Developing Online Games 240
| Developing Online Games | |
| author | Jessica Mulligan and Bridgette Patrovsky |
| pages | 495 |
| publisher | New Riders |
| rating | 8 |
| reviewer | Peter Wayner |
| ISBN | 1592730000 |
| summary | The Sociology of building online games. |
The book's strength lies in the deep experience of the authors and the efficient, occasionally gimlet-eyed voice they use to analyze their collective addiction. Jessica Mulligan's bio lists work on more than 50 online games like Ultima Online, while Bridgette Patrovsky's includes time building games for Electronic Arts, Sony and Interplay Online Services. If you believe that Online games are the latest thing, Mulligan would like you to know that you're wrong. She wrote a column celebrating the 30th birthday of the Online game in 1999. Rick Blomme wrote Spacewar back in 1969 and Dave Arneson started an RPG named Blackmoor in 1970 or 1971. It was so long ago, he can't be quite sure.
All of this experience weighs a bit heavily on the authors. The book is more of a core dump than a logical progression and that means we hear bitter echoes of the past. One section is entitled "Yes, it really will take 2-3 years to complete" and another is called "No, More Programmers Won't Make it Go Faster." These sections don't add much to the usual literature about herding cats, but they do offer a strong reminder that this isn't a task for slackers who never could get around to forming that garage band.
The better parts are aimed at the design of the games themselves. While game players are slaying monsters or saving Princesses, game designers are questing after a full Player Satisfaction Matrix. Good games sate the player's need for socialization, accomplishment, discovery and conflict as they journey from the state of confusion (0-1 month), on to excitement (2-4 months), glide through the state of involvement (5-48+ months) before landing in boredom (until VH1 starts making "Behind the Game" documentaries). The trick to good design is making sure that there's plenty to feed the player's involvement.
For instance, you may be driven to create a new persistent world that emphasizes socialization because you're tired of all that death. The authors gamed that scenario and decided that "killers do have a positive role to play from the point of view of the socializers." Good can't exist without evil acting as a contrast and besides, players can usually find some other passive/aggressive technique for stabbing each other in the back even if knife objects aren't instantiated.
The authors tend to view the online realms as ecosystems. If you want to "increase the number of achievers," then the authors advise that you "reduce the number of killers, but not too much" while maybe "increas[ing] the number of explorers." I suspect that these recommendations are to be taken with a grain of salt, but they do reflect the observations of people who've spent a long time managing these games. I'm even tempted to develop my own Sim Sim that lets you simulate the process of crafting a simulation.
Ultimately it's hard for the authors to offer much more than these recipes and matrices. The details about the management, the strategies for stopping cheaters, and the intricacies of player relations are essential parts of the journey, but those are only half of the battle. Making the characters sing and the world come to life is a job for the artist.
This book is like many of the simple guides for writing a screenplay. They talk about arcs, hinge points and beats, but end up counseling that the screenwriter should aim to make each of these "good," This book can't tell you how to make your characters "good," but it can give you much insight into how others have done it before.
You can purchase Developing Online Games from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Could be an intersting read..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, the majority of broadband adoptors, in the home, are online gamers, but broadband saturation is still very low; and the availability, coupled with the price will probably keep it low for a while. I know people in Canada who pay between $25-$30 US per month, and get better speeds with their broadband than I get paying $55 US a month for mine.
Online games need to be optimized, no matter what connection the programmers would prefer. There's still plenty of lag on broadband when playing games, and a lot of it has to do with unoptimized code (which normally is fixed later down the road via patches on the PC).
Uncle Thursday
---In Soviet Russia, I might have gotten the first psot.---
Re:Could be an intersting read..... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Big Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
MUDs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Could be an intersting read..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I feel the most important aspect is gameplay. But, in online games, shoddy network code can ruin the gameplay.
