I recently interviewed Nexon's Min Kim for Worlds in Motion -- if you're new to SVGL, you may not know that's the site at which I cover business news related to online worlds, social networking, and MMOs that work on the free-to-play, pay-for-goods model. Nexon is like, a ridiculously successful company in this space, and one of the more amazing things is that one of its most successful games, MapleStory, is a 2D sidescroller. I reviewed MapleStory for Worlds in Motion's Online World Atlas, and I found the Asian-influenced, cutie-sprite oldschool look really charming; as I said, it reminded me of playing strange nonsense Hudson Soft-type games on my Turbo Grafx 16 back in the day.MapleStory has millions and millions of players worldwide -- I've heard the figures pegged at anywhere from 30 to 60 million users. When you think of how big a deal people like Newsweek and Time think Second Life is, reflect that Second Life has only about 7 million. On top of that, MapleStory has been thriving for almost five years now, and growing every year -- after about five years, the majority of MMOs have maxed out their lifecycles.
When I asked Kim about why MapleStory's been so successful in a relatively tricky market, his answers are pretty much what you might guess -- fresh content constantly, listening to what the users want, being unique graphically, and having a strong community.
The community element is one in particular that a lot of players in this space are talking about quite a lot lately -- after all, the presence of others is what makes a game an MMO. There's a huge gold rush going on for MMOs and virtual worlds; just about everyone has realized they can make a ton of money by aiming a community-oriented product at the "sweet spot" aged about 14-17. Especially if they can get those kids to bring their friends. Saying that peer pressure drives site loyalty is a bit of a cynical way of looking at it, but if you have a MySpace or Facebook
account, why'd you get one? Because you had some friends who were using it. And once you're sick of it, why do you keep logging in? To see what your friends are up to, of course.In other words, a sense of community and shared experience drives revenue, because it keeps users coming back. And for sites like Twitter, Digg, Flickr (why do dot-coms have the stupidest names ever?) it's pretty clear they wouldn't be big hits without that element. But what about MMOs?
I think that the community element that could really drive an MMO is still not bulls-eyed yet. I played MapleStory; I still play it, sometimes. I'm not enormously fond of action gaming on a keyboard; I could never become accustomed to it, and maybe that's the reason my patience for MMOs is fairly limited. As far as I'm concerned, my PC gaming career was point-and-click from the time I was, like, five (yay for HyperCard) so keyboarding still feels archaic and cumbersome to me. I suppose that could be remedied by getting a USB controller, but I just don't care all that much.
And that's the problem. I don't care because most MMOs I have played still feel a lot like any old-school RPG to me -- only more skeletal, because of the open-ended world and the lack of a presiding narrative. It's grind and gather, and it tends to bore the hell out of me. The variable element is supposed to be the presence of others; you and the others are supposed to create your own story. But all that really ends up happening, in general, is that you don't grind alone. You form teams not to create a story, but to grind more effectively.
I know that for, say, WoW loyalists, they feel rather connected to their guildies and consider them friends. We hear a lot about how some people can talk to their cohorts in MMOs more than they can to their friends. But there seems to be a disconnect there -- you're fostering a social relationship based on your real life, your real identity, whether you're just being friendly or you're confessing your life's secrets, your problems with your girlfriend or your favorite kind of beer. All of that, against a backdrop of elves, orcs, monsters and mysterious artifacts? Why do the social relationships in MMOs seem primarily strategic, a function of your gameplay style? Is it because despite all the attention paid to this "exciting new" 3-dimensional connected reality, people don't really want to escape all that much?I don't mean roleplaying per se, because I know there are plenty of people doing that on designated servers -- though I confess it surprises me that they're in the minority. What I'm saying is, with an MMO there is the opportunity for users to build a story together; there are no limits on what they can design. And yet primarily, it's team up, kill things, sell loot, repeat. It's either that, or they don't talk much at all because they're busy -- wait for it -- playing the game. Seems to me there's a lot of lost opportunity there.
I think that if socialization and gaming were hybridized a bit more fluidly, then we might have that truly lifelike, compelling and immersive gaming experience we all keep saying we want.
