These are the articles I have found thus far covering the online
worlds discussions at GDC 2002:
http://www.joystick101.org/?op=displaystory;sid 02/3/28/82435/1986
Caveat: Goodwin appears to have misspelled Jessica Mulligan's name
in multiple different ways, and the list of credits as to who worked
on what seems a bit wrong. All in all, though, it's a fair account
of the "Next Generation of Massively Multiplayer" panel.
start quote--->
GDC Day 5, Developers on the Future of Online Worlds
By jongoodwin
from the go IU department, Section Articles
Posted on Thu Mar 28th, 2002 08:24:35 AM
Although I enjoyed every day of the GDC, the last one was my
favorite. It was a little less crowded, but the speakers were
still top notch. Although I saw several sessions this day, I'm
going to concentrate coverage on two amazing sessions. The first
was a panel discussing the next generation of online worlds.
The session was scheduled to be a virtual "who's who" in
MMOG's. Raph Koster (Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies), Rich
Lawrence (Air Warrior Series, Ultima Online), Jessica Mulligen
(Neverwinter Nights, Skotos, and Warcraft 2 Online), and Gordon
Walton (Ultima Online, The Sims Online). But before the session
started I introduced myself to the guy sitting to my right who
happened to be the producer of Dark Age of Camelot. We talked a
bit about his launch (which the panel discussed later on as one of
the few success stories of the year), and all of a sudden I heard
a familiar voice behind me talking about architecture. Turning
around I noticed it was Will Wright sitting behind me. That's what
I love about this conference, you have the opportunity to spot and
even chat with your favorite game designers - who are usually very
approachable and friendly. After each session I attended, every
designer stayed to meet the participants who wanted to chat. If
you're a game fan and have the opportunity to attend I highly
recommend you register for next year's confernece.
At 10:00, the session began as Raph Koster, Rich Lawrence,
Mulligon, and Song sounded off about their field, which they
quickly differentiated from traditional games. Everyone seemed to
agree that the service nature of MMORPG's made their product more
like a cable company than a game.
The session started with the question, "What is wrong with the
current games out there?" Mulligen was quick to state that there
were too many moving parts in the current crop of
videogames. Games are too difficult for non-gamers to get
into. Those that play the games are overwhelmed with the vast
number of packages, and the difficult installation
procedure. Those that do sart the game well after the launch have
a much more difficult time with the game. Koster countered that
the games aren't complex enough. Games aren't complex enough to
meet consumer expectations. He said that games were too
repetitive, and that there should be a way to overcome the quick
consumption of MMORPG content. Hours after a new area comes
online, people have it quickly mapped, and there are lines to
collect the new items. Rich pointed out that perhaps the biggest
problem is that games aren't matching the customer's expectation
of service when they pick up the phone.
The next question asked where the next generation of persistent
worlds would go. Koster, perhaps the one with the most persistent
world experience thought that user content would be the next
generation, if developers and lawyers would let users get away
with it. He also thought that dynamic content and better AI were
key for the next generation of online games. He also pointed out
that their new worlds would stop being referenced as games and
become fully immerse worlds where perhaps users could have actual
citizenship.
Jessica mentioned that she thought that there wouldn't be a
revolution, and what we'll really see is an evolutionary change
giving players a world where voice communication would replace the
keyboard. Also she described a Majestic-like scenario where you
would get paged if your guild was being attacked. Rich also echoed
Raph's call for user generated content where the audience could
better design their own experience. He also expects that patching
will be replaced soon. He thought that their distribution method
is pretty weak, because the repeated patching necessary for
content updates makes it difficult to get new users up to speed.
The session really heated up with the Q&A. There were some great
questions and responses. One of my favorites came from a
participant who asked how MMORPG's could better appeal to
women. Jessica pointed out that some games as high as a 50% gender
distribution. She reiterated, "Women want to escape to a new place
or time just like men... In RPG's they become leaders and guild
members, men tend to kill more." Koster quipped, "If you want more
women to play you could start by not showing naked breasts on the
boxes." "Everyone should play a woman character on an RPG and not
just to get free stuff.", he challenged. "Experience for yourself
sexual harassment, that everyone expects you not to know anything,
and get propositioned every hour." Everyone on the panel nodded
and the audience clapped as Raph sized up the experience.
