LoL Beta Keys

I currently have 2 LoL beta keys to give away. If you would like one and are not a scrub, send me an email edit: all gone. First come first serve, or as one of my professors would say, "a FIFO stack." /facepalm

Edit: All gone!

CCP to Social Network EVE

Evizaer hates it when I post gaming news, but since it is related to something I talked about, I'm going to do it anyway:

As social networking seems to be the buzzword of the new millennium, EVE steps up to the plate by introducing COSMOS, a social networking framework that allows players to create Facebook-like pages for their EVE characters, allowing them to maintain friend lists, write blogs, update their status, send each other messages and upload pictures. E-mail sent ingame can be read by the recipient through the website. Corporations and alliances will also have their own page.

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/102/1021847p1.html

Why am I not surprised that CCP is the one to start in this direction? (Champions Online doesn't count because Twitter doesn't count.)

By the way, what I said was:

I think MMOs and Social Networks should merge, and they'd both be better for it.

How awesome would it be to have a web-facing aspect to your favorite MMO? You could still "friend" all your non-gaming acquaintances, upload your RL photos and game screenshots to albums, tag your guildmates or relatives, and update your status or microblog. "Going to Boston on Monday. Won't be in game." Now your family and guild know where you are.

Almost there!

MMOs Evolve in an Elaborative Way

MMO evolution is in a stage of elaboration. The game mechanics in RPGs have reached a stage of development where we generally know what works, though the specific applications of single-player and tabletop RPG mechancs to the MMO vein are still a work in progress. Elaboration shows in the fact that each successful game offers players more to do than the last. The standard activities in MMOs are each being built with increasing intricacy. This intricacy is aimed at producing the highest probability of the players having fun and getting what they want. Camping mobs was supplanted by quests, static quests were gradually replaced by instances and, perhaps, will later be replaced by Guild Wars 2’s “Events” system.

Elaboration is a process that relies on familiarity, because without a simpler form from which to build,  creation results. A raw creation is an unproven attempt which has a significant chance of outright failure because the outcomes of implementing a creation are significantly less predictable than the outcomes of implementing an idea that has been tested and elaborated upon for several generations of games.

Think of the evolution of certain apes several millions of years ago. Did the evolutionary process yield survivable, successful creatures by flailing about and coming up with radical new ways to solve problems that were already somewhat solved? You can clearly see the similarities between chimpanzees and gorillas, the differences between the species aren’t vast swaths of new features on a similar basic vertebrate structure, the differences are elaborative changes that built on past partial successes and honed the features of the individual apes for survival in specific environments.

There are two ways to utilize familiarity to effectively elaborate game mechanics:

1. Use unfamiliar methods to achieve familiar goals.
2. Achieve unfamiliar goals by using familiar methods.

There are two other permutations of goal and method familiarity that I did not list above. Neither of them afford a designer noticeable advantages in a scenario where elaboration is the guiding evolutionary pattern. Using familiar methods to achieve familiar goals is better described as “cloning” a preceding game. Using unfamiliar methods to achieve unfamiliar goals is almost assuredly creation and not elaboration.

The goals in MMOs are quite standardized. The metaphor is of living in another world as a being with extraordinary abilities. This means that the goals players will have, in their most abstract forms, will be very similar between games. The game designer exercises their abilities in designing the necessary sub-goals that can lead to the achievement of abstract, standard goals.

The methods of achieving goals in MMORPGs are the game mechanics that the designers implement to mediate the interaction of the player characters with the game world. The tools designers to interact with the game world are very limited in the popular style of MMORPG, so elaboration can easily lead to gameplay that is significantly more fun. We’ve seen MMOs get more fun over the past ten years, and that trend should continue. Designers need to mind the gap between cloning and elaboration.

After getting through all this abstract talk of elaboration, the question becomes what exactly is familiar to players.

What cases can you think of where good familiarity factors have aided elaboration to create great mechanics? World of Warcraft is the first to pop to my mind—that explains its wild success. What about the rest of the market, though: which games do you think elaborate and which simply clone?

I’d love to hear cases where unfamiliar goals combined with unfamiliar methods have led to success, as well.

Social Competition

How highly do we value uniqueness in our RPG characters? I think we all want to be heard.

