The internet seems to be on fire with this article I wrote about World of Warcraft. You probably came here to be all mad about it. If so, go ahead and say what you must.
On the other hand, if you have some ideas about how to create an MMO that doesn't have the problems I described in the article, that would be highly constructive.
Thanks,
--Sirlin
Related Posts
• World of Warcraft Also Teaches Good Things
• World of Warcraft Arena Balance, and Sirlin…
• 10-man Raiders: Second Class?
• Ernest and Patents
• Join my World of Warcraft Guild
• Digg this and help spread the word about Sirlin.net
• If you found this article useful and would like to donate to sirlin.net, please proceed to the Donation Page
• Discuss this article in the Sirlin.net forums
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006 at 5:55 pm and is filed under Blizzard Stuff.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 22nd, 2006 at 10:42 pm
For some reason the ability to comment on this post has been broken all day. I don’t know why, but it seems fixed now.
–Sirlin
February 23rd, 2006 at 12:18 am
probably fended off a ton of flames by having a temporarily broken comment system ;)
Your points on the honor system are correct. The Honor System has nothing to do with how skilled a PvP’r you are and everything to do with how much time you can devote to staying online and hitting Enter Battleground.
There’s also the rather strange issue that competition is not the “enemy” but rather your own side, who are jostling with you for ranks. Your allies are your enemies, and your enemies are your best friends, because by queueing up they give you a way of earning honor.
I think the “being alone together” experience is actually well-implemented in the 1-59 game. You can level up solo if you like, or duo, or find 5 man pickup groups to do instances. It isn’t too much trouble to do this, perhaps a bit of time standing LFG in Orgrimmar, but you aren’t forced to do instances in order to level. You can progress solo.
Now once you hit 60, suddenly the game changes. Your options for solo progression have all but disappeared; all that remains is the raiding game.
The raiding game itself, by its nature of lockouts and timers, is exclusionary. Once you pick a group of 20 or 40 people, you’re stuck with them for the duration of your lockout timer. This of course naturally leads to elitism and community fragmentation, making the end-game entirely guild centric. For all practical purposes, other guilds could just as well not exist in the PvE game, they don’t influence you at all (save on outdoor bosses, to which I will only say “Kazzak” to point out the wonderful success they are).
What’s missing from WoW is a faction-wide cooperative effort. There’s no reason for a member of an uberguild to team up with his fellow factionmate, unlike DAOC, there are no realm objectives such as capturing relics. Anything that matters is in an instance and the world is merely pretty decoration.
Not that the servers are stable enough to support anything on a scale of more than 100 or so characters…
All that said, I think your background in Street Fighter and intensely individually competitive games gives your analysis a unique perspective. MMORPGs are by their nature a cooperative game as well as a competitive one, and in WoW the cooperative elements have been emphasized, in an effort to broaden the market.
For the vast majority of WoW players, their main competition is not another human being — it’s the game itself, either in a raid instance or in some abomination of a battleground queue system. Even Arathi Basin and WSG eventually degenerate into a grind for faction or honor with players focused on maximizing their per hour gains and completely glossing over what you and I might call the competitive aspects (i.e. fighting). This is not helped that losing quickly is rewarded over putting up a tough fight.
Last Fall, I GM’d a PvP-only guild on a new server and I can’t even begin to see how many fishing/dancing groups as my guild’s reputation spread. People refused to fight — because the game gave them the incentive that not fighting was better than fighting and losing. Witness the rampant afking before the deserter penalty was implemented.
Your points as to the necessity of a guild are correct. This is the nature of the beast, and it is present in Guild Wars as well (at least at the highest end of play). There really isn’t room for 1v1 competition in WoW — classes are not balanced against each other at all.
Perhaps the most fun I’ve had in WoW have been 5v5 events set up in the Stranglethorn arena, where my guild organized teams from both sides (coordinating over IRC) to have a large gladiator style tournament.
Don’t get me wrong, WoW is a wonderful game… its popularity attests to its superiority to everything else out there. It is far from the best possible MMORPG, however.
I appreciated your insights on Gamasutra (along with playing to win articles from a few years back) and look forward to reading more on your blog.
–dominik
February 23rd, 2006 at 7:23 am
Using real-world analogies always opens you up to counter scenarios, and it’s anoying to see people get hung up on them.
MMO players, especially younger ones (noticeably into their late teens even), have a hard time hearing their game does not revolve around developed skill. If people are put off by that then they’re most likely going to miss out on the article, which I thought was quite good. Thanks for posting it.
February 23rd, 2006 at 7:28 am
Isn’t rewarding skill even more “elitist” that rewarding time? The percentage of people with free time is likely greater than the percentage of people who are truly skilled.
February 23rd, 2006 at 7:32 am
First, I would like to say that I agree with you on many points. I play many types of games. Chess, M:TG, FPS, RPGs, Fighting, Arcade, Dancing, and I think that’s all. Through all of these games, I’ve learned many things. I was thinking about looking into MMORPGs, but to my dissatisfaction, they did not please me.
I wanted to be able to get my friends and I to level up, naturally, and some how abuse the system. Namely, becoming a mercenary group for players to hire on quests or player-killers. WoW doesn’t even support this type of gameplay.
I want to be able to abuse the set up of rules, looking for loop holes to be the best. What Blizzard seems to do, is just ban you. As you said, they should change the coding. Not blame me because of their own programming.
I’ve learned strategies for fighting. (one on one, one on group, or basically war) Take your advatages and minimalize your disadvantages. I’ve learned how to think from outside my perspective. I’ve learned patience. I’ve learned team work and friendship. Open-mindedness. My entire mind frame is based on what I’ve learned. I learned many things, and I pass on my knowledge. I’ve learned from you Sirlin. Play to win.
I’ll do what I can to help you with MMORPGs. The only thing I can think of now (I’m in school and will probably be late for my class for this) is dividing the reward for quests.
Have all players and groups be able to go to every quest. Have a set reward for each quest no matter the number of players. If there is only one item, then the group must decide who gets the item. You learn that to help others while you get nothing material in return. Sorry, I can’t elaborate as much as I would like to. I’ll try think up some more ideas. I have no idea if WoW does this or not, but it doesn’t seem like it from the raids and such.
February 23rd, 2006 at 7:35 am
To the one before me…
In the real world, I would hire people who can get things done fast and with a great amount of skill. Rather than something mediocre or even done at the same level, at long periods of time.
Sirlin is trying to teach gamers lessons of the real world. Does it matter what he’s trying to teach? As long as it goes with our society’s structure, it will be a well taught lesson.
February 23rd, 2006 at 7:46 am
I’m not sure that I’d agree with you about the group>solo thing. I would lean to the viewpoint that teaching kids to get on with and organize 40 other people is a fairly humungous achievement.
Also, whereas ploughing time into WoW doesn’t really teach anything, in most other areas of life you’re only going to get better if you’re willing to spend the time. Therefore I would say that coming into a situation with an attitude that time spent is very important could be considered a fairly beneficial trait.
February 23rd, 2006 at 9:22 am
To say 1 hour should be equal to 1,000 hours is a childish reflection of how some people want instant gratification.
On the other hand, the honor system really does suck ass because people who lose can actually reach higher in the rank system than people that win… they just need to lose a lot more.
February 23rd, 2006 at 9:35 am
Sirlin, it seems to me as though WoW is engineered to be addictive. I used to only have one friend who played WoW…then another started playing, and even another (one of them even bought gold with real money). They often stay home or find excuses not to go places so they can play WoW all the time. One of them even passed up a date. They often talk about it extensively (almost all the time) whenever we’re all out together and they’ll make injokes about anything concerning the game when any oppurtunity arises, alienating anyone who doesn’t play.
Now, even more of my friends are playing (one more guy friend and two female friends). Yuck. It just doesn’t seem like a good game, rather, an addictive game.
What is even stranger is that one of my WoW playing friends said that he doesn’t like fighting games because they “are the same thing every time.”
February 23rd, 2006 at 11:41 am
Another insightful piece, so well done for that. I do agree with most of your points in the Gamasutra soapbox thing. While I agree that it is perfectly valid to play an MMO on your own, I think that a major part of MMO play is the co-operation. I think those 40-person raids are absurd though. I’ve read that the best, most successful teams range from between 4 - 10 people, so I think 40 is really excessive, unless there are squad commanders that report to a “general” who is then responsible for the tactics of thise 40-person raid. I really don’t know how raids work, since I don’t play much WOW (it’s been rather dull for me, so I’m probably going to quit). Anyway, I think most of your points are spot on, particularly the issues you raised about Blizzard’s TOS policies.
February 23rd, 2006 at 2:00 pm
Sirlin, I believe that the best way to make a MMO that fits your requirements is to go the route of Kingdom of Loathing and allow a limited amount of “turns” a day, or hours played. Of course, players could have as many alternate characters as they wanted. The problem then is that you have players being rewarded by playing daily. Perhaps a system other than “experience” is the answer?
February 23rd, 2006 at 3:36 pm
The problem is, I believe, that exposing real world problems with high accuracy in MMORPG would be harmful (even if it’d be obfuscated.) Imagine that you’re making building plans. You can learn what to do to make house usable. You can learn how to be competitive on market, and it’s all about skills. Cute, isn’t it? Another player can actually build this house, learn to conform to specs, learn to do what ppl who know certain thigs better (planing) tell him to do. It’s so perfect! You can become a real bartender, learn to listen to people, learn to earn money. This is all so cool! But what happens if you stop caring about real life? There are games already which enable both paying for certaing goods as well as gaining real money from characters (players) work. You don’t need real world job to survive, pay bills, eat… Take a look at Project Entropia to understand what I mean. Both real life rules and time-over-skill rules in artificial environment can be immersive and dreadful. No rules of “fun” will change it, there is always a common sense factor in it. Without common sense, even a game with rules by rules of fun ;) will be dangerous. When you don’t need real life problems and computer game can be a substitute of school of life, our civilisation will be doomed.
February 23rd, 2006 at 4:15 pm
Disclaimer: While I condsider myself a gamer, I got my MMO phase over with AC a LONG time ago. I talk with friends who play WoW but I have not played it myself, nor do I ever intend to.
Time>Skill -
1. Is it time or persisitence? Is there no skill in leveling rapidly during time spent? Is persisitence not worth rewarding?
2. If the idea that time>skill is totally alien to you…you never read the Tortoise and the Hare did you?
3. Are there ulterior motives to this design? Is the design meant to keep you playing? Is there a revenue model that expects players to buy the game and at LEAST play X months before moving on? Are there technical reasons why a player might have a negative experience if the game (feature) were purely skill based?
