Mr Koster, I am wondering if you can help me with a bit of online Mythbusting? I have an interest in statistics with relation to gamers and beta testers. This quote: “Something like 90% of the people playing an MMO never post in the forums.” was recently made here and attributed to you and Rich Vogel here. (please read the thread to see why I am interested) So, I was wondering if you could confirm this? How did you collect this data? And if so, what other data can you share? Do you know of any other sources of this sort of data? And, yes. I would be very happy to see this email posted and commented on in your blog. Thank you for your time and effort.

Regards, Guy Russon

Well, as far as how that stat comes about (and it does vary game to game — don’t take 10% as gospel, becaus eyou are right it’s a “whisper stat” at this point), you simply measure your subscribers, measure your active forum posters, and derive a ratio. In the case of forums where they require a game registration in order to register for the forum, this is pretty easy.

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Hi Raph: I am not sure if I’ve ever thanked you in my visits to your site before or when you had your old site up…so here goes now! I met my husband in Ultima Online in 2001. We are still together - in fact he made me his RL wife two weeks ago in Las Vegas with our family present to give our blessings. (Had a blast - wish you were there!) So, I don’t know really, how involved you were with UO. Richard Garriott also received my thanks but hasn’t written back yet. He’s probably busy with his Tablula Rasa (which i didn’t like at all SHHHH!). Anyway…thank you for creating that world and naming a shard “Catskills.” As fate would have it thats the place we both chose and there we met. HAIL RAPH! *hugs* Thank you for bringing us together!

Well, congratulations! And take that, everyone who thought that Catskills was nothing more than an iniquitous den of PKers. Though I suppose that by 2001, it wasn’t anymore. And for what it’s worth, I am sure that Richard would offer his congratulations as well.

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Quite a lot of the mail I have gotten recently relates to the quickie design outline I did for Penny Arcade… a few of them were pretty interesting, so I am just reprinting them here.

 Dear Raph, I am a huge fan of the SimCity series (worried about the loss of technical details in the new Socities) and read your words on Penny-arcade.com. PLEASE BUILD THIS. I know, i know, you are busy writing the code to run an actual world like this, but as someone who is both a DIY homeowner and a lover of constuction, the game you propose would be fabulous. Thanks for your time, Fred

I can assure you that I have no intention of rushing off to make this game, anymore than I did when I tossed out the Healing MMO as an idea. Sorry! Besides, the real point is to make Tycho do it, not me.

Now, this one, I thought was really fascinating:

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Gene Endrody of MaidMarian.com pointed out this cool Alexa graph that shows how much seasonal trends matter for virtual worlds:

I did an Alexa compare of traffic for the last six months for MaidMarian.com, ToonTown.com and Habbo.com. Habbo’s traffic is from the US site only - compared with MaidMarian.com’s worldwide, so it’s not a fair comparison per se. What I found very interesting was how close the three correlate. You can see the boost that summer holidays provide, however the ebb and flow of web traffic is really obvious. I would be really cool if we had a Dow Jones Industrial Average for web traffic to compare against.

Yeah, I think any of the operators who have been running more than one world have noticed this. There’s definite seasonal trends to virtual world usage. We need some worlds popular in the Southern Hemisphere to even out the curves!

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Hey Raph, Just wanted to note that the CMP Game Group (who runs GDC, Austin GDC, Gamasutra, Game Developer magazine, etc!) has launched WorldsInMotion.biz, which is a Game Developer Research-branded online worlds blog. In my post over at GameSetWatch announcing it, I particularly mention your commentary on web-based online worlds passing the game biz by - we’re going to do our best to make sure that doesn’t happen, while documenting the most interesting bits of the current online worlds.

This is looking quite good, and another one to add to the virtual worlds-specific news sources that are rapidly springing up. In particular, the Online World Atlas that they are putting together looks like it could be extremely useful. For those keeping track or interested in the space, here’s the list of other ones that I am hitting pretty regularly these days:

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It’s a very light mailbag this week. Remember, anyone who wants to drop me a line and maybe get an answer here can send me an email here — be sure to click the checkbox so it goes to me instead of Webmaster. She’ll forward it, but why spam her mailbox…

Howdy Raph, Let me introduce my self, basically an MMO hobbyist going on 20 years+. I currently run a small software shop(procurement related) but decided to start writing some thoughts down. Will publish more over the next couple of weeks as time permits. Would love to hear your opinions on it. archimedian.wordpress.com

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I have this crazy backlog of messages in the Mailbag. It would be much much worse if 2/3 of the messages that come in weren’t some variant of “Please don’t post this to your blog.” So I am thinking of making the mailbag a regular Monday thing — both so that greater variety of stuff gets sent in, and so that I clear it out more regularly.

Hey Raph, I’m a big fan of yours since the UO and SWG days and this is the first time I wrote to you. What do you honestly think of MMO games that uses full body motion sensors? Do you think it will be the future of gaming? A lot of hardcore gamers have trouble with a healthy lifestyle (since mmo requires a ton of your time planted in front of the TV/PC not moving) and an mmo/game that requires you to exert some physical effort (by using full body to control your game avatar) would be a great way to have fun as well as keep in shape. Nintendo wii’s nunchuck controls is the start of this great idea. I hope someone would bring this great idea further.

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I have literally hundreds of mails backed up from the Mailbag. There’s no way I will get to all of them. So here’s just a few recent ones, and maybe I’ll try doing another post soon. Or maybe I should do this weekly, or something.

Mr Koster. Let me first start off by saying I have been following you since you worked for Origin, and I am a big fan of your work. I have several questions I would like to get into. I am currently stationed in Afghanistan, and I have some free time on my hand, It has always been a personal goal to work for a company like EA, or Sony. Or Just a company who is involved with MMORPG’s I would like to also design a small game myself, Do you have any suggestions on where to start. Thank you for your time Alan SPC US Army Salerno Afghanistan

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I just got done reading Chapter Nine of your Theory of Fun for Game Design and I think it suffered for not having a functional definition of ‘art’. I’ll throw you the one that I developed and hope that you find it useful as it is very applicable to systems in general. “Art is a manifestation of Genius.” This definition does more than just separate ‘good art’ from ‘bad art’ subjectively, but allows art to spread accross a wide swathe of mediums and fields. Yes, a beautiful mathematics proof can be art. Computer programs (and even games) can be art. It makes art reflect upon the creator and context. One’s regard for Duchamp’s Fountain, for example, is based on whether one thinks it a cute idea, a clever idea, or a manifestation of genius. The definition also rids us of the notion that art is somehow about communication. The only thing that art universally tries to convey is ‘Look what greatness mankind has wrought’.

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I’ve been bad and let the mail pile up. Even this only cuts it in half…!

OK so I’ve been reading your site since before it was a blog, since lumthemad.net was still a website. I read everything I can find about game development. I’m currently in community college (not doing well, but whatever), and I want to work in game design. I read a post where you pointed people in that kind of direction. One thing I’m not sure of, though, is once I get a diversified education, what do I do? I’m about to have an associates (2 year) degree from my school, and I have no idea what to do after that. You say learn coding, I’ve already got Flash’s Actionscript and some basic C++/C# down. Should I continue my education at a 4-year school? What should I major in, since I already (almost) have a Liberal Arts/Social Sciences degree? Start coding up some games and try to break into the industry? Apply for a job at a game company near where I live (yeah right, New York)? Start a blog that nobody will read and post thought-provoking essays? I’m at that point in my life where I need some direction, and as probably the most successful person in your field, you’d be the man to ask. I’m looking to spend my life making games and worlds, I just don’t know where to start. Thanks for your time, whether you respond or not.

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