen to criticism of your ideas? This is a very dangerous type of argument that tries to refuses to listen to the other side even before the other side speaks. Really what’s important are the facts of the matter, not the perceived motivations of either side.

    That’s why this post posed questions. At this point, I honestly have no idea what you think the “better other things to spend the time on” ARE. It’s a vague generic cloud of “other stuff.” You say

    “Make sure you nail the core gameplay” is only relevant to one of my three objections/questions: is this worth the time that could be spent on other things.

    OK, list the other things. What are the other things? You can say (and SHOULD say, in a design situation) “is this worth it compared to X.” But saying it in the abstract isn’t useful.

    In the case of the NPCs, if you choose to make that argument the X has to be something like “some other way to keep players from complaining about generic worlds and dull environments.” And make no mistake, players do complain. I note that WoW spends a fair amount of effort on stuff to make its NPC fiction engaging.

    In the case of the ecology, it’s even more — you have to weigh it against the entire quest system, spawning system (which everyone agrees is problematic to some degree, given issues with farming), crafting system (which most playres agree is substandard in most games — and I’d note that in the games where they like it, it almost always features a low-level ingredient or property system)…

    The point being, you weigh it against something, and when you choose to accept a default solution warts and all, you weigh it against the warts too. The choice to have something different will also have warts, of course, but sometimes it works better, shockingly turns out to be simpler, and so on. Sometimes it works.

    What I think is unrealistic and has no compelling supportive argument is all of this talk of vast game ecologies and extensive AI.

    But this post was triggered by not the ecology stuff but by the rather simple and straightforward NPC stuff, which got much the same reaction of “why bother?”

    I think that WoW is, more or less, the wave of the future for the mainstream audience.

    All historical evidence points to the notion that the big wave of new players will be jaded with the hack n slash game in a few years. If you are looking forward, all current games are the past.

    The future of diverse, complex worlds, IMO, will come about through very small ideas and changes in comparatively small worlds. Overly ambitious triple-A projects that attempt to create vast, flourishing ecologies will only further doom the idea for the mainstream (by proving to investors that putting money into such fantasies is a bad idea). Instead I think that games like EVE, ATitD and SL will sit on the fringe and make very slow headway occasionally spinning out ideas that get picked up by the mainstream. And hopefully, with time, we’ll see technology allowing a flourishing of even smaller worlds catering to increasingly specialized bases of players. I think we are talking about a long and slow process here, not an overnight revolution or insight.

    While I mostly agree with this scenario, I have to point out that

    - the ecology actually was cheaper to develop than the handcrafted methods in use now

    - who said anything about AAA efforts?

    - you are putting very large limitations on future development by effectively saying “and therefore never tackle anything big.” It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

36. Raph said on June 16th, 2006 at 7:16 am:

    Oh — I will give one specific example of an MMORPG feature we wouldn’t have today if it were not for that sort of ambition. Housing was cut from the UO schedule because it was deemed too hard. We implemented it over a weekend to prove them wrong. It went on to be one of the absolute most critical features in retaining users — even though it also resulted in a giant pile of headaches and problems, I think that nobody today would say it wasn’t worth it.

37. StGabe said on June 16th, 2006 at 8:15 am:

    OK, list the other things. What are the other things? You can say (and SHOULD say, in a design situation) “is this worth it compared to X.” But saying it in the abstract isn’t useful.

    I did in my prior post. My three questions were:

    – Is the result likely to be usable and worth the time invested?
    – Can we spare the time or do we need it for other things?
    – How much will this complicate the rest of the project?

    I am most concerned about the 1st and the 3rd with respect to ambitious ecologies/AI. In particular, as I said, I think that you will implement your ecology not once but ten times and still not get it right and as you work on it you will quickly make an already very difficult to manage project a complete nightmare complicating everything else you do.

    You claim things like:

    the ecology actually was cheaper to develop than the handcrafted methods in use now

    Which I think is ignoring far too much reality. You didn’t actually get done implementing it and try it with players. You have no evidence that could have done an adequate job of replacing hand-crafted content, that it would have worked on the first go, etc. I think it wouldn’t have. I think the first implementation, and the fifth, would have sucked because complex systems like that don’t just fall out of the sky or work the first time. Using very simple scripts as evidence that you can do stuff like this isn’t compelling and I see little reason to think it would “just work”. I see lots of optimistic scenarios which *sound* great but probably would not have happened even had UO implemented the system fully as you’ve described it. What would have happened is some unstable system that a few players would have abused and most would have just ignored or been confused by.