Group>Solo
1. See ulterior motives above.
2. So playing by yourself in WoW is inheritly less fun? I’ve heard that’s not the case from some players. That it in fact succeeds in this regard AS LONG AS, you don’t need to feel as though you are the BEST.
In the end, I think your original article comes off a little whiney. Kind of “WoW is a neat game but it totally sucks for us solo guys that want to re-live our Street Fighter days of glory”, is how I interpreted it. Mind you, your days of glory as a Street Fighter player extrordinare may still also be ahead of you. Hey on that note….aren’t there fighting game tournaments where you guys ban the use of certain moves becasue they are thought of as exploits or unfair advantages? Do you alter your tournament rules to acoomodate these short comings?
February 23rd, 2006 at 4:45 pm
to the above poster:
no, we don’t ban moves in fighting game tournaments. pretty much everything outside of physical contact with the other player is allowed.
February 23rd, 2006 at 5:26 pm
I stopped playing WoW months ago, for several reasons. When I saw the title of your article, I expected to see an article that I might agree on in a lot of points.
Instead I noticed that wour whole attitude towards the game is so exaggerated and biased, that even your most plausible arguments are easily overshadowed.
There is so much ignorance that I dont even know where to start:
>But far worse is the idea that
>millions of children are learning
>that doing things on your own is
>bad.
This statement is so over-the-top and stupid, that I dont even know what to say. Let me just say one thing: If we’re having one problem in this world, its for not working together enough, not the other way around.
Besides that, since you seem to believe that games have so much power that they absolutly brainwash every person - or at least child. Is’nt then Streefighter a lot more irresponsible for showing a world, where every conflict is solved by fighting? You are contradicting your own arguments.
I’ve been reading Gamasutra for years and all this time has not one article been so low in quality as yours.. and this comes from someone that doesnt even like WoW.
February 23rd, 2006 at 5:49 pm
Hmm. Apparently the above poster didn’t even read the whole article on his beloved site. Sirlin clearly said that SF ISN’T about beating people up. That’s like saying that chess is about destroying your enemy in all out war, which Sirlin also mentioned.
Dawolffman
February 23rd, 2006 at 7:49 pm
Hmm. Apparently the above poster “Dawolffman” didn’t even get my comment on his beloved site.
I love Streetfighter. My point is that sirlin is using two measures. One moment he is abstracting by saying that Streetfighter isnt teaching violence. The next moment he goes like “But far worse is the idea that millions of children are learning that doing things on your own is bad.”.
February 23rd, 2006 at 8:18 pm
Exactly, he was hinting to the underlying messages…
SF– Two people locked in combat.
Lesson: Yomi, strategic thinking, “sleight of hand”, etc…
The game is not teaching you to use yourself as a human bullet, channel electrical currents through your body, spit fire, or travel around the world challengig top-ranking fighters.
WoW– The player explores a world of magic and mischief to defeat dungeons and monsters.
Lesson: Strategic thinking, team work, time>skill, etc.
This game is not telling you to go out into the world dressed in armor and attack whatever creature you come across to magically become stronger, nor will they drop items or gold. Now, if you walked around and slaughtered helpless animals and then used their bones as tools and weaponry, that’s a LOT more realistic.
It’s actually obvious that sirlin was using the same measure for both SF and WoW. That is, of course, the underlying message in the game.
February 23rd, 2006 at 11:56 pm
What people don’t seem to understand is that while spending more time can lead to a development of skill, the main determinant to success in the real world is skill itself, where success is measured by results.
Ever wonder why college tests test you on you well you understand the material, instead of how long you’ve spent cramming? You don’t cram for 30 hours and then magically pass a course.
-JLC
February 24th, 2006 at 9:03 am
Mostly agree with all but a few of the following:
“When Lord Kazzak was added to the game, Blizzard also added a list of Terms of Service rules that would make your head spin. None of these rules were hard-coded; they were all “squishy” rules added on top of the actual game rules. And now for your reading enjoyment, the Lord Kazzak Official Rules of Engagement (I did not make these up; they are real!):”
There are 6 outdoor raid bosses currently in the game, and so far the rules only pertain to one of them. There’s a reason for this, due to how Kazzak works. The nitty-gritty:
-Kazzak has an AoE shadowbolt that does 2k to everyone within range of him, regardless of if you’re on his aggro list or not.
-Every time Kazzak kills someone, he regains a quarter of his total health. This alone isn’t a big issue except that…
-Kazzak “goes supreme”, where he starts using his AoE shadowbolt every few seconds, making him essentially unkillable. This happens if more than 40 people try to attack him at once (anti-zerg ability) or you do not kill him within 3 minutes.
The reason the ToS rules exist is that an unflagged (PvE) or friendly faction player can get themselves killed or cause Kazzak to go supreme and there’s nothing you can do about it with the tools provided in game. It’s not the most ideal solution, but it’s a bandaid until a fix gets added (ala banning rooftop camping until they gave the goblin bruisers guns).
Free-speech: you brought this issue up in an earlier article. Free speech is nice, but there’s a reason why private entities and public ones are held to a different standard in regards to it (Wal-mart can kick you out for holding a Klan rally in there store, for example).
Yeah, I think the rules about language can occassionaly be a pain, but the bigger problem is assholes provoking people into saying a bad word and then calling the overworked GMs on them, who are too busy to bother looking over the chat logs. However, I would assume you’re not allowed to start dropping racial slurs on your opponent in the middle of a fighting tournament, so I don’t see how some restrictions are horribly problematic in regards to the general chat channels.
This applies to the “gay-friendly” guilds idea, for the same reasons you’re not allowed to create a pro Christian/Muslim/Abortion/Republican guild: it’s typically too much of an invitation to start shit for both sides.
eBay gold: it’s mainly an issue because of the number of exploits gold farming companies use (teleport hacks et. al). Plus, as one lawyer wrote giving people property rights over virtual items is pretty much invitation for a shitstorm that offers no conceivable benefit.
So yeah.
February 24th, 2006 at 11:14 am
Check “Hard America, Soft America” out. It’s Michael Barone’s book on pretty much the same issues raised in your article.
What worries me is that given the choice, people tend to prefer risk- free cooperative games to competitive skill based games. I played Planetside a lot, and it is ruthless. No advancement is possible without literally killing other players for experience. Leveling up is pretty quick, and having a better character didn’t matter as much as FPS skill. Most play was solo. How did this game do? Badly. WoW? Hugely succcessful.
February 24th, 2006 at 11:54 am
Interesting article. The whole TOS thing seemed like a digre4ssion though, not really germaine to your key point about lessons learned.
In any case, I’d like to make a few points.
First the definition of fun you quote is very interesting. It really resonates with me as a game designer. However you seem to be making a huge conceptual leap, i.e. that the learning involved is directly analogous to real-world learning. I see this as not at all a given. In other words people are wired to like the act of learning, and what your learning can be real world or not. Looking at what they learned for real life “lessons” is not the same thing at all and has little to do with how fun the activity is.
Of course its reasonable to assume that people do learn real life lessons from gaming, as they do from any activity, but these real life lessons are not whats fun about the game. Your keyt point is a good example of this the “learning in a safe environment” of Warcraft is learning the many skills, equipment, etc. NOT learning that “time > skill”.
So my problem with your remaining argument is that all games can be analyzed to show similarly “dangerous” messages. Does not Mortal COmbat teach that all problems are solved with violence? That no one can be trusted, even your best friends will fight you to be top dog? That skills in one arbitrary area define a ranking of people? That Finishing downed opponents is the only way, no mercy?
Similarly, good “lessons” can be found in mosty games as well. Team work, general social interaction and economic principles are all lessons you can learn from WoW. Other lessons are organization, causational relationships, and risk reward analysis.
I believe it is impossible to know what lessons a game will teach any individual, besides what it teaches about playing the game itself (the fun part). Each person will be effected and changed by a gaming experience in ways that are shaped by that experience filtered by their unique perspecitve. In fact you are a case in point, you didn’t learn that time > skill from WoW. In fact the experience has brought home to you the opposite.
February 24th, 2006 at 1:09 pm
Chozo said: …as one lawyer wrote giving people property rights over virtual items is pretty much invitation for a shitstorm that offers no conceivable benefit.
Couldn’t one argue that shares in a company are also “virtual property” that one buys and sells on the stock market? The difference is that the law, the government, and the general populace have all agreed that shares have value, and that people can own them — despite the fact that you cannot physically touch the shares that you own in a company. It’s a virtual property of a kind.
One of the problems with this virtual gold buying and selling on eBay is that people disagree over the validity of this practice. Blizzard says it’s not allowed, but people can very easily go to eBay or elsewhere to buy in-game gold. It’s a fairly common practice, since there wouldn’t be a market if people weren’t buying it. However, I am sure that most players would never admit to buying gold with real-life money, since there’s a stigma attached to it. Also, the market is not regulated, so you’ve got people exploiting the situation.
February 25th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
“Couldn’t one argue that shares in a company are also “virtual property” that one buys and sells on the stock market? The difference is that the law, the government, and the general populace have all agreed that shares have value, and that people can own them — despite the fact that you cannot physically touch the shares that you own in a company. It’s a virtual property of a kind.”
Couple problems with that argument.
1. The company sells the shares itself.
2. There are numerous legal hoops to jump through. You simply can’t start selling or buying shares of Tom Dick and Harry Co.
If you give people ownership over their virtual items, you open up the door for lawsuits because you, say, changed the color of their house or nerfed the stats on their items. There’s no practical benefit for a company to ever consider such an idea, because the designers are hamstrung by outside factors in trying to balance their game.
February 27th, 2006 at 5:00 am
Great article, I mostly agree with Tom H. up there about the TOS bit, but I think it strenghtens a core tenet (i.e. players will use the tools we devs provide, and it is our onus to control proliferation/end unintentional exploits, not to ward against them in the ToS) and I agree with that tenet wholly.
Also, re: John Lynch’s comments about Planetside, you sir, are spot on in analysis, but how sad is it that good and fun games are no longer viable if they can’t financially compete with a ‘balanced for the common-denominator’ product?
I know a few folks in the industry that didn’t sign up to become rock stars or to sell a billion copies, but rather to make great experiences, tell awesome stories, and otherwise bring the same escapist joy to the people that they themselves experienced on thier introduction to video gaming. I think that goal is harder and harder to reach in a environment focused on the bling more than the zing ya know?
