Category Archives: Game Psychology

The Curious Case of Catalysts

11 Saturday Oct 2014

Posted by in Community, Game Psychology, General Thoughts, Social

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http://youtu.be/2TImvarF-Z0

I haven’t posted in a while, and this post is going to be a fairly serious one – I am not going to write about gameplay or mechanics or design today, but instead talk about a curious facet of multiplayer gaming most of us have experienced but rarely are comfortable looking directly at: the complex emotions driving the players behind the avatars.

You’ve seen it before – hell, it may have happened to you: someone loses an event or contest, they’re replaced in a leadership role, or maybe they just slip up and wipe the raid… and then, suddenly, they react, disproportionately upset. It seems irrational. It’s a clear overreaction to a simple setback.

And so, you tell them, “Hey. Don’t worry. It’s just a game. Relax. Don’t be upset over it. It’s just a game.”

Stop. Doing. That.

If you went bowling with friends, and someone got a gutter ball and suddenly burst into tears, you wouldn’t just tell them to “Shut the fuck up, Donny!” (obvious exceptions excluded) – you’d go “Holy shit, what’s wrong?” or you’d hug them or ask them to talk about it. You’d instantly realize it’s not that gutter ball that’s upsetting them – obviously it’s something far more. The gutter ball was just the catalyst, simply the last straw on a pile of other problems – and that’s a connection we can mentally make, in a split-second, when the person is right there, in tears. They are hurting, and there are clearly deeper issues at the root of it.

Somehow, in online gaming, that instant, obvious realization is muddled.

Maybe it’s because we’re all remote. We can’t physically see the tears. The pain in their voices is muffled by the static of vent, or sanitized into choppy text. Maybe it’s because our chosen games, themselves, can loom large – dramas can seem more important than they are, and part of us thinks maybe the game itself and solely the game could be the source of someone’s emotional issues. Or maybe, maybe it’s because we play games for our own distraction. We don’t want to login every day to deal with someone’s personal, real-life crisis. We just want to kill monsters and roleplay being a hero and escape.

And that’s ok – you don’t have to fix everyone’s problems. It’s absolutely fine to recognize that you don’t want to – or can’t – invest that emotional energy to help someone. Most of us who game have stuff we’re struggling with, on our own. It can be exhausting and depressing to face those things, even in other people, during our happy-escapism time. AND. THAT’S. OK.

What’s not ok, what’s harmful and painful, is minimizing the experience someone else is going through. When you are hurting, you are hurting. Telling someone that it’s not a big deal will just push them away and make them feel ashamed for being upset. I know, I know, you’re trying to be helpful – but that’s not helping. Neither is demanding them to tell you what about the game in particular is upsetting them. If the game is merely a catalyst, they aren’t going to have a logical, clear answer…and they will feel even more frustrated and ashamed for that.

So what CAN you do?

– Be insightful. Recognize that there’s almost always something else going on with this person who is upset, and the game – or the gutter ball, or the broken dish, or that stuffed animal they found cleaning their room – is merely the catalyst. Don’t minimize what they are feeling by dismissing the catalyst. More than that, recognize that people are passionate about their hobbies – and for many, gaming is a social outlet, with aspects of our real life persona tied into it. It’s a tangled mess, and for many people, it’s hard to draw a black and white distinction.

– Be constructive. Instead of asking for specific game examples, instead ask how the setbacks or negatives in game are making them feel. This can be incredibly helpful to assist them in pinpointing the root of their frustrations and painful emotions. Maybe losing contests is highlighting how they feel like they can’t win real life. Maybe a roleplay arc involving losing a loved one is poking at buried feelings they have about an incident that happened a while ago. Emotions aren’t easy, and they don’t play nice – sometimes they are insidious and sneaky and creep in corners we aren’t watching, and identifying the underlying causes can be so useful to healthily addressing them.

– Be flexible. Not everyone responds to the same things in the same way. Once, right after my boyfriend and I broke up (Heeeeey, I’m back on the market, wink wink), I was having an absolute mess of a night online – and my friends in game thought the best thing for me was to log off so I didn’t do anything rash. They were harsh, thinking I needed tough love – and that might have been a good answer, except the reason I was so upset was that I was feeling ALONE. Being told to log off, when, at the time, the internet held the only people I had to talk to…that was fairly devastating and the most wrong thing I could have heard. It only amplified my feelings of rejection and loneliness. Be flexible in how you help someone. Try to assess where they are at and what the root causes of their emotions are. What works on one person, or in one scenario, is not going to be the universally best answer.

– Be supportive. Sometimes you won’t know what to say. Often you won’t know what to say. You’re not a therapist – you’re a friend…and that’s fine. Sometimes, all you need to say is “Want to talk about it?” or “Hey, I’m here.” They might not even take you up on that offer…but trust me, they hear it. Sometimes, all someone needs to know is that there are people there for them.

In short, don’t minimize what someone is feeling – to them, when they are experiencing it, it’s incredibly powerful and painful and hard and there are often underlying causes. If you can’t help them tackle that right now, let them know that you still care, despite being unable to help. If you can help, be insightful, constructive, flexible and supportive: understand that there are almost certainly bigger root causes, address their feelings about things versus just the things themselves, be flexible in how you deal with them, and, most importantly, at the very core, be supportive.

Let people know you’re there for them. I can’t emphasize how important this can be.

Lovely ladies

25 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by in Game Psychology, Gaming, Gender, World of Warcraft

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So another blogger posted an interesting survey recently, although the sample size is small enough that I suspect there is some definite self-selecting bias in there. To me, that means we really can’t make broad extrapolations from the data. I still find the issues raised to be interesting – how does our gender identify with our toon? How does our gender affect our play? How does our relationship status interact with our gameplay?

However, the biggest “reveal” seemed to be the “issue” of female toons being hypersexualized.

I, personally, don’t understand the drama and “issues” that come up regarding costumes, especially those of female toons. Part of what attracted me to Tera (though I never truly played, their free-to-play launcher has serious design flaws with the download) was the highly sexualized costumes. On the same note, I love to transmog my blood elf in WoW to wear pantypants and crop tops.

See, I’m a female gamer, and I’m straight. I just like seeing my avatar as sexy – I don’t have the sexiest body IRL, and I like the escapist fantasy of running around as a badass damn sexy lady. I even play my characters in MUDs (text-based games) or freaking D&D as wearing skimpy gear. So do the other RL females in my D&D group. Think about that for a moment – there are no visuals attached to these last 2 genres, but we still make a conscious choice to pick “sexy” outfits.

Perhaps that hints at an underlying issue with society. Perhaps, however, it hints at a deeper issue with the portrayal of females in games.