    The example I have resisted bring up is SWG. It is a very good example of a project that tried to do too much. Stuff that not only didn’t work because it didn’t have enough time but also because it was too ambitious and too unlikely to achieve what it wanted anyway. And yes, with SWG more time on the combat system and other core, “boring” systems (let alone bug squashing) would have significantly improved the product.

38. StGabe said on June 16th, 2006 at 8:22 am:

    - who said anything about AAA efforts?

    It was just an example but IMO, for the next 10+ years, you have to be talking about AAA efforts anytime you are talking about the larger audience (as you are with statements like: “All historical evidence points to the notion that the big wave of new players will be jaded with the hack n slash game in a few years.”) Players have consistently shown very grave reluctance to play anything but the latest shiny and there is little evidence that this will soon change. The ecology stuff you are talking about does not and will not have mainstream appeal. Most players want directed, simple, easily understood experiences. Casual players want directed experiences. That’s the audience of tomorrow. Casual players obviously are NOT jaded by having the same experience again and again. Look at how many Zuma clones have graced the top-ten sellers lists.

    I just pitched EVE to a bunch of old SWG players. I thought they’d eat it up because they were among this “jaded” audience you speak of. They all barely considered it. It was immediately obvious to them that it was too complicated and too different from what they knew and were comfortable with. I wanted to shout at them, “but you all bitch and moan about how tired you are of the status quo, how can you not give this a shot?!” But reality is not so kind.

39. Raph said on June 16th, 2006 at 9:23 am:

    You claim things like:

    “the ecology actually was cheaper to develop than the handcrafted methods in use now”

    Which I think is ignoring far too much reality. You didn’t actually get done implementing it and try it with players.

    I should have been clearer. No, the full system was never implemented and deployed. But there were very large aspects of the system, specifically the underlying data, which did in fact work and which also greatly enhanced the speed of development on numerous systems, such as crafting. For that matter, I have done similar things with other projects and that sort of underlying data structure has proved to be very powerful and flexible, and much faster to work with than a zillion individual handcrafted objects.

    There’s no doubt that the full AI stuff is not easily within reach right now.

    On SWG, the story there is far more complicated that just overreaching in ambition, though there’s little doubt that is a huge part of it too. Again, not something that I am ready to talk about yet. Suffice to say that there was no lack of resources applied to the core issues such as content and combat.

    for the next 10+ years, you have to be talking about AAA efforts anytime you are talking about the larger audience (as you are with statements like: “All historical evidence points to the notion that the big wave of new players will be jaded with the hack n slash game in a few years.”)

    Actually, if anything, past history suggests that some fraction of the larger audience slides away from the AAA efforts in search of novelty. In other words, the scenario you offered earlier, with the niche games.

    Historically, the pattern we have seen is an influx of new people trying out the new game and loving it. They stick with it for a few years, but eventually want something new. Clone titles generally do not do it for them for long and they either drift out of the hobby, become recidivists on their original game, or move into niche titles. This is a pretty common pattern; it’s a trajectory most everyone is on, just at different rates.

    I just pitched EVE to a bunch of old SWG players. I thought they’d eat it up because they were among this “jaded” audience you speak of. They all barely considered it. It was immediately obvious to them that it was too complicated and too different from what they knew and were comfortable with.

    Well, that’s heavily dependent on which aspect of SWG it was that appealed to them, really.

    Casual players want directed experiences. That’s the audience of tomorrow. Casual players obviously are NOT jaded by having the same experience again and again. Look at how many Zuma clones have graced the top-ten sellers lists.

    I strongly agree with the first statement. Directed experiences is indeed key.

    I strongly disagree with the second statement. Everyone gets jaded of repetitive experiences. Even in the truly derivative match-3 market we have seen games like Zuma itself appear that bring new elements to the equation. Were jadedness with the older designs not a facto, then Zuma wouldn’t have popped in the first place.

40. StGabe said on June 16th, 2006 at 10:29 am:

    I think we’re sliding closer to agreement.

    I would be a lot more positive about what you had to say if you were indeed pitching it as niche instead of (as I see it) trying to convince yourself that this stuff is going to be mainstream. I think that to get a lot of this to a market that is interested you’re going to have state, flat out, that you are targetting not the mainstream but a derivative of the mainstream with very specialized interests.

    Also I think that you have to recognize that a lot of the “jaded” gamers were actually jaded with respect to games they considered to be too complex. WoW came out and they all breathed a collective sigh of relief. “You mean I don’t have to lose something when I die? I don’t have to work my ass off to create an actual story? I just log in, get handed a scripted quest and do it? Great!” They are giving up on all these pipe dreams of emergent narrative and are relieved to just play a game that fakes narrative in a convincing fashion.

    Even in the truly derivative match-3 market we have seen games like Zuma itself appear that bring new elements to the equation. Were jadedness with the older designs not a facto, then Zuma wouldn’t have popped in the first place.