February 28th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
I found this article interesting, as I’ve found most every article on this site at least mildly interesting, and I agree with most of it, but the reality is that Blizzard is a corporation, trying to make money. As pointed out above, Planetside did not do so well. WoW is a game that targets gamers of all types, from the people who will get addicted and play all day, and to the people who do not play too many games, but enjoy playing WoW with their friends from school. I will never be able to play a MMORPG if the model remains the same. I am a highly competetive person, and any game in which how much you play is directly proportional to how good you are is not a game I want to play. Currently, I’m competing in Warcraft III, and I believe the game has innumerable flaws (unlike Starcraft), but the reality is, it is a competetive game. I hope to compete internationally within the next two years. Just by the fact that I am among the best American players makes me different from the players of WoW. They do not care about skill > time. For these people, and that is most people, do not want a game of pure skill. I do, but they do not. Blizzard has made a highly addictive game, that appeals to a larger target audience than any skill-based game ever has. This is how they make money.
March 1st, 2006 at 12:38 am
Greetings Mr. Sirlin.
Despite of how did you expressed your opinions at Soapbox, I think I get your idea, when I come to your website, this blog entry shows that is not pure criticism is a GAME DESIGN CHALLENGE. I don’t know if the best way to start such discussion is blame an AAA for something that is common in ALL Fantasy MMORPGs, but it’s also a way.
Like you ask to post some ideas that can help in design a different MMO I think that this is unnecessary, MMOs can be anything, games where you simply select a spaceship, a warrior or a fighter from a default set and PvP forever against multiple massive online players can be easily designed. Simply offer a score of wins like reward system and establish a game play that like in FPSs relies on player’s “physical” game operation skills.
This will be ok to a MMO, but is this enough to a mmoRPG?
A infinitely most interesting “if not impossible” challenge is try to create a merit system that not relies on time expended with Fantasy RPG based games, games like these have another target audience, mmoRPGs have a reward and competition system that approaches a “SIM WARRIOR”, is not only how well do you play, they main relies on avatar and set building and the PvE challenge is updated with character evolution.
Evolving a character trough PvP or PvE combat until if changed to a physical skill based combat system will still with the trouble time>skill, because an ordinary player that plays 10 hours/day will remain between the server champions, but I doubt that many “default RPG players” will find it interesting.
A hybrid that can show what I’m trying explain is Rakion from Softnyx that you can find at http://rakion.softnyx.net .
March 1st, 2006 at 6:37 pm
Nice article, I stopped MMoRPGs because of the time>skill thing.
I’ve been playing fighting games for a long time, so naturally I don’t need too long to pick up on a new one because I understand certain things like spacing, move properties. My years of knowledge get transferred to the new game, adapted and voila, I already do decent. In an MMO I can have played for years, the moment I start a new one, it’s all for nothing. I can have played for years but it hardly counts anything being my ability to endure long grinds.
On a strange note, I somehow like Ragnarok online. Maybe because it’s a more loose game… or because the enivironment is very uncompetitive. Simply a nice time-sink, occasionally :)
March 1st, 2006 at 8:32 pm
nice article.
guildwars seems to have handled the issue to at least a little extent by seperating pvm/story from pvp/competition. however, the item grind still remains and without a constant group youll get stuck. but at least youll get stuck at a very high level and still beeing able to compete with others.
sadly in guildwars you play a specialist, so 1on1 is out of the question. still pvp is very challenging with things like player collision detection and projectile physics.
of course, gw is far from beein perfect or even a full mmo, but it at least trys to make a difference. on the bottom line, i don´t think you can sell a “traditional” mmo with heavy focus on player skill. too many ppl won´t play the game just becuase they refuse to invest intellectual ressources in their freetime (stupid concept, but some ppl tick that way!) and therfore only want to play the game over a timeperiod and get a reward.
but carry on on your crusade … ill be your first and loyal fan.
March 2nd, 2006 at 2:44 am
David..it warms my heart to see that you are unwavering in your reductionist logic. Having worked with you in the past, I’m well aware of how inflexible you are to the opinions of your peers and coworkers, but it amazes me that you are incapable of understanding the base concept of fun…the reason WOW is so successful is because it creates a pace that encourages socializing. WOW is actually many games in one, and allows for unstructured play. Not everything is about street fighter, a game with a simple mechanic that isn’t applicable to all games.
March 2nd, 2006 at 3:30 am
anonymous, what are you doing these days? Have you found anyone who does value your opinion, and if so, where? Because in my experience, David only ignores people who are dumber than him (but I don’t think he would admit to that). Which is why I’ll wager I’ve never heard him mention you.
March 2nd, 2006 at 3:45 am
First, let me say that you single out WoW for many things that most MMORPGs do, mostly, they are aquisition games. Any game that has a level system (Ultima, SWG, EQ, etc) will reward time spent on a character over the skills of the player. All character games are structured this way, including thousands of single player offline games spanning several decades.
Second, you mention they ban people who buy and sell in-game items on ebay as if that is a bad thing. What lesson does that teach kids if they were to allow it- that they can buy their way around working for what they get?
USDing damages in-game economies and does tangible damage to game-play quality, I don’t think any judge will overrule an EULA anytime soon on that one.
Perhaps you may prefer a game like neocron2 which is a twitch-based fps mmorpg, which places a bit more emphasis on player skill over character skill. I think however, you are taking your personal preferences and finding reasons to draw a moral argument where there is none.
WoW teaches if you work hard enough long enough, you’ll see rewards for that effort. Other games may teach to work smarter instead of longer, which is also valuable, but not all games need to teach all things to all people. You cannot learn how to work with a group in streetfighter, but I won’t fault it for that.
Please reconsider your crusade, your good points get lost when muddled in with fallicious ones.
March 2nd, 2006 at 4:38 am
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=7311744&tmp=1#post7311744
March 2nd, 2006 at 7:54 am
not-so-anonymous here Says:
March 2nd, 2006 at 2:44 am
> David..it warms my heart to see that you are
> unwavering in your reductionist logic. Having
> worked with you in the past, I’m well aware of
> how inflexible you are to the opinions of your
> peers and coworkers, but it amazes me that
> you are incapable of understanding the base
> concept of fun…the reason WOW is so
> successful is because it creates a pace that
> encourages socializing. WOW is actually many
> games in one, and allows for unstructured
> play. Not everything is about street fighter, a
> game with a simple mechanic that isn’t
> applicable to all games.
… and then from the linked WoW forum, he says:
248. Dave is a Dink. | 2/28/2006 2:14:51 PM PST
> I have worked personally with this guy at Big
> Ape Production on Celebrity Deathmatch.
>
> This guy was (and judging form this article,
> still is) a total dink.
>
> I would not take anything Dave has to say
> seriously. In over a year and a half at Big Ape,
> working on Celebrity Deathmatch (A wrestling
> game he was hired to make like his beloved
> Streetfighter, and FALIED) he could not make
> one sound decision.
>
> He was a terrible designer, and from the looks
> of it still is.
>
> Cheers,
> Jareth McBrehon
I also worked at Big Ape with both David Sirlin (the original article author), and Jareth “Doc” McBrehon.
Hey Doc:
That’s pretty rich of you to try to insult Sirlin about Celebrity Deathmatch considering you were fired from the project. It’s also either inappropriately malicious or horribly uninformed of you to characterize Sirlin’s responsibility on that project paraphrased as “turning a wrestling game into his beloved Street Fighter.” The truth of the matter is that Celebrity Deathmatch was a doomed project from the outset because it had grossly inadequate engineering support and rotten management. Sirlin was hired after the title had been languishing for over a year and he saw it through to completion as thoroughly and entertainingly as possible under the adverse circumstances.
Sirlin is not “inflexible to the opinions of his peers and coworkers.” He engages them all in honest dialog through his designs, articles, blogs, forums, e-mail, his book, etc.. Neither should you be amazed because Sirlin is totally capable of “understanding the base concept of fun.” Sirlin constantly writes awesome game designs and is habitually hamstrung by insufficient and incompetent development teams and companies. You wouldn’t know a good designer or a good design decision if it would save your life (or save your precious goblin character from needing a res).
You claim “WOW is so successful because it creates a pace that encourages socializing” and it’s “many games in one, and allows for unstructured play.” It must be flying over your head that “alone together” as mentioned (where large parties are optional but not essential) can be just as “social” as WoW. A better MMO than WoW could “create pace”, have “many games in one”, and allow for “unstructured play.” You don’t seem to be adding anything worthwhile to the discussion.
It should be obvious that Sirlin deeply contemplates the ramifications of fundamental design decisions and methodologies. He is actively engaged in the discussion of where MMO games reside presently and where they need to go and how to best get there. It’s great and fine for you to discount his opinion but don’t disparage his skill when you have less or none to speak of. It’s a totally cheap shot of you to argue anything based on whatever projects Sirlin, you, and I all had the misfortune of working on in the past. Maybe you could try arguing with relevant ideas next time instead… or you could butt out of design discussions you don’t belong in and go waste away with your favorite time sink because you’re the only dink around here.
-Pip Stuart
March 2nd, 2006 at 11:01 pm
A good idea remains a good idea even if its only proponent is a nobody. A bad idea remains a bad idea even if its main proponent is some dink with several game titles to his credit (I didn’t bother looking up Jareth McBrehon, I’m just giving him the benefit of the doubt). Jareth, now that you have publicly defended Blizzard’s bad decisions to those of us who are looking for a WoW replacement, thanks for letting us know that we probably won’t be interested in a game with your name on it.
Pip: ROTFLMAO
March 2nd, 2006 at 11:44 pm
i havnt read much only the main article but i wish the stress of this was put on the shoulders of blizzard that they do these things to keep players playing. see it costs money to play longer, you pay by time and are reqarded by how much time you slave over the game.. it isnt the nature of fun or gaming.. its the nature of making profits, if anything one would call the world of warcraft makers corrupt
March 3rd, 2006 at 6:04 am
Ahhhh, PIP!
How the hell are you man!
I wondered what happened to you! Still following the all mighty Dave around I see.
First off, that first quote from “not-so-anonymous here Says:” is not me.
Actually it goes to show I am not alone in my opinion of Dave or his poor ideas.
As you can see, if I write something, I add my name. I’m not ashamed at calling Dave a poor designer or a dink. I feel he is.
I would NEVER publicly write something about someone (good or bad) without including my name. Besides, that first post is filled with all sorts of fancy words. I prefer to cut to the chase… such as “Dave is a Dink”.
Next, I was laid off from Big Ape Pip. Laid off because of the second project we had failed, and the company had no more money. I was laid off with about half of what was remaining of the company. This does happen allot in the game industry. Small game developers like big ape do implode quite often and many people are laid off as a result. Of course I did make Dean Sharpe mad by telling him that CDM was doomed (largly because of lack of DESIGN), and that as a leader he was mostly to blame. I believe that did add me to the list as to who was to go and who got to stay.