11 comments:
Having now quit WoW for a 3rd time, I can honestly say that, at least on the server I was on, the community aspect has grossly diluted the RPG elements of the game. My angle was that if I was paying $14.95 a month for a role playing game that I happened to play with a bunch of other people, then I wanted to see as much content as I could. The problem is that the majority of old players have a "been there, done that" stance and new players just want to run the same dungeons over and over again. It was disheartening to learn that unless I wanted to go heavy into PvP, I would not be able to acquire the gear necessary to properly enjoy PvE content; reason being few were willing to run the more challenging dungeons.
Guilds are, in my opinion, overrated and prone to inner circle clique-ness. The guild I was in before I left this time was run by a dude who, well, was kind of a douche. He had a tendency to talk down to people, really showed favoritism to the "women" of the guild, and tried to force all the guild into doing things he wanted. I know this all comes off as just one bad experience, and you're not wrong, but I can say that I encountered few people in WoW that I would associate with in real life, much less divulge inner turmoil. Not surprisingly, that has been my same experience with the internet in general.
MMO's have always taken a sandbox approach to gaming, so your experience will be what you make of it. If you'll forgive the ESRB reference, "experience may change with online play." I also just quit WoW, but am left with different feelings with my experience.
Guilds are, yes, flawed. Any large group of people working towards an end will have different ideas of how to go about getting it done. Still, the sandbox comes into it in that there should be a large enough sampling of people in game to find some that don't rub you the wrong way. Unfortunately, in a game like WoW, you need 24 other like-minded people to see what the majority of Blizzard's development budget is spent on.
I think the problem with the community aspect of MMO giants like WoW is that it's so large that people with the same interests in mind can't find one another.
"What I'm saying is, with an MMO there is the opportunity for users to build a story together; there are no limits on what they can design."
MMOs are full of technical and interpersonal limits. Technically, if the players want to build a story with X in it, the programmers have to anticipate and provide X itself or in the case of user-generated content, some sort of framework to insert X into.
Interpersonally, we have the stresses of trying to get thousands of people to play with the same toys (Edwin VanCleef can't stay dead), or to play nice (griefing etc). The rules that come up, out of necessity to deal with these limits, are always detrimental to creating a world where your actions make a difference.
"Lifelike, compelling, and immersive" are great ideals to shoot for, but it's a hard target to hit when the genre is so resistant to having worlds where your actions can make a difference.
I'm intrigued by the idea of hybridizing gaming and socializing in a new way, but I wager there's little hope of doing it in today's 'traditional' MMO.
That being said, it'd probably be pretty fun to have a sort of WowBook, where instead of your own profile with your pic in the corner, you've got your avatar's; instead of 'friends from work, friends from school, friends from college' you've got 'raid buddies, friends from Ironforge, friends I leveled with'... You know, built into the game and all - see someone who named their avatar after one of your favorite characters in a novel, rightclick to look at his profile page; guy steals your kill, rightclick him and write something nasty on his wall...
I doubt this is quite what you had in mind, but I should probably stop before I start to think I'm onto something...
I'm really excited to see where gaming and the whole web 2.0 community style meets.
I'm not certain I'd play, or involve, myself in such a game... thing. But maybe.
In a way the sorts of community that evolves in social networks to me seems very dependant on the game mechanics (if I can call it that). I mean the way that you can interact with other people is built into them, so you have friends, family, contacts. Do you need approval before calling them a friend? Joining casual groups based on interests, etc etc. This changes the way you relate to those people you are connected to. (I'm curious, is facebook very different mechanically, seeming as it's creating such a big deal. Or is it just a more mature myspace?) So to me, it's no real surprise that gaming worlds don't have the same kind of community feel, they simply aren't designed for it. This is no doubt why they are destined to merge.
Thinking on a tangent, wouldn't it be great fun to be in a gaming world, where you can join groups (if declared public, or invited, etc). Thinking of groups: Druids, Roleplay, GMT+10, Sarcastic, Fond of Fangled Things.
The greatest potential I can see for introducing social networking concepts to games, is that it would provide the users with the tools for being organized. Potentially for creating their own stories as you suggest (it sounds kind of utopian though doesn't it?) Also new players wont just dumped in the tutorial, they would also place themselves in a learning enviroment.
I hazard a guess, that social networks are easier to learn and be involved with then online games. They are interesting primarily because they can so quickly involve you with people of similar interests. That's why they have exploded everywhere, it was a completely new experience for people.
Obviously every social network has many problems, but I'm really interested to see if the things both industries have learnt can meld together into something really special.