    Sure. But not at the pace you are describing or hoping for. Zuma is actually derivative of Puzzle Bobble and Snood and other games that are 10+ years old. Now instead of Zuma we are seeing Diner Dash clones (although Diner Dash is actually a Betty’s Beer Bar clone) and I’m sure we’ll see new styles of games down the line. However, these same simple ideas do keep audiences for years and then when you go from Zuma to Diner Dash you aren’t talking about changing the ecology of the game. You are really talking about moving from one simple puzzle to another puzzle, both structured in the exact same singleplayer experience. If you look at best-selling casual games you will see that they have almost all fallen into the same exact UI:

    * Load the game and enter a name
    * Pick story, puzzle or possibly some third mode of play
    * go to a map showing you the levels
    * play a level
    * once you beat that, move to the next square in the level

    Innovations are along the lines of: let’s not only have a score required to beat a given level but a score that gives you an “expert” rating for that level to allow a little bit of replay. That’s a nice, very small, very manageable change. It is nowhehere near the order of change that you are suggesting with things like your ecology. Games that get too far away from this model tend to alienate the audience. These players want to play something that they are comfortable.

41. Raph said on June 16th, 2006 at 10:58 am:

    I think that to get a lot of this to a market that is interested you’re going to have state, flat out, that you are targetting not the mainstream but a derivative of the mainstream with very specialized interests.

    Hmm, how about I respond with this challenge. Visualize in your mind the hugely successful mass market game of fifty years from now. Imagine playing it, all hooked up to your VR rig.

    Do you really think it won’t feature ecological behaviors and NPCs with a bunch of personality traits? They may be faked, but there is zero doubt in my mind that stuff will be there.

    What we’re probably disagreeing about is the current feasibility of this stuff, not whether it can be mass market, but when.

    Your next example illustrates it:

    Also I think that you have to recognize that a lot of the “jaded” gamers were actually jaded with respect to games they considered to be too complex. WoW came out and they all breathed a collective sigh of relief. “You mean I don’t have to lose something when I die? I don’t have to work my ass off to create an actual story? I just log in, get handed a scripted quest and do it? Great!” They are giving up on all these pipe dreams of emergent narrative and are relieved to just play a game that fakes narrative in a convincing fashion.

    WoW isn’t simpler. In many cases, it’s more complicated than its clearest antecedent, EQ: classes that play very differently from one another, the realm conflicts, the crafting model, and so on.

    It most definitely is more streamlined and more guided. It most definitely removes a bunch of obstacles to enjoyment. But “simple”? WoW is not simple. Particularly not to newbies.

    Again, it is easy to imagine playing WoW with the same level of accessibility to the quests and so on, but also with much greater variety to the quests you see. With occasional events like a dragon attacking the town. With NPCs that seem to have a bit more of an agenda. Would any WoW players say it was worse, if it retained the streamlined characteristics? I strongly doubt it.

    these same simple ideas do keep audiences for years

    Of course they do. WoW is substantially still the same complex game that was defined in AberMUDs and then Dikus in the late 80s to early 90s. However, it is also true that the number of users who flowed through that experience and out again is vastly larger than the number of users who stuck with it or kept coming back to it over and over.

    I would be stunned if the same weren’t true of the casual games. I think that because it’s an enormous pool, we don’t tend to see that there’s far more people who will likely never play Bejeweled again than there are people playing it interestedly at any given time. A slow pace of innovation means that people are lost to the market.

    I’d love to see stats on “player fatigue” on all these different markets. I only know the virtual worlds well enough, and I can tell you that the typical player plays for two years or so, gets jaded, and gives up.

42. StGabe said on June 16th, 2006 at 1:02 pm:

    Do you really think it won’t feature ecological behaviors and NPCs with a bunch of personality traits?

    You could have asked the same question of AI 50 years ago and most people would have said, “yes, without a doubt in 50 years we will be holding meaningful conversations with intelligent computers”. People thought that Chess would have been solved in 10 years, not 50, and they never imagined that it would be solved in such a brute-force manner. They vastly underestimated the slope of that problem. It is something that we are doomed to merely chip away at, bit by bit. We still don’t have that great of an understanding of even the most basic functions of the brain let an understanding of how to recreate those on a computer.

    50 years from now is a long time. Maybe long enough. But basically, yes, I think that we won’t see a lot of that even in 50 years. Mostly because the knowledge that we will need to play VR games runs on a different clock than the knowledge we need to run these vastly complex ecologies or AI. VR technology, in comparison, is relatively straight-forward.

