The Barbarians At The MMOG Gates 78
simoniker writes "Areae president Raph Koster is perhaps best known as a designer of Ultima Online and the previous CCO of Sony Online Entertainment, and in an in-depth Gamasutra interview, he discusses his views on 'game grammar', the uniting of MMOs and online worlds, and the software patent problem. In particular, he's been talking about the 'barbarians at the gates' for hardcore MMO makers: 'Even the creation of the MUD in the first place was that. It was the Internet-based reaction to the stuff that had existed on the microcomputers and the Plato network and all of that. All of a sudden, "Oh, wait! We can put a text MUD on Arpanet!" And it was like, "Whoa!" and it spread like wildfire, and all of a sudden, all of that other stuff went away. So it's really possible for that stuff to be happening now with microtransactions, with portals versus traditional publishers, with digital distribution publishers versus traditional publishers, and with MMOs from MTV versus MMOs from Sony or EA or NCSoft.'"
Meh. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Just because your online experience was apparently a bad one, don't assume that all people who play MMOs are "complete dicks or immature little twats". The comment is narrow minded and naive, and the fact that you even said this shows an immature attitude.
There is something to be said for a group of people who can combine together to down difficult raid bosses and contribute to one another's rise in abilities or overall economic power. Organization is a mature trait, and is
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MMO socialisation has VERY FEW DIFFERENCES TO ANY OTHER SOCIAL SETTING. The main difference is that people seem to want to vocalise their beliefs enmasse. While this does not ring true for all MMOs - WoW & LotRO come to mind as the biggest breeding grounds of this verbal diorreah.
As an avid MMO player (not just one either) I can see the benefits of playing an MMO as part of guild/clan/corp/whatever. The arseholes are usually sorted out fairly quickly, even a tallented arsehole is a
Re:Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
I prefer MMOGs to single player, not for the chatting or guilds, but for the fact that humans make for more interesting teammates or opponents, than the computer does. On the rare occasion that you have teammates in a single player game, they never do anything interesting or novel. Having other characters in my game world that make choices that haven't been tweeked by a game designer make the game more interesting for me.
On the 99% of everyone is an annoying twat thing: I've spent hours in City of Heroes, doing missions with a good team, where hardly anything not game related was said in the chat box. Sure there are a lot of junior high kids in MMOs who want to talk trash, but the same can be said for going to a baseball game or the mall or anywhere else in the world were there are teenagers. Usually they adore the PvP aspects of a MMOG. Personally, I usually stick to the PvE aspects of the game (and out of guilds or clans or whatever) and have quite an enjoyable time, with a minimum of immature brats and idiots. If MMOs aren't you cup of tea that's cool, but as the genre matures so do a fair portion of the players, don't paint us all with the same brush.
So maybe it's worth looking at combat MMO? (Score:3, Insightful)
Game AI is definitely one of the things that makes me not want to play video games any more. Why? Because game AIs suck, so instead they either make the enemies stronger and faster than you (bosses), or they put more of them up against you (everything else), so that your human AI advantage is countered by overwhelming force. I got tired of the
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In most MMOs there's about equal numbers of wage earners playing the game as "immature brats"--and honestly, the majority is probably more in favor of 20-30 somethings than kids. But of course you don't remember the normal (or even "nice") people you interact with in such an environment, just the ones that piss you off. W
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It's no less logical than your claims. It's probably a bit more logical, in fact, since there is observable evidence to back up what I've said that anyone can see. Instead of over-broad blanket statements about a large and diverse population, I've made a comment about an individual who's comments can be used to extrapolate the likelihood of my theory being true.
Probably because you're so full of vitriol and spite that you can't e
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MMOs are predominantly played by immature childre
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With this in mind, most gamers spend ~$40+ a month to keep on gaming.
That depends on the game and the gamer. For a lot of people who don't have hours and hours to play a game continuously, it may take more than a couple of months to beat the game. For example, it took me several months to beat Final Fantasy 10, simply because I didn't have the time or the inclination to put more than a couple hours of play into it per day.
Your analysis also ignores replay value and free online play. To return to Fina
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Everquest expansions routinely took months to out and out beat, and most players -never- got see most of the end game content.