These surveys always seem to insinuate that there is some underlying motive, usually by men, for wearing sexy gear, but why is it so bad to want to play a super sexy version of yourself as a female gamer? The overly muscled avatar isn’t nearly as criticized, but that is the male equivalent. To be frank, we like playing our idealization of ourselves – and I see nothing wrong with that.

My visualization of my MUD thief. Skintight leather, aye!

My visualization of my MUD thief. Skintight leather, aye!

I got into a rather big fight at work once with a handful of other gamers about female avatars and how they are portrayed. They were indignant and upset that female characters were portrayed as sex symbols, rather than as legitimate characters. My response to this, however, is that ACTIONS are what define the character, not her clothing – and that fact that the focus is on her clothing, even if it’s to protest what she’s wearing, is focusing on the wrong thing.

If a female character is marginalized in a game, there is a lot more than her outfit as the culprit (unless it’s something incredibly asinine and nearly-porn-like such as Bayonetta, where the devs seemed to think that her outfit constituted half the gameplay). Often there is a flat story or lack of real character development or motivation.

Consider WoW. Let’s name some strong female roles: Jaina, Garona, Anveena, Sylvanas, Sindragosa, Lana’thel, Vereesa Windrunner, Alexstraza, Tyrande, Onyxia, Magatha Grimtotem. That’s a good number of chicks; tweleve. Now, let’s remove all the one who have a big chuck of their story intertwined with a love story. This leave us with….Sylvanas and Lana’thel. Wait, out of 12, only two have stories that stand independent of their relationships to males? And those two got screwed over and corrupted?

Applying the Bechdel Test to video games yields a depressing result:

In order to pass, the film or show must meet the following criteria:

  1. It includes at least two women,

  2. who have at least one conversation,

  3. about something other than a man or men.

That, in my opinion, is what makes a female character marginalized. Tyrande could walk around 24/7 without clothing and still be an entirely powerful character if her focus was on freaking leading the night elves, instead of making her get caught up in (and her actions subservient to) a random love triangle. There are dozens of male characters who have storylines – or even ambient roleplay – that have nothing to do with romances. It is often the exception when their romantic lives are involved. Why doesn’t the same apply to the females?

Interestingly enough, touchedthesky’s survey shows that both male and female gamers, on average, got the same amount of insults about their ability – something which suggests that gamers, on the whole, are egalitarian with their dickish and trolling behavior. We all know that there is the random weirdo and creep, but it seems like today, perhaps, there isn’t actually a huge stigma associated with gender and gameplay. So, I think it’s fair to say that there isn’t some huge bias against female gamers on the part of the devs.

Another self-portrait of my sexy Thief lady!

Another self-portrait of my sexy Thief lady!

My theory? I think it’s unintentional and merely a result of the industry. Video game companies hire far more males than they do females (again, due to self-selection bias, but this time with the job applications). The gap is lessening over time, but it is still a largely male dominated industry. I’m not trying to suggest that male devs are sexist – I am merely stating that they may have stumbling blocks when characterizing females. Hell, I know I’ve had issues trying to RP a male character and have resorted to stereotypes.

However, until a conscious effort is made to make a solid gender equality in games, or we get enough of both gender hired that it becomes irrelevant, I worry that this is something we’ll be stuck with. And it doesn’t matter how many sexy hotpants you give me in game, if the female characters are badly written, I will be turned off.

E items

03 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by in Game Design, Game Psychology, Gaming, Gold, MUDs, World of Warcraft

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You may have heard the recent news about e-theft; in case you haven’t here’s a quick re-cap: Two boys in the Netherlands physically attacked (in the real world) a third to get to acquire items in RuneScape. The verdict? On top of assault, they were guilty of theft. This is only the latest in a series of similar rulings establishing precedent for real world value for online concepts.

The notion that items which exist solely on the Internet still have some intrinsic real world value is not a new one. You might recall the virtual island which sold for nearly $30,000 several years ago, or the Supreme Court ruling over ownership of domain names. However, this case is unique in that it’s not tens of thousands (or more) of dollars at stake here. It’s basically the equivalent of two kids beating up another to get his prized baseball card – and the courts are recognizing this as just as valid an issue, despite the fact that the stolen item exists solely in a game.

I VALUE MY DARN FULL MALEVOLENT GEAR OMG

I VALUE MY DARN FULL MALEVOLENT GEAR OMG

The ramifications are interesting. IRE‘s EULA provides a solid blanket of cover, ensuring that items such as credits and artifacts are always protected, while items you acquire in-game are subject to game world theft, subject to the individual game’s rules. However, what does this say about the value of our characters themselves and the items they hold? Do they now have a real world or monetary worth? Can items which exist solely in the virtual ether have any sort of price tag attached to them, or are they just intangible abstracts?

An intriguing way to look at this is to consider what in itself denotes value. Basic Econ 101 courses look at real world goods in this way, assessing factors which contribute to an item’s value. One theory suggests that value derives from the inherent costs of production. For items which exist solely online, however, the need for labor and materials is completely absent – a virtual sword doesn’t require a smith’s time or iron ore to make, just like a house in Achaea’s subdivision doesn’t need masons and stone to actually build. Yet these can be highly desired things to acquire in games, so there is obviously something else which plays into how much an e-item is worth – a more subjective scale of perceived use and desirability.

For the most part, items fall into three categories, although there is understandable interlap: utility, enjoyment and rarity. A rune for your blade or a set of wings, a special design for your unicorn in Avalon, or a meta gem in WoW – are all clear examples of items which are highly valued for their utility. These items augment your fighting or greatly ease your travel through the land, and carry high price tags which players consider worth paying because of how useful they are. A house one can roleplay within or a fancy mount, on the other hand, would be an item considered valuable because of the enjoyment factor it contributes  to. These types of items often are acquired more for roleplay or sentimental purposes. Finally, rare items, such as prizes earned through events or promotions, or pets which have a very low chance or spawning, are valued primarily because other people don’t have them, or need them and find them hard to acquire.

Artifact auctions provide a great example of this sort of valuation in practice. Aetolia, for example, is currently holding a unique type of auction, where several of the items can only be bid on with special tokens which players acquired in an earlier promotion. One of the items, a torc which gives the Druid vitality skill, currently has a very high bid, due to how useful the ability is perceived to be in combat. Another item, though, is a special traveling house, and is also rising high up on the bid list, because of the “fun factor” many see in driving a gypsy wagon around. The currency itself, finally, is a great demonstration of the notion of rarity – before the items were announced, most people didn’t value the tokens that highly and they sold for rather low prices. Now, however, that the auction is underway and people need the tokens (and the amount available is becoming more scarce) the price these are being traded for is skyrocketing.