    I think it is easy to conflate these two types of technology. CPU cycles are increasing at such a dramatic rate and communication technology is burgeoning so why can’t we solve all these other problems? Because some problems are just orders of magnitudes more difficult than others.

    WoW isn’t simpler.

    I wasn’t so much talking about going to WoW from EQ although I do think that WoW is much more accessible and has a much simpler “experience” than EQ, much of which comes from its strong direction. Where players have *really* reacted is from games like SWG that do try to be more complex. There used to be a lot more enthusiasm for dynamic narratives but I think that having seen more of this players realized that dynamacism is in fact, really, really difficult and a rather large burden on themselves. Making a strong economy, for example, requires significant sinks. Players hate sinks. So eventually they give up on wanting games with strong economies and settle for the very weak economy of WoW’s auction house.

    I only know the virtual worlds well enough, and I can tell you that the typical player plays for two years or so, gets jaded, and gives up.

    Yes but what do they give up to? The typical match-3 player, for example, is going to eventually get fatigued with Bejeweled and then try Jewelquest which will be just different enough to reignite their interest for some time. The average MMO player, it seems, will move on to another hack-and-slash game with only small innovations and changes over their last one. The combat game for WoW is a lot more than different than EQ’s when compared to the differences between Bejeweled and Jewelquest. The average Madden ‘05 player is happy to play Madden ‘06 with slightly better graphics and maybe a handful of new features. I suspect that MMO players won’t seek drastic changes in their gameplay but rather small, incremental changes. They will fatigue of specific games but not necessarily of the Diku-style of game.

43. Raph said on June 16th, 2006 at 1:27 pm:

    So, the first thing is that I think you are overstating the complexity of the sort of ecology described; it really isn’t nearly as complex as something like AI. For that matter, the NPC stuff is very much not on that level either, it’s quite a lot simpler than the average spell or skill is.

    The second thing is that I suspect WoW is distorting your perception of what players have reacted to. Players did not react negatively to the complexity of SWG or UO, for example; each, for their time, was pretty successful. A comparison of numbers on games available at the time won’t show the sorts of huge disparities you are assuming. Arguably, the issues with SWG have little to do with complexity and more with failing to execute on some simple things. Almost universally, those who enjoyed it cite the sorts of features you’d list under complexity.

    So I’d assert again that it’s not complexity that we’re talking about here, it’s accessibility. Were a game with more complexity under the hood to manifest with the same accessibility factor as WoW, where do you think it would land in the marketplace?

    Yes but what do they give up to?

    They give up MMOs altogether.

    The number that moves on to another MMO is a smaller percentage. It’s a game of attrition.

44. StGabe said on June 16th, 2006 at 1:49 pm:

    So, the first thing is that I think you are overstating the complexity of the sort of ecology described; it really isn’t nearly as complex as something like AI.

    See…I think there’s a gap in your reasoning about the utility of the ecology. You really want the ecology to generate narrative. And that’s where the problem is. If you all want is some background simulation of some fairly well understood principles then I don’t think you’ll have a problem. But that’s not what you’re asking for. You’re asking for a system that is dynamic, can survive manipulation from thousands of players, and will still be stable enough and varied enough to create interesting narratives.

    You start with a system that is fairly reasonable to implement…
    *then a miracle occurs*
    … and then players are playing through dynamic stories with it, no problem.

    I think that more likely is:

    You start with a system that is fairly reasonble to implement …
    … you unlease players on it and it falls apart …
    … you go back to the drawing board, probably many times, and still never get it right.

    It’s not just implementing one attempt that is the difficult bit. It is getting it right and working in the real world. Right now you’re trying to fly and all you have to build a plane is a bunch of sticks. You might describe a reasonable way to fashion wings out of those sticks and attach those to your arms but I still don’t think you’re going to fly. By all means use procedures to generate terrain and do some of the heavy lifting but I think you’re still going to have to rely on handcrafted content heavily for the time being. There is room for small bits of dynamicism only. I used to think the exact opposite and clamored for these vast ecologies and dynamic worlds. Alas, real world experience has taught me differently.

    The second thing is that I suspect WoW is distorting your perception of what players have reacted to.

    It’s only anecdotal evidence but I know a lot of hardcore SWG players that were relieved to move on to WoW and are still playing there a year later. I do think that some of the dynamacism worked well in SWG but it also turned off a huge segment of the market which is why eventually they switched directions and did away with most of it. After the draw of the license faded it really did become a niche game. And most of the more complex content really was more or less broken even after 2 years of tinkering.

    The number that moves on to another MMO is a smaller percentage. It’s a game of attrition.

    That may be. I still don’t think it indicates that players want more complicated worlds. If anything I think it indicates that they want more lightweight, casual worlds. The “burn out” occurs because the game seems to onerous.

