How MMO Design Has Improved Bar Trivia 22
Polygon.com features a look at how (very) different computer game worlds can meet, in the form of game designer Ralph Koster's Kitchen Disasters-style rescue effort to revive a game quite unlike the ones he's famous for designing, like Ultima Online. Bar-trivia provider Buzztime has been putting electronic trivia games into bars for three decades -- and in that time, the number of options available to potential players has jumped. Bar trivia has crept into the domain of things like vinyl-based juke-boxes: not without appeal, but not exactly modern. Koster has tried to apply modern game design paradigms and objectives, and revamped the game:
Koster's Jackpot Trivia is now being introduced in a few hundred locations. Buzztime operates in around 4,000 bars and restaurants, but already the new addition has increased game usage by 15 percent.
Much of the improvements came from Koster's experiences of making and playing MMOs, and on the MMO's influence on all games. "These days, a lot of the qualities of MMOs are popping up on everything from social media to systems that sit outside and on top of games, like everything around Xbox Live and Steam," he says.
The re-vamp means, for Buzztime, better matching of opponents, as part of an overall redesign of incentives and risks: players have also gotten finer-grained control over their plays, by being able to assign weight to their answers: that means they can guess with less penalty when answers are tough, or take advantage of confidence in knowledge about a category in which they're strong.
Addicts (Score:2)
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Re: (Score:1)
I agree. The other festering shitholes deserve a turn too: hothardware, startswithabang, technology trends...
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Yeah it worked; here we are reading and posting on it...
But MMOs aren't dying. Well, the games are, but I don't think the genre is done. The most fun I've ever had in my whole life, while sitting down and looking at a screen, was rated battlegrounds in Warcraft. Whitewater rafting, helicopter rides; sailing a Hobie cat; those are things that are more fun than an MMO at its best.
I think its just a stagnating thing, not a dying thing. Blizzard's success has hurt the industry, and then they hurt themselves. Wa
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Subscription as a tradable item (Score:2)
Never allow real money into the game economy.
Make your money only through subscription / buying time.
EVE Online allows players to buy an item called a "pilot license extension" (PLEX [eveonline.com]) that's worth a month of play time but can also be traded for in-game items. Is that acceptable to you or not?
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Yeah. Warcraft just copied them on that.
That is pushing it though. The good thing about having to buy time is weeding out the riff-raff.
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Oh I disagree that it has nothing to do with MMOs, its really very similar. Its all about the basic core of game design and, the limitations of a game designed around a single game mechanic with respect to encouraging more and diverse groups of people to play.
Whether its bar trivia or an MMO your bottom line is you need repeat business. It really is, fundamentally about making a more diverse product.
Say what you want about MMOs dying or WOW, it, and others like it (I wont get into the flame war about why EV
Won't work (Score:2)
Bar trivias work bestg when you're sitting with your friends around a table. No gadgets or anything.
8 rounds, 10 questions each, 8 sheets of paper.
Buzztime is nuts (Score:2)
They are crazy with the amount they charge bars and restaurants, and they are losing out to other services deservedly based on that.