Developing Online Games

peterwayner writes "If you're a bit tired of programming books, API descriptions, tables of keywords, and arguments about which data structure is buzzword compliant, super-mega-efficient and intuitively easy to grasp, turn to Developing Online Games , a book that seems to have very little interest in many of the traditional challenges for programmers. The authors spend four lines discussing the best computer language for the job (C/C++), conclude that objects give "far more flexibility in design" and then move on to fun questions like how to make a online game compelling for achievers, socializers, killers and explorers. This book is a wonderful psychoanalysis of the gamer's mind and it should be the first and last book read by game developers about to start a quest to capture the hearts, minds and subscription fees of people on the Internet." Read on for the rest of Peter's review.

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.

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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.

Jessica Mulligan at Themis Group

[Allen Varney]

Jessica Mulligan does indeed have one of the longest and most respected resumes in online games. I was distantly acquainted with her back in 1989-91 when (as Richard Mulligan) s/he was product manager for GEnie's online games, and even then her knowledge of the field was extremely comprehensive.

Now she's involved in The Themis Group [themis-group.com], an interesting venture that basically lets online game services outsource their customer support [themis-group.com]. (Another notable figure on the Themis team is the esteemed game designer Greg Costikyan [costik.com].) Given the problems some online game companies seem to have with customer support, sometimes regarding it almost as an afterthought, I wish Themis well. They're good at conveying the important message that an online game company isn't selling the game, it's selling the service.

Re:The Big Problem

[L7_]

until MMORPGs actually have an advanced enough engine where real-time world updates are possible, then you won't get the storylines that you want.

The game engines that are avaliable don't seem to have too much a cause-effect relationship to provide the in-depth immersion that is neccesary for good storytelling.

I mean, you can kill a monster 100 times in a row... and nothing happens.

Re:Already done..

[Anonvmous Coward]

"ohhh, a game whose commercials show people beating each other up with a baseball bat or something... sounds real compelling. not really.

senseless violence glorifying immoral crime. grow up."

"I don't know what it is that you're talking about, but I heard about it on TV. It's that .. uh.. stupid game. I hate it and the people who play it are immature and are easily entertained. I'm not going to do any research about my harsh stand because I don't want to find out that I'm wrong. I'm glad I can post anonymously here so that I can spread my weak message!"

Re:The Big Problem

[syle]

I think, if it's done right, a storyline isn't necessary. I'm assuming you're experiences are something like EverQuest, where the endgame basically involves raiding the same sets of supermobs over and over until your whole guild has the best stuff, then moving on to harder supermobs.

That's one way to do it. I don't think it's very fun, but a lot of people obviously do. Even though there are a lot of lore-based quests in EQ, it's fair to say the story is missing because the player doesn't encounter it in day-to-day play. It's there if you want to search for it, but you're certainly not immersed in it.

Take a look at other games like SimCity or Civilization. There's no storyline, but that doesn't make it exactly meaningless. You're given a task to accomplish: Take over the world, build your city, destroy the orc hordes, etc. Any storyline made to support it is obviously artificial, and rather irrelevant. The fun is in accomplishing your task.

I've played Shadowbane a little bit, and it feels like a strange combination of the two genres, but it works pretty well. You're given a task: Take over the world. Expand your nation diplomatically, or by war, or economically, or however you like so that you control everything. There's a little story behind it, sure, but it's mostly irrelevant. The leveling treadmill is there, but it's vastly shorter, because the real point is the far-sighted goal of world domination. You could say they strategically opted out of storylines (though they do exist).

Anyway, this isn't an advertisement. Things can be fun without the traditional storytelling approach the works so well in single-player though. I think EverQuest is a good example of why it usually doesn't make a lot of sense to try to extend that to MMORPGs.

It'll get better, I promise

[zarthrag]

IMHO, Online games haven't gone through their rennasiance yet. There are lots of glaring issues with actual gameplay mostly those about giving the player a sense of purpose, importance, and acheievement in a game. I'm currently involved in a (maturing) independant MMORPG project, and I must say, we're on the right track. Most RPGs are too much like the first, and define (and limit) Adventurers and Trams, Beat-nics and PKers, and other balance aspects much such too strictly, and never in the context of role-playing! Everything I've read in this book so far isn't an insane leap of logic. As far as networking code goes, it's not the unoptimized networking code that *really* matters in the end (the increased benefit only allows more clients to connect, but doesn't *truely* improve ping times and such.), but it's the way the game presents you with other players that matters. I've said too much already, but if you're interested in a much different game, there is one coming, *I promise*.

Re:Jessica Mulligan at Themis Group

[lightspawn]

There seems to be a pattern here:

Jessica Mulligan
Dani Bunten Berry [anticlockwise.com]
Jamie Fenton [fentonia.com]

I hope I'm don't come off as intolerant, but this got me thinking: Is this a coincidence? Or maybe it's just that video game programmers (or programmers in general) tend to be dissatisfied with their lives, and thus more likely to try something extreme?