It’s somewhat fascinating how the game world can mirror the real one, but with its own distinct spin put on it. Without the fetters of some real world constraints, such as production and material costs, other aspects of the economy come to the forefront, making for a interesting system to sit back and observe.

How about you? What items do you most value in your game of choice, and why?

Newb Moments

17 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by in Game Psychology, MUDs, Social, World of Warcraft

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The following comment from a WI article started reminding me of some of my biggest newb moments.

Daniel said: If quest healing, also remember not to modify your attacks to the alt key! Alt+tab when questing may end in disaster.

You see, I use keybindings a lot for my healing, especially for instant cast spells. Probably a development of all the PvPing I did during my formative levelling. I soon realized that I ran out of keys to use, so I use modifiers quite often.

#showtooltip penance
/cast [mod:alt, target=focus][mod:shift, target=target][nomod, target=player] penance

That’s a simple use of modifiers in a macro. You press different buttons and different things happen. You can use these quite potently…or otherwise…

I, personally, have alt set as my modifier for directing my spells to my tank. Ie, I press 1, I bubble myself. I press alt+1, I bubble the tank. Well, I was raiding on my paladin and we were in Bastion of Twilight at that REALLY nasty trash pull with all the elements, right before the Captain Planet fight.

Now, at this past point in time, I have my hands (eg of protection, salvation, etc) lined up on my F keys to keep track of them really easily (you may see where this is going), but when I try to hand of sacrifice the tank, my game crashes!

“Omg!” I growl into mumble. “Wait, sorry, ack, stupid game crashed!”

I log back in to see that everyone has wiped. Sadface. We run back and try again. Again, I attempt to hand of sacrifice the tank. Again, poof! WoW closes.

“OMG! This spell is making my game crash!!!” I log back in, righteously pissed off at Blizzard by this point, and finally one of my teammates jokes, “Geez, what are you doing? Pressing alt+f4 over and over? Lawl!”

Oh. Duh. I mumble something about bugs as I furtively move hand of sacrifice off of the F4 key.

Apparently I’m not the only one who was reminded of newbiness, as today’s WI breakfast topic is a  wonderful collection of amusing raid-based failure. I highly recommend a read.

Some runs back are longer than others...

Some runs back are longer than others…

“Newb moments,” to me, are something longer-lasting than a simple blonde moment or brain fart. They are almost a sort of epiphany, moments where you discover something fundamental and profound – except in this case, that discovery is something you really should have known about.

My very first memory of a newb moment was when I initially began playing MUDs, over a dozen years ago (ugh, I feel so old saying that). I remember reading the game’s website and imagining how I could become an amazing, powerful….something. I wasn’t that clear on how it all worked. Eager to become awesome, I set off exploring.

Now, I had played other games before this. I had a Sega Genesis as a kid and even before that we had an Atari ST (it was the Cadillac of prehistoric PCs kthnx). Even better, we had internet access before the internet was even a fully-fledged thing. This meant that we got, in addition to all the important boring government DARPA defense stuff, SHAREWARE (and demo) GAMES!!!

While some of these games were amazing displays of graphics and sound like TURRICAN, some were little freeware ditties, including a range of text games: virtual trucker games, a Clue knockoff and Zork-esque adventures. The text adventures, in particular, resonated with me, and I spent many an hour trying to “get dragon” and “kill dragon” (and lots of subsequent “you have died”ing).

So, when I got older and we got ourselves a fancy new computer and super fast internet – the phone jack went STRAIGHT INTO THE COMPUTER!!! – I started looking at what games were out there on the web and found a game called Avalon. Fast-forward to my imagined ascent to greatness.

Oh boy. Telnet.

Oh boy. Telnet.

I explored the virtual world, merrily typing north, north, east, look, get dung – you know, the usual. I discovered things all over that I could pick up. I found a whole castle on top of a mountain filled with dwarves! I got lost in the caves under the castle and got killed by an orc. I dropped all of the awesome shinies I had been carrying. Le sigh. A roadblock on my path to becoming amazing!

It didn’t matter. I was enthralled. I played for hours straight, and then again the next day. And at the height of this enraptured gameplay, something happened – the newbiest newb moment of all newb moments – that changed my paradigm on games completely.

I was still caught up in my voracious exploring and questing when I wandered into a building that appeared to be a temple. The rooms had vaunted names and the text descriptions detailed columns and ornate carvings. I felt a shiver of apprehension. Was I nearly at the part where I became the ruler of the world?

I came upon a dead end. There, standing out in bright aquamarine text, was what had to be part of my ultimate quest: “Archimedes, the God of Wisdom.” Normal quest creatures weren’t named in colors that brilliant. Normal quest givers didn’t have names that illustrious. Normal quest givers didn’t hang out in a sacred temple. Exhaling slowly, I readied myself for the final task and then typed in the phrase I had learned would prompt the game’s creatures to give me quests – GREET ARCHIMEDES.

You warmly greet Archimedes, the God of Wisdom.

I waited, breath bated.

And kept waiting. Weird. The other creatures always gave me quests instantly.

GREET ARCHIMEDES.

You warmly greet Archimedes, the God of Wisdom.

Still nothing. I was getting frustrated.

GREET ARCHIMEDES

GREET ARCHIMEDES

GREET ARCHIMEDES

You warmly greet Archimedes, the God of Wisdom.

You warmly greet Archimedes, the God of Wisdom.

You warmly greet Archimedes, the God of Wisdom.

Archimedes, the God of Wisdom lets out a broad chuckle.

Archimedes, the God of Wisdom says, “Quite the persistently friendly one you are, aren’t you?”

GET QUEST FROM ARCHIMEDES

Archimedes, the God of Wisdom says, “Are you lost? Need some help on your novice quests?”

NOVICE

NOVICE commands are the province of the Ministry of Public Relations and the barony.

Ok, what did that mean?! All of a sudden this game was getting confusing.

Theresa appears before you through the black screen of a magical portal.

Whoa.

“Hi!” Theresa happily says.

Theresa says, “Lost novice here?”

Archimedes, the God of Wisdom nods emphatically.

Theresa says, “No worries. I’ll help her out.”

Theresa says, “Follow me. Just type FOLLOW THERESA.”

WHOA.

Suddenly it hit me – these were not computer creatures. THESE WERE REAL PEOPLE. There were other people playing the game with me. The world fell out beneath me. I had been completely oblivious to the vast, expansive nature of the game I was playing…oblivious to the potential of the internet itself. I was in a fantasy world inhabited not just by monsters and dragons, but also by other living, breathing people. All on my computer. The realization was astounding.