My favorite question came from an audience member who asked how
designers should deal with user generated content when 99% of it
would be crap. I was lucky enough to try to record it with my
laptop. Here's the audio file
<
http://educlass.ist.indiana.edu/~jagoodwi/Authorship.wav> to hear
the response (1 meg), sorry about the quality - my built in mic is
pretty pathetic... For those of you without audio, I was most
impressed by Koster's response. He said basically that all the
artistic types should "get over yourselves, the rest of the world
is coming", their self-expression is what's most important. He
said the challenge was to give players the next generation of
"legos" to facilitate easy creation and self-expression. If you
have a decent connection, I recommend you try to listen to the
full audio - because Koster can say it better than I can summarize
it.
<---end quote
A transcript of that snippet since it's pretty hard to make out
(thank you, SoundForge, for rescuing it!):
start quote--->
Question: How do you make it so that if other people want to start
playing in that, either it works out, or it's a good story,
or... what do you do? Gordon Walton, panel moderator, exec
producer The Sims Online, former Tyrant of UO: I want to
paraphrase this, let me paraphrase this. What are we going to do
when these unwashed people actually start, you know, putting stuff
in front of us and you know, spoil our beautifully crafted world
to hell. But uh, so that's the paraphrase, the one paraphrase. The
other is, how are we going to get over the 99% of everything
that's crap. Right? So that's a real problem, if 99% of everything
is crap, and most people, you know, have the desire to be
creative, but most of them don't have the actual skill to be
creative. It's a real challenge, I think it is a real
challenge. Why don't we see it today? That's probably a big part
of it.
Raph is dying to say something... this is probably the last
question, so start filling out your little forms, you know, and
mark 'em "1" for Jessica. [rest lost in laughter--Jessica
Mulligan was one of the panelists, and I kept contradicting her,
and it had turned into a running joke. Basically, Jess said a
dirty word, and I said, "Shame on you, now that's on tape!" and
she said "Yeah, like they never heard that word here..."].
Me: Let me say, sir, that I really sympathize. I'm an artsy type,
as Jessica is fond of reminding me, and you know, I have an MFA. I
spent much of my life training to write crafted
experiences. There's an intense amount of learning and craft and
skill that goes there, and I hate to say this to say this to all
the film directors, writers, poets, um, painters, and everything
else out there in the world: get over yourselves, the rest of the
world is coming. Okay? People value self-expression. Is story
going to go away? No. Is careful crafting going to go away?
No. Are the professionals engaged in that going to go away?
No--well, except that IP, the concept of intellectual property,
may; but that's a whole other side discussion.
The thing is that people want to express themselves, and they
don't really care that 99% of everything is crap, because they are
positive that the 1% they made isn't. Okay? And fundamentally,
they get ecstatic as soon as five people see it, right?
So we can move to a meta-level of crafting experience. We can try
to take a step up and say... you know, we can do what Lego did,
which is give them the building blocks, so that they fundamentally
can't make something so screwed up that everyone ends up
leaving. Okay? And that's a different level of authorship than
what we are used to, but it's a really exciting area of
authorship.
It's all them, guys, and fundamentally, authorship is about
us. And it's the wrong medium for it--it's not what the medium is
for.
<---end quote
http://www.gamespy.com/gdc2002/mmog/
This article is built out of several different sessions, including
the "Laws" session run by Anthony Castoro, the "Future of Massively
Multiplayer" roundtables run by Bernie Yee, and the above referenced
panel discussion.
start quote--->
What's This World Coming To?
The Future of Massively Multiplayer Games
The industry's most experienced world builders hash out what happens next.
By - Dave "Fargo" Kosak
Of all the games in the world, the group loosely classified as
"massively multiplayer" or "persistent world" games have the most
unexplored potential. They're among the oldest of multiplayer
games; the very first networked computer users played adventure
games similar to EverQuest, but comprised entirely of text. And
with the advent of graphical interfaces, these massively
multiplayer online games (MMOGs for short) may someday change the
way we live and communicate online!
...at least, that's the promise. In the meantime the genre is
trying to find legs. Are these products games or are they
services? Should they be complex or simple? Should they cater to
niches or mainstream audiences? How should people access them? The
Game Developers Conference gives game developers the unique
opportunity of stepping away from their current projects for a
couple of days to put their heads together and hash out the
answers to these problems.
