- MMO: Massively Multiplayer Online…
- MMOG: Massively Multiplayer Online
Game
- MMOPW: Massively Multiplayer Online
Persistent World
- MMORPG: Massively Multiplayer
Role-playing Game
Today, November 14, 2003, is a red letter moment in the history of massively
multiplayer / persistent world gaming. Today Linden Labs, creator of an
enormous shared user-built world known as Second Life,
announced that they’re allowing users to retain the intellectual property
rights for anything they create within the game. If users build a house,
create a character, program a cool script, or write an adventure, those
graphics/concepts/programs will belong to the user and not the service provider
-- even if they are used for personal profit later on. The announcement,
made today at New York Law School’s “State of Play” conference,
is a marked departure from the end-user-license agreements of most MMOGs.
Most of today’s games retain whole ownership and openly combat users
attempting to profit in real-world dollars from the service.
Times are changing.
Over the past eight weeks GameSpy has looked into the history of massively
multiplayer gaming, the people behind it all, and the products that are
making a difference. But as we close up the series with a look toward the
future, it’s clear that MMOGs are soon going to become so different
in their play, billing models, and overall philosophy that this may be the
last time the blanket term “MMOG” can adequately describe them
all. (As if it ever truly did.)
Leveraging user-created content is just one way that the landscape will
change. Forget for a moment the obvious technical evolution in graphics,
sound, physics, etc. That's inevitable. What sorts of things, unique to
this genre, will happen? The subscription fee model may change, as well
as the economics of player-owned digital property. The way that people interact
with games will change -- both technologically and socially -- will change.
Gameplay will branch out in new directions.
GameSpy gathered together developers who are making a difference in the
genre to talk about the changes we’ll see over the next few years
and the decade beyond. It's a panel of industry veterans and relative newcomers,
from small companies and large. Here -- in the developers’ own words
as much as possible -- we’ll step away from the products of today
and look at how these games are going to break out of their shell and offer
even more compelling experiences than ever before in years to come.
It starts by leveraging the biggest asset available to persistent world
games ... you!
It's Your Game Now: User-Created Content
Will Wright, creator of Sim City and
The Sims, is no stranger to using gamers' own creativity
to enhance his products. Look at the original Sims game:
hundreds of thousands of player-created downloads are available, for furniture,
wallpapers, clothes and more. User content can help turn a great game
into a mainstream phenomena. Wright feels the same way about massively
multiplayer: "We're going to discover more ways to leverage player
creativity," he says.
He goes on to puzzle out some of the problems to wrestle with: "How
do we give them the most amount of satisfaction and surprise from the
least number of clicks? Once we have the ability to leverage the creative
process, how do we move that content between players in the most efficient
way? There's always some content that a small number of players create
that will have the most appeal. [In the long term] there's going
to be a mapping of style and orientation of gameplay, and we'll be able
to feed you custom content unique to your interest."
Of the developers we spoke with, user-generated content was unanimously
seen as The Next Big Thing... but with the caveat that it opened up a
whole new can of problems to solve. Let's hear from our panelists:
"User-Generated Content is going to be huge. It’s
one of those questions that’s more a matter of ‘when’
than ‘if,’ because it’s coming, and it’s coming
big time. There are lots of hurdles and difficulties, but if the players’
talents and creativity can be harnessed like it has been with FPS mods
and the like it will be a huge step forward for MMOGs."
Brad McQuaid
Original Producer/Co-designer of EverQuest
Currently President and CEO of Sigil Games Online, Inc.
"We believe that players will be given more and more
direct control over the shape and structure of the world through further
refinements in concepts such as Crafting and Ownership. This will lead
to the creation of stable systems that encourage cyclical interdependencies
between players. These interdependencies and the ensuing meta game mechanics
that emerge as players jockey for political, financial, and physical
control over the player generated resources in question will only continue
to get better and more addictive."