Re:Not quite

[0x00000dcc]

I've learned my lesson on underestimating women in the geek realms. Example: My sister, who looks like computers would be the last thing on her mind (tall, blond, tan, etc.) actually asked me the other night how letters are represented by ones and zeros. I was busting at the seams, busting out the ascii charts and translating her name to binary and hex for her. And she was genuinely interested!

And NO, you may not have her either.

Jessica Mulligan Article

[MCS]

After reading some posters comments on Jessica/Richard Mulligan, I found the following site on google:
Bites The Hand [skotos.net]

It is her bi-weekly editorial/thoughts on the gamming industry. Skimming over these bring some interesting insight into the industry over the last 20 years.

Re:The Big Problem

[Lightwarrior]

Play Shadowbane, and make your own plot.
Stop laughing, I'm serious. What more do you want from a MMORPG than to influence the rise and fall of nations? Leveling isn't a chore, it serves as an introduction to the game. Once you join a guild, you're taking part in your nation's saga.

Let me give you an example:
A guild of which I was briefly a part was at war with a bigger, more powerful guild. There were many nights where our armies met on the rolling plains and sparse woodlands around our city. We were routed, time and time again, until we were forced to become allied with a different rival nation. Together, we turned the tides of battle - now we take the battle to them.

It's not about levels, money, war, or diplomacy - it's about all of them. Being skilled at some of those four will make up for deficiencies in others.

And take the reviews you read with a grain of salt. The review I read at Gamespot made me wonder if he was playing a different game.

-lw

Re:What language?

[Fnkmaster]

Well, I can understand the confusion. Even C++ isn't always C++. I mean, the difference between a full-fledged Stroustrop-complete C++ program and a simplified, Java-style object-oriented C++ API is large. I can actually read and follow the latter - the former is still a bit of a mystery to me (who learned C++ back in the day before it became such a broad, all-encompassing language, and didn't really touch it again for quite a few years).

So I don't know if I'd say that C and C++ are totally different languages, just that C++ in its entirety is such a complex language that there are many stylistic variations possible that result in greatly different program structure. C certainly has different stylistic variations possible too, but not to the same extent, and clearly structuring a program in C and in C++ usually result in fairly different designs and solutions, though it doesn't have to be that way (object-ish C programming is certainly possible).

I think it's fair to say that somebody exposed to all of these stylistic variations is able to better pick and choose the appropriate techniques for the job at hand, and equally importantly, is able to pick up and read a much wider variety of code than your average schmoe who claims to be a "C/C++" programmer.

Re:Could be an intersting read.....

[J0zhu]

Network optimization and other technical aspects ARE important. Playstation 2 proves that. However, think back, have the games gotten any better? Are they much more exciting then the nintendo days or bards tale? Truely I say to you that the techinical aspects are somewhat important, however these days I see the tech of a game outweighting the playablility as well as the enjoyment of the players. if you play an adventure/RPG style game. Your playing for the adventure, not the eye candy. Muds where tremendously popular (and to a degree all things considered still are) because they had a depth of play and a depth of exploration. both the world and the workings of the game itself. a game is primarily for the enjoyment of the players, who may or may not appriciate your suave use of 1's and 0's. something to consider.

Re:Already done..

[NanoGator]

"See? I can kill a prostitute, then drive over her with my car. The game rewards this. It's totally immoral."

"...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'."

I just had this discussion with a coworker this morning. My point was a little different. Here's the gist of what I said:

"Yes, you do get a few bucks for running over pedestrians. Unfortunately, we're not talking huge sums of money here. You would have to run over a LOT of people to buy the most basic weapon in this game.

Does that mean you're encouraged to kill people in this game. No! You're really being rewarded for the risk you're taking by getting the cops attention. You see, running over people (and killing/assaulting them in other various ways) gets the attention of the cops. When they start chasing you, you have to run like hell. This counters the point of the game. It's a good deal harder to complete a mission (the actual point of the game...) when you have numbers of cops trying to run you off the road.

You do not advance in the game by beating up old ladies. Believe it or not, you win by saving the girl. Heh."

I think my coworker understood my point. I'm a little sick of accusations based on assumptions.

The point you quoted is a lot more interesting than mine on a fundamental level. The reality is you can do bad things in this world. A lot of the time, you think you can get away with it. If this game teaches you anything, it's that you can't get away with hurting people. As I said before, you reflexively learn NOT to hurt people in it.

I appreciate you quoting that person. Something new to think about. :)

Re:Could be an intersting read.....

[BaShildy]

I don't know about the author, but yes I do believe that. We are talking about multiplayer games here, and not a single player game. Most multiplayer games only need a small backstory, a small (if any) story for the map, and that's it! Games like Battlefield 1942, Quake3, and Counter-Strike would be not as fun if you were interrupted for storyline reasons.

Online RPGs are a different story (pun), and usually require a lot of writers for quests and dialogue. Online action and strategy games rely on gameplay, and communication for fun factor. Better netcode improves both of these, while a better story won't fix your game that isn't fun.

If you want a good story, read a book, or play a story focused game. Multiplayer games should have instant fun, and a storyline would not allow the player to jump instantly into the action. All the multiplayer games I've worked on have focused on controls, gameplay, and netcode. The better the netcode, the better the player's experience.