Over the course of the weekend I attended several presentations,
talks, and roundtables headed up by leaders in the industry. How
often do you get the lead designers from Star Wars Online,
Asheron's Call 2, EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, Lineage, World
of Warcraft, and other games together all in the same room?
Hearing them talk not only illuminates the current state of the
genre, it points at the road ahead as well.
Here are their observations, organized into rough categories. I
tried to spot and identify overall trends -- talk frequently
meandered, but kept coming back to a few key issues I've written
about below. Read on to see where the genre is headed! [Or skip
ahead to the forums to see what people are saying.]
A Controlled Environment
Star Wars Galaxies: a meticulously crafted environment in a galaxy
far far away... Everyone at the conference was intimately familiar
with the Disneyland analogy: the school of thought that says a
massively multiplayer, online world should be just like
Disneyland, a "controlled environment," built for the
entertainment of guests and with all unsavory elements
removed. Others referred to this as "a fascist state," and not
always in jest.
Primarily this is in response to so-called 'grief' players, who
thrive on making the game miserable for others. "One bad player
can affect hundreds of others," said Anthony Castoro, lead systems
designer for Star Wars Galaxies in one roundtable discussion. How
can game designers deal with what another developer called "the
pull to supervillainy?" Most developers agreed that in small
communities you can rely on the user base to police itself. But
large-scale games with tens of thousands of users logged in at any
given time can't be counted on to effectively
self-manage. Conclusion? Control the environment. Just as
Disneyland keeps its attractions clean and ejects any
troublemakers from the park.
A major part of establishing a controlled environment revolves
around managing user expectations, a phrase that came up again and
again in several sessions. Most designers agreed that to date many
games have done a poor job of letting the user know up front what
kind of world they were stepping into and how conflicts were to be
handled. Laws, and the enforcement of them, would have to be
clearly outlined in order to maintain strict control of the game
without a bunch of upset or confused players.
While most developers seemed to agree that a theoretical "online
Disneyland" was a good way to create a world enjoyable to most
players, a tightly controlled world unfortunately comes in direct
conflict with an even stronger sentiment shared among the next-gen
game designers. They wanted more dynamic worlds, not less, and
more power for the users to shape those worlds. And that's the
subject of our next topic...
User Content: Making Your Mark On the World
A panel of experts debates the third generation of MMOG
games. From left to right: Raph Koster (Star Wars Galaxies),
Jessica Mulligan (formerly of Ultima Online), Jake Song (Lineage),
and Rich Lawrence (Sony Online Entertainment) Rich Lawrence, the
Director of Development at Sony Online Entertainment, was pretty
adamant about it. "You need to create a presence for yourself in
the game," he said at a panel on third-generation online games. As
a player you should be given the tools to determine "the world you
live in, and the laws it's governed by." There was muttered
agreement all around.
In fact, one of the few things that all these designers could
agree on was that players needed a way to make these worlds their
own, to establish belonging and permanence. It's the best way to
get a player to stick around: Allow him or her to build something
that lasts or make a meaningful change to the game
world. Something personal.
Of course, user-created content has a lot of sticky issues. Raph
Koster, former Lead Designer for Ultima Online and current
Creative Director for Sony Online Entertainment and Star Wars
Galaxies, expressed the problem without mincing words: "Our
corporations are terrified of this." Intellectual property,
ownership, and copyright issues are just the beginning of the
uncharted territory. More importantly, how can a game design
rationalize the desire to give players creative power with the
need for a controlled environment? Are the two mutually exclusive?
Solving this problem seemed to be the top agenda in the next
generation of games.
Are developers worried that empowering users to create things will
just result in massive worlds packed with low-quality (read: crap)
content? Of all the people I spoke with, this didn't seem to be a
concern. Most consider it imperative to allow users to create
lasting things in the game world, and the only issue was how to do
it elegantly while maintaining the integrity of the world. Koster,
in fact, saw it as sort of a crusade. Speaking on the
aforementioned third-generation games panel, his message to
elitist writers and artists was this: "Get over yourselves! The
rest of the world is coming." He said that games will want to move
to a 'meta-level' as content aggregators. "We can do what Lego did
and give them [the players] the blocks," he explained.
Is It a "Game?"
This question is more than just semantics, and it's one that's
still open for debate. Raph Koster made his feelings pretty clear
in more than one session: "It's a medium, not a game."