45. Raph said on June 16th, 2006 at 1:56 pm:

    The stuff on narrative in the articles was speculative — we never got there, nor do I pretend it would have been easy. I spent a chunk of the third part talking about how hard it would have been. But even without that stuff, it’s still hugely valuable.

    I do think that some of the dynamacism worked well in SWG but it also turned off a huge segment of the market which is why eventually they switched directions and did away with most of it.

    Having watched exit surveys and the like, I can tell you exactly what reasons there tended to be for people exiting, and that’s not one of the commonly given reasons.

    Now, if you wanted to make the case that the emphasis on dynamic content led to a lack of emphasis on static content, that would be a more fruitful discussion; but the core complaint was “NO content.”

    I still don’t think it indicates that players want more complicated worlds. If anything I think it indicates that they want more lightweight, casual worlds. The “burn out” occurs because the game seems to onerous.

    The commonest reasons given for exits in any of these worlds are “lack of content,” “ran out of things to do,” and “got bored.” “Takes too much time” is indeed on there, as well. But “world was too complicated” is not one I have seen.

46. StGabe said on June 16th, 2006 at 2:18 pm:

    The stuff on narrative in the articles was speculative — we never got there, nor do I pretend it would have been easy.

    If this is alls speculative then I wonder why you keep mentioning doing away with handcrafted content as, to me, handcrafted content means people hand-populating quests and stories. Procedurally generating terrain and populations of critters is well and good. I’m not sure how an ecology helps with this though.

    Now, if you wanted to make the case that the emphasis on dynamic content led to a lack of emphasis on static content, that would be a more fruitful discussion; but the core complaint was “NO content.”

    Well yes I would argue that the emphasis on the dynamic content caused a lack of static content. Other developers I talked to on the project indicated that things like, “it’s too hard to get routine stuff done” were very common on exit surveys. Later in the project, this was cited as a reason for killing a lot of the dynamic market and dependencies between players. These were, of course, the complexities of the game that still managed to keep it afloat with at least a niche audience.

47. Raph said on June 16th, 2006 at 2:29 pm:

    If this is alls speculative then I wonder why you keep mentioning doing away with handcrafted content as, to me, handcrafted content means people hand-populating quests and stories. Procedurally generating terrain and populations of critters is well and good. I’m not sure how an ecology helps with this though.

    Hmm, I would have thought it was apparent from the articles why having that sort of data layer and basic AI would be helpful even in creating handcrafted content.

    Handcrafted content isn’t just quests and stories. It’s everything — all the data you need to enter. Manually filling out tables of which ingot spawns can be used in which zillions of craftable knives is also handcrafted content. Having a starving wolf as opposed to a normal wolf is creating two separate monster entries, likely by different designers who may not know what the specs on the original wolf are. And so on. There’s countless issues like that. It all boils down to expense.

    Other developers I talked to on the project indicated that things like, “it’s too hard to get routine stuff done” were very common on exit surveys. Later in the project, this was cited as a reason for killing a lot of the dynamic market and dependencies between players. These were, of course, the complexities of the game that still managed to keep it afloat with at least a niche audience.

    I don’t know which developers you talked to, but I can tell you that the number of people assigned to static content versus the number of people assigned to dynamic content was literally an order to magnitude difference. Yes, many things were hard to accomplish given the toolset, but how much of that had to do with dynamic content per se… some, but not even the majority, IMHO.

48. StGabe said on June 16th, 2006 at 3:21 pm:

    Handcrafted content isn’t just quests and stories. It’s everything — all the data you need to enter. Manually filling out tables of which ingot spawns can be used in which zillions of craftable knives is also handcrafted content. Having a starving wolf as opposed to a normal wolf is creating two separate monster entries, likely by different designers who may not know what the specs on the original wolf are. And so on. There’s countless issues like that. It all boils down to expense.

    I think you are oversimplifying what can be done with static content without your dynamic ecology. Procedurally generate terrain and scatter resources. Create a “hungry” tag that any “animal” can spawn with. You just have to then create a set of guidelines for your static designers to work with (i.e. all animal names have to accept a prefix adjective). There are ways to streamline this process that are far easier, and far more manageable, than creating an ecology that will almost certainly break the moment you add players to it and won’t make the entire project that much more unmanageable.

    If dynamic narratives aren’t your goal then I really don’t see that you are gaining that much and I come back to most pressing of my three questions.

    – Is the result likely to be usable and worth the time invested?

    Probably not. The system will still be rather brittle and can be faked through much more direct, more manageable methods. If you can’t get at truly dynamic narratives then it’s not clear that the gains are worth the inevitable addition of complexity and confusion you are foisting on the player (unless you are willing to bite the bullet and declare it a title targetted at a niche of simulationist-interested players).

