How is this relevant? It boils down to Cafeteria Food. By worrying about such things, you take a huge human element out of the game. An interesting one. An emotional one. Sure, worry about mechanics in things such as secure trades and a justice system, but don’t take the social aspects of human beings out of the games.

WoW did quite a job of adding flavor to the cardbaord, by dangling fun on a carrot stick with level gained abilities and quest gained items (again according to levels). But as I explained in the cafeteria food posting, it’s only dressing on the cardboard and only acceptable due to the fact that there’s little else to go to. WoW is merely the best at that kind of gamey game play. Add in the ever expanding RMT thing and the followers of both Blizzard and Warcraft, and it’s quite a success. But that doesn’t really mean it’s what players want. Or will want in the future.

While it sounds cool and interesting, I knew very few guilds would ever take part in such a raid from my time in SWG.

In SWG the closest thing to CoX bases really were the GCW bases. A guild hall was nothing more than the guild leaders home with guild controls. GCW bases however were intended to be pvp flash points.

The problem with this was they were very expensive in the first version of SWG and often took many guild members pooling together to purchase. They were a selling point to new recruits, and a vital source of income for your guild members (using it to grind faction and money).

Because of their great value, they brought out the absolute worst in the player population. Guilds would do anything to defend these bases, often pulling every dirty trick, glitch and bug out of their bag of tricks. Once it was discovered players could stop the shutdown sequence while feign dead, smugglers were camped on the floor near the terminal at the first sign of trouble.

And or course the large, large majority of bases were originally placed in the wee-hours of the morning figuring the server would either be down for maintenance while they were vulnerable or too few players would be around to take it down without a defense.

The point is guilds in CoX weren’t going to work hard to get this great object, place it in their vault, then schedule a raid with a rival guild so they could come in and take it. They’d rather just marvel at its coolness and have that be than.

Whereas if you say distrust of strangers, the message that comes across is that someone doesn’t want to group because they think the strangers are going to do bad things, which at least in my experience is closer to the mark.

Either way the problem comes down to the players themselves and their behavior. While the makers of a game can include tools to make it easier to find groups and try to build in ways to make it easier for players to form good, productive groups – but in the end you can’t stop the bad experiences from happening altogether, which leads to the fear/distrust factor.

*shrug*

I’m being a bit nitpicky, but that makes me think of the child who is told, “Don’t say hate. Hate is a very strong word. Use ‘dislike’,” and promptly follows up with, “I really, really, really, really dislike that!”

Just to clarify the 10 year statement as I was there.

This worries me, because it suggests that this litany of criticism is based off inaccurate reporting. Has anyone found a better transcript of the talk, or perhaps one they feel has higher fidelity to Emmert’s intent?

[...] Seems everyone’s commenting on something Jack Emmert said at the Serious Games Summit.  I was there too, but since most of the meat is being discussed over at Raph’s, I figured I’d reply to the topics there. [...]

The casual creative player who wants at least /some/ slight benefit (be it an item or a skill) from their time would be faced with massive grind.

Ben is right about what Jack had to say about designers, to summarize he said:
Game creation stage 1: One person is artist, designer, programmer
Stage 2: Artist + designer/programmer
Stage 3: (1997 or so) Artist(s) + Designer(s) + Programmer(s)

My impression of the Fear of Strangers point is this:
Games where people play in group lead to better retention of players
To group you have to meet strangers
Fear of Strangers makes finding a group more difficult

Therefore as a game designer you want to help your players overcome thier fear of strangers so that they will group and stay with your game for a longer period.

Personally I found his talk interesting, but a bit disorganized. I do think getting him was a very good thing to do because the serious game space can benefit a great deal from the learning that is coming out of games like City of Heros. At the start he had the guts to stand up and say that he did not know much about serious games and my guess is that the problems I had understanding what he wanted to say came in part from his difficulty in knowing what the audience needed to hear. I’m also being a little harsh, Philip Rosedales Keynote at Serious Games GDC is really the gold standard, and Jack Emmert was good, but not as good as Philip, who did know what we needed to hear.

I don’t see this attitude in new players, or even in players who have only been playing MMOs for a year or so. I usually only see it in people who have been playing for several years, AND who have had the experience of having a regular guild or group to play with at some point as well.

It’s a human problem but it creates a game problem because when it becomes widespread, it inhibits the formation of communities, which in turn can hurt retention.

You will notice for example that players are usually less shy in forming groups in first person shooters like the Battlefield series (where you are automatically assigned) and to an extent in WoW’s battlefields.

In the original days of Star Wars Galaxies while hunting on Dathomir picking a group was easy. You started out, did a few missions and when you came back for more missions you kept an eye out for those that were looking for a group. If there were not then you could still proceed but if you found one inviting them was just a command away. I suppose it’s a matter of balancing the number of opportunities that require grouping and those that benefit from grouping.