Representatives from Asheron's Call 2 agreed, acknowledging that
calling these products "games" was too self-limiting. Of course,
the current crop of products can hardly be called anything but;
players still "play the spreadsheet" and try to gain points and
items. "MMP game design seems to be rooted in Wizardry I online,"
said Bernie Yee, former EverQuest developer and Vice President of
Publishing for newly-founded En-Tranz Entertainment. He described
"harvesting," where characters are encouraged to "go out into this
field of experience points and cut something down." Social
structures seem to evolve in spite of this system, rather than
because of it. Another designer wished that MMOG game design could
be more influenced by Will Wright (creator of The Sims) than by
Gary Gygax (creator of Dungeons & Dragons). [[That was me
too--Raph]]
Of course, while everyone wanted to build more interesting systems
promoting different types of play and social interaction, nobody
could agree on how exactly it can (or should) be done. Giving
people the tools to create player content (as described above)
looks to be one of the first steps.
The root of the issue is that players will do whatever they're
rewarded for doing. And it's easy to reward monster-bashing; it's
a simple, elegant system that's worked in games for decades. It's
much more difficult to reward other kinds of activities without
players abusing the system. An example that someone brought up:
they tinkered with the idea of a "chivalry" system, where players
could give "tokens" to other players who helped them out in the
game. The problem is, how do you prevent players from hoarding
tokens with a hundred of their friends? How do you prevent such a
system from, in the lingo of the developers, "getting gamed?"
Another option was to encourage and enforce player behavior
through direct interaction. This works within a small community,
but doesn't scale to huge games. Most designers were skeptical of
this, anyway. There has to be a more elegant solution than spying
on the players and rewarding them whenever they do something
interesting.
Of course, if anyone in the room had any clever ideas for
rewarding constructive/social types of behavior, they may have
chosen not to speak; trade secrets and all. But judging by the
amount of discussion, this remains a hot topic in MMOG design.
Complexity, Time Spent, and Ease of Access
"We're building games with too many moving parts!" exclaimed
Jessica Mulligan, MMOG columnist and former events and volunteer
director for Ultima Online. "Hideously complex games that are
impossible to balance." Her argument ultimately wasn't that games
should be simple, just that they needed to be elegant and easy to
understand.
Most of the discussions I sat in on at the convention seemed to be
in agreement. With the exception of a handful of hardcore
niche-focused game developers, most people wanted to broaden the
pool of potential players. And that meant a lot of things. It
meant simpler game mechanics that don't take a doctoral degree to
demystify. But it also meant different ways to access the game.
"The PC is really our only delivery platform right now ... and it
sucks," said Rich Lawrence, Director of Development at Sony Online
Entertainment. For people to be computer literate, own a PC, own
the proper hardware, and to have broadband installed (since many
games are modem-unfriendly) is too much of a "coincidence." It
narrows the available playing field. Consoles are a possible
distribution method. (And, to that end, I noticed one of the Xbox
engineers sitting in on one of the roundtables asking pointed
questions about what it would take for developers to feel
comfortable with the Xbox platform. With integrated broadband, the
Xbox seems like a likely MMOG target.) Also, better distribution
is necessary; the "patching" process is extremely lengthy and
obtrusive. There's got to be a better way to distribute new
content to people!
Along with new means of distribution, Gordon Walton -- Vice
President and Executive Producer of The Sims Online -- wants to
see additional means of entry. What about accessing the game world
via your handheld or cell phone? For example, while riding the
bus on your way to work, you could check your in-game messages or
manage your character's general store from your Palm Pilot. Walton
also insisted that there needs to be a portable game client that
people can mail to their friends ... an intuitive sampling service
to get people hooked on the game world. "Like liquid crack," he
said.
And finally, from an ease-of-access perspective, another issue is
the amount of time required on the part of the player to have a
meaningful interaction with the game. In the current crop of
products, rewards are distributed in direct proportion to the
amount of time spent online. As Yee said in the roundtable he
hosted, "How do you make a player who spends five hours a month
[playing] still feel relevant to the game world?" A majority of
the developers agreed that this was essential to broaden the
audience, and one answer to the problem goes back to allowing
users to build something permanent in the game world to call their
own.