    – How much will this complicate the rest of the project?

    Greatly. Suppose there is a great imbalance in spawns after release (very likely). With procedurally generated datasets you merely write a script to massage the data. With an ecology you have to rewrite the code.

49. magicback (frank) said on June 16th, 2006 at 5:04 pm:

    Hmm, I think you guys are talking pass each other. Let me see if I can find a common ground. Would the following summary be accurate?

    Question– Is the result likely to be usable and worth the time invested?
    Yes, for an ecological data layer and basic AI with the necessary tools to leveraged the platform with handcrafted content. Not yet worth the time invested for an fully integrated and dynamic ecological system due to the complexity of balancing the system (Raph stated the major issues). The perspective is to enrich the world platform on which games can be build on.

    Question– Can we spare the time or do we need it for other things?
    It’s a question of fixed sunken cost versus variable cost. Spending more on fixed cost can provide operating leverage and enables variable cost content to be create at a faster pace. However, a key consideration noted already is that if you don’t have enough time or budget to get the core set of features done right at launch, there will be no resources available to develop a broad and robust ecological platform. Some will see this platform as a core, other will not. Going to let the board room or the designer room decide?

    Question– How much will this complicate the rest of the project?
    An ecological data layer and basic AI should in theory simplify the development of other areas. However, as the industry has not gotten this done to pat, it may complicate the project. So, the most market efficient sweetspot is likely to be a middleware developer.

    Hope this is a good summary of the common points.

    Frank

50. StGabe said on June 16th, 2006 at 5:16 pm:

    I think it can be breaken down a bit further.

    I read the original posts on the resource systems again and what I was responding to was the second half of the second post. The bit where AI enters and we have wolves starving because they can’t find enough rabbits. It is at this point where, IMO, a crucial threshold is broken and we’ve entered into pipe dreams. Once you have your such tightly coupled and dynamic content for players to screw up they will screw it up. Up to there, the system didn’t seem too ambitious nor even that much more than has already been done in worlds like SWG and EVE. And I’m definitely in favor of using procedural methods to bootstrap your world. I never wanted to indicate otherwise.

51. Morgan said on June 16th, 2006 at 7:32 pm:

    It is at this point where, IMO, a crucial threshold is broken and we’ve entered into pipe dreams. Once you have your such tightly coupled and dynamic content for players to screw up they will screw it up.

    Nature has self-correcting mechanisms. Why not this virtual ecology system?

    I would be a lot more positive about what you had to say if you were indeed pitching it as niche instead of (as I see it) trying to convince yourself that this stuff is going to be mainstream. I think that to get a lot of this to a market that is interested you’re going to have state, flat out, that you are targetting not the mainstream but a derivative of the mainstream with very specialized interests.

    You constantly claim that most players (i.e., the mainstream) don’t want to see such a virtual ecology realized. Where are you getting this information?

    Implementing the virtual ecology as Raph suggested achieves a subtle subconscious experience for players that provides a significant level of immersion unsurpassed by any of the pseudo-interactive environments in today’s MMO experiences. This virtual ecology is certainly not something you would find typical players saying "I want one too" because this is a background system that drives the interactive world rather than a directly interactive system, such as combat and crafting. You wouldn’t find typical train passengers saying "I want pistons and valves" either. Typical train passengers want to travel to their destination. Typical players want a vehicle for immersion, for exploration, and for social integration. Properly implemented, the virtual ecology is effective for increasing the level of immersion, for providing more opportunities for exploration, and for enhancing social integration by enabling expectations of the unexpected that drive the establishment of communities.

    You also seem to be of the opinion that niches are bad for business. We may just be using different definitions, but I’ll say this: niche creation is good for business. Read Strategy as Ecology. The article discusses the three critical measures of health for the business ecosystem: productivity, robustness, and… niche creation.

    Also I think that you have to recognize that a lot of the “jaded” gamers were actually jaded with respect to games they considered to be too complex. WoW came out and they all breathed a collective sigh of relief. “You mean I don’t have to lose something when I die? I don’t have to work my ass off to create an actual story? I just log in, get handed a scripted quest and do it? Great!” They are giving up on all these pipe dreams of emergent narrative and are relieved to just play a game that fakes narrative in a convincing fashion.

    Didn’t you say something about avoiding generalizations? You’re assuming that there’s a single market of gamers — that World of Warcraft has demonstrably captured more than half of that single market, and that this single market of gamers is only interested in the casual gameplay of the World of Warcraft total experience. Guess what? There are multiple markets for interactive entertainment, multiple segments of each of the multiple markets, and there is no such thing as a single unified MMO market into which all MMO experiences must reach to attract and retain subscribers.

