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10 Things That Will Make Or Break Your (online world)

October 2nd, 2006 (Visited 6193 times) Tags: game design, vw design

This list of 10 Things That Will Make Or Break Your Website has plenty that is applicable to developing online games and game communities. I won’t bother to do the translation, because in most cases it’s very obvious.

What’s interesting is how much is different from the way online worlds do it. Is it that the Web world and the online world-world are so different? Or that we aren’t up to speed on current thinking? (After all the Web world moves at warp speed compared to the glacial pace of online world development.)

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Faith wrote on October 2nd, 2006 at 12:35 pm:

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Psychochild said on October 2nd, 2006 at 11:55 am:
I’m going to have to disagree with the parallels here. To name a few:

EASY is the most important feature of any website, web app, or program.

We’re making a game here, not an application. A certain level of difficultly is required for the game to remain interesting. But, the game shouldn’t be hard to play for difficulty’s sake. However, at startup, you generally want things to go as smoothly as possible. Unfortunately, our current business model of requiring payment up front can be daunting. At the very least we want a verifiable identity, so some sort of signup is usually required and that instantly introduces an obstacle.

Open up your data as much possible.

What ever happened to “The client is in the hands of the enemy?” I think that sharing some data is a good ideas, such as DAoC Herald XML feeds are a good idea. But, do we really want to give the players enough information to write their own clients?

Release features early and often.

Ruin balance on a weekly basis! If you even get a balanced game in the first place. I guess you’re on the Balance is impossible side of the argument, Raph? This also makes it difficult to have an international product, as it takes time to translate resources. Your non-primary markets are going to get very cranky being significantly behind the times.

User generated content and social software trends

Let’s not rehash this discussion. Note that the article does say that a Wikipedia-type contribution system is likely unworkable outside Wikipedia itself. Therefore, you can’t just open it all up and expect it to magically work. So, this means we’ll still have the approval-process bottleneck we’ve talked about for the past several years.

It’s some interesting advice, but I wouldn’t say it is 100% applicable to our work. IMHO, of course.
Raph said on October 2nd, 2006 at 2:49 pm:

I agree with the points you raise, but I think that there’s answers to each of these that do seem to fit quite nicely in the game paradigm:

Not an easy game, but yes to easily discoverable interfaces.
Opening up data can also means everything from leader boards to economic statistics.
It’s worth pointing out that the flip ide of the Web 2.0 style “release early and often” is the oft-cited game design mantra of “focus and do one thing well.”
User generated content and social software trends includes things like customizable avatars, most everything XBox Live offers, and stuff like mod support for standalone and multiplayer games… it’s not limited to Second Life-style worlds…
Michael Chui said on October 2nd, 2006 at 4:52 pm:
“Focus and do one thing well” is also a Web 2.0 style thing. =P
moo said on October 2nd, 2006 at 6:47 pm:
But, do we really want to give the players enough information to write their own clients?

YES! Its the server’s job to make sure they can’t cheat without a high probability of being detected. Why not let dedicated players write (or at least augment) the client?

..But more seriously, the client being in the hands of the enemy is no problem if you’re only trying to catch active cheats (as opposed to passive cheats that just observe client state without altering its behaviour). Without hardware support (TPM or whatever) it will always be impossible to prevent passive cheats. To put the regular users are on a level playing field with the hack writers, just give all of them the data. =)
Aaron said on October 2nd, 2006 at 8:24 pm:
In regards to ease, there will always be some measure of difficulty in an alluring game, but MMOs could likely go even farther toward the easy side (not suggesting that’s a better path, but a viable one) and the difficulty could be shifted into different areas of gameplay.

With Legos, if the child fails (doesn’t create something pleasing), there is no punishment beyond wasted time and disappointment. With limited success and some positive feedback, young kids will sometimes play with Legos all day long (and in the middle of the living room floor). WoW works much the same way, as I recall. If you die, the punishment is wasted time and disappointment. Furthermore, the corpse retrieval encourages the player to start again, rather than simply walk away from failure, much like a mother telling her young boy that he can’t leave his Legos lying on the floor (I sneaked away when I could). If you can’t just walk away, you’re more likely to try again.