I was playing a female Draenei hunter with Evizaer even though I already have one. Same model, same professions. A few days ago, I was planning on transferring the older, level 43 hunter to our current server. I wanted to do this because she has a Nightsaber mount, the Furbolg wand, and pretty high Mining/Engineering (it's hard to keep up professions with RAF). But the rational part of my brain kicked in, and since I suspect we will only hit 48 by the time we head off to GDC Austin and then Aion, I decided against the transfer.

That Nightsaber mount is special. I remember going to the newbie Night Elf area and doing every Darnassus quest I could find. I did the same thing for a little Gnome mage I have because I don't like the appearance of the elephant nor Mechostrider mounts. But at the same time those accomplishments uniquely identify those two characters.

Achievement is also expressed though generational items, often earned during time-limited events. Wearing a Pumpkin Head in FFXI said "I was there". FFXI is without a doubt a much more social game than WoW. Players had casual clothing that they would wear in town. I had a very clownish costume of a Pumpkin Head, a blue kimono, and white slacks which I would often substitute with a Rusty Subligar. Here is an example of how ridiculous I often made myself look with the subligar.

It was a statement. Among all the Hume Dark Knights with face/hair model #3, I was the guy who wouldn't wear pants. I was also a walking trophy shelf. I never did any end game raiding in FFXI; event gear was all that I could show off.

In WoW 1.x, standing around in IF with all my fancy raid gear was enough to set me apart. Even if I did manage to obtain clown gear, I dare not remove the trophies of my accomplishments. During guild raids, I wasn't that unique snowflake anymore; everyone had uber gear. Thus I frequently brought "toys" from all the holiday events: snowballs, moon beams, pets, a reindeer, etc.. I often had at least one application of Noggenfogger on me at all times. It still is my favorite item in WoW. I made Evizaer come with me to Tanaris just to do that one quest.

The synthesis of social and competitive aspects cannot be decoupled. Your accomplishments mean nothing unless compared to others. Has a friend ever been really excited to tell you some feat he completed in a game you've never played? Sure you feel happy for his success, but you don't know how grand the accomplishment really is. We even juxtapose our solo trials. I can win Civilization 4 on the hardest difficulty (yea right!), but unless I've failed on Deity before, I have no sense of victory. It's all relative, just like any metric. I see players walking around in WoW with epic gear. It could be from some 5-man heroic or from Yogg+0 or whatever the kids are killing these days--I have no idea; the trophies are wasted on me.

If we use evolution to explain human behavior, the competitive backbone of society isn't that far fetched. Time and time again economists, anthropologists, and psychologists have tested the premise that humans should rationally choose the objectively better option when dealing with choices. But time and time again, humans show they would rather be better off relative to their neighbors. Keeping up with the Joneses. Or Ensidia.

Social players and achievement players are two sides of the same coin.

MMOs for Gamers: My Approach

Designers face a unique design hurdle in mass market MMOs: they have to make a game that isn’t relying on gamers for its chief source of subscribers and sales. I know many people who play MMOs but do not play games in general. They are drawn to the genre because it offers a social playground. The game mechanics are interchangeable and unimportant to them because they are just a side show to a game of social maneuvering, friend making, and accomplishing arbitrary goals cooperatively. If the game is popular enough to draw their friends in, the non-gamer will jump in and mass-market games are forced to make the landing comfortable. MMOs provide a microcosm of a meaningful life: you learn the game in your youth, you build trust and form relationships with others, you exploit those relationships and the dynamics of life in the world to do what you want to do and enjoy yourself.

It appears to me that most MMOs are produced with the goal of appealing to both the non-gamers and gamers equally (or appealing to primarily non-gamers in truth but appealing to gamers with marketing speak). I don’t think this is a productive approach. Non-gamers will not be interested in a game that forces them to play frequently and assumes they have some kind of skill and care about the outcomes of gameplay. They want a platform for social interaction. Gamers want the game to bind the players together into a de facto community—gamers do not want the community to draw the players. This naturally creates a situation that Gevlon likes to draw in stark relief: non-gamers who don’t really play the game intermingling with gamers who are primarily in the game to play it. To judge one group by the other’s standards, as Gevlon does to much controversy and dramatic effect, is foolish—it’s a variety of ethnocentrism akin in kind, but by no means in significance, to the ethnocentrism that mars many pieces of historical work regarding Asian and Middle Eastern cultures written by Western authors of the past thousand years. It’s easy to believe something is better just because it is your belief—it is not easy to come to grips with the complex reality of a multi-dimensional and multi-faceting picture of goals and motivations.