NOW, You (if I remember correctly) were actually fired and, not laid off, for incompetence. In an effort to keep it fairly civil, Ill spare the details here on the public forums.
Yes I agree that CDM was a nightmare. It was and your points are 100% accurate with the mismanagement of the project. It was a terrible project. Dave did have some to do with it being a terrible project (he didn’t know what he was doing, and he had no Game design experience), and a lot of the management was in part Dave’s responsibility and duty on that project.
I don’t put blame the failure of CDM on Dave shoulders. HOWEVER he was hired against BA’s will make CDM more like Streetfighter. Big Ape did not want to hire Dave; because his ONLY qualification was that he won a streetfighter tournament. Again, I will not go into the details on a public forum.
Regardless, Dave had his chance to make the game he himself prides himself as an expert in, and he failed to get close.
The ENTIRE time I worked with Dave, he failed to answer a single question, or make one decision. As a designer of a game he was there to A) made discussions, and B) Answer Questions. I also remember the Animators hating to work under Dave because he usually had no idea about what he was talking about. Maybe that has changed now, and Dave knows a little more. His Essay leads me to believe otherwise.
As much as I would love to sit here and talk about the good old days…
CDM, Big Ape, nor you are the topic that on the table at the moment.
Now that the ugliness is all taken care of lets examine Dave’s article.
In short, Dave challenges many points of Worlds of Warcraft with weak analogies, poor arguments, unfair examples, and offers NO alternatives himself.
Let me explain.
Dave “Fancies” himself as a great game designer.
I can assure he is not, on many levels.
He lacks a great many qualities that make great designer. To be fair, he DID lack these qualities, and judging form his article, he still lacks them.
A good (not even great) game designer should be capable of the following:
A) Have a good understanding of ALL games in general.
If a game designer cannot understand WHY something as simple as Tic-Tac-Toe, Checkers, Tug-0-War, are entertaining and fun, they lack the basic fundamentals of what “Games” are all about. These are as basic as games can get, and any game designer worth a damn understands this.
Now for Dave’s Article, (No past work experience included), Dave himself cannot Define “Fun”. THIS SHOULD BE FUNDAMENTAL. It is the basis of WHY people play games. Games are Entertainment. If they fail to be fun, nobody will play them. Over 5 million people play WoW. As a Designer Dave Should be asking himself, “WHY are so many people playing this game?” and “ WHAT is it that makes this “fun”?
Professionally speaking, WoW is a huge success. Any game designer saw this coming a mile away, and knows WHY it is such a success. Even if they don’t like it personally.
Even if they couldn’t see if before it hit the shelves, any game designer should be able to see why WoW (and many other MMORPGS like it) are so successful.
Just to clear it up:
Here is what Dictionary.com has to say about “Fun”.
________________________________________________________________________
5 entries found for fun.
fun ( P ) Pronunciation Key (fn)
n.
A source of enjoyment, amusement, or pleasure.
Enjoyment; amusement: have fun at the beach.
Playful, often noisy, activity.
fun
adj : providing enjoyment; pleasantly entertaining; “an amusing speaker”; “a diverting story”; “a fun thing to do” [syn: amusing, amusive, diverting, fun(a)] n 1: activities that are enjoyable or amusing; “I do it for the fun of it”; “he is fun to have around” [syn: merriment, playfulness] 2: verbal wit (often at another’s expense but not to be taken seriously); “he became a figure of fun” [syn: play, sport] 3: violent and excited activity; “she asked for money and then the fun began”; “they began to fight like fun” 4: a disposition to find (or make) causes for amusement; “her playfulness surprised me”; “he was fun to be with” [syn: playfulness]
________________________________________________________________________
In Short, Fun is to Engage in something entertaining. To have a good time.
This is FUNDAMENTAL above all for a game designer to understand.
“What is Fun” “Why is it fun” are the core of entertainment.
Dave’s Analogy of fun was moronic. “Fun is like pornography: I know it when I see it.”
What else is like Porn Pip?
Lets Explore, Shall we?
Bad Articles are like pornography: I know them when I see them.
Morons are like pornography: I know them when I see them.
Faith is like pornography: I know it when I see it.
Love is like pornography: I know it when I see it.
Space is like pornography: I know it when I see it.
I hope this makes my point.
B) Have a basic understanding of the audience they are designing their game for.
It is blazingly apparent form Dave’s article that he has totally missed what KIND of game WoW is and who would be interested in playing it.
WoW is designed around most of the basic core ideas of a Computer Role Playing Game.
Computer Role Playing Games were designed around the mechanics of Table Top Role Playing Games such as Dungeons and Dragons. Almost all of these games are about building your character, solving problems, taking on quests to earn experience to advance your character, to work COOPERATIVLY with a GROUP of people to achieve the goals of the quest.
The fact that Dave uses Streetfighter as an example for how WoW is a poor game is much like using the argument of:
“A Ferrari is poor example of a car because it cannot haul nearly as much as a U-Haul.”
As this statement it 100% true, it judges one car against another based upon something it was not designed to do whatsoever.
That being said, let me explain to you what WoW is based upon and how it is an amazingly successful game.
WoW, is based around a turn based battle mechanic. Its not based in real time. Where the “Skill” comes in, is how to organize a group to achieve something above what you can do single handedly (in some cases). Most high end encounters are like puzzles to figure out, and they are done well. The “puzzles” come in the form of tactics, adapting to situations, and WHEN to use the abilities to your advantage, and claim a victory.
THIS is who WoW was built for. This is the 5mill+ abidance that enjoys WoW.
3) Understanding Game mechanics to set forth challenges to be beaten.
Without challenge, there really isn’t much of a “game”. In essence it is usually the Challenge of the game that makes the game “fun”. Not only are there win/loose situations, but also Succeed /Fail type games. Sim City is not a Win/loose based game, it is very much a Succeed/Fail based game. Dave seems to have missed this in his narrow view of games as a whole.
Streetfighters challenge is in our maneuvering your opponent, using button combos to perform moves to not only defend yourself form your opponent, but to also gain the advantage over them. This does take a large amount of Skill, to know when to use what move, when, and how fast the player can perform the moves.
WoW sets forth an entirely different set of challenges. WoW sets forth Tasks to complete in order to earn the experience you need to advance your character. it is a MUCH slower game than a fighting game, FPS, RTS, ETC… It is the challenges are in figuring out how to complete the tasks. Part of that is gaining Levels, being part of a Group, etc.
Its clear form Dave’s Essay that he does not see the difference between these two games or at least finds them so similar as to be able to use one as an example of why the other fails.
4) The ability to build a Game that you yourself may not be a fan of.
This design philosophy is a hard one to deal with and I’m sure is highly debatable. I feel that any designer worth their stones can design ANY SORT of game professionally.
Of course its always better, and a lot more enjoyable to be part of a game you are very excited about, but it takes a professional to be able to build a game well for someone else even if they themselves aren’t exactly a fan. Of course its much harder the latter way, but if you can do it, and Enjoy it… That says a lot about the designers ability.
It says that the designer understands what it takes to make something enjoyable no matter what.
It says that the designer is capable of a long term value to an employer in a very volatile industry.
It also goes to show that the designer can identify the product with the people who are looking forward to it.
Dave seem stuck on Streetfighter. He always comes back to Streetfighter. Its as if he knows very little about any other sort of game. His article reflects this amazingly well.
5) A Basic understanding of the Development Prosess.
This is an area Dave lacks almost entirely, Or at least he did while he was employed at Big Ape when I knew him.
It is critical that as a designer you MUST know HOW your game is to work. There is no better way to understand this, than to be part of the team and actually posess the ability to take part on some sort of its production. Level Design is problem the best position for a Designer. Scripting, AI Programming, Environmental Art, Concept Artist or Basic Programmer are also EXCELENT places for a Designer to be. Its a lot of work to be a designer, and as such you have to answer a lot of questions. The best way to answer the questions and solve problems that arise during development quickly, and with less chance of failure, is to understand the game as one of the people building it.
As far as I know, Dave does not have these abilities. To be just “A Game designer” is to work in a bubble out of touch with the project. It puts you at a disadvantage.
Anyway, lets get back to Dave’s article.
The Moral side of WoW.
This is just moronic. You can find Amoral ideals in almost anything if you stretch it far enough. This does not make you deep, it makes you look like an ass. Dave wrote a long essay making himself look like an ass.
WoW is not damaging our children. WoW is not teaching out children that time spent on something entitles them to a reward. To say that it is, is moronic.
Someone can just as easily use the same feature in WoW to say that it is teaching our Children very positive things. Things like, If you want something, you have to earn it. Sometimes you have to ask for help form your peers, because you are not strong enough to accomplish it yourself, and that this is ok.
Same feature, different side. JUST as valid.
Dave states that Streetfighter taught him allot of positive things about life. I don’t disagree with that at all. I am totally sure it has.
Lets argue the other side (because its just that easy).
Streetfighter teaches all the WRONG things in our youth (Dave’s choice of GTA was too easy to pick on).
It teaches kids fighting moves they wouldn’t other wise have access to.
It teaches kids that they can accomplish things by Fighting.
It teaches that the better fighter always wins.
It teaches winning is all that matters.
Of course these idea are broken down into single sentences, but its just as easy to write a whole essay on each one of those topics, and more.
Truth, WoW is not ment for little kids. Its intended abidance is Teen and above. If people haven’t figured out their moral code by the time they are 12-14, I doubt they will be looking to On-Line Video games for guidance.
Now, The Honor System…
Maybe one of Dave’s most Valid points in the entire essay.
I think there are allot of valid points Dave has not taken into consideration. Judging from what he wrote in his Essay, it seems to me he did miss the entire idea of the Honor system, but that is not entirely his fault, but also Blizzards. Its presented as a system that has a goal that everyone could and Should achieve. This is not the case, and Dave has a valid point.
The system is flawed in that it promotes to the player to achieve the highest rank they must be “Better” than everyone else. To me this defeats the entire idea of what WoW is mechanically all about.
There is no “Better” in WoW. The honor System grants the “Best” player bonus items, and because you CAN play 24/7 people will to archive this. That will kill any fairness in any competition, which the honor system has become by its very nature.
Lets examine blizzard’s “honor” system just to be fair. I don’t have to agree with it to understand it.
Honor is based not only on TIME spent. Of course lots of time does matter. Honor is based upon many factors, not just time. Weather your side wins or not comes into play, how many PCs you killed, are some parts that are also factored into the equation.
You can PVP 24/7 but if you loose all the time, I can still earn more “Horner” but playing 8 hours a day and Win a Victory every time.