No, the success of constructing a Lego fortress isn’t quite the same as the success of finally slaying the dragon who mopped the floor with you the past dozen or so attempts, forcing you to try new strategies and rub your rabbit’s foot with even more vigor. But not all gameplay is dragons, and dragons don’t have to be the only logical end. If content is webbed rather than paved, or freeform like so many Lego blocks combined into something greater than merely the sum of its parts, then the game’s difficulty can escalate to epic struggles for some players and remain a simple, steady wade down the stream for others.
Evangolis said on October 3rd, 2006 at 2:49 am:
Ease of access, Ease of use, ease of understanding, and a trivial initial penalty for initial failure with frequent small rewards for initial successes. MAke it easier than it appears.

Give players more info on what they and those who interact with them do. Log stuff and make it possible for the players to access those logs. Trust but verify should be an option for interacting with other players, without requiring the intervention of your CS staff. Expose the data that really matters to players, the data about their play experience.
Andy Havens said on October 3rd, 2006 at 7:33 am:
Raph asked: “Is it that the Web world and the online world-world are so different?”

Well, yes. In general, companies and people set up Web sites in order to pursue goals that are entirely exterior to the site. Especially companies. For example, most commercial Web sites serve pretty traditional marketing, sales, and customer service goals, even if they are using social-y tools to do it. We want to sell products/services, answer customer questions, advertise and promote products, ask questions of users, etc. The site itself is not ever the destination, really… but a vehicle. Which is why “easy” is a huge mantra. Because any friction — anything that keeps a user from getting to the product, the info, the answer — is bad. Stickiness per se isn’t a goal. It’s only a goal as it translates into a final, measureable action. A company site where customers hang out all day, reading your stuff, leaving comments, etc. etc., but where they don’t buy anything… ever… bad mojo.

On the other hand, MMOs and VWs goals are entirely interior to themselves. I don’t enter into a game to accomplish something that I’ll take somewhere else. I don’t play WoW in order to do my shopping or find a neat texture to use in another world or (usually) meet people that I’ll then invite to a poetry reading. I go to the other world to be in the other world. All goals are particular to it, from both a creator and consumer standpoint.

People, on average, don’t spend anywhere near the kind of time on any regular Web site that they spend on a game. A recent study showed average use of MySpace to be around 2-hours per month. Wonder what it is for WoW? The difference, in many cases, is similar to a reference work (Web site) and a novel (game). You don’t sit down and read an encylopedia. You dip in. “Easy” means the articles are alphabetical and nicely cross-linked. Is that the case in a novel? Are the characters introduced alphabetically in order to be “easy to remember?” Of course not. That’s ludicrous.

A game… a VW… is not a Web site. Entirely different animal.
Allen Sligar said on October 3rd, 2006 at 8:32 am:
Those are 10 very valuable insights, (wish I’d been at that conferrence) for what I’m currently working on in particular.

Andy-
“It’s only a goal as it translates into a final, measureable action.”

Thats true.

“A company site where customers hang out all day, reading your stuff, leaving comments, etc. etc., but where they don’t buy anything… ever… bad mojo.”

Thats not true. Unless you think Myspace is used only for selling Ads.
Raph said on October 3rd, 2006 at 8:43 am:

people set up Web sites in order to pursue goals that are entirely exterior to the site.
MMOs and VWs goals are entirely interior to themselves

I think that this clean line is blurring rapidly. Web sites that are centered on community, are based on ad revenue, or that aim to offer immersive experiences (these latter ones do exist — among them, all the casual game sites) are crossing over in one direction. And worlds like Second Life are crossing in the opposite direction.
Andy Havens said on October 3rd, 2006 at 9:01 am:
Allen said: “Thats not true. Unless you think Myspace is used only for selling Ads.” And Raph said, “And worlds like Second Life are crossing in the opposite direction.”