This, here, was my newb moment, when I discovered I had been overlooking an essential element of the game. In my case, I had missed the fundamental nature of what a MUD was – a multiplayer dungeon.

Once that awareness sunk in, the game was never the same.

On one hand, a whole new vista of gameplay unfolded. Player-to-player interactions are far more complex and ever-changing than scripted AI. Roleplay develops, alliances form, enemies are made. Combat is intense and politics compelling. The game develops endless playability.

Then again, there is something vital lost in that awakening. It’s like a kid realizing that (spoilers!) Santa doesn’t really exist. Yes, you see the more complex mechanics of the gameplay (or reasons for the holiday) and learn to play at a deeper level (ie be a grown up), but there is still an element of blissful ignorance that has been shed. What started as an impossibly engaging magical experience establishes itself as just a game.

Any level of competent gameplay requires this transition (which is probably a better topic for another entry, as this one is getting rather long). Sometimes, however, I look back on this first massive newb moment, and nostalgically remember what it was like to be clueless.

How about you? Any incredibly huge blind spots you’ve discovered in your gameplay? Any big discoveries? Any reaaaaaally stupid mistakes you’ve made?

Why I Wouldn’t Bet on a Warcraft Movie

08 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by in PR, Social, World of Warcraft

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[edit from 2024: this blog post is amazing and I’m never deleting it. Radical acceptance is my new mantra: we’re all dumb when we’re 20-something.]

So, reading WoWInsider’s daily queue, I came across this question:

dumbass said:
Ok, so, I’ve just watched Hobbit and, having read the book ,but not being a LOTR buff, the film still felt pretty darn amazing. The art, the effects, the way they went about things. WHY ISNT THERE A WOW MOVIE??? If they can do that with Hobbit, I mean come on ,the style felt so WoW-like. And the box office would be off the charts for it imo. Any idea’s why it’s still not out there?

I don’t know about the profitability of a movie. The fan base isn’t as relatively large as many think it is, for one. Assuming $8 a ticket, let’s be generous and say that everyone who has ever played WoW also manages to talk someone else into seeing the movie with them. That’s 24 million people! Actually…that’s actually not a huge number in movie ticket sales. The top 100 movies sold a much higher range: 50-200 million.

Let’s do some math, though, and guess how much money Blizzard would make. 24 million * $8 = $192 million. That sounds pretty good! But that’s just gross intake. You have to subtract production costs, advertising, etc. The Hobbit? Guesstimations put that at $300 million to make. Even if WoW went for a drastically lower budget, they’d still have to invest some decent funds to make the movie look professional. The anomaly of the incredible El Mariachi aside, most movies take a big chunk of change, with fantasy movies requiring even more. It appears that no top (or even modest) grossing fantasy movie has been made in recent years with a budget of less than $50-$100 million.

I'm ready for my close up, Mr. Ghostcrawler.

I’m ready for my close up, Mr. Ghostcrawler.

Blizzard already tagged Sam Raimi for producer – even though he’s backed out, we can approximate what style (and cost) of movie he’d make by looking back at his other recent projects. Spiderman 3 is probably an unfair example, since it’s one of the most expensive movies to be made. Ever. Legend of the Seeker, however, is more on-point: a toned-down and SFX’d up version of Raimi’s original Xena and Hercules series, the show makes do with a budget of $1.5 million an episode, which is leaning towards the higher end, especially for non-network television. The special effects, however, are clearly made-for-TV quality, and a much larger amount of money would need to be allocated for a movie. Raimi’s most recent work, Oz: The Great and Powerful, had a budget of around $200 million, a number that is becoming increasingly more average for big name fantasy flick. Extrapolating from these, it seems that Raimi’s average production budgets, as far as fantasy stuff goes, would range from solidly above average to Lord of the Rings territory…so we can conclude that Blizzard would be aiming at a fairly high bar (which is pretty well reinforced by the company itself, in my opinion. They don’t do substandard stuff).

So, basically – the movie would either have to be quite cheap to make (which doesn’t look likely) OR draw in a ton of general fans, to cover the production costs and net a large profit. Just how generic would the movie have to go to draw in non-WoW players? How much would that deviation detract from the movie? At the least, there would have to be heavy backstory exposition – or a lot of sweeping changes to lighten the plot and make it easier to follow – to catch the non-gamers up on the storyline. I’ll let you chew on that and consider how it would affect the overall movie.

This whole moment – the verge of confronting Varimathras in the Battle for Undercity – would be drastically scaled down to, “There’s a demon being demony so let’s demon slay!” And Sylvanas wouldn’t be undead. Hell, it’d probably just be all about Thrall to simplif- heeeeeey wait….

Conversely, Diablo 3 sold over 10 million copies, at (let’s round down) $50 a piece. That’s $500 million gross intake.Rounding up as much as we can (to match the insane budge of Gran Turismo 5), let’s say D3 cost $50 million to make. That’s a much larger investment to profit return.

However, it goes beyond even that – Blizzard is a video game company. Making a live action movie is entirely outside of their wheelhouse, so either a large chunk of the movie would have to be outsourced (perhaps with Blizzard just providing the story, rights and maybe some creative input), or a big investment would have to be made in regards to staffing and equipment (which, really, just is impractical unless Blizzard is planning on making other movies in the future).

In short, making a Warcraft movie would likely not be a financially wise decision for Blizzard. It might, however, be good for other reasons – such as a PR move to pull in more subscribers to the Warcraft/WoW franchise. In my opinion, it would have to pay out quite solidly in this other department to be worth the creation of an entire movie… which may have been the entire original point of the movie. Remember, the movie was first announced in 2006, at the height of vanilla and WoW’s seemingly-unstoppable rise in popularity.

WoW subs over time. From http://mmodata.blogspot.com/

WoW subs over time. From http://mmodata.blogspot.com/

At the time, creating a movie probably seemed to be an ambitious, but exciting, idea for a spin-off. Sure, the profits would only be modest at best, but it would draw even more players into this new world of MMOs. The sky probably seemed to be the limit – more and more people were discovering online gaming and the industry was growing at exponential rates. A movie would only draw even more in.

However, time passed and this growth slowed. WoW seems to have settled into the 9-12 million subscriber range, and has hovered around these numbers for several years. Furthermore, it seems the MMO market itself has saturated and reached somewhat of an equilibrium of players, staying steadily around 20 million:

All MMO subs over time. Image from http://mmodata.blogspot.com/

All MMO subs over time. Image from http://mmodata.blogspot.com/

A movie nowadays would lack that recruitment punch that it would have held in 2006; Blizzard would be pulling a relatively small amount of new MMO players in with it, and existing gamers probably wouldn’t try WoW out just because of the movie. A new game (Titan, cough, cough), new expansion, or revised content, on the other hand, is much cheaper to make and more likely to draw in gamers from other games, draw back straying WoW subs or draw money out of D3/Starcraft addicts in need of the new game fix.