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There's plenty of progression left after reaching maximum level, at least in a good game there is... And WoW's "content" patches are every 2-3 months usually...
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Ahh but you forget that REAL MMO players have more than 1 account
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Viva la free singleplayer!
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I don't like coffee, therefore starbucks = failure (Score:5, Insightful)
The world doesn't revolve around you. Learn to accept this.
More precisly, it doesn't revolve around your demographic, there are enough persons who are willing to play a monthly fee and who want to play in a multiplayer enviroment.
Different tastes, is that so hard to accept? No, it doesn't mean you are old, just means you have an over-inflated ego. Frankly that isn't age dependent.
Every single story about MMO's you get some person complaing about monthy fees and somehow the world is supposed to care. Here is a newsflash for you. Blizzard is RAKING it in. WoW should be closing in on the billion dollar revenue mark by now. That is hard to ignore. Game companies that struggle while they see thousands of people downloading their games for free and here is a company with an OLD OLD OLD game still raking it in. You think these companies care about you? They got a choice, spend fortune developing a single player game that will be obsolete in months, hopefully get them a onetime income and maybe some sparechange for the value release with tons of players using their forums for support a full week before the game is actually OUT (pirates move fast, and leechers have no shame) OR spend that money on an MMO and get a ton of cash each and every month. Gee, difficult one.
No, I don't like paying $5 for coffee. (Score:2)
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So get coffee at Dunkin' Donuts.
Since reactivating my WoW account I've spent significantly less purchasing new games. At the end of the day it's saved me money.
I wouldn't call GTA rewarding, personally. There are some games out there that are considered "art" and really should be experienced for the experience's sake, but most of them aren't from this generation anyway...
Re:I don't like coffee, therefore starbucks = fail (Score:2)
The world doesn't revolve around you. Learn to accept this.
More precisly, it doesn't revolve around your demographic, there are enough persons who are willing to play a monthly fee and who want to play in a multiplayer enviroment.
Different tastes, is that so hard to accept? No, it doesn't mean you are old, just means you have an over-inflated ego. Frankly that isn't age dependent.
By that same token, everybody and their brother is trying to get a new MMORPG to the market. Blizzard's dominance will not last forever. There is ever potential that they will see their market fragment, much like TV. Remember when a show like I Love Lucy could claim an audience of half the frickin' country?
So, there's every possibility that there's a good niche to be found making the kind of multiplayer game that would appeal to someone like the original poster.
I like starbucks, non-coffee drinkers are a threat (Score:2)
Ahm, isn't this exactly the problem you are facing? So the OP said they prefer single player games and wanted to know how alone they were. Yet the response you just gave the person is incredibly defensive and has the tone of 'if you don't like multiplayer games then there is something wrong with you!'. The game market isn't a zero sum game.... people CAN play single player games without seeking to destroy multiplayer games.
Sounds like a c
No... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously though, there's nothing wrong with a "good single-player" game. The problem is there are so FEW of those on the market today, and finding time to lock one's self away on the off chance that a game actually turns out to be good is just not high on most people's priority lists. Even a bad game can be fun with friends, but giving up human contact for something that turns out to be mediocr
Re:Why Offline will matter (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the trouble. MMOs have the same time-sink mentality. If you travel with a group, you'd better keep up with them, because if you get to be more than 2-3 levels behind them, you can't do the same quests as they do. So they either redo the easy quests with you, or leave you behind. So you'd have to play several hours a week -- in order to play the game.
Now compare the above to an offline RPG. I own the disk. No one's going to charge me to use my copy of FF12. No one will delete my lvl 60 party for nonpayment of fees. I don't have to set up a time to play it so that I don't fall behind the rest of the party. I could set the game aside for 6 months, never touch it (say if I get busy, or if I simply *don't want to play it*) and everything will still be exactly as I left it. I'm not going to lose out just because I didn't have enough time to play this month.
That's what I love about offline gaming. I don't feel pressured to put tons of hours into a game just to get a little pleasure from questing with my buddies. I don't want to feel like I'm losing money because I'm not playing as much as I did last month. Offline does that.