Two points. One, MySpace pages and its content isn’t designed by the publisher, but by the users, as is SecondLife. There is nothing there besides some interface tools unless users put it there. The publishers aren’t providing Web sites or even worlds/games, per se, but the tools that allow users to build their own. I believe SL is a world, and MySpace isn’t, but won’t get into that at the moment…

Second, from the publishers’ standpoint, the goal of MySpace *is* to sell ads. That’s what supports the service. Same as how the goal of network television is to sell ads. The purpose of most TV isn’t to make really good television, much to the dismay of viewers, though that sometimes happens. It’s to sell advertising space. TV, in this country, is an advertising medium punctuated by programmatic attractions intended to lure viewers to the ads. In Britain, much of the TV is supported by a different model. In the US, we have some public television, but not much. And some direct-pay TV like HBO. But for the most part? It exists to increase shareholder revenue. If people responded well to watching a blank screen filled with alternating pixles of blue and white, that’s what programs would be. If people responded well to watching people eat bugs and behave badly in fabricated, semi-reality situations, that’s what we’d get.

That’s not to say that every user of MySpace always clicks on an ad, or every TV viewer always buys an advertised product. It’s like evolution; it happens big n’ slow. In the aggregate. But it happens.

Is the line blurring? Sure. But, again, I would argue that people “play a game” or “go to a world” to do a “worldy thing.” What do you do on MySpace that you can’t do on another Web site? That’s my main reason that it ain’t a VW. I can’t play WoW on MySpace, but I can do everything on MySpace on a Tikiwiki or WordPress blog. I can’t visit SecondLife on EVE. I can’t use MyYahoo to play Everquest. But I can use MyYahoo to RSS the same blogs that I do from Windows Live. Tools vs. Worlds.
Allen Sligar said on October 3rd, 2006 at 10:14 am:
Myspace mines data. Those users with 14,000 friends that propogate bullitins asking 10 questions disguised as zombies vs. clowns, coke v pepsi, Jack Daniels vs Budwieser, legos vs lincolin logs, grant theft auto vs Sims, Jay-Z v Justin Timberlake…..data, mined logged, analyzed, and sold.

Those users with 14,000 friends are aggregators, of opinion and preferance, make no mistake, those are not users, those are Myspace employees.

Thats the product they sell

“I can’t play WoW on MySpace (Yet)”

Thats your convergence and collision.
Allen Sligar said on October 3rd, 2006 at 10:26 am:
However, Im not discounting thier Ad revenue as well Andy
Allen Sligar said on October 3rd, 2006 at 11:57 am:
PS: Forgot here is some convergence and collision as well, lest we get to overzealous and forget previous bubbles that have been blown: http://emptybottle.org/bullshit/
StGabe said on October 3rd, 2006 at 12:10 pm:
Myspace mines data.

To use to sell more expensive, targetted ads.

Understanding your users is very valuable. But it is useful as a tool for marketing and throwing ads at people. Just as network TV targets budweiser commercials to football fans, MySpace may target budweiser ads to those viewing profiles with budweiser listed in their interests, and both organizations are making their money off of ads.

BTW, those “aggregator” accounts you speak of almost certainly have nothing to do with MySpace (the company). They are outside people collecting data and are just using MySpace as a venue for that (from which MySpace takes no cut). Also, I’ve never been contacted by anyone like that on MySpace (although I get invites from porn profiles on a near weekly basis ).
Rik said on October 4th, 2006 at 2:13 pm:
Point number 6 “Be special” is where my brain is at right now. It seems to be what the Wii is about too. Customer seeks a way to tell products apart. It’s OK to risk alienating some people if it means people can differentiate you from the pack.

Overall, I felt the list applied to Virtual Worlds very well: easy to use, easy to understand, customizable, beta test, always be adding something new, differentiate, try not to alienate, be prepared for large rushes of people, let players make the world.
Abalieno said on October 4th, 2006 at 5:28 pm:
Deja vu! ;p
Prokofy Neva said on October 4th, 2006 at 6:33 pm:
Thankfully they dissed Wikipedia. The consensus is growing. Good.
Rik said on October 5th, 2006 at 1:13 am:
Actually, they said Wikipedia works, but don’t think that you can replicate that yourself.

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