Matt Wilson
Executive Producer of Mythica
Perhaps more interesting than the direct benefits of
user created content are the indirect effects, or metagames, that arise.
Once users can create value in the world and can trade, the economic
incentives create new types of relationships, goals, and opportunities...
It is only a matter of time before issues surrounding commerce create
a need for more developed political systems, which will usher in a whole
new set of relationships, goals, and opportunities [within the games].
The gameplay in the metagames will ultimately be far more interesting
than the specific gameplay features of the original games."
Will Harvey
Founder and Executive Vice President of There
"As PSW’s [Persistent State Worlds] become more expressive
and allow more content creation, who owns the rights to things made
within them? If a character in a game gets a movie deal, who should
get the money? Current terms of service for games suggest that the users
get absolutely nothing -- all rights are forfeited to the game creators.
But if game worlds become increasingly real, isn’t this just like
living under the British Crown before the colonies revolted? It seems
likely that some sort of ‘bill of rights’ for gamers will
be needed if real innovation and depth is to emerge in the activities
and creations we see in these worlds."
Phillip Rosedale
Founder and CEO of Linden Labs
Developer of Second Life
"As the backend hardware improves and more players
have access to high end PCs, we’ll see players getting to change
more about the world on a permanent basis. Not just laying down a house,
which is pretty much the extent of it now: imagine fighting an apocalyptic
creature and having the whole side of a mountain blown out permanently,
or players creating safe Commons areas and donating features such fountains,
games, tables and chairs, wedding chapels, etc... I really want to have
players be able to build floating cities, grade new roads between points
of interest, that kind of thing. It is a ways off, but we’ll get
there."
Jessica Mulligan
Executive Producer for the Asheron's Call Franchise
Turbine Entertainment Software
User-Created Content and the Technology to Make It Happen
The first breed of graphical MMOGs worked under a set of very similar
assumptions. They used a client-server model, where it was assumed that
the client (you) had most of the content stored on your hard-drive or
CD-ROM. The server, then, simply had to manage the gameplay events and
communication as you moved throughout the world. Of course, if you allow
truly dynamic user-created content, this assumption goes out the window,
and a whole new set of challenges open up. "In the long-term... technology
for more powerful servers is vital for MMPs to overcome the limits of
the client/server model," explains Raoul Kim, Lead Designer for NCSoft's
Lineage II.
Both There and Second Life are open-ended
player-created universes struggling with this. Their creators spoke to
us about the nature of the problem:
"Most MMPGs are hosted in data centers with 10s
or 100s of servers running the server code for the game. If 3rd party
developers [AKA, gamers playing the game] write games for an
MMPG, will the code for those games also run on the servers? What if
it crashes? How is the MMPG platform company to protect its servers
from instability on the part of 3rd party code? What if the 3rd party
code doesn’t crash, but just runs slowly enough to hurt the overall
game experience? What if it requires more resources than it is allowed?
These questions don’t even address protecting the platform from
malicious intent on the part of the 3rd party developers. As MMPGs shift
from being games to becoming platforms, they become, in essence, a new
class of operating system.
The technical issues this class of operating system addresses are easily
as deep as the technical issues addressed by today’s computer
operating systems, so we have a long challenge ahead."
Will Harvey
Founder and Executive Vice President of There
"The key will be technologies that enable the in-world
content to be created by users rather than the game creators. Creativity
is the revolution that drove The Sims to 10M subs in the single-player
world. This is the revolution that will get 100M people interested in
persistent online worlds. The technology that allows players to create
together in real time is very hard and very different than what drives
game engines today. Additionally, this breakthrough is absolutely required
for the economics of yet larger online worlds to even make sense."
Philip Rosedale
Founder and CEO of Linden Labs
Creators of Second Life
Will Wright got a lesson in player-created content first-hand when he launched
The Sims Online. The problem isn't just a technical one.
Assuming the players can create good content, how do they find it? "We
[Developers] are fighting two battles: How to get the most creativity
out of players? And then how do you get the most leverage out of that content,
how do you get the most value?" That's a problem that will need to
be solved once the technical hurdles are overcome, and it's one that nobody
had any answers to yet.