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Actually, no, it doesn't. All MMORPGs will save your characters for some period of time while your account is not active (if there's anybody that deletes in less than a year, I'm not aware of it). Many MMORPGs simply never delete your characters. Not paying for month means you can't play your lvl 60 Bard that month, no more.
Chris Mattern
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A well designed game doesn't have this problem...
I've never had a character deleted for nonpayment of fees. My WoW account was inactive for a year and everything was there when I got back. A friend of mine reactivated my old EQ
There's also people who "just play games"... (Score:2)
There's also people who don't consider video games their only potential avenue for socializing, and maybe even go whole *days* or (yes, really) *weeks* without playing one. They're not gamers, they just play games. Some of them might even consider that people who are so focussed on video games at all... MMO or otherwise... as the "antisocial shut-ins".
This isn't new, though, Raph Koster is wrong about that. Putting myself into a Victorian frame of
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1) I kinda figured the "anti-social shut-ins" was obvious sarcasm
2) Yes, I realize this. I myself am not currently playing video games as I finish my Master's
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Am I the only one who prefers sitting by myself with a controller playing a good single-player game? Am I the only one who still refuses to pay a monthly fee for a video game? Am I...getting old? :)
I think the biggest problem with MMORPG's is that they're time sinks. Now of course one man's time sink is another man's fun game so what's the difference? I think the problem is that most games are designed for anything from ten to forty hours of play. A shooter is linear, beginning to end, you're done. Something like Civilization, you can put ten hours into playing a vigorous game, beat it, and come back to play another round a month later. You can play different games in the meantime. Single-play never
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For the base MMO game, you will usualy pay about $45. You get the first month included in that price. Now, for the same price, you can by a FPS, or a RPG, etc, and get usually a month's worth (on average) gameplay for your $45. Then you are going out and paying anoher $45 for the next game, or breaking into multi-player games with little to no enforcement.
With the MMO, you get more content, and you p
*Ahnold Scream* (Score:3, Interesting)
It's Raph "Galaxies" Koster (Score:2, Insightful)
Raph's ideas and theories have REPEATEDLY proven inaccurate, unworkable, stupid, and wrong. The gaming industry as a whole would be better off if he were filtered off into the black hole of FAIL with Romero.
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So have Richard Bartle's, you could argue; in any case, you still have to respect them for being pioneers, and in Koster's case, giants in the industry.
Personally, I think Koster is just ahead of his time. People said the same of Tesla.
Please stop (Score:2, Interesting)
Every time someone talks about some evolution of something we have now they go and mention MTV.
MTV provides nothing but attention whore PR.
Please stop mentioning them in your next-gen-extreme-thing PR.
-ts
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Sounds like someone isn't going to get their "Sweet Sixteen"...
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MTV might have been the new Playboy.
But we have The Hills.
"LC is wearing an American Eagle headband; $40."
arghh, why the *FSCK* does that have to be somewhere in my mind?!?!
Purge!!!
koster again (Score:1, Insightful)
raph koster... standing in the corner shaking his fist.. at... large MMO companies.. that.. don't
this is the the guy that drove UO and SWG into the ground... failed to keep EQ relevant
WoW came along and ran over them like a mac truck over a 90 year old grandma.
Blizzard created the genre defining title and expanded the MMO market to its current level
the only thing koster expanded was his beltline
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Britney Spears tops the music charts but isn't heralded as the ultimate evolution of music.
MMOs are still in their infancy... there's tremendous room to grow, and it's great that there's an experienced and thoughtful philosopher working in the trenches to make real their potential.
Raph Koster's ideas are akin to Socrates'; try him if you must, but they will persist through time -- hopefully in fu
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raph koster... standing in the corner shaking his fist.. at... large MMO companies.. that.. don't
Would you say the same thing about the creators of Resident Evil?
Let me put this into perspective for you, in consoles (including handhelds), 7 of the top ten sellers of all time contain either the word "Mario" or "Pokemon". (The least of these titles has sold over 15 million copies.) Combined, they sold some 200 million
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This is a stereotype of the older, larger raids (20 and 40 person teams). New raids in WoW are much smaller (10 and 25 person teams) and thus require better players to succeed as a whole.
