One of the hypotheticals that Richard Bartle brought up in his IMGDC keynote was in the context of a cautionary tale of bringing too much commerce and too “light” of experiences to the MMO space.
The theory went: Given that people’s first experience with an MMO tends to frame how they view everything else from then on, if we introduce future players to the space with too much to sell them in worlds that don’t have enough depth to them, are we risking them not finding the experiences as intriguing as they are those of us who occupy those spaces in this generation, and have enjoyed them thoroughly in the past?
The old-guard developer in me nods emphatically at that thought, but after thinking about it on returning home, I’m not as sure.
While I was in the middle of assisting another progress bar in its epic journey from Left to Right yesterday, a friend and I found ourselves laughing at a subtle, modern reference on an item description that neither one of us had stopped to read before. (For the record it was: “This is my booterang. There are many like it, but this one is mine.”)
That example is a far cry from (say) a 2d, commerce-specific world like a Habbo Hotel, of course, but I realized that moments like that are what I play these games for now - If we can both laugh about something like that from 2000 miles away, and I find the experience now just as entertaining as I did back in the old days, is it any less of an experience?
It is a different one, for certain, but in a way it seems even more personal, since sharing that humor also implies a real-life connection to knowing where this friend and I both heard that quote, on top of the shared world-specific knowledge.
That’s an element of humor that likely wouldn’t have existed in MMOs ten or even five years ago. In ways such as that, the MMOs that we have today are already considerably lighter than the ones that I started out with.
Did I trade one indescribable thing for one that’s a little more describable?
As long as I’m entertained by the experience, having fun with friends, does it matter?
What do you think? What is the indescribable “thing” that attracts you to MMOs? Has it changed over the time you’ve played?
Do you feel like you’ve actively lost something in the process, or do you feel that you’ve seen your tastes evolve a little?
As for me, I’m still not sure, but it’s something that I’m going to be keeping a closer eye on now.
Thanks, Richard. 
Richard Bartle said
April 3 2008 @ 12:24 am
>As long as I’m entertained by the experience, having fun with friends, does it matter?
It does, for two reasons (one pragmatic, one idealistic).
The pragmatic reason is that those friends have got to come from somewhere. People who have played virtual worlds for some time are fine, because they already have the friends; people who have to make the friends in the first place will feel shut out if everyone is already arranged in cliques.
The idealistic reason is that there are many forms of entertainment, but virtual worlds offer something unique on top of that - the freedom to be and become yourself. Now for long-term players, again, that’s not a problem: they’ve been on their hero’s journey and come out at the other end, so they can indeed spend their time (as Confucius put it) sitting on the porch drinking wine with their old friends. However, for those who haven’t been through the mill (either because the worlds they have been exposed too are too anodyne or because they were too young to appreciate it), they get the regular kind of entertainment but they miss the unique part that makes virtual worlds special.
In other words, my concerns aren’t for people who have been playing these game worlds for decades, they’re for the newbies.
Richard
Barbara said
April 3 2008 @ 9:16 am
One of the things MMOs have going for them is that they are huge. With tons of content, not only do you have room for these moments of levity, I feel you need them.
Intensity of any sort can’t be sustained. The brain just doesn’t work like that. Beautiful knock-me-out graphics, after a few hours, stop registering until something brings your attention back to it. Suspense, without some sort of relief, loses its hold. And intense immersion in any game can’t keep a lock on your brain 24/7.
Humor is now and has always been one of the best tricks for clearing the mental pallet. Sure, it pulls you out of the game for a minute. So do dishes, children, and cats in the lap. We recover. And that break in attention makes the re-immersion that much stronger once we go back in.
My first MMO was Everquest and it had amazing depth, but also humor. Before that, I loved the Wizardry and Ultima series of FRPGs, which also had both intensity and humor. I don’t think call-outs to pop culture are a new thing at all (even back all the way to Zork), and I know they never stopped me from finding great immersion and depth in the games I played.
Ken said
April 4 2008 @ 11:52 am
The issue I see is having an MMO generate, for want of a better term, “fish stories.” One generally thinks of “fish stories” as being the “one that got away” type, and I include that in my meaning as well, but I would also include types in which the tale was exaggerated or legendary.
MMOs need to work the
memory emotions situational enviroment spectrum in order for them to be something other than what I would call distractional entertainment.
How many people would continue to fish if you could go out every day and get anywhere from 5-10 2 pound 12 inch Bass, but that was all you could get? How many people would continue to play golf if there were invisble walls on the course (hence no oob), no rough, no sand traps, and you could get bogey or par, but that is it?
It is that big old fat bass we caught two years ago at Cave Run that keeps us coming back and make us smile every time we troll into that little cove where we caught him. It is that sweet drive, followed by a wedge to the trap, and finally the eagle we chipped in out of the bunker, that keeps us coming back to Quail Chase. It is the ups and downs that imprint upon us and cause us to put ourselves into situations where we can again experieince those feelings.
I would suggest that an MMO that doesn’t imprint postively will languish even if it is otherwise entertaining. I would suggest than an MMO that imprints too negatively will fail, even if it is entertaining in other regards.
As far as your question…
>As long as I’m entertained by the experience, having >fun with friends, does it matter?
Being entertained is good. Being entertained and imprinted is better because the latter keeps you coming back to those situations to a larger degree.
So yes, in my opinion MMOs must have a certain depth in order for the peaks to be truly memorable, and therefore the content engaging.
As far as too much to sell being a turnoff, I think it could be. Let’s go back to our fish or eagle story for a second. What makes these events notable, emotional, and therefore stickily memorable? Rarity. We get worked up and recount these stories because they are something notable. We “know” that the average Joe Schmoe may never do that, or does that very rarely. The significance of such an event is a “universally” accepted truth. The perception of the “specialness” of the event causes it to imprint.
Now, let’s say that you play a game involving non-cosmetic micro-transactions? Could that cause one to perceive an event is less special? Could the bombardment of advertisements ruin immersion? Ruin that otherwordly feeling? Possibly.
Right now MMOs are on the brink of something special, and if they can imprint AS A MEDIA, the future is bright. If they devolve into merely distractinal entertainment, akin to channel surfing, what is there to keep people playing when the next big entertainment thing hits the market?
These semi-coherent ramblings brought to you by the mind of no one special.
Ken said
April 4 2008 @ 11:54 am
Well that was suppose to have double ended arrows between memory, emotions, and situational enviroment to indicate a spectrum flowing both ways.
Babs said
April 6 2008 @ 10:15 pm
All these years later I think I’m still drawn to the MMO for the spontaneity of its community. As games have gotten bigger. my guilds have gotten older and I’ve needed to evolve into a solo player, I’ve started to pay attention to the “depth” part of the game itself. But I still enjoy watching other players having a blast. It’s probably the same reason I did concert promotion for so long - it’s immensely satisfying to observe (as fellow participant or creative catalyst) an audience that enjoys the good work you have wrought.