Raph's Website » Is Call of Duty 4 an MMO?

Is Call of Duty 4 an MMO?

May 15th, 2008 (Visited 1119 times) Tags: console games, game industry, online games

Rob Fahey has an editorial up on Eurogamer called “Genetically Modified Gaming” which makes the case that Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is lifting the key elements of an MMO, and is in fact the most important MMO release of the year.

This definitely echoes things I have said in the past about the ways in which online gaming is taking over single-player gaming. After all, the CoD series has always been about strong single-player narrative despite its multiplayer component. With the latest installment, there’s lots of MMOish things like persistent character advancement snuck in there.

On the other hand, I think it is worth asking if this is really what we want:

Player retention and the science of addiction is being expanded upon in innovative, groundbreaking ways

Put that baldly, it’s rather disturbing. I don’t want my games to be about the science of addiction! There are a lot of other qualities brought to the table by virtual worlds, and to my mind, it’s these other qualities that are better.

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Azaroth » Blog Archive » MMOs, Addiction, And That Silly Thing I Keep Referring To Called “Morality”. wrote on May 15th, 2008 at 11:10 am:

[...] Raph made a post about Call of Duty 4, its likely integration of many MMO-like features, and the reason for those integrations. Specifically, this quote: Player retention and the science of addiction is being expanded upon in innovative, groundbreaking ways [...]

So, the Difference Between Game and Drug Designers is…? | Quiet Babylon wrote on May 21st, 2008 at 10:21 am:

[...] The business side screams “OH GOD NO, we can’t let them walk away from the game! They might stop paying!” The ethical side should be asking “Ok, I want them to like this game and keep playing it, but I also want them to have a rest of their life. Where’s the balance?” Jonathan Blow asked this question eloquently at MIGS 2007. Raph Koster asked it again just last week. [...]

chabuhi said on May 15th, 2008 at 10:52 am:

I’m just stuck in the past in terms of what “MMO” means to me. Or, rather, what I want my “MMO’s” to be. To me, the multiplayer elements of single-player games are just that, elements, no matter how many badges, ladders, or what not you throw in in an effort to build a lasting community.

But, then again, I’m a worldy kinda guy.

Morgan Ramsay said on May 15th, 2008 at 12:12 pm:

chabuhi wrote:

To me, the multiplayer elements of single-player games are just that, elements, no matter how many badges, ladders, or what not you throw in in an effort to build a lasting community.

Badges, ladders, etc., aren’t part of the community; they’re reward mechanisms, usually aspects of the game. Think of a game as a service. The community around that service is part of the intrinsic value offered to consumers.

Producers of interactive entertainment are not manufacturers of goods; they’re service providers of interactive experiences, experiences that involve multiple people. I’d go further than Raph’s saying that single-player gaming is doomed to saying that there were never such things as single-player games.

Raph wrote:

With that statement, Fahey also opens the door wider to people who want to declare that virtual worlds should be treated as gambling establishments instead of the town squares that they are…

tim said on May 15th, 2008 at 3:59 pm:

Hmm. I haven’t played COD4, but isn’t STALKER essentially a single player MMO? Stick crafting in there and you’d almost have the whole thing.

Eolirin said on May 15th, 2008 at 6:16 pm:

Morgan, nah, single-player games definitely did exist. It’s easy to forget that there was a time when the internet didn’t exist, and there wasn’t this sense of global community… back when if you didn’t have personal friends who were into your stuff, you very much *were* alone. Back before downloadable content and online forums gaming was no different than a book or a toy: a material good and not a service. Zero interaction outside of the author and the viewer. For instance, I played the Quest for Glory games by myself, and it’d be more than 5 years before I actually talked to anyone about them, let alone what it was like playing them… there was no one else who was interested. Almost all of my early gaming was done in isolation. That’s just how it was, there were no online communities to connect to, no way to reach outside of your directly local community. You just played them for what they were, and then put them back on the shelf, and went “Damn, that was a good game.” There was no shouting from the rooftops or discussing the finer points of a plot twist or game mechanic. There were just no avenues for it unless you had an interested friend. It didn’t matter of course, the game was good, and that was that. But it was alone, and it was in isolation, and it was single-player.

Things are changing, yes. And that sort of quiet isolation is disappearing, but don’t pretend it was never there.