All that being said, have you heard about Defiance? This game is intertwined with a TV show on SyFy – the game world is represented on the small screen, characters from the TV show appear in game, game events revolve around the TV plot – and promises to be a potential…err…game changer when it comes to video games. Even though it’s not really my thing (I like to test shooters, but I’m not as much a fan of playing them), I will probably keep a close eye on this just to see what develops. If it works out? Hey, maybe we will see a WoW movie someday.

I really hope so, if only to see the racial dances on the big screen. >_>

Low Res Gaming

02 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Game Design, Game Psychology, World of Warcraft

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I was reading the Queue, WoW Insider’s daily reader Q&A, and this question (and the TONS of debate in the comments) stood out to me:

Daniel asked:

is the increasing size of the game killing subscribers with inferior machines?

No. WoW is still very accessible from very aged computers. The size of the game has very little to do with any as well, as long as the graphic settings are low the game could be three times the size it is right now and it’d still function fine.

It’s a fairly relevant topic for me. You see, I don’t have a video card. In Guild Wars 2, I joke that I have a super deluxe in-built realistic physics engine. My friends all kinda raised their eyebrows, until they saw my computer at our New Years’ GW2 LAN party: every time I ran anywhere, my turns would translate momentum from the direction I had been travelling in and if I stopped running my character would jog a step or two before fully halting. It makes doing jump puzzles impossible, but it actually does add an (inadvertent) layer of realism to my toon’s movement. Still, it’s crappy graphics. The game looks pixelated and grainy, and WoW – while less demanding – is often hardly better.  I run at about 10 fps in raids. All of my settings are as low as low can be, except for view distance in battlegrounds (hey, I gotta be able to see Gold Mine from Lumbermill!).

I’m also my guild’s top healer. Granted, we’re not a hardcore progression team, but we did just down the first boss in Terrace, so we’re not a throwaway guild either. My game is not as pretty as…pretty much anyone else’s…but, to be honest, I find that helps half the time for avoiding crap on the ground. I used my live-in-arms-warrior’s computer while he was back east visiting family and I was dazzled and almost a bit overwhelmed by all the shiny, pretty, glaring spell effects. I may be part magpie. However, I can see the merit of toning all that down (except for certain encounters, like BoT’s Valiona which had to be hotfixed so low graphic settings could even SEE the black circles) to make it easier to see the really vital stuff, like void zones.

Plus, if you have really shitty graphics, it makes gathering quests (and sometimes PvP) cool in an almost-cheating-it’s-kinda-that-great way, since all the ground clutter phases out of view unless you are right on top of it. This means that you can essentially see through the world and view the actual quest elements and other players. Boxes, rocks, plants – bam, gone! Great for things like hunting for cloud serpent eggs; all the foliage vanishes, but the eggs are interactable objects, so they remain visible.

I mean, really, what stuff IS actually important to see? As a priest, I like being able to see who has bubble and aegis at a glance, but that’s really only vital in PvP (both for keeping them ON my team and for dispelling them FROM enemy teams!). In raids, I tend to be keeping my eyes more on health meters, however, and those display who’s got bubble AND  how long their weakened soul is. I don’t really NEED to see my spells themselves being cast. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’d feel weird if my character just sat there, but seeing sparkles shoot out of my hands is not necessary to gameplay – all I really need from that end is a cast bar to let me know that spells are actually being cast. Technically I don’t NEED the visuals of it.

However, there’s a reason gaming moved on from text-based into graphical, afterall (hint: it involves the graphics). A game where all of the visuals are pared down is not an aesthetically pleasing one. Think about it – when you picked up your first MMO, there was probably a moment of awe, simply based on what you were seeing. I know there was for me: I came to WoW from text-based MUDs and to suddenly SEE all of the game in dancing, vibrant colors and 3-d image was jaw-dropping.

mudscreen

General MUD gameplay. Talking to another player and viewing /g

mudscreen1

MUD combat and part of the in-game mapping system

mudscreen2

An ASCII firework!

Those above? That’s what a MUD looks like. You might get some ASCII image, like the “map” at the bottom of the second (yes, we use THAT to navigate) or even some more flashy things like ASCII fireworks of a nyancat. However, that’s as advanced as you get, graphically. It’s like being stuck in 1980, visually, in a MUD. So to suddenly load WoW and SEE my character (instead of just imagine her) and SEE her casting spells…that was incredible. It’s not much of a leap to assume that it was a similar experience for many people trying MMOs for the first time, and there is no doubt in my mind that part of what makes a game popular is its graphics – but very firmly only part.

Graphics alone don’t make (or break) a game. RIFT, for example, had stunning graphics, but a lack of distinctly unique gameplay prevented it from becoming the WoWKiller it was predicted to be. Many Asian MMOs have gorgeous graphics, but overly-grindy (to Western audiences) gameplay prevents them from getting a foothold in the US and EU market. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the runaway success of Minecraft and its 16-bit world.

In my opinion, it comes back to that first experience I had with WoW. Not only was I seeing the game world, I was seeing MY character. I had given her red hair, like me, and, to this day, I remember what it looked like to watch her run around and cast spells. I identified with my avatar and formed an attachment to her visual representation. Now, that kind of visual identity transcends whether the game even has graphics; it’s just easier in an MMO. In MUDs,  many players went out of their way to visualize their characters: avatars and signatures for forums, a paragraph describing how the character looks, even real life drawings to depict the character. One of the biggest ways to make money in the IRE games, for example, is drawing pictures IRL for other players. I know, personally, because I had DOZENS made of my little Imp.

The difference between a MMO and a MUD is that the ENTIRE world is there for you to see in a MMO. In a MUD, you have to imagine the game world, and immersion stems from other sources, such as reading the description of a room, or reading what an NPC says, or reading another character’s emotes (it involves a lot of reading, is what I’m getting at). In a MMO, it’s right there before you. You drink it in and are instantly immersed;  that type of game magic is what drew so many to try out MMOs and shot the popularity of multiplayer games from the thousands into the millions.

…but at the same time, that quick, in-your-face immersion dulls you to its very power.

In a MUD, you are drawn in to the story and the mental pictures you, yourself, are painting. That doesn’t mean that you read the text for every time you cast a fireball. It’s the same line of words, and you cast hundreds of fireballs every time you go out grinding. You tune it out, just as MMO players tune out basic cast animations to focus on what is DIFFERENT. It’s the same concept of our brain tuning out white noise or ignoring the sight of our own nose in front of us. Basically, stuff that is repetitive and the same gets relegated to the back of our notice, so we can pay attention to changes.