This gives players with better Skills, better able to communicate, who have more time to spend in PVP Battlegrounds, and Larger Numbers to help them a HUGE Advantage.
The Solo player, like Dave, no chance at becoming number 1 in the WoW, PVP world.
I personally dislike PVP in games like WoW. I personally feel that they promote the wrong idea of that I feel the game is, in essence, all about.
I feel MMORPGs are based on a Co-Op System rather than a competitive system. PVP, brings Competition into a Co-Op environment, and I don’t think the two mesh well. They can be together, but I personally don’t think they work well together form a game design point of view. You usually have to stick with one or the other.
HOWEVER:
I also understand that I am not the majority of the MMORPG population, and can accept that PVP is an option if I choose to partake. IT IS NOT MANDATORY to accomplish my personal goals in the game. This is a strength by the way Pip and Dave. It gives the player options.
As such, I don’t partake in the PVP in almost any On-Line game, simply because I find that I don’t enjoy it as much as solving and accomplishing goals I set for myself in these types of games. The FACT that I CAN play WoW and choose to play differently that You, Dave, or anyone else is an incredible strength of the game. How many different ways can you play Streetfighter?
Now, For the Dave’s Argument of Abusing Exploits, and the terms of service.
Now I understand how much Dave likes a good exploit to abuse in order to show us his l33t Skillz, but it takes the “Fairness” out of any sort of game. Something Dave is raving about WoW not being.
Taking into consideration how complex it is today to build a competitive game, it is nearly impossible to ship a 100% bug free game.
Persistent World MMORPGs by their nature have to build about 4-5 single player games worth of content to even start to be competitive. It is this reason that the devs cannot account for EVERYTHING over 5 Million people can and will find to exploit. Camping on roof tops of Gagetztan was a hot topic for quite a while, and the fix is not necessarily always an easy one. I haven’t checked, but i DO believe that this particular “Bug” was fixed.
As to Profanity, Verbal Abuse, and other such “Bannable” offences, these stem from a Legal point of view. If Dave DOES indeed make his MMORPG in the future, he will also be REQIRED to support and enforce allot of the same “Bannable” offences.
To think he can work around allot of these issues is moronic. Any publisher worth a damn will not take on something that in turn will become a legal problem for them. To get published, you have to support legal ideas and enforce them.
Don’t even get me started on Gold Farming. This is a highly debated issue, and its pretty popular that most people feel such activities ruin Perpetual World Economies pretty fast. As a matter of fact, I believe its usually referred to as a “Problem”. So much a problem I also think its outlawed in China, and they are creating real life laws deal with the issue.
That would be Outlawed by CHINA, and not to be confused with what we have here in the US of it being against the EULA of Blizzard.
Lets move on to your request for “Constructive Criticism”. I never saw one valid constructive point made in Dave’s Essay. I only saw his complaints about it. I still see no Constructive points made in either of your posts.
All I do see is you defending Dave with petty arguments.
Now, let Dave defend himself Pip. It doesn’t do Dave any good to have you fight his battles for him. He’s a big boy and he can do it all by himself.
As for you, and you’re friends not buying any game with my name on it personally?
This is ok with me. Unlike you and Dave, I seem to grasp the idea that “I” do not build a game. I am part of a much larger team that builds the games I work on. Usually I’m just 1 person in a team of anywhere from ten to sixty. This has given me the capacity to realize that I do not build my games, but rather I work on my companies games.
It also give me the capacity to understand what makes a Computer version of Football fun for somebody other than myself, design a game around Football, build stadiums for a football game, all without not really liking football myself very much.
Its what makes me a professional over a fanboy in my work.
I by myself lack the rest of a team that I would require to build my game, and the publisher to produce and ship my games out to the public. I also lack the Time and Cash to do it all myself.
I too design Games. As a Hobby.
I try to design WIDE Varity of games to keep myself challenged.
I extend my designs to as many different types of games as I can..
I ask other people who like games I personally dislike, in a search for understanding of what it is they are finding in the game as entertaining.
I also break down existing games into their core fundamentals in a search to examine the “WHY” of that game.
I am not a game Guru, and don’t claim to be. This industry is to large for “Game Gurus”, and to claim your self as such shows ignorance and idiocy as well as an immense ego. Hence my opinion (and obliviously from your “Quotes” not mine alone), Dave is a Dink.
And you, Pip, are someone who looks up to and follows blindly behind a Dink.
March 3rd, 2006 at 6:42 am
I too worked with both Dave and Pip.
I’ve got over 15 games to my credits, 3 original designs and numerous licence based designs. I’m still working happily away as a designer.
Dave isn’t necesarily a bad designer. His understanding of game design is good. What he lacks is just experience. Actual hands on game making experience is very different from theory of game design. One key thing that comes from experience is the understanding of the target market for a game.
Dave’s a hardcore gamer, he talks about how games that deliver for him, the hard core gamer. Now in 15 years of sitting in meetings, where millions of dollars were being tossed around for game developement, not once did anyone say “Let’s make this game for the hard core gamer”. What they say is “We want this game to hit the mass market… If it’s good you will get the hard core gamer also”. If you get someone like my mom, or anyone that has never played that type of game before, interested in your product, you did something right.
When I look at Dave’s article about WoW, and think back to the design he did for Celebrity Death Match, I see Dave coming at both as if these are games for the “Hardcore audience”. Celebrity Death Match was a beer and Pretzle game, it never should have been aproached like Street Fighter for design. WoW in many ways is the Beer and Preztles version of a MMRPG. It’s a hugely successful because it got a lot of non-MMRPG people playing. It’s not a hardcore game, it never planned on making money by hitting the hardcore MMRPG market. Hardcore players will find much to enjoy, but it’s the casual gamers that are the big money for the product.
I think Dave just needs to start looking behind the marketting decisions that drive a lot of game design, and think of the games in terms of how they appeal to the consumer, not to Dave. Dave and any hardcore gamer is not the target consumer for most games developed today.
Mike Ebert
March 3rd, 2006 at 7:39 am
Hey, it’s a Big Ape family reunion! Hiya guys!
Dave, I’m not exactly sure where to begin. First off, I should give you a bit of my WoW background.
I played WoW for over a year and only managed to get my character (Zanzibar, natch) to level 45. I could only play 2 to 3 times a week, for about 3 or 4 hour stretches, and couldn’t play on the weekends. As with every other MMORPG that I played (except for maybe Meridian 59), I would get easily outdistanced by friends, as they outleveled me so that I couldn’t keep up with their experience. However, my overall feeling about the game is incredibly positive.
I enjoy a group mentality in my gaming - I will always prefer ‘team-based’ gaming over individual accomplishments. WoW definitely rewards that kind of social interaction.
You, however, seem to prefer the individual accomplishments that something like Street Fighter rewards, and you feel that the challenge comes from learning and exploiting the nuances on a set character rather than guiding that character into learning new “skills” or acquiring armor etc. What I see you saying is that WoW ‘teaches the wrong things’ - for gamers like YOU.
I disagree with your assumption that it’s merely time that elicits advancement. I could stand in Stormwind City for years and not advance. In order to gain abilities and items, you need to adventure out into the game world. In-game, I would hear stories of places to visit, and then would go out and visit them, meeting new people and then grouping together. Invariably someone will know ‘how’ to accomplish a task, thus they would teach the rest of us how to do it, and then, later on, we can pass that knowledge to someone else. And, in learning how a dungeon/boss monster needs to be killed, and experimenting with different ways to do so, how is that not skill? If you learn how to kill something and do it, and can then repeat that, isn’t that along the same vein as learning one of the nuances of a Street Fighter character?
As for the Group>Solo point, in theory I can understand what you mean, but as you mention distinctly, it is YOUR PREFERENCE to do something alone. Not everyone has that preference, and indeed, the Universe is ripe with examples of teamwork being required to accomplish a task. From the real-world Manhattan Project, to the fantasy world of Lord of the Rings, to a million other examples, it’s the job of the specialist to work with other people to complete a goal. Is Luke Skywalker’s achievement of blowing up the Death Star cheapened because he had a fleet of Rebel ships accompanying him?
As I stated above, I played a MMORPG called Meridian 59 for a while. It had a very short ‘level-grind’ time, you could solo damned near everything in the game if you were high-enough level, and there were no items you couldn’t get off a drop. Sounds great, right? Well, it was - if you didn’t mind massive turnover as people got bored and left. WoW has a slow path of advancement to keep you paying your monthly fees, but keeping you entertained while moving up in rank. Most every MMORPG follows this same model. WoW just hit 6 million accounts. They must be doing something right.
What you seem to be after is something more like Battlefield 2 in a persistent world. You can jump in and have instant action, but very few ‘level grind’ aspects for advancement. Your character has very little ability to improve skills or weapons, but the better you do, the more likely those improvements will come. As you personally get better and more skilled, you will be less likely to get killed regularly.
March 3rd, 2006 at 7:47 am
Considering Sirlin’s lack of any response, one wonders if he’s bothered reading any of this at all.
March 3rd, 2006 at 8:41 am
And the ex-Big Ape people keep crawling out of the woodwork.
I also have a few comments, of course.
MMO’s, by their nature, support large groups of people doing tasks all at the same time. In fact, usually the best rewards are given for tasks that are difficult enough to warrant a group.
“You can forget self-reliance, because you won’t get far in World of Warcraft without a big guild.”
World of Warcraft is an exceedingly solo friendly game, given it’s genre. I have played Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes, and Final Fantasy XI, as well, and none of those (save for maybe CoH) comes close to WoW for soloing. In WoW you can go from level 1 to level 60 without ever having to join a group. And it’s not even that difficult a task. Not even CoH can say that. You can even have some extremely nice items crafted for you by someone else if you gather the materials. Or is that too much social interaction for you?
“As an introvert, I’m pretty outraged that this game is marginalizing my entire personality type.”
You don’t find grouping fun. So what? A lot of people do. There is plenty to do in the game without grouping. Honestly, I’m not sure why you would play a game with such a fundamentally social dynamic if you didn’t want to play with other people.
And saying it marginalizes your entire personality type is like going into a steakhouse, and complaining that they marginalize your vegetarianism.
“The very idea of using the terms of service as the de facto way to enforce a certain player-behavior goes against everything I’ve learned.”
When you are in a game with so many people, you have to establish rules of behavior. Not everything can be taken into account by game mechanics. You would rather have anarchy?
I can’t really pick a particular quote for the Street Fighter comparison, so I’ll just say my peace. Comparing WoW to Street Fighter is kind of ridiculous. They are completely different types of games. PvP in WoW is fundamentally different because of the loot and talent specifications of the individual players. Some talents will make a player fundamentally good at killing monsters, but not so much against players, and vice versa.