Morgan Ramsay said on May 16th, 2008 at 12:58 am:

Eolirin wrote:

Morgan, nah, single-player games definitely did exist.

First of all, before we go into a long, fruitless debate, just know that you will never convince me you’re correct. There are some things that I have an open mind about, but when I’m confident I’m not wrong, you couldn’t force me to say otherwise, even at gun point. Now that that’s out of the way…

It’s easy to forget that there was a time when the internet didn’t exist

I’m not an idiot, so no, it’s not easy to forget.

and there wasn’t this sense of global community…

Communities don’t have to be global to be communities.

back when if you didn’t have personal friends who were into your stuff, you very much *were* alone.

Outcasts were outliers, but even outcasts formed communities of outcasts. The ability to form relationships with others is perhaps the single most significant factor that allows all speci capable of doing so to survive throughout the ages.

Almost all of my early gaming was done in isolation.

Really? You didn’t even play cards or chess or checkers with others? No Cowboys & Indians or House games? Ring Around the Rosie? Spin the Bottle? Never played sports? That’s not a truth representative of the rest of the world; that’s just sad.

And that sort of quiet isolation is disappearing, but don’t pretend it was never there.

I’m not pretending. I’m just ignoring the children raised by parents or guardians who failed so miserably that they never socialized their kids.

I also said that single-player games never existed, period. Not just video games. All games. Not just this era. But all eras. That doesn’t mean games can’t be played alone. That just means that all games, even solitaire, are meant to be played with other people, regardless of how minute the degree to which players interact with others.

Spaz said on May 16th, 2008 at 5:05 am:

Morgan, I would like to try to understand your point of view better. You say that single player games never existed, and I get the explanation behind it. A lot of the world still uses the term ’single player’ which is representative of a mode of thought you oppose, and is also representative of a way of experiencing early computer/video games (not Games in general) that a lot of us had (Eolirin’s description). I imagine you would like people to think of games differently such that they, too, would also believe there is no such thing as a single player game.

My question is - what is gained by doing that? What will be different if people stop using the term ’single player’ to describe some games? This is a serious question and I am NOT tacitly implying that nothing would be different; word choice matters a lot in human psychology.

len said on May 16th, 2008 at 6:46 am:

There are certainly single player games or divertissement or divertissement. That doesn’t negate the idea of relationship building. It affirms that first and most important relationship in life is with oneself. All other relationships are figured in kind, coupling strength and affective affordances by that one. The norms which are the indicators of relationship potentials are formed after that relationship is in place.

For virtual worlds, we’ve been building single user worlds for a long long time. MMOs were the exceptions. I get Morgan’s point but he is a relationship marketer and one asks ‘qui bono?’ not meanly but as a matter of fact.

Gene Endrody said on May 16th, 2008 at 9:23 am:

Raph’s point that the single player game are doomed or an anomaly relates to game mechanics - synchronous vs asynchronous. “There is no single player game” says that all games have a community around them. They are both interesting points and relate to each other but why are you trying so hard to be right? I like single player RPGs for much of the same reason I like fantasy novels. Fantasy novels have communities around them too - so there are no single player fantasy novels? You can choose to have a single player experience simply by enjoying those aspects of a game that are less social. World of Warcraft can be a single player game for many players. Sometimes you want to be part of a community, sometimes you want to immerse yourself in the narrative and be in the imaginary world created by the world builders - shutting the real world out. It depends what type of experience you feel like that day.

JuJutsu said on May 16th, 2008 at 11:00 am:

First of all, before we go into a long, fruitless debate, just know that you will never convince me you’re correct. There are some things that I have an open mind about, but when I’m confident I’m not wrong, you couldn’t force me to say otherwise, even at gun point.

Lol. Now I’m stuck with this mental image of Morgan putting his fingers in his ears and saying la la la la la la la…….

Morgan Ramsay said on May 16th, 2008 at 1:29 pm:

Spaz wrote:

My question is - what is gained by doing that? What will be different if people stop using the term ’single player’ to describe some games?

Extrinsic value. At some level, buyer-consumers are currently enticed [to a small degree] by the extrinsic value offered by games—whether that value is derived from the reputation of a developer (e.g., Blizzard) or the helpful, welcoming community that envelops the product. There is more to a game than just the packaging, materials, or software. Assisting consumers with recognizing the extrinsic value of an entertainment product would not only bolster sales but also help consumers make better decisions and thus lead the way to a range of other benefits for all involved.

len wrote:

I get Morgan’s point but he is a relationship marketer and one asks ‘qui bono?’ not meanly but as a matter of fact.