I’d argue, however, that after a point, the very gameworld becomes background noise. When you are raiding or capturing a flag, you aren’t focusing on the cool architecture of the room or the pretty trees surrounding the base. You are looking on the ground for void zones or watching an enemy cast bar for polymorph. MUDs are similar: when you first start playing you walk around reading every room description. Eventually, you just turn on BRIEF and get just the name of the room and the exits as you run around the game.

Verbose and then brief room descriptions in a MUD

Verbose and then brief room descriptions in a MUD (my spaceship in Lusternia)

In short, you focus on the game’s mechanics and gameplay, and the immersive aspects (like graphics or descriptions) only really factor in as an occasional “yeah, that’s nice” or when you consider how well they are letting you see stuff like enemy AoE. In both cases, there are definitely moments where you can be drawn back into the game world. It might be a particularly beautiful vista in WoW or an especially unique room name in a MUD prompting you to read the room’s description. And some players who are focused heavily on roleplay may not even leave the heavy immersion behind in the first place. But the majority of players tend to concentrate on the gameplay itself when involved in tasks like raiding or PvP. I guess I’m saying that graphics don’t really matter for core gameplay, as long as they are good (and fast) enough to let you see what you need to. Having graphics, period, has helped draw many new players to MMOs, but having insane graphics won’t make up for subpar mechanics or design, because players become essentially immune to the visuals when they are engrossed in high-attention gameplay.
All of the above being said, playing low graphics does make for some amusing anecdotes. For example, when xmog came out, I said I wanted a halo or a crown or something pretty, so a guildmate took me to BRD and I got the Circle of Flame. “Oooh!” I thought. “A red gem hanging above my head!” and proceeded to xmog every outfit ever with it for a year or so.

flame_kal

See? There’s a little red gem hanging over my head! (Squint your eyes and zoom in; it may help) Then, a few weeks ago, I came to bug my boyfriend’s toon by mimicking him as he ran around doing stuff (we’re mature adults like that)…and I completely froze, staring at his screen.

“What…what is that?!” I stammered.

“What is what?” he replied, turning to face me in real life.

I pointed at his screen. “That!” I exclaimed, circling my toon’s head on his screen. “My head is on FIRE!”

He stared blankly back at me. I mean, I’m a goof, but I think he was a bit concerned.

“It’s…your…armor…?” he suggested.

“Since WHEN?!”

Turns out, the actual visual for the circle of fire is – shockingly – a circle. Of fire. Go figure. After a few minutes of being weirded out by my (from my view) new wreath of flames, I decided I liked the look quite a bit, and began demanding that he show me myself just so I could admire my toon in high res. In a way, I feel like I’m back at square one, knocked out of my jaded function-over-form paradigm from the last few years to find myself enthralled simply by the image of my character, shining away like a pretty little pyrotechnic elf.

Pretty fire....

Pretty fire….

…Damn. Now I want a video card, and Christmas JUST passed.

With Win Trading, Nobody Wins :(

28 Friday Dec 2012

Posted by in Battlegrounds, Game Psychology, PR, PvP

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I recently tried to join a RBG via Battlemasters. No hate on the site – I love these new communities for PvP. However…sometimes…I am astounded by the kind of things I see.

Random Leader: “What’s your gear/MMR?”

Me: “http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/dragonmaw/Kaliy/simple – healer priest, veteran of the horde, 15 from vet #2, 7.8k resil – low MMR (1500) however because I’ve been playing with guildies. Great player!”

Random leader: “8k resil? That’s subpar.”

Me: “Wait…what?”

Random leader: “I only take 10k resil players.”

Ok, I suck at math. But I think I am fairly in the clear to say that 10k resil is a SHIT TON OF WINS. I have capped EVERY SINGLE WEEK except for 1 (I had the flu, sue me!). My cap IS ABOVE THE MINIMUM CAP. I GEM PARTIALLY FOR RESIL. If my resilience is “below the norm” there is a severely skewed impression of what the norm is going around.

But, then again, I don’t really blame people for being confused. Actual rating is somewhat of a lost cause right now – when there are 60 pages of people wanting to cheat the system, you HAVE TO admit that something is wrong. Or, ya know, at least ban those 60 pages worth of people. Sadly, neither of those has happened, so we have a system riddled with crazy ratings, permeated with far-too-powerful gear…and one that makes legitimate victories feel worthless.

I really am quite sad to learn about this rampant win culture. As you can see in my self advertisement, I am quite proud of my RBGing. I’ve been doing it as a PUG since the system debuted, and I want to earn “Warbringer of the Horde” this season. The issue is that the win trading has pervaded beyond just the top brackets – as you can see by the skewed view of “geared”, even midranged brackets are being ruined by these exploits. I used to be able to hop in for any team and many people on my server will snatch me up as a RBG healer – healers are rare this expansion. With a wider net, however, we start seeing the influence of cheats.

Let’s have a visual. Here are top top rankings:

wintrade

Here’s an easy way to discern a cheater- look at the number of games they have played. Most of us? We’ve played HUNDREDS of games. These cheating brats have played maybe 10 or 20 games. Can you spot the cheater in the above pic? The sad answer is that MOST OF THEM ARE CHEATERS.

I am gonna stop ranting about cheaters. Oh, I mean, it’s not because I *want* to give it a break. It’s just that there’s no point in being upset; there is no website functionality to report  cheaters at the top brackets, unless you use the in-game reporting system, which relies upon being in a group with them, encountering them in a BG or arena, or being on the same server as them. This is an irritating oversight, as PvP is based on battlegroups (ie, multiple servers linked together). I quite like the many new additions Blizz made to automate customer support, like the new item restoration service and easy, right-click reporting – but they need to extend it to armory profiles and ladder listing functionality for it to be truly useful.

Tons of PvPers have identified people who are clearly cheating or win trading…but have no way to flag them for the mods to investigate. For PvP, in most games you play (especially the smaller ones), a lot of the potential regulation and moderation can be outsourced to the community itself – you aren’t fighting NPCs in PvP, but other players directly, so the impacts of cheating are instantly felt and disliked. The majority of serious PvPers aren’t behind cheating, and the cheaters will quickly rise above the rest as they are ferreted out. Crowdsourcing the moderation for PvP is easy AND it also has a great, “calming” effect on the frustrated honest players. Being able to easily flag people who are obviously cheating feels a heck of a lot better than just having to sit and shrug, accepting it.

Winter is here…but is the roleplay?