I approach MMO design as a gamer. I’ve played many games in nearly every genre. I don’t rely on the mainstream to supply games—I play and love games like Armageddon Empires, Romance of the Three Kingdoms (X and XI, primarily), Front Office Football, AI War, Dwarf Fortress, Europa Universalis 3, and ADOM. I seek to find the games that I will have fun playing, and play them until I no longer find them fun. I’m accustomed to learning difficult and opaque games; they often give me the greatest amount of concentrated fun. Blundering through difficult games for hours in order to learn even the simplest uses of their mechanics doesn’t faze me. In this, I’m a rare type of gamer and I’m indelibly a gamer.

I am the diametric opposite of a non-gamer, and understanding that will allow you to see where I come from with my design ideas and my exhortations towards a revolution in MMOs. Any MMO can rise and fall on the waves of social fancy among their players, but the ones that stay big seem to have good games locked within them. I want to design and play MMOs that are sound games around which strong communities can flourish. That is the most sensible and least trend-dependent (and therefore more stable) way of achieving success.

Currently Playing (September Edition for Evizaer)

Here’s a content-free post about what I’m playing these days. I tend to play games that are a bit off the beaten path and every good word you can put in for them is going to make a difference for the developers, so I think a shout out is appropriate. It’s also nice to see what kind of games an eternal critic like me actually satisfies himself by playing. I don’t think I’ll be posting reviews or critiques of these games individually, but I may break down individual mechanics that I find illuminating.

Here’s what I’m playing:

I've been playing League of Legends, though I may give up on it until it is released to the public due to there being not enough low ranked players for learning the game to be anything but a ridiculously frustrating and painful exercise.

I'm playing World of Warcraft a couple of hours a night with Mot. Using the Refer-A-Friend system makes the game just barely tolerable enough to keep playing. Got a Warrior up to 51 before getting bored. Switched to a priest who is now 32. I'm having fun. I would not play without 3x XP from RAF, though.

I'm playing AI War, an indie cooperative-only RTS that is ridiculously massive. Large unit counts in multi battle-field campaigns throughout a galaxy of 10-100 (maybe more?) planets. This game is worth a look because it experiments with asymmetric AI—the AI isn’t just a dumb attempt at simulating what a player will do, the developer of AI War has designed the AI only with fun play in mind, so the mechanics the AI follows are different from the player’s mechanics in some important areas such as unit creation, tech advancement, and unit movement between battlefields and throughout the galaxy.

I just got over a fit of Armageddon Empires. It's an awesome turn-based strategy game that uses card-game elements to spice things up. If the interface weren't awful, it'd be a very good game.

I'd like to get back into Europa Universalis 3, but I don't have the time to dedicate to relearning the game. It's a difficult game to wrap your head around. And once you wrap your head around it, it's a difficult game to play well.

I bought Hearts of Iron 3 upon release to support the developers, but I knew the game would be not worth playing for months. Paradox Interactive, the makers of HoI3, have a tendency to release really complex games that have gaping flaws, then patch them into being great games over the course of 1-3 years.

I will be playing Aion later this month with Mot. Hopefully its novelty will allow it to remain engaging for a month or two. I do not have high hopes, but I am looking forward to trying a game with a heavily eastern-influenced design. I tried Ragnarok Online (on a hacked server, which I guess means I didn’t get the full experience) and some other blah eastern-style MMOs and they yielded little fun.

LoL Info NDA Lifted

Beta Testers,

We are loosening the NDA to allow discussion of all elements of League of Legends.

As of now, you are now allowed to talk or write about the game with no restrictions.

You are still not allowed to post pictures or videos.

With this announcement, we encourage you to start writing blogs, posting comments on articles, recording podcasts and discussing League of Legends on your favorite external forums.

We also encourage everyone to correct any misinformation you see in discussions going forward.

Thanks for playing, and see you online!

- Pendragon

http://beta.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=8097