Uncle Thursday
---Gamer. Lover. Fugitive. Not necessarily in that order.---
Quickly deploying underpaid games? (Score:3, Insightful)
The best games will always follow the 'good gamer' strategy: have plenty of customization, tight control, run fast on older hardware, and light bugs (fewer than 4 or 5 if possible.)
While these ladies seems to know a bit about how to paint a gauntlet in Ultima Online or the coolest magic effects in EverQuest, I can't see anyone following this advise in a professional gaming environment. The commercial depression is just too high.
Re:Women Programmers (Score:2, Insightful)
Required Reading (Score:3, Insightful)
I really appreciate the fact that this book focuses more on theory and concepts rather than code, but statements such as "...and it should be the first and last book read by game developers..." is a little ridiculous.
Please give a little thought before you post something.
(of curse now, someone will find a typo in my post...;)
Re:Could be an intersting read..... (Score:2, Insightful)
I think MMORPGs are a bad idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest problem with games like Ultima and EverQuest is that there is very little actual role-playing going on. This is news to no one in here, of course, but I do find it interesting how the term 'RPG' has been kind of mutated.
Traditionally I would not call something like Final Fantasy an RPG, but that's what it is in computer game terms. You don't get to shape your character's identity, or their destiny. You don't get to 'act' the character. You merely plod along the pre-determined timeline towards your only fate; in the case of FF, sometimes this line abandons you, to search for the next game thread. That's not what I want RPGs to be.
An interesting approach to online RPGs: throw away the Massively Multiplayer aspect. It's possible (in my mind anyways) that this is just an unattainable fantasy, to have a fluid, engrossing, plot-driven world where everyone is a character. The qualifications just aren't there. They've already identified these little subgroups (achievers, killers, etc.) and those players, for the most part, don't seem that interested in the role playing itself.
Rather, I like the dynamics of Neverwinter Nights. Small groups of people, who are like-minded. It's what you look for in your typical RPG anyways; the party comraderie, the give-and-take, clasing of personalities... a great story to tell later, if successful.
What if, rather than selling a packaged online game for all comers, you started a sort of RPG Society? You'd apply for membership, pay a monthly fee, knowing that every player is absolutely into the role playing. Applying would consist of your character history and thoughts about what you want to get out of it. Keep the number of players on each server small. Several instances of the game world. That way you' d be guaranteed of a much better experience. Pipe dream I know, but a nice thought.
I mean, look at what has happened to Star Wars Galaxies. Ugh. It's already become fucked up before they've even released it (yeah, I'll smuggle stuff on foot. In Star Wars.)
how to make good movies, books and TV shows (Score:3, Insightful)
However, where does programming, networking design, latency considerations, etc fall in here? Well that is the difference between specific concern about the game making and the game creating. Being a programmer I of course hoard every book on game making. (why yes, I do actually have a new book on game oriented data structures :) Yet that will not help me to understand the important design issues that act as a composer. The coding is the implementation portion of one part of the game manufacturing process but there seems to be a shortage of design oriented books available.
Personally I think this reflects the industry as a whole. This is why you get (via customer comments) the endless stream of clones pumped out with no real feeling of content. Or perhaps it is better to say that the lack of materials focusing on this is just as much a symptom as the cookie cutter games themselves. What seems to be the real problem is short term greed. Too many publishers want games that only fill the niches in name. Instead of actually focusing on specific aspects of the game and thus specific target audiences and making it great, they would rather you dump in the "mass market components" box of crap that will justify their claiming a game has "elements of" something. Look at MMOG's. There are a many that exist now and are in production that call themselves Role Playing Games when it is obvious that they are nothing but persistent action/adventure with thousands of simultaneous players. Each seems to be nothing but another cookie cutter game to absorb your money and time until a game comes out that really fits the description of what you are currently playing. However, many like these games. It would be foolish to ever change games like EQ and UO. Instead focus on the niche. Have a game or two that is totally different from these in respect to gameplay and character/avatar involvement and development. You will attract a different set of folks and will have less to worry about the "corruption" of each other game type. The RPG'ers want more "non artificial" RPG elements in the action/adventure diablo type games while if it was RPG's out then you would have the hack-n-slashers demanding more focus on killing endless hoards of critters. Don't merge the two, focus on the differences and make them better. Imagine if Baskin Robins advertised "32 flavors... all mixed together into 32 different containers but with all different food coloring."