13 Thursday Dec 2012

Posted by in Events, Game Design, Game Psychology, Social, World of Warcraft

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WINTER IS COMING HERE! Holiday season is upon us and pretty much every game out there is cashing in with special events. Aetolia and Achaea have Celesmas. WoW has Winter Veil. Even Team Fortress 2 has a (surprisingly) somewhat-roleplayed Christmas event. But what part do holidays play in the overall game world?

Many games TRY to give a semblance of backstory to the holiday celebrations. For example, WoW does a pretty cool job of translating Halloween into the game world: the Foresaken get a giant wicker man to burn (sadly devoid of bears and bees) and the classic fairy tale archetype of a headless horseman gets a lich-themed twist, as the horseman is a reanimated paladin confused over his own state of life (though I don’t really understand why we never just…show the guy a mirror or something).

Christmas is no exception. WoW slaps some drunken dwarves and dancing gnomes on it and makes it religion-neutral: bam! You got yourself a Winter Veil. It’s one of the least complex of the WoW holidays (check out the backstory for yourself – the Harvest Festival has more going on in the lore department)…but it’s definitely one of the most FUN. Free stuff! Free stuff! More free stuff! I honestly think the popularity of this holiday inspired the  Blingatron.

santa

“Have you been naughty or nice, little girl?” “…I’m a freaking Twilight Cultist, dude. What do you think?”

But how do these holidays fit into the game world itself? Let’s look at the obvious, first. While it’s not as noticeable in WoW, many games don’t use 1:1 calendar systems, and instead have accelerated time scales. An event that matches real-life holidays will have NO correlation to the in-game calendar, and will highlight the biggest “detraction” of holiday-based events: they aren’t based in the game world. Even with attempts to pretty them up, the events are based on real world holidays, and some players find this to kill immersion.

In MUDs I’ve played, this immersion-slaying was as ubiquitous as dragon slaughter (granted, we didn’t have that many dragons; they were rare spawns) and rather vehement arguments sprung up around the holidays (kinda defeating the point of a fun event). Both sides had very valid points, to be honest. For example, for Valentine’s Day, Aetolia holds an events where players pretend to be Cupid, shooting arcane bows at each other to collect “hearts” which they could turn in for prizes. The people playing the event basically ignored most of what their character’s motivation and actions would be, and tended to just run around doing what they needed to in order to win prizes (highway ambushes, kidnapping and breaking into houses all included). The roleplayers, on the other hand, often were stuck as targets (or at least in the crossfire) for the event traffic. Chatter and shouts would often be inane. People couldn’t emote more than a few lines without someone busting in on holiday event business – and the people trying to do the events kept getting frustrated by nonparticipants getting upset at being shot, as if their characters were the ones being hit. But weren’t their characters the targets? For the roleplayers they were – for the people participating in the event, they weren’t…which was the crux of the problem.

Another example from MUDs are holiday giveaways. Certain holidays in the Iron Realms games feature a NPC named Ironbeard who will randomly visit a player and toss a giftbag at them. Inside may be gold, a potion or two, or fabulous prizes. Players soon figured out that being online increased their chances of getting a random visit, and soon nearly every player was logged in 24/7…most of them afk. Guilds would have dozens of members online, but nobody actually around to help out a newbie’s cry for help. People started getting angry at the rampant afk and some people even started attacking others, merely for being idle.

As we can see, beyond just the badly transmogged holidays themselves, reskinned events can trump normal gameplay, on a fundamental level. Many players view holiday events as “OOC” (out of character) activities, because they are based on real life holidays. And, as mentioned, games which do not have a 1:1 time scale have an even more jarring inclusion of external holidays.  Even in WoW, this happens: think of battlegrounds and how drastically they change when Children’s Week rolls around. Players who don’t even PvP are in there trying to get the achievements – the big fans of PvP would be the roleplayers from my example above, irritated at the achievement hunters clogging up their gameplay. Rogues around Thanksgiving also make gripes about holidays and their constant turkeyfication.

However, holidays are a great inclusion to a game world – any developer should strive to include some types of events like these to punctuate normal gameplay. In Avalon, there were no holiday events, and their lack of presence was felt. Players would put on their own activities, and anything an admin/god did was considered a big deal. That burden for excitement should not fall on the players, however. A well planned persistent gameworld should include holidays and/or seasonal events, as these punctuated bursts of activity “outside of the norm” can really spice up play, giving players something to look forwards to and log in for.

So how to reconcile immersion with events? My thoughts:

– Base events off in-game lore. A game which values IC immersion will already have a lot of lore and backstory to find a way to base holidays off something within the game world.

– Base awards on participation. Simply logging in is fine for a “You were here!” recognition, but any sort of random giveaway should have a basis in actual player activity.

– Consider ramifications of event participation. Adding NEW things to do for the event is good. Reskinning existing content (like children’s week battlegrounds) will lead to normal gameplay being invaded by event traffic.

– Make em fun 😛

 

So. My thoughts for now. All that said, I love holiday events. As someone who’s travelled alot and moved to strange places and isn’t the best at making huge groups of new friends, it’s been nice to be able to log in to the games I play and have my own little version of Christmas if I can’t be at home with my family. So, in that regard, I absolutely love that games have special recognition of these special times of the year.

Let’s just make sure it doesn’t involve mobs of PvErs trying to cap all the flags in WSG, ok? Sheeeesh. >_>

Game Fame

06 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by in Development, Game Psychology, Gameplay, Social, World of Warcraft

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I was reading this thread on the WoW forums and it reminded me of an article I wrote for IRE a few months back. Rehashing it and adding a bit…

Anyone who’s played an MMO has a sense of the vast scale of the internet. Millions of players game online, with dozens of identical servers hosting similar iterations of the same world. Standing out in this vast community is nearly impossible – sure, there are a few famous players well known among the crowd of their particular game, but for the most part, the game world is a persistent place, rather untouched by those who live in it.

But that idea is shattered by MUDs. By their very design, MUDs are much smaller realms, and part of what makes them so appealing is the level of impact individual characters can have on the game world. In IRE games, for example, players lead houses, guilds and cities, with the process to learn class skills based entirely on interaction with other residents of the game. This makes for a very rich, player-driven system – people within the game, rather than game  mechanics, lay out the foundations for progression and this creates an intricate system of politics and interpersonal interactions.

To advance in your city or guild, you earn favors from the organization’s leaders and high ranking residents. Essentially every organization has set tasks you can complete, with additional perks and rewards often given for members who demonstrate that they are valuable and hard working. This setup makes for a vibrant, interactive world that draws people in – you aren’t just grinding away to get to some abstract level or earn x amount of coin; instead, you are also working to prove yourself to your organization’s leadership.