    Furthermore, simply because one MMO experience appeals to a different market and/or a different market segment does not automatically lessen the value and equity of the experience. The advanced virtual ecology system may not appeal to World of Warcraft’s target market, but that doesn’t mean the virtual ecology-driven MMO experience will not attract and retain subscribers elsewhere. The fact of the matter is that direct competition with World of Warcraft is not necessary.

    Perhaps I’m completely misunderstanding your message? Anyway, I’m responding to that which I understand you’re communicating.

52. Raph said on June 16th, 2006 at 9:32 pm:

    The wolves starving thing is not a very good example, since any implementation of the system would fix the closed economy problem and thus case the wolves to spawn again after they starved out.

    Also, IMHO, the stuff you suggest in place of this, like the randomly attached hunger tag, the notion of animals accepting prefix tags — I’ve done stuff like that too, on Legend. It’s not really static content either.

    So I don’t think we’re actually that far apart either… I wasn’t advocating doing everything in those articles — after all, I spent a chunk of time pointing out everything that went wrong.

53. moo said on June 17th, 2006 at 3:25 pm:

    When should we push the boundaries? I’d say, any time we get that instinctive feeling that there might be something to be gained by pushing them. (This presupposes that you can get away with it in your context; it might mean coming in on the weekend for example, so decide up front if its worth your weekend to you or not). I agree that passion for what you’re creating is key here. And believe it or not, it DOES show through to the players–you can tell after a few days of playing WoW that Blizzard went to considerable effort to “make everything fun”.

    Joe Ludwig said:

    Pushing the boundaries is a great thing, but you have to be careful to pick your battles. Many of the failures in MMOs happen to teams that bit off more than they could chew. Sometimes that’s because they couldn’t handle making any MMO at all, but usually it’s because they tried to push too many boundaries.

    I totally agree. Biting off more than you can chew can be fatal to your game. (Duke Nukem Forever, anyone?) On the other hand, making a bland, derivative EverQuest-alike won’t net you the kind of playerbase you need to be successful, these days. If you want to be successful, you’d better try and push SOME boundaries. Try and give players something compelling and new.

    Raph said:

    I’d love to see stats on “player fatigue” on all these different markets. I only know the virtual worlds well enough, and I can tell you that the typical player plays for two years or so, gets jaded, and gives up.

    Anecdotally, I fit that description to-a-T. DAoC for about 8 months, SWG for 2, CoH for 2, a short hiatus and then WoW for about a year. At that point I tried EVE for 2 weeks and then gave up on the current generation of MMORPGs altogether. I’ve been everywhere, tried everything, killed 10 foozles more times than I can remember. Until I see something compelling and new, I’m sticking to free games like Continuum (which I’ve been playing on and off for almost 9 years now and still enjoy more than most MMORPGs).

    StGabe said:

    50 years from now is a long time. Maybe long enough. But basically, yes, I think that we won’t see a lot of that even in 50 years. Mostly because the knowledge that we will need to play VR games runs on a different clock than the knowledge we need to run these vastly complex ecologies or AI. VR technology, in comparison, is relatively straight-forward.

    I think 50 years from now we really will have that kind of stuff… because of this. I know some pretty smart people who have looked at the predictions for MNT and they aren’t convinced. But I’m firmly convinced it will be everywhere within my lifetime. Not only will we have incredible (barely conceivable) amounts of processing power to throw at the problem, but we’ll also be able to build neural networks with the same sort of density and complexity as human brains, which will likely lead to true artificial intelligence (whether it would be feasible–or ethical!–to apply those things to gaming is not as obvious… but I bet somebody will sooner or later).

    Raph said:

    Handcrafted content isn’t just quests and stories. It’s everything — all the data you need to enter. Manually filling out tables of which ingot spawns can be used in which zillions of craftable knives is also handcrafted content. Having a starving wolf as opposed to a normal wolf is creating two separate monster entries, likely by different designers who may not know what the specs on the original wolf are. And so on. There’s countless issues like that. It all boils down to expense.

    That is why we definitely need to figure out how to automate more content generation tasks. It would be nice to have more dynamic content, but it would also help a lot if we could create good static content more cheaply. Better tools can always help with this (improving workflow, catching/preventing more user errors, data validators, and automatic simulation cycles similar to the edit-compile-run cycle used by programmers are just a few things that come to mind). Of course the right architecture can also help significantly to avoid wasted time. Do you really want to enter all the attributes for your 10 kinds of wolf by hand? Or should there be some sort of “auto-templating” system where you define one generic wolf template, and then create the specific monster types from it by plugging in a level, a name, a color and then tweaking what it generates a little bit? The UO resources system also seems like the kind of thing that could speed things up, because there’s less stuff to hand-code to make it work. As a tools developer, one should be completely pragmatic about stuff like this. A feature that takes you two weeks to implement, but enables the artists to create 5-10% more stuff in a week, is probably a large win for the team.