Lets start focusing on what you really want in a game and how to make those unique aspects as good as they can be. Learn from other genres but don't force merging and evolution... let it happen naturally.
Re:The Big Problem (Score:2, Insightful)
EverQuest tried a small sample of letting the players change the world. Ok, so those 40-60 people went and changed the world. The 20,000+ other people then bitched that the world has been changed, and they didn't get to do it.
Re:MUDs (Score:5, Insightful)
What language? (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only C and C++ programmer who finds the "C/C++" label annoying as hell? Having it come from HR people who don't know any better is one thing, but hearing it from programmers drives me up the wall. I sometimes suspect it comes from C++-only programmers operating under the mistaken assumption that because C++ is a superset of C, they know C, too.
Despite similar syntax, C and C++ are completely different languages. C++-only programmers write C code that's on a par with the code produced by C-only programmers dabbling in C++. Perl, PHP, Objective C, and several dozen other Algol-descended languages have really similar syntax, but no one says "Algol/BCPL/C/C++/PHP/Perl/Pascal" with a straight face.
My guess is that if the authors are extolling the virtues of objects, they are primarily extolling the virtues of C++.
Re:Already done.. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that's not what this game is about. Though I'm curious how you could mistake a game called "Grand Theft Auto" for a game where the point is to beat people. *eyeroll*
"senseless violence glorifying immoral crime. grow up."
One should know what they're talking about before telling people to grow up. If you had actually played the game, you'd know that senseless violence is the fastest way to lose in that game. Run over a pedestrian, the police chase you. Fight the police, more chase you. Etc.
I find it hard to accuse it of glorifying violence when playing it trains my reflexes to avoid hitting people.
The reason that GTA3 is controversial is because a lot of parents (mothers mostly) have no clue what their kids find in video games. So when some jackass politician *cough*Joe Liberman*cough* comes along and says "the style of entertainment you're uneducated about harms your children", suddenly their fears get voiced. They say stuff like "GTA3 makes prostution a good thing! Just watch, the woman gets in the car, and his health goes up when they have sex! That's immoral!!" And the mothers are like "My babies would never have sex! That's wrong!"
The reality of that aspect of GTA3 is a little bit different. The prostitute does get in the car. The car does shake around. The health of the player goes up. None of that is in dispute. However, they are not actually depicting sex. If you turn the camera a bit, you'll see that both the driver and the prostitute are sitting in their seats staring out the window. They're not touching in any way, that's unmistakable. The car's just shaking around, it's not clear why. The point? If the player doesn't know what a prostitute is when they play this game, they're not going to find out by playing this game. For somebody to understand what's happening here, they'd also have to be educated on the dangers of sex with prostitutes. It's called innuendo. Nothing new here that a child isn't exposed to by watching a little TV, even the news. (ZipperGate comes to mind...)
In any case, the point of this post is not to defend GTA3 specifically, it's to point out that just because you've heard a compelling side of an argument that does not mean you really know what you're talking about. There's always other points of view. If you're going to run around calling people immoral without understanding the other side of an issue, then you shouldn't be telling people to grow up. Finding information supporting your point of view is easy. Complete understanding of an issue, that's a grown up method of debate.
Re:Could be an intersting read..... (Score:2, Insightful)
At this stage of online gaming much of this has already been done. Many people are already playing online games(specifically MMORPGs) in a lag free environment from broadband and modems alike. I'm not saying that there won't be more advances, but they will most likely be evolutionary and not revolutionary(ala what Quakeworld did for Quake).