The concept unfolds in engaging ways: if you are a promising novice, it is quickly noticed. If you demonstrate aptitude for combat, you often find that you are recruited to assist with city- or guild-based conflicts. And the recognition extends both ways – those in power are known throughout the land. Guild or city leaders become household names, and their characters often find themselves in the spotlights of the land’s activity.

Beyond this, events are sometimes held where the land itself is changed….due to the result of player actions. For example, in Aetolia, a giant sea monster threatened the entire world. Not only was his emergence a result of a magical ritual cast by the Magi guild, his eventual defeat came about through the efforts of many players. In game lore, posts, scrolls and stories documented the roles various characters played in his defeat and many players have found that their characters are now part of the game’s canon mythology and ongoing story as a result of their participation in this event.

In short, to become known in a MUD is not only possible, it’s a rite of passage. The communities are smaller and more tight-knit, and players thrive on interactions. Individuals can make an impact on the world in impressive ways you rarely see in today’s MMO, be that for their leadership style, their roleplay of a certain race, or their frightening ability for combat. Fame is not only possible, it is, arguably, one of the reasons why we play our characters!

One oddly particular quirk of WoW players is looking back at “vanilla” (ie, the original) WoW with rose-tinted glasses, claiming it was better. I’m not going to get into that (very LONG) debate here, but I will bring up the idea of a server community. Vanilla WoW didn’t have the immense resources that we have today. There weren’t sites you could just google to find out about an elusive quest or the best DPS rotation. Upcoming content wasn’t datamined months before it became live. The developers themselves didn’t communicate with the players like they do now – changes were magical new things handed down by the Blizzardy gods. Sidestepping the idea of dev-player relations (which I’ll probably explore in another post), the end result is that things were just a heck of a lot more mystical and hand-wavingly mysterious….and that meant you had to rely on your fellow players a lot more to learn things and get stuff done.

Nowadays in WoW, we have automated battlegrounds and dungeons, and cross-server zone functionality, where zones will merge across servers if their current population is low. But back in vanilla, it was just you and your server, and you had to get out there and talk to people to form up groups. I absolutely agree that this antiquated system made people stand out. Every person I remember from my early WoW days was someone random I met via questing or grouping up to tackle content or even through PvPing.

But is that equivalent to the type of fame you can achieve in a MUD? I can login to a handful of MUDs right now and people I’ve never met – people who didn’t even start playing until after I quit – will send me whispers along the lines of, “Ooh, it’s you!” Granted, that sort of notoriety goes both ways (sometimes I get “*groan* It’s YOU.”), but the very fact that you can leave a legacy like that is a heady one. There is something about fame that is alluring. We are drawn to leave our mark.

In a way, I think MMOs will always have a bit of a standoffish feel to their immersion for me, until they find a way to incorporate this feeling: instead of just playing a game, I want to help shape what happens. WoW skimmed the surface of this type of gameplay with the gates of AQ event, where each server worked together to complete gruelling requirements and eventually unlock a new raid. However, the end result was the same, no matter what happened. The gates opened and, sure, a few people got special titles out of it, but it wasn’t really something the players themselves shaped. Imagine, instead, if the event had been open ended – players could choose how they respond to the crazy bug stuff. Propose a treaty, declare a war, hold a ritual, etc, all could have spun off in different directions.

Obviously the logistics of that won’t work in a huge game like WoW. There are just too many players and servers to allow for open-ended and evolving events. The closest we get is roleplay storylines on roleplay servers. However, games like the new MUD Lithmeria make me think that maybe some awesome-crazy-awesome integration of player-based direction could find its way into MMOs. In Lithmeria, for example, hardcoded mechanics exist to let players do things like found their own religions or complete unique, one-time quests. Clear mechanics for player contributions combined with random response generation keeps the process feeling organic, while not requiring constant admin oversight. It’s a rather elegant idea, and I’d love to see something like this translated to MMOs. Let the players do the creative work, with mechanics in place to both facilitate this process and channel it along certain avenues (such as city elections).

In any case, I’ve been rambling, so I’ll stop now.

So, how do you view it? Does your server have any standouts? Is your character renowned/hated/revered/loved? If you could be famous for anything in your game of choice, what would it be?

Launch woes

22 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by in Game Psychology, PR

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A game I’m really excited about, Lithmeria, just bellyflopped PR-wise. The game has been riddled with launch errors (unexpected bugs, resulting from things like 50 people spamming the same command at once), so development has been pushed back. Unfortunately, each day for the last 3 days has been this process of “Game’s up…crap, something’s broken…game’s down.”

One gamer finally got irritated and posted his/her feelings about this constant yo-yo in IRC, suggesting that updates should be posted on the website/forums, instead of through IRC….and a dev happened to be there. Unfortunately, instead of simply making sympathetic sounds, the dev tried to defend the game – to the point of counter-attacking the player and siding with the IRC crowd who claim the game is fine, regardless of errors. Now, I can feel for the player – IRC is not for everyone. Still, some people like it, and power to them – but a player should not be forced to hang out in there to get information about the game they want to play through IRC – the GAME should provide it, because the GAME should want the player to play.

I think Lithmeria is quite confused, and I don’t blame them. When I was a new leader in MUDs, I didn’t even fathom the concept of players who didn’t read the game forums or participate in IRC/etc. Someone told me to ask others about my news post and I was SHOCKED to discover that a large number of players don’t even read in-game posts. This concept is entirely foreign and “crazy” to a hard core MUD player, but this type of gameplay is more typical that it is not. Yes, the majority of people playing your game won’t follow the OOC  (out of character) mediums – they just want to play the game.

Seriously, how is wearing this not bad PR?

Seriously, how is wearing this not bad PR?

Blizzard has learned this lesson the hard way: early Cata dungeons were demandingly hard because of a large FORUM outcry about dungeon difficulty. Blizzard very quickly realized that the forum populace is not, by any extent, a good sample of the real player base, and dungeons were quickly nerfed down to casual-friendly runs. Some people even claim that the negative 2 million spike in popularity is because of  changes Cata introduced, many of which were based on forum crusades; many of these crusades are now counteracted in MoP as WoW has brought back a more classic gameplay and storyline.

For the original MUD of discussion, the extrapolated point to take from this is that it’s GOOD for a game to imaginarily extend its potential player base. It’s BAD to assume the loud 4 people in IRC know what’s best (and siding with them is really dumb). It’s even WORSE to neglect some sort of official promotion when you have an official website – I know you aren’t complete, but you are close enough. The issue is going to be: is that medium of casual players going to be enough to make your game fly – and will neglecting them in PR make you sink?