Boy my grammar sucks at 3am.
You guys all raise some awesome points.
Dave: You didn't get to experience all the content you wanted because you'd need huge groups with your exact interest level and similar play style; Expellate agrees you need the groups and adds in the complexifying factor that people with similar interest levels and play styles probably can't find each other.
Which brings us to Scott's idea, which is genius; make a more sophisticated social networking tool within WoW by which the players can connect based on their engagement with the game, and Nectarine's point that social networks are easier to navigate generally than games helps bolster this idea -- it would decrease the barrier to entry for newbie WoWers if they could start by getting to know other users and connecting to groups who could help them get involved in the game.
And yeah, Nectarine, Facebook is like a more mature MySpace; it's a little different, though, in that it keeps essentially an RSS feed of everything your friends say they're doing -- what groups they're joining, what their status is, who they're communicating with, etc. There are also stupid little widgets that let users quiz each other or play very simple games against each other. They can also gift one another with RMT "badges" that can be displayed on the recipient's profile, sort of a "look how much my friends love me," kind of thing.
It wasn't just raids that I was missing out on. There were plenty of 5-man dungeons that were empty because most people playing on the server thought they were too hard. I can name you the top Azeroth dungeons just based on how many people were LFG'ing them: Deadmines, Ulda, BRD, SM (Armory and Cath), and Sunken Temple. Sometimes you could get a group to go through Mara, but I thought that was a big old boring waste. You could almost never find a group willing to get together to go through Stratholm or Scholomance because of the challenge factor. A well formed group can handle ANY dungeon, but it requires players with a knowledge of not only the game but also how to effectively play their characters in a group dynamic.
You remember FF 12's combat mechanics? One player set the gambits which controlled how your entire party reacted in a battle. You basically had everyone in your party set to certain roles. In a WoW party, the dynamics are more or less the same, as they are in any RPG. The problem is WoW seems to have attracted quite a few people who have never played RPGs before, thus don't understand the concept of group dynamics. This is not just about being polite, though that's a huge benefit to a good group. True group dynamics encompass knowing what your role is and how it relates to a specific dungeon/boss. A well formed group acts as a cohesive unit, and it helps when one person is designated the leader. The social hierarchy of real world successful groups can be applied to MMO ones. Unfortunately, given the disparity among skill levels found in many players, forming a cohesive pick-up group in WoW is the rare chance. When it happens, the game sings. Blizzard would do well to implement the sort of match-making features you guys have come up with. When they introduced the Looking For Group/More function, the idea was it would match a character/party up with a group that needed a particular class. So few people actually use the function, though, that those who do still end up with a mismatched group normally front loaded with Hunters.
Books have been published on the mechanics of WoW; surely there is enough anecdotal material out there that would make fascinating reading on the more disingenuous side of the game.
Since you are onto the "social thing" it is worth noting that the Asian online games are full of social elements. You can get engaged and married. Valentines Day is a huge, huge thing in many of the games (I think there is more than one Valentine's Day per year!), there are many gifts to give your partner, you can bid for one of a limited number of wedding ceremonies, etc.
Basically, there are game play mechanics tied to social interaction.
This is not just the micro-transaction-based games, but seems to be fairly pervasive.
With the anonymity of the internet, when and where do you (if you can) draw the line between role-playing and online social networking?
Are there more serious implications if a married man or woman with three kids and a golden retriever gets married in a Secondlife-ish type arena? Is this person cheating on his or her family?
Sorry if this is deviating from the nature of the post, but that last comment got me thinking.
We are awesome, at both points and generally (at least I know I am). We should make an MMO called Sexy Videogameland. My imagination boggles...
So who wants to whip up a prototype over the weekend? Anyone?
From dave...
"Books have been published on the mechanics of WoW; surely there is enough anecdotal material out there that would make fascinating reading on the more disingenuous side of the game."
Heh, reading? I think it would make for amazing playing.
Guild Leader, The Game! Poach skilled healers from other guilds! Flip out on your raid group! Minus some DKPs! Bribe officers with loot! Test the effect of changing raid meet time at whim! Can your guild survive your MT and Druid Leader's explosive breakup? Can it survive the latest class nerf? Can it survive the release of Warhammer Online?
The supreme irony of this is it would only work (and believe me, it would) as a single player, offline game!
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