The only point I can agree with, is the your complaint about the Honor System. I agree it is flawed, and needs reworking.
The fact that you couched what seems to be a rant about what you don’t like about WoW under the guise of a “What is it teaching our children” article makes me uneasy. I see no real valid points about negative lessons our kids take away from WoW in your article. Rather it seems like a rant about what you would like to see changed. Using a current hot button issue topic to draw attention to your article is rather unethical, and should have been beneath you.
March 3rd, 2006 at 12:17 pm
1. My history at Big Ape has no relevance. We should be talking about ideas, not about personal attacks. It was unfortunate that several of us in this thread had to suffer through the experience at Big Ape, hamstrung by technical issues and management. At least we had some good artists, especially Ray (above), who I would hire any day of the week.
I came in a year or two after the project started and did what I could to put things together. It was clear the publisher wanted a very casual game, which made sense given the license. That’s exactly what we shot for with a very simple fighting system. Each character has only 10 moves, fewer than a character in Smash Brothers. There are only two types of input commands in the game: 1) press a button while stick is neutral, and 2) press a button while stick is held any direction. It doesn’t get any more simple than that, so I wonder why anyone would claim the game, design, or direction to be “hardcore like Street Fighter.”
As I said, all that’s irrelevant anyway. Let’s put the gossip aside.
2. Casual vs. Hardcore. The claims that I want to alienate casual players are unfounded and ironic, since I’m always in the position of arguing to make things easier for the player. Ninja Gaiden tries to kill the player at every opportunity and is pretty hardcore. God of War is inclusive and something everyone can enjoy. I don’t think it’s financially responsible to aim the Ninja Gaiden way, and I wrote a whole article about that here.
The ultimate accomplishment is if a game can strike a chord with both the casual and hardcore audiences. StarCraft and Halo are successful examples of that. Each of those games has great single player content, good story, and easily accessible multiplayer gameplay. They each also happen to be great games even at high-level tournament play. That’s an accomplishment.
Meanwhile, Street Fighter looks pretty bad in comparison. It has terrible single-player modes, bad story, is very difficult to play (dexterity required is too high), and makes no effort to teach you how to play. Casual Joe cannot perform a dragon punch, and you can’t get far in SF without being able to dp. What a poor state of affairs. These are huge problems with Street Fighter, and if I ever got to make a new version, making the game accessible to a wider audience would absolutely be the #1 concern.
3. Changes to Warcraft. If I were in charge of World of Warcraft, some people seem to think I’d turn that game into a pure meritocracy as well. Not every game can or should be relentlessly skill-testing. The level 1-59 experience is pretty good as-is. You can group, you can solo, you can quest, explore, socialize, etc.
The claim that I would alienate people with only skill-testing gameplay is totally incorrect. In fact, the current gameplay is alienating to both introverts and skilled players, and for no real reason. All the difficult work of making a big, awesome mmo is done (and getting it in many countries, many languages, over 100 servers, etc). The frustration is that it alienates small groups and highly skilled players without tons of time—and it just doesn’t need to.
Imagine the game with a reasonable pvp system where a skilled player would distinguish himself, even if he didn’t have tons of time. Also imagine that simply putting in a lot of time ALSO gave rewards, just as it does now. Imagine that small group (and solo) content was added that’s just as “difficult” as raids, and gave the same kinds of rewards for the same time invested. The point is, imagine the game where all the rewards of large groups and lots of time ARE STILL THERE, but in addition, there are comparable rewards for small groups and those who are highly skilled.
It seems like anyone who is against that plan is the one who is being “too hardcore and elitist” rather than inclusive like I’m trying to be.
The frustration is how similar this imaginary (and much better) game is to the current game. Changing Street Fighter so it could also reward cooperation between 40 people would change 99% of the game. Changing World of Warcraft to equally reward large groups/lots of time, and small groups/highly skilled players would change something closer to 1% of the mammoth game. The biggest barrier is the developer-mindset.
4. A new MMO. Even talking about World of Warcraft isn’t as productive as thinking about how a new MMO might approach these problems, and add in the ideas of freedom of speech, privacy, legal ownership of virtual items, and player-generated content. (I can’t even write a paragraph like this without mentioning Second Life, so there you go. Yes I know Second Life isn’t a “game” like World of Warcraft is, but at least is has very forward thinking.) Any thoughtful readers interested in pursuing these ideas would do well to read this very long academic paper on these subjects.
–Sirlin
March 3rd, 2006 at 8:40 pm
Wouldn’t the problem be very easily solved with something like a “Gladiator Arena” inserted into World of Warcraft? You’d have three “gear classes”, like the weight classes in wrestling matches, to keep it fair. Magical/Green class, Rare/Blue class, Epic/Purple class… the game would analyze your current gear and slot you into the tournament closest to how powerful your gear is. It would be like a tournament match… a dueling ladder that resets about every month. Whenever you can, you’d log on and do a few duels. You’d be matched against people who have similar win/loss ratios. Time would mean nothing because playing again and again just means you have a greater chance of losing, which would actually knock you down the ladder.
Winners of the tourney could get access to epic level items designed specifically for dueling, which could in turn create a new tournament class, for the top tier players.
As for epic solo PvE content: is it really hard to conceive of a “one-man raid”? They could be called “hero raids” or “legend raids” and be notoriously difficult to complete, near ninja gaiden levels, perhaps, but if completed, the solo raider would be praised as a hero. I would think this sounds like the best sort of mechanic in implementing hero classes, since it sort of dilutes from the “hero factor” if it takes forty people to all turn into Blademasters.
In fact, I would think those two solutions would actually help generate even greater revenue for Blizzard. Not only would it allow the casual players who don’t have enough time to play 24/7 to continue to have something to work for past 60, but the fact that the online fee is Monthly means that the waits between resetting the one-man raid for each individual player or the dueling ladders would actually keep the solo players p(l)aying as long as the hardcore raiders, while actually getting less hours of gameplay out of WoW: they will generate the same amount of money while adding even less stress to the game servers.
March 3rd, 2006 at 9:18 pm
Greetings to all my fellow former Big Apes! =)
Likewise, greetings to all other Sirlin.Net visitors.
Doc: I’d like to humbly apologize for misconstruing your termination as a ‘firing’ (as did happen to me) when you were actually only ‘laid off’. I also errantly attributed a comment to you that seems not to have been yours and tried to insult your professional design skill (or lack thereof) just as you have repeatedly done towards Sirlin. For each of those, I am sorry.
I find it mildly amusing that you insist on referring to Sirlin as a ‘dink’ (even habitually capitalizing it and other words apparently for emphasis). It seems the most relevant definition is:
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
dink \dink\, n.
an Asian person, especially a Vietnamese; — used contemptuously,
considered disparaging and offensive. [U.S. slang]
Syn: slant, slope. [PJC]
If you have seen http://BangTheMachine.Com (the “Street Fighter Community Documentary”), you might know that Sirlin was likely “made in Japan.” Certainly the overwhelming majority of competitive fighting games (as well as the majority of all hardcore console video games from most genres) come from Japan. Conversely, most MMO’s seem to originate from the United States. It is maybe poignant that you choose such an epithet to level at Sirlin (and I guess me too as one of his followers).
While I do follow Sirlin, maybe I’m blind to my “blindness”. ;) Since I prefer competitive or solitary games, it seems to me to be a predominantly rational decision to prefer his designs, goals, and approaches to any alternatives I have yet encountered. I am a hardcore fighting game player (and competitor). I am probably quite a bit more introverted than the average MMO player (especially considering I’ve never subscribed to one and have hardly even enjoyed table or software RPG’s of any form either). Maybe there is a whole other (valid) discussion topic to be explored of whether current hardcore cooperative MMO players are generally better “team players” professionally than their more egotistical hardcore competitive counterparts. That said, I think we would all be better off to get away from personal and professional attacks (admittedly maybe me most of all). Let’s please discuss the issues and put out the flames.
You obviously are much more well-informed on the subject of MMO’s, have stronger opinions and experiences, and are generally more capable of explaining your defense of them than I gave you credit for. I am thankful to you for probably drawing Mike, Ray, and Chris into the heart of this discussion (as all the comments have been authored in rapid succession). You have elucidated the underlying confrontation between MMO cooperation and MMO competition.
coOp vs. coMp (a.k.a. the ‘O’ vs. the ‘M’ in MMO ;) ) …
Round One! …
Fight! (”No fair! Out-numbered!”)
Ironically, MMO cooperation can cooperate with MMO competition but, to this point, it has instead almost exclusively (and unnecessarily) competed against it. Of course that’s playing on the words somewhat since there hasn’t really been any seriously competitive MMO yet. The void is gaping. “Alone together” and transferrable actual skill are IMO relatively missing alternatives (i.e., even assuming WoW has one of the best level 1-59 games so far, it is not enough).
Although the social knowledge of new towns and group strategies for beating bosses each become growing player skills of sorts, they seem to me to transfer between titles far less effectively than a player’s understanding of the principles underlying every fighting game. The perceived accomplishment and notoriety associated with the respective skills seem to be used for general competitive measure. MMO players (and by extension, the games themselves) appear to me to proclaim “My character’s level and talents and armor and honor and record of beating bosses all make me a better player than you (and my game or genre better than yours).” which prompts me to trivialize the accomplishment with something like “You are just hypnotized by the grind and glittering prizes.” Of course the coordination and socialization are broadly useful skills but are the remaining skills gained transferrable between titles in unobvious ways?
Maybe I’m doomed (or blessed) to remain a recalcitrant oblong gear that never slots into the finely oiled machinery that is a glorious 40-player raid but I would like to understand why so many uniform pieces proudly parade and prate about their individual superiority. Maybe struggling to become one of the best uniformly replaceable pieces is a thoroughly mass-marketable competition where there’s less risk of failure because the formulas and refinement tools are so public and cooperative and social. Aren’t the best of both worlds possible?
-Pip
p.s. Sorry again to be typically an eccentric pedant but hopefully it will aid clarity. “Allot” is exclusively a verb whose synonyms include distribute, assign, portion, grant, administer, mete, deal, parcel, dispense, dish, and dole while “a lot” is akin to many. Also, my salutation above may be the first time I have ever written (or seen written) “fellow former” and thought it correct.
March 4th, 2006 at 12:07 am
1. Game you’re looking for is called Guild Wars. You get to max lv in ~10 hours and from then it’s PvP on equal terms. Mind you, it’s not an mmorpg and that’s for a reason.
However, that’s not why I came here.