Future of Single-Player (Score:4, Insightful)
It kinds of says a lot about his kinda gaming (Score:2)
We just had an article about a great game, The Longest Journey. As great as it is, it is kinda hard to imagine it having spectaror modes, presence, chat or persistent profiles and whatever. There are tons of games like that. Not all gaming is FPS.
Who cares anyway? Do you really want to see how another person does in a single player session? Sure, some games it might work, racing games where you can compare times. And then only in those racing games that are "equal".
I really don't need or want to know how
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Does he really talk like that? (Score:4, Funny)
It's Crush from Finding Nemo! "Saw the whole thing, dude. First you were all like "whoa", and we were like "whoa", and you were like "whoa..."
STFU Koster, you still owe us for SWG (Score:4, Insightful)
Any MMO can be played "singe player". There are a ton of people who play WoW "single player". The other people that run around them, sell them items on the auction house, and try to converse with them? They might as well just be computer NPCs. And that's the extent of it. Really. Some people like to play WoW by leveling up multiple characters on their own. They never group with others, they aren't in guilds, and yet here they are, still paying the monthly fee to play WoW. Some people play in the Battlegrounds only. They never actually talk to anyone, and the players they fight might as well be computer NPCs too, because they never communicate, they just fight and forget.
The cool thing is that even though they've been playing WoW "single player" for all this time, at any moment they can decide to "get out there" and join a guild and get together with people. That's always an option for them, and I've seen it happen. Then the game becomes truly multiplayer, when you are working with others on common goals.
But make no mistake, single player is not doomed. It will never, ever die.
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Merging comments... MMO turing test? (Score:2)
In an environment where network access is sufficiently invisible, and the "game AI" (horrible term, I know) sufficiantly subtle, you could potentially get into a state where you don't notice whether the game you're playing at any given moment is online or offline, single or multi player. In fact I could see someone deliberately designing a game like that, so the main effect of getting into MMO mode would be that the "game AI" seemed to suddenly
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There will come a time when the defining characteristic of a single player game is that it has no connection to the outside world. Why? The knowledge that you have no connection to the outside world will be the only way you can be sure the other characters in the game you are playing are not "real".
The interesting situation here is that when this happens, and game NPCs can pass turing tests with ease, then you might be unallowed to play the game anymore as you used to. Where do t
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So, does uninstalling the game kill the AI? Is that amoral?
I don't expect that this will be an issue in anything but the very distant future...
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As to its consent, it's the same consent any human player gives when entering the PvP areas (or else, seeing as it's the AI's job to play these characters, it's the same consent that, say, a Renfaire jouster gives to be knocked off his horse for the amusement of the crowd, or a LARP NPC player gives to be defeated by the paid guests.
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Sort of like the livestock in the restaurant at the end of time. They walk up and happily self-carve onto your plate.
Takes alot of the "icky" out of blowing them away.
They're still part of the MMO world. (Score:2)
Even if they never communicate with you, if they're treating you like NPCs and acting like NPCs, they're still not acting like AIs, and you're not acting like AIs, so they're not getting the same experience as single-player, and you're still getting a different experience because they're there.
Similarly, in R
Could someone post a 5 line summary (Score:2)
Ideally the slashdot abstract of the article should have provided me this 5 line abstract, but somehow the slashdot editor failed at this task.
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"|current trend| is going to fail."
"I have weird, out there ideas about |idea1| and |idea2| that are like 'whoa!'... ya know, out there."
"All this |concept| about |genre| is 10 years old now, so we're seeing a, ya know, 10 year cycle."
"|produce1| and |producer2| think my |pulled-out-of-my-ass concept| has some merit, so they're on board with it."
"|random shit| is consuming all my time right now, so
He got one thing right... (Score:2)
That's my general sentiment of the entire interview and all his circle speak about the game grammar.
Seems to me that game designers and companies are speaking the language just fine. Are there a variety of systems that cannot relate to each other because they use different game systems? Sure. That's called variety. That's called different points of origin. It's called originality of the designers.
Should game designers learn to speak a universal l