Treatment of Customers
Speaking on the panel about third-generation MMOGs, Rich Lawrence
spent several minutes talking about the level of service present
in today's games vs. where the genre needs to be. The game
experience needs to stabilize, difficult as that may be for an
Internet product. "They [players] have unexpected, unplanned
events happen to them that aren't part of the game mechanics,"
Lawrence explained, referring to network glitches, bugs, lag, and
other frustrations. And it's hard to know what's supposed to be
accepted and what isn't, or how to complain. He continues: "Users
don't know where the parameters are of the service .... that
uncertainty is unacceptable of a service."
Gordon Walton agreed, stating that customer service needs to be
integrated right into the game and placed into the game design
from the beginning. In many games, customer service is tagged on
at the end of the process, and "the seams show like Frankenstein's
Monster," he says. Walton also says it's essential to move to
virtually 100% uptime. "It needs to be more like the phone
company," he claimed, wherein only an act of God will shut down
your service and take away your dial tone.
Solutions to this problem aren't merely technical. Again, it comes
back to customer expectations -- lay out up front what's to be
expected from the service and what to do when the service
fails. This is a problem that may take several generations of
technology to completely solve.
So, what does this all mean for the games of the future? Read on.
What Games Are We Going to See?
All this talk was awesome, but ultimately the developers who got
together for those few exciting days in March have to go back to
their respective companies and actually put those theories to
practice. Here's where this article gets speculative: What are we
going to see in the years to come? After a few days of trend
spotting, we can make some assumptions.
Most companies are going to strive to make gameplay more
basic. That doesn't mean shallow! What it means is that they'll
try to find simpler game mechanics that combine together in
interesting ways. There's a difference between a simple game or a
complex game that's simple to play. Think of The Sims: there's
only a limited set of character actions and items available, yet
they combine for all sorts of interesting effects. That's what
developers are going to aim for in the future: a basic set of
things to do that will nonetheless allow for continual character
growth and plenty of interesting social interactions. Expect to
see several games experimenting with gameplay formulas that aren't
based on a D&D-style "experience-leveling" path to advancement.
You'll also almost certainly see more opportunities to build onto
the game world, or to change it in meaningful ways. That means
more character customization, more item creation, more building
opportunities, and more ways to get involved with the larger game
world (building towns, being elected mayor, starting a war, etc.)
We'll probably see some simple building in the next generation of
games, with more opportunities as the technology improves. Along
those lines, sometime in the next five years, expect a couple of
legal battles involving user-created content. If you create
something spectacular within a game world, is that your property?
Or does it belong forever to the game publisher? More importantly,
who owns your online persona? Chew on that!
Service seems to be a major focus for games moving
forward. Developers and publishers are realizing the escalating
costs of managing a huge base of paying customers. It's uncertain
what concrete changes we'll see, but it's likely that rates will
be higher, more support staff will be available, and game designs
will by neccessity become more robust (less downtime, longer beta
periods, less bugs in the retail product.) At least, we can hope.
Internet latency and the complexity of these games conspire
against the ideal of flawless service...
You'll also find that you'll be able to interact with online
worlds in new and different ways. It won't require several hours
of your time each day in order to build up a character who's
important. You'll also be able to "play" through alternate methods
-- instant messages, e-mail, and the like. The most important
switch is that we'll see more console-oriented MMOGs, such as
Phantasy Star Online (but hopefully without the cheating). As a
proponent of console multiplayer technology, we here at GameSpy
expect to see game worlds in the near future where an Xbox user
can be playing on the same server as someone sitting at his or her
PC.
Lastly, it's inevitable that the people running online worlds are
going to get more strict with their user base, reaching for
tighter and tighter control of the user experience. You'll agree
to certain terms when you enter the game world and you should
probably expect a zero-tolerance policy for anything that would
disrupt the experience for other players. Don't like it? Hey,
don't worry. There are something like seventy MMOGs in
development, big and small, so you'll almost certainly find a
niche somewhere.
The future of massively multiplayer may be clouded by uncertainty,
but it's certainly bright. The developer that finds the cleverest
solutions to the above problems will have a phenomena on it's
hands unlike any the world has ever seen.
We're curious to hear your take on the present and future of the
genre! Are we headed for true virtual communities or another
decade of mindless spreadsheet-manipulation games? Speak out in
this thread on the GameSpy Forums!
<---end quote
-Raph