    Lastly: I don’t think having an audience for your creation has anything to do with whether you should pursue it or not. If you’re interested (and if employer constraints permit), pursue it! The world would be a dull place if everybody just made “mainstream” music, “mainstream” movies and wrote “mainstream” books (or games!).

    My current hobby project is writing a code generator which generates C and assembly implementations of an emulator for certain CPUs–the ones in NES, SNES and Gameboy actually. There’s probably about 5 people in the world who think my project is interesting. I will be pushing a few boundaries when I get a little farther along with it. But basically I’m only doing it because its really challenging and I find it interesting.

54. Morgan said on June 17th, 2006 at 7:22 pm:

    Wouldn’t it be nice if starving wolves were found in environments in which starving wolves would be expected? That’s called having an ecology.

55. Michael Chui said on June 17th, 2006 at 9:05 pm:

    Wouldn’t it be nice if starving wolves were found in environments in which starving wolves would be expected? That’s called having an ecology.

    Yah. I still don’t understand why people are convinced that if a player games the system, it becomes broken. Abuse it, and it dies. Or not.

56. StGabe said on June 19th, 2006 at 6:02 pm:

    So I don’t think we’re actually that far apart either… I wasn’t advocating doing everything in those articles — after all, I spent a chunk of time pointing out everything that went wrong.

    Yeah, I think so. I still believe that “mainstream” target is going to be very directed, accessible, simple content. As the market grows its IQ and patience drop. But I don’t think this means only static content and I think a developer is stupid not to consider any automated ways to generate the data in which to seat their tailored/directed/accessible/simple content.

    Nature has self-correcting mechanisms. Why not this virtual ecology system?

    Actually I think that nature is very complex and our methods for modelling it and understanding it are still very naive/limited. Nature does have self-correcting mechanisms, which developed over millions of years, genetic manipulation acting as super-designer working in parallel in trillions of critters at once. Taking climate modelling as an example, we have made a lot of progress but (if you live in the northwest anyway) you know that weather prediction is still an incredibly inexact science. Also, in an MMORPG you are dealing with large numbers of players who actively want to screw up your system if they can. I still believe that these are very, very hard problems that won’t be solved anytime soon.

    Guess what? There are multiple markets for interactive entertainment, multiple segments of each of the multiple markets, and there is no such thing as a single unified MMO market into which all MMO experiences must reach to attract and retain subscribers.

    I agree. But I think that more casual play is still going to be the mainstream mode of play. More information from Raph only convinces me further of this. The casual market is full of players who want to play very simple games for an hour or so after work (or during work ). The players who are playing less and less with each MMO are looking to play games that require less investment and are burning out on onerous experiences that require them to invest huge amounts of time and thought and penalize them if they aren’t better than other players or don’t have more time than other players. I think that we are seeing a strong movement towards “alone together” play with other outliers taking shape. I consider myself not mainstream (which really isn’t that much of a shock, rarely in my whole life have I been “mainstream”) and am not interested in WoW or “casual” MMO play (although being out of college I certainly want to be able to play less hours per week and still feel like I can compete). I want the ecologies and such. I just think that, to be realistic, one must realize that as the market grows this stuff will be increasingly a specialized taste.

    niche creation is good for business.

    I also agree. However I think a key factor in succeeding in the creation of niches will be to identify that you are indeed targetting a niche. I am simply trying to bang that point across and get people like Raph to start talking about how to create cool niches instead of (as I read it) trying to infer that really this stuff will be mainstream.

    I think 50 years from now we really will have that kind of stuff… because of this.

    This is a good example of the sort of thing I am talking about with regards to confusing the speeds at which CPU speeds or manufacturing speeds advance versus the speed at which understanding of complex systems advances. How does having huge nanocomputers, for example, help you to solve the problem of understanding the brain? It gives you some nice shiny tools but it doesn’t create understanding in and of itself. Multiplying computer cycles by 10,000% is great if you want to do a matrix multiplication (order n^3 — i.e. it takes on the order of n^3 units of time per size of the matrix) but what if you want to solve a problem that is exponential or NP-complete (x^n, in other words the size of the problem increases the exponent of the time to solve the problem). Computers have become literally many millions of times more powerful since the 1950’s when AI began with quite a bit of optimism and we still haven’t made that much headway towards good AI or understanding of the brain.

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