I think you’re looking at entire story from wrong angle.
In my eyes:
What about those mundane people? For every genius programmer, there are thousands of average ones. WoW teaches those people, that if they work hard and work together, they can achieve something. Is that bad? Or maybe that’s one of the reasons of WoW’s staggering pupularity? - it’s a world where everyone starts as equal and it’s your dedication that matters.
Regarding Kazzak:
Blizzard wanted to create unique experience for PvE players, but had to put rules in place to stop kill-stealing. You simply cannot do it the other way around, because mmorpgs are always your [i]second[/i] world. Kill-stealer can always log off or sell account on ebay, simply retreat to real world, making you unable to take vengence. World isn’t perfect and that’s why we have those “silly” rules.
March 4th, 2006 at 1:11 am
Well Pip, and Dave.
I would like to first apologize for any hurt feelings or misconceptions about the phrase “Dink”, as I have never heard it referred to as “an Asian person”. I don’t think anyone who read here in the US knew of this meaning either considering nobody brought it to my attention.
The only way I have ever known the word was in reference to “That of a small mind” or “Someone who is wildly ignorant.” it was in the spirit of this context that this comment was made. Maybe unjustly, but there it is. The essay you wrote was that of a small mind.
After your definition of the word Pip, I will of course refrain from ever calling anyone this again. You are right, in that context, that is wildly inappropriate and grotesque. I apologize for the misunderstanding.
Thank you Pip for clearing that up. I will of course be editing any post in which anyone is referred to as such if that is possible.
Now as some of my peers point out, I can get hot headed over certain issues. Game Design is one of these. As you can see, their posts are allot better written than mine and don’t go after the people in my comments as personally. I still stand by the heart of my message that Dave’s essay on Gamasutra was written in incompetence and ignorance.
To be a game designer, you MUST be capable of understanding games of all sorts at their fundamental levels. When I see something as ignorant as Dave’s essay posted on someplace such as Gamasutra (a Web zine with a high rep in the industry that a lot of newer people look to as an authority), it gets me “hot headed”. To follow Dave’s ideas in that essay, was to follow unsound game design ideals, and promote ignorance about game design as a whole.
As to both of your rebuttals. Both are well thought out, well written (Far better than my own I must say), competent, and intelligent responses. Brovo.
However, this does lead me to wonder, if Dave is capable of such writing skills, and shows he is capable of such skills, how come neither were used on his Soapbox essay on Gamasutra. To be honest, that essay paints Dave as an idiot.
The heart of the essay paints a picture of Dave as not understanding the basic concept of what it is to be role-playing game as if this is a new mechanic. As a game designer (or even a fan of games) this is unacceptable. RPG’s have been around for a long time. Longer than almost all video games in fact. It is a tried and proven game mechanic, and Dave’s Essay treats the mechanics of WoW as something new and damaging to children.
I don’t like fighting games very much my self. I DO understand them, understand the skill involved, understand HOW the game is fun for someone else, all without really liking the genre very much. I would feel confidant I’m my Skill as a designer to have the ability to empathize with the target audience and design a game you or Dave may actually find enjoyable. THIS is the design quality Dave has yet to show the rest of the community, and why his article makes him sound like an idiot. He failed to understand the core mechanics of what WoW is at heart… an RPG.
On the same merits of Dave’s arguments, he would have to Include RTSs, Sim-Games, Single Player RPGs, All other MMORPGs, Board games, Dice Games, most Children’s Games, Etc… as damaging our youth because they promote XXX over his definition of “Skill”.
To say RPGs (or many other games for that matter) do not require Skill to play, shows a grotesque lack of understanding of a wide variety games.
To say that the Goal of all games is to win is also just as grotesquely moronic. There are a great many games that never involve “winning” and MMORPGS are some of the leaders of this concept.
I would also like to point out that the Slow progression of levels within WoW is not unique to WoW in an Attempt to suck $$$ out of the player. This is how RPGs work. D&D form day one has this exact mechanic. The level 1 player needs say 100 experience points to achieve Level 2. At level 2, the player must collect 400 experience to achieve level 3. At level 3 the player must collect 1200 experience to achieve Level 4, so on and so forth. WoW is using a level based system of progression. This is nothing new, and has been around for a long time. I am sure that a fighting game where you keep 1 player and continuously build upon that character could, and most likely, would use a very similar system.
The other idea Dave missed is true of almost all MMOs. That is of Longevity. Most single player games last anywhere form a few Minuets, to maybe a month or two tops. MMOs generally last YEARS. This in and of it self is a momentous achievement.
Even if you were to play WoW form Level 0 –60 for the first time, Solo, and stop as soon as you hit 60, you still will have most likely Logged in MANY MORE hours than most single player games, and have tons of content still unexplored.
This is not counting allot of other areas in Dave’s Essay where he fails to define “Fun” as a game designer, but also in the arguments where he repeatedly states the unfairness of WoW, and then turns around and supports “Exploits” and “Gold Farming” from within the game. Dave then goes on to express how WoW is somehow damaging our children’s moral ethics. All this in one essay attacking what is widely known as maybe the most successful game to date.
Judging from other articles on Dave’s site, this is appalling and wildly irresponsible, and shameful. It filled me with a sense of duty to pants Dave in public. To let people know that the person writing this article is a very small fish, with little to no titles under his belt, passing him self off as a “Game Guru” or Game designer, with very little experience to back it up.
I have spent a little time poking around sirlen.net, and have found a level of game design in Dave’s essays here that are far above the quality of what was written on Gamasutra. This disturbs me. Allot.
If, Dave, you are able to write so competently, and intelligently, why would you find it acceptable to write something as moronic as what I read on Gamasutra?
I personally was never impressed with Dave’s skill as a game designer while he was back at Big Ape when I knew him personally. However back then he didn’t consider himself a “Game Guru”, nor an authority on the subject to my knowledge. Today it would seem he does claim both of these self appointed titles, and speaks to a small group of people about his ideas of game design which I largely consider as poor.
I still feel Dave has a lot of work to do before claiming the title of “Game Guru” or claiming that he is a great game designer. That is not to say you have not done your homework Dave. From what I have seen on your site, you have read a lot of other peoples ideas and have done quite a bit of personal research, carried on discussions, and authored a great deal of essays on the subject of game design. This may be a great, but not necessary, first step, but still does not make you a great game designer.
Pip, your comment of “Sirlin constantly writes awesome game designs and is habitually hamstrung by insufficient and incompetent development teams and companies.” Goes to illustrate one of my points quite nicely.
Part of being a great designer is the ability to design WITHIN the parameters of what is achievable to you. It is good to push the envelope, but not to the point where the goal becomes unachievable. This is a VERY fine line, and something a Great designer has the ability to see.
It does no good for an Architect to design an AMAZING house that carpenters, or engineers cannot build.
The fact that Dave cannot design something achievable and then to pass the blame onto the people attempting to build what he designed, shows poor ability to deign, and a lack of responsibility.
However I have wandered form the topic again.
As for your statement of “As an introvert, I’m pretty outraged that this game is marginalizing my entire personality type.” Destroyed a lot of your credibility as a game designer. There are thousands and thousands of games on almost every platform that cater to a Single player idea. You picked a game designed around the idea of multiplayer mechanics (at the highest end), and state that they are alienating you.
My Suggestion (This is the part of Constructive Criticism) is for you Dave (I would include you Pip, but you are not claiming to be an authority of Game Design), to try and Extend your expertease in your search for Game design.
Buy a few RPGs, RTSs, Adventure Games, try out some Sim games, Puzzle Games, Dexterity Games (monkeyball for example), Flight Sims, Sports games, Racing Games, Board games, Dice games, Children’s Games (hop Scotch, Tic-Tac-Toe, hang-man, Etc), and analyze them on their merits alone.
You have done a lot of work in the field of Fighting games and know a great deal on the subject. Extend what you know to other areas of how other games work. Forget yourself personally, and what YOUR opinions are. You don’t matter as far as the game design is concerned. It is the audience that will be playing your game that matters. If its something that excites you, that is simply a bonus.
With each game, ask:
What is it am I doing here?
What is the goal(s) I am trying to archive?
Where is the entertainment value (AKA: fun)?
Why does (person X) feel this is enjoyable?
Where and how big is the audience for this idea?
How can I use this idea for another game in a different way?
Any other question about the subject at hand that gives you an Incite into understanding the game (even if you don’t like it personally).
Lastly, Dave. You have an enormous ego. I don’t mean that in a way to try and bash you, but its relevant to what I have to say next, so stay with me…
It is good to have a great deal of confidence. As a leader, designer, Artist, Engineer, etc… Confidence in yourself, your abilities, and the team you are a part of is an admirable quality, and will server you well.
This is not to be confused with Ego. Having a huge ego will serve to keep you at a large disadvantage, and close doors to you in the future. It will work against you at almost every turn.
To explain… lets use good old Gorge Lucas as an example.
When GL was young, confidant, and on the same level as his peers, he created Starwars. I don’t think anyone can say that Starwars was a failure by a mile. However time came for him to revisit Starwars and he came at the project with an incredible Ego. “HE IS FUCKING GORGE LUCAS MAN!” The last three movies (although not flops), went a long way into damaging what it was he created in his fore few movies. He became known as a joke, and his audience laughs are his latest creations.
There are many other examples where Ego gets in the way of a great design. John Remero, is another great example, American McGee, as well… the list goes on.
There are just as many examples of Great designers who are able to remain confidant in their abilities, yet keep their ego in check. Will Wright, for example, John Carmack, Etc…
I have seen ego kill a great many good designs personally.
Do what you can to remain objective, and separate form your design and you will achieve much more, and encounter far less problems.
Cheers,
Jareth Doc McBrehon
March 4th, 2006 at 1:31 am
Hi. It’s me again. After a perusal of the above, there are a few other issues I’d like to comment on.
Doc: Thanks for asking how the hell I am (even though you were just being sarcastic). I’m quite well. I’m at Sony R&D for now working on PS3’s SDK. I am also still following around the almighty Sirlin, as you say, although (using another of your sayings) I “fancy” myself his peer more than his loyal subject. I may have learned from him but he has learned from me too.
Let me extend you similar (and hopefully less sarcastic) courtesy. How are you?