I am not my occupation. I can hold opinions external to my profession. Please stop asserting that every word I use is part of some hidden agenda.

Gene Endrody wrote:

Raph’s point that the single player game are doomed or an anomaly relates to game mechanics - synchronous vs asynchronous.

When Raph explained what he meant by e-mail to me when we were at SOE, I didn’t get the impression that he was talking about mechanics. He was talking about “connected gaming” and I didn’t interpret his use of the terms “single player” and “multiplayer” as part of the standing lingo. I read his explanation as pointing toward value, not benefits, not features, not mechanics, but the value of interpersonal play. I’ll see if Raph will give me permission to post that e-mail to my blog.

JuJutsu wrote:

Now I’m stuck with this mental image of Morgan putting his fingers in his ears and saying la la la …

That was exactly what I was doing. ;p What can I say, it was late.

Morgan Ramsay said on May 16th, 2008 at 7:41 pm:

Gene, here’s the e-mail exchange.

Gene Endrody said on May 16th, 2008 at 9:32 pm:

Morgan, you’re right. I meant “asymmetric” not “asynchronous” anyway. I must have been sleepy. From here. It was just one aspect of his main point. Since Raph made it clear that he was talking about “connected gaming” in the talk, in that context the single player game is dead. Creating experiences in a game intended to be consumed in a non-social single player way, is not dead.

Morgan Ramsay said on May 16th, 2008 at 10:46 pm:

Creating experiences in a game intended to be consumed in a non-social single player way, is not dead.

Sure, but like I said, “While the original creators of games might not have intended there to be extrinsic value, the natural design of games, resulting from their socially driven evolution, precludes games from maintaining exclusively single-player systems.” Great, now I’m quoting myself… ;p

Eolirin said on May 19th, 2008 at 4:57 pm:

Your counter examples don’t even begin to work here. They’re multiplayer to begin with. I’ve played all of those things. But you’ve shifted the context too. I meant video gaming. I wouldn’t have thought that, in context of a discussion about video games I needed the extra qualifier. But whatever. And no, there were no communities of adventure game players local to me at age 10. No community of outcasts either, because there was no community to begin with.

So Morgan, note your use of language. You said that there were never any singleplayer games.

If something is a certain way for even just one person, you cannot use a universal qualifier like never. A single counter-example makes it at best a particular. This is basic logic. Never is a universal, I can provide even a single counter example (myself), ergo, you are *wrong*. And it’s not that I didn’t socialize, I just didn’t socialize about THAT. I also didn’t spend much time discussing many of the books that I was reading with my friends either, it’s just not something we had in common. We talked about other stuff instead.

Furthermore, you’re moving up from the general case (games in general are social activities) to the specific case (any given game is a social activity) which as also broken. I can agree with the general, but I can’t agree with the specific, because while I do have discussions about some games (and it’s vastly more often now that I’ve got different circles of friends) I don’t about others, as there isn’t always a common interest in those, or they were just too forgettable to bother bringing up. Outliers can be ignored for statistics, but they invalidate universals in logic.

And I really don’t think that gaming is intrinsicly social either. People may be, but gaming isn’t. People form communities over anything and everything: art, writing, music, stamp collecting, doing taxes, brutal violence, compassion, hatred, love. Humans tend towards social behaviors, so it’s not surprising that you’d see gaming tend toward social behaviors too. It says nothing about gaming though, just about people.

len said on May 20th, 2008 at 6:58 am:

Now Morgan, don’t go all paranoid on me.

The single player relationship is very important. Not reckoning for that leads to some critical flaws in network analysis.

Morgan Ramsay said on May 20th, 2008 at 10:19 am:

But you’ve shifted the context too. I meant video gaming.

You’re on Raph’s Website. Y’know, the guy who wrote A Theory of Fun, which talks about all games. The context was always “games,” not specifically games played on a video platform. There’s little difference between games played in physical spaces with physical pieces and games played in virtual spaces with virtual pieces.

You said that there were never any singleplayer games.

Right, because I’m talking about design and value, not what players might choose to do with a product. Simply because you can play games alone doesn’t make those games “single-player games.”