Online gaming is no longer in the infancy stage. People expect bug free, stable, and lag free games. Games that don't provide this right out the box won't last long now anyways. The only thing in the end that will make one game different from everyone elses surviving games will be content.
The next big problem presenting itself to online games is how to bring in the largest audience(which seems to be what this book will deal with). Some people want PvP, others want PvE, and still others want a glorified chat room. The real hurdle when creating these games is how does someone design a game to satisfy as many segments of the gamer population as possible. Then there are other questions such as even if it is possible, is it the right thing to do? Should we pick a certain segment and focus or try to catch many small parts of segments?
So in summary, everyone already expects graphics, special effects, even whizbang network code in todays online games. The problem is that all these things are completely completely useless if there is no content to drive it.
Re:Jessica Mulligan at Themis Group (Score:2, Insightful)
Online, you can create a persona for yourself that is not dependant on your physical appearance. Being online (role-playing in games or just in chat rooms) was an escape from the unpleasant reality of one's gender dysphoria.
If there is a pattern, that's it...
The truth however, is that there are a lot of us out there - Some of us "Made the change" rather young in life (I was 21 when I had my surgery - yeah boys, don't think about it too much or you'll have sympathy pains) and you might work or go to school with one of us and never even know.
Actually, I'll be the first one to admit that those women you linked to are/were far more brave than I am. At least they didn't author their games as "Anonymous Coward"
Re:I think MMORPGs are a bad idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
The best "multiplayer" RPGs, plot-wise, were the single-player Wizardry series. One player commands six people. The first week, it always seems weird - these guys are cannon fodder, these guys are generic spellcasters. The second week, it sorta gels that they're working together. Fred's the guy who's mean with the sword, Zapp's workin' on the polearm. By the end of the third week, all six have their own (imaginary) personalities and the party just wouldn't be the same without 'em.
If I'm gonna play an online multiplayer RPG, let it be with three of my friends from meatspace, the four of us taking on the world, to emerge as heroes a month later... only to re-roll and do it all over again as another party if the adventure was good enough the first time.
The idea of being an anonymous luzer scraping out a living killing orcs in a vast countryside teeming with 100,000 other anonymous orc-killing luzers... shit, if I wanted that, I'd play The Sims Online... or I'd just drop the RPGing and stick to real life.
Re:Could be an intersting read..... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is largely a myth. "Optimize," in regard to network code, means "fool the user into thinking it's faster." There is nothing you can do to get rid of network lag. It's a fact of life. So what game developers do is play tricks to make you think the lag has gone away, and each of these tricks doesn't work in some cases. A classic fudge is to predict where an opponent will be in X milliseconds, based on his last known movement characteristics. If the prediction is right, then everything is grand. Hopefully it will be more right than wrong. But it can still be wrong.
Yes, there's also the issue of reducing packet size, but that's pretty mechanical. And even if you could reduce the entire state of a client to 1 bit, then there's still going to be lag time. Period.
Re:Already done.. (Score:3, Insightful)
You reminded me of something I saw on tv a little while ago, when some guy on Donahue (I think it was) had GTA3 up on the screen. He was going through the paces, showing all the psychopathic stuff you can do in the game... beating up old ladies, killing hookers, etc. "Games are corrupting kids" was the argument.
There was a panelist who was on the pro-game side who had a fantastic rejoinder that went something like this (paraphrasing loosely here):
GAMES-ARE-EVIL DUDE
See? I can kill a prostitute, then drive over her with my car. The game rewards this. It's totally immoral.
GAMES-ARE-ART DUDE
You know, there's nothing in that game that tells you to do those things.
GAMES-ARE-EVIL DUDE
What do you mean?
GAMES-ARE-ART DUDE
I mean, Grand Theft Auto is a simulated city. They've tried to fill it with as much (exterior) realism as possible, to make it look like Miami. But the game is not about killing old ladies and prostitutes, it just allows for that. It is a crime-based gangster game, but those old ladies and prostitutes you just killed... that's you doing that. You're choice. The game does not say 'kill old ladies to win'.