I know Sirlin can fight his own battles as can I, but sometimes it’s better to party up. ;P
With all your talk of professionalism, it seems interesting that you are the most eager to discuss everyone else’s professional performance, competence, and capacity. Writing the things you have in public forums seems like a staunchly unprofessional thing to do to me. You claim that I was fired for incompetence and I would like to defend myself against that statement briefly (and without retaliation) before moving on. We have already established that Big Ape suffered from mismanagement. I think it’s valid to abdicate the majority of my responsibility in the matter with the following statement. If I was assigned (or even worse, mistakenly hired to perform) tasks which I was incapable of handling, as a junior developer, that failure rests on management. We could delve into details were it necessary and relevant but it should suffice to say I have always had a (some would say repulsively) strong work ethic. I can be relied upon to be uncooperative when I feel I’m being led into tragedy. As discussed a bit above, maybe I am unwilling to be easily interchangeable as a worker unit / human resource. I don’t begrudge others from being who and how they want to be. I am an impassioned agitator and an eloquent advocate for creativity and individuality (even when that individual choice is conformity). I have strengths and talents that can be immensely valuable assets if focused effectively.
I was drawn into the fray of this blog a bit too enthusiastically and vitriolically (for which I have already apologized sincerely). Even if I insult your capacity as a designer, I don’t think that is your chosen dominion (while it clearly is Sirlin’s). Please refrain from further insulting my, or anyone else’s, professional competence (and fitness for further employment by extension) unless I am holding you under the same brutal flame. If you are willing to abide by this request, I would be glad to let the “professionalism” topic rest for now.
One last remark for you Doc: I’m also sorry I called you a dink. I don’t think that word (or slant, slope, etc.) are generally useful or appropriate insults primarily due to their distasteful racial connotations but also their typical imprecision. I’d rather call someone uncivil, brazen, moronic, or slothful (not that I am calling you any of those) as they convey a more precise deficiency in the subject and they do so with more characteristic (or egotistical ;) ) elegance than plebeian ethnic slurs. This is just my (rather politically correct) opinion. It is not intended as an escalation of our engagement, just an apology accompanied by my personally chosen justification.
p.s. Do you prefer to go by Jareth now?
With all of that out of the way, I’d like to address some of the issues and points raised above by all comment authors.
I concede that “I know it when I see it.” is a weak definition of ‘fun’ (or anything else). It does, however, make sense that some words are associated with nebulous concepts rather than clearly delineated boundaries (like the proffered ‘pornography’). The dictionary citation for ‘fun’ as “A source of amusement or pleasure: have fun at the beach. Playful, often noisy, activity.” is not some panacea of illumination on the subject. What the hell is ‘amusing’, ‘pleasurable’, ‘playful’, ‘noisy’, or even an ‘activity’? More subjective concepts. I don’t think any more thorough definition of fun can be considered a fundamental requisite for all game designers to understand. It doesn’t seem reasonable to expect or demand a more thorough definition of designers, especially because some who are incredibly talented work their craft through intuition rather than clinical precision.
Similarly, I don’t agree that every game designer (or Sirlin specifically) needs intricate knowledge of tedious development details that are irrelevant to the design of gameplay. Of course a designer does need a basic understanding of the development process (which comes with experience) but (especially for an espouser of the ideals if increasing numbers of more highly specialized gears in giant game-making machinery and raids alike) it doesn’t follow that a great designer must know how to write level or AI scripts, know how to personally construct game-quality environmental art, sketch concepts, or do basic programming in order to be exquisite at their primary design work. Certainly communication is necessary in order to successfully translate designs into reality while conforming to all the inherent technical constraints of the target platform. I don’t think what we might call “classic designers” who are almost exclusively confined to conceptual design and the thorough documentation of their ideas (even though it’s a bit of a misnomer because most designers of the past primarily held another position and did design work consequently, accidentally, or out of necessity) can be fairly considered less worthwhile.
It seems a bigger problem is that such “classic designers” are the relative experts on the fine points of both high and low-level details of gameplay (i.e., interactivity) and are also talented at synthesizing and documenting the necessary descriptions but everyone is an armchair designer these days. Every “team member” has their own egotistical opinion about every design decision. Every artist struggles with function-over-form in the design. Every programmer who tests their code in-game cares about the control scheme and the difficulty progression. Every producer and publisher and licensor cares about the thematic content. Everyone’s hands are in the design cookie-jar! Of course I’m generalizing and many people don’t care. Lots of artists and programmers don’t ever play any games but the majority in the game industry do and they all have their pet-peeves and dreams of designs not-yet-extant. That’s all not to mention the broader fan-base of any title. Every couch-potato gamer “fancies” themself the greatest game designer ever because they got stuck in some level somewhere or they remember some great story. It’s no wonder practical game design experience is elusive considering the current state-of-affairs. Am I wrong? Is the problem (paraphrased) really that “some designers (namely those who are dedicated exclusively to game design) don’t understand the development process enough to make great games?”
Discussing the moral side of WoW doesn’t seem so moronic to me. The tired “Think of the children!” angle may be a social hot-button and an attention grab but there still can be an issue worth discussing. It’s the depth of the issue that everyone gets hung up on. It has nothing to do with thematic content, the story arc, the animations, etc. but rather the underlying gameplay principles. It’s been described properly several times but it still seems to be eluding most readers. Taken at the same depth, fighting games aren’t teaching children how to fight or even that the solution to resolving conflicts is to win at all costs. It is that focusing your time and attention to improve your skill (actual transferrable player skill) in direct competition with a single opponent in a fair duel can provide a constantly complex experience that offers nearly endless new challenges and perpetual entertainment with minimal new content.
Fighting games (like MMORPG’s) are very social too but on a much smaller level. Nobody plays the single-player game or likes fighting the computer. The dialog, the argument, the chase, the retorts and counters… these are the compelling social experiences of deep competition (FG, RTS, FPS, racing, MtG, chess, poker, Scrabble, etc.). Taken at the same depth, MMORPG’s appear to be teaching that time spent is more important, entertaining, and valuable than accrued skill.
This “Save the children from the menacing influence of video games!” topic is filled with obviously lame memes like “Fighting games teach kids martial arts and overt aggression.” and “FPS’s teach kids to kill with guns (and vehicles ;) ).” That is not at all what Sirlin is talking about. Please don’t bandy about those statements as refutations of “MMORPG’s are teaching kids (and all impressionable players) that time spent is more valuable than personal improvement and attainment of actual skill.” Probably kids should not be mentioned at all to avoid cheapening the argument with all the dross already to be found with similar search keywords but this “games teach kids” article is distinct from those others in premise and example. As I understand it, Sirlin is arguing that MMORPG’s should tilt away from “time > skill” towards “time == skill” (i.e., ‘time is equivalent to skill’). The thought is that this approach would be more lucrative at little expense and would hopefully “teach” a better general message of social tolerance and inclusion rather than the existing form of homogeneity and exclusionary cliquish (i.e., clan) behavior.
I think everyone can agree that the MMORPG genre is the most technically challenging one to enter and survive in. Saying that the massive challenge justifies arcane ToS practices, removes developer responsibility for properly enforced rules and constraints within the game, and that legal issues justify the revokation of free speech is just not progressive. The discussion is ideological. How should things be? Not like they are? Why not? A defense of the above practices should consist of more than “because it’s hard” or “because it opens you up to legal trouble.” A defense of current practices should explain ideologically why existing ones are superior to the alternatives (which have been proposed even though some would like to claim that no solution proposals have been made and that Sirlin’s article is merely complaining).
I don’t agree that the industry is too large for so-called “Game Gurus”. I think there aren’t nearly enough charsimatic leaders and reknowned experts in the game industry. We should have lots of celebrities championing quality-of-life standards (without needing to resort to unions or legal recourse). We should have more collaboration between companies on technology and experience. Egotists (for better or worse regarding their other traits) are at least a particularly visible (often boisterous) rallying-point for like-minded individuals and anyone who can share some semblance of a common idealistic vision. I think the industry is not large enough and I certainly think it needs way more “Game Gurus” as Doc put it.
Chris said: “And saying it marginalizes your entire personality type is like going into a steakhouse, and complaining that they marginalize your vegetarianism.”
That doesn’t seem to be a complete analogy to me because of WoW’s 1-59 experience and the rampant attitude that WoW is a good competitive game (i.e., a worthwhile and effective determiner of gamer skill). Maybe it would be like the Steak and Vegan House saying that they won’t serve you anymore steak whenever you get too hungry (i.e., you try to eat faster than someone adjacent to you). =) Analogies are weird anyway and necessarily abstract away some detail (hopefully only the irrelevant stuff) but maybe mine helps a bit.
Regarding needing rules for handling what can’t be taken into account by game mechanics: Is treating a game’s ToS as a patch system for the game’s design and code a respectable long-term goal? Maybe I would rather have anarchy! ;)
I’m probably the least qualified to discuss any of this stuff since I haven’t played an MMO yet but once there is one with a half-way decent real-time fair combat system, I intend to dip my toe in the water. Hopefully I’ll see you all there. =)
-Pip
March 4th, 2006 at 2:20 am
Forgot to say “heya Pip”, so….heya Pip.
Anyhoo, just wanted to touch on a couple of points.
You response to my “And saying it marginalizes your entire personality type is like going into a steakhouse, and complaining that they marginalize your vegetarianism.” comment is…rather difficult to follow. Let me put my point into clearer focus.
Dave was complaining that the need to group to achieve the better rewards marginalizes his personality type. My point was that he is playing an inherently social game, that is built to encourage social dynamics between players, and reward them. As such, there is a limited amount of purely solo content available. There is, by far, more of it when leveling up than when you reach 60, but just by the nature of 60 being the “cap”, the gameplay dynamic is going to change. Blizzard is already adding more solo and small group content to the endgame, and has stated such. Yes, there are problems with the endgame for small groups, but grouping will always have the better rewards. Again, I wonder why he is playing an inherently social game if he wants to be on his own.
My next point. I still find it reprehensible that Dave used a hot button issue to call attention to his article. His article could have been written entirely without that topic, and still been exactly the same. His point is that “MMO’s should not be Time > Skill”. Why he needs to couch this in a “What are we teaching the children?” theme is beyond me. Using that as an attention getting device only helps bury much more valid articles that ARE about what our children are learning. It was unneccessary.
As for design, if a designer does not have at least a working knowledge of the other links in the production chain, then it makes it extremely difficult for the designer to make informed decisions and choices.
In a production environment, as you should know, the designer does not say “Jump!” and everyone says “How high sir!” This is exactly what would happen if the designer had no knowledge about the other disciplines or how their process works. Design, in every game I’ve worked on, does the best job when working WITH the artists and technicians. Designers get their hands dirty, and have long and in-depth meetings with artists and programmers about current technologies, what the capabilities are, and how those restrictions can be pushed for more. Yes, they must also think outside the technological box, and work with other people on how the restrictions can be bent or broken, but that does not mean they are an island. No, a designer does not need “in-depth” knowledge about art or programming,