It's an interesting point, and one that's lost on a lot of the game haters.
Re:The Big Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure you are paying $10 - $20 each month, but so is everybody else. When every one gets to be a super powerful mage that gets to save the world from evil "forces from the north", it kind of loses its appeal.
Instead, everything is reduced to competition: who can level faster so they can kill more monster so they can level even more!
And who cares about a quest where you have to slay the dragon that's ravaging the countryside? It will re-spawn a couple of minutes later so someone else can do it!
You want storylines? Buy an solo game. The last game with a good storyline I played was "The Longest Journey". I'm partial to adveture games more than FPS and RTS, so YMMV.
Re:The Big Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that the MMORPG developers think of their job as developing a fancy virtual world engine for people to go ape in. This is like a MU* administrator thinking that their job is to write LPMUD or TinyMUSH, rather than work on their actual game content.
Which leads to an interesting point: this is a book about game design, written by programmers/designers. Maybe the kind of people who are best at doing the story thing are the artists, whom the review noted are the content people. So this gripe against storylines in MMORPGs may be misdirected.
At least from my own experience designing the occasional RP MU*, I find the best approach isn't to design a story, but to create situations where the players can tell the story themselves. The medium is multiplayer, and you can't dictate that people follow your carefully-crafted, meticulously-written script, no matter how good it is. I could see disaster looming for Earth & Beyond when I figured out what approach they were taking.
If you're interested in having a story told to you, then I agree that a single player game is probably a better bargain. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you're interested in telling a group story with thousands of other people, then hopefully there'll be a MMORPG for you, eventually.
Don't get me wrong, the game administrators have a part to play in pushing a particular story branch along, to keep a sense of direction to the game events. But if you're asking that they provide you with single player-like plot development in a massively multiplayer game... well, keep dreaming.
Re:I think MMORPGs are a bad idea. (Score:2, Insightful)
Finally, someone on /. who isn't pixel-blinded as to the definition of "RPG".
"MMORPG" is a misnomer at best, and really dilutes the meaning of its "RPG" element. I've said it before and I'll repeat it here: Quake + character.creation != RPG. Unless the R stands for "roll", not "role" (well, in software is should probably stand for "random()").
Online games do have a certain number of "role" players, many of which cast "role" aside in order to keep up with the advancement rates of the Quake-boys: the roll-players who do nothing that doesn't advance their character; the social voids that play 22 hours a day, even after the novelty wears off.
The social hierarchy in online games simply isn't sophisticated enough. Most involve a very small number of (semi)-automated NPC's, versus thousands of PC's. Almost every one of those NPC's has a specific purpose, most likely to feed some part of the player driven economy. There are no common folk for the sake of having common folk. When was the last time you walked into a village in an online game and saw children? Farmers? The butcher's wife? If you did, they were there only to support a non-essential sub plot (quest).
Offline games haven't even truly achieved this yet, but the Elder Scrolls games come close.
An RPG is a social event. Face to face. There's no substitute for that, no matter how much bandwidth is burned for audio and video. Sitting at a table, you and your friends accomplish something together. "Grouping" in an online game is a flimsy facsimile of this. There's also the tactility of tossing dice (which most players of online games would only find distracting, if they could actually get past the concept of having to do simple math for themselves). Finally, the thing most people don't understand about a true RPG, is that there is no concrete definition of winning, therefore people don't see the point of playing. The reasons for playing are:
Now, any MMORPG could provide these, except #1 and #5. Why? There is no "there" in an online game: it's virtual. If you can see and hear everything, you don't have to imagine it.
All this rambling to get to imagination: that' the key. Online games deprecate your imagination, instead of nourishing it.
Re:Could be an intersting read..... (Score:3, Insightful)
robi