Massively Multiplayer
Gaming ... On the Go
Imagine this: you're taking the bus in to class, or to work, when you
get a message on your cell phone. It's from your guild leader online: he
warns of an attack on your stronghold that night. Over the next few minutes
you punch some buttons to order your online minions to pack up and move
within the castle walls. At lunch that day, you log into the web to check
on the status of the game world, read a few messages from your fellow players,
and verify on a live interactive map that the enemy is indeed closing in.
The city's governor has requested permission to dip into the emergency magical
weapons, and as a citizen you vote 'yes' from the web browser. You set your
cell phone to notify you when the attack starts, and all through dinner
you're planning strategy in your head in anticipation of the evening's play.
The scenario above is just the beginning. Most developers agree that the
way we interface with worlds will change, and we'll be able to interact
without the need to constantly join the game from a full client. Rob Brown,
Senior VP of Cosmic Infinity, literally bet the company on mobile gaming;
he's developed one of the first MMOGs entirely playable through a mobile
device:
"MMOG is a natural extension of the mobile device;
people buy their phones to be in contact with other people, and that’s
what MMOG is all about. MMOG is also the perfect game genre for the
type of play behavior we see people enjoying on mobiles; people like
to drop in to kill a few minutes while waiting for a train, or between
classes, or before a meeting. These short game sessions are not wasted
as they would be in a standalone game, since they all help build your
character up or advance your social and strategic agenda.
Rob Brown
Senior VP, Cosmic Infinity
Developer of Shade (a mobile-only MMORPG)
"Your guild is having a get-together on Saturday?
Send everyone a real-world email, or a pager message, or even hold an
Internet conference call, secure in the knowledge that your real-life
name and numbers will remain as private as you keep them."
Michael Lewis
CEO of Cryptic Studios
Developer of City of Heroes
Mutable Realms, the developer of WISH, is working on advanced server technology
to make the online experience seamless. When asked about non-traditional
game access, WISH's lead designer looked far into the future:
"Long term, the big thing is going to be the coming
of 'ubiquitous computing.' When the typical person is walking around
with a full-fledged computer built into their cell phone, with GPS,
color display of decent resolution (or perhaps direct retinal display
if we want to get a little further out), text and voice input, and essentially
'always on' internet presence, the potentials for smudging the line
between 'game' and 'real' are very significant. See the book 'Smart
Mobs' by Howard Rheingold for a very primitive version of this called
'Bot Fighting' that is popular in Finland."
Dave Rickey
Lead Designer for WISH
Mutable Realms
A Question of Economics. Monthly Fees?
There was definitely disagreement from game makers on the issue of price.
Many felt that a monthly or annual subscription simply worked well for this
particular industry. There's no question that the 'all-you-can-eat' subscription
model is here to stay for many products. Others felt that new pay structures
would emerge (paying for content, tiered subscriptions, etc.) For example,
NCSoft's Guild Wars will not have monthly fees, but will
offer themed expansions on a regular basis that people can opt to pay for
whenever they're ready to explore more of the game. Will Wright feels that
subscription pricing is a detriment to the mass-market appeal of online
gaming:
"There are big challenges on the business side.
To make mass-market numbers we're going to need a new business model
that doesn't require monthly subscriptions. The biggest innovation that's
going to crack that market is going to be on the business end."
Will Wright
Founder, Maxis
Developer of The Sims and Sims Online
Jessica Mulligan, who's managing Turbine's Asheron's Call
franchise, doesn't see subscriptions going away anytime soon:
"I do think that we’ll see the price for your
average MMP slowly rise, as it has been doing for the past 2 1/2 years.
It rose from $9.95 per month in June, 2001 to the current standard of
$12.95 today and some products are testing the $14.95 waters. I would
expect the standard to rise to $14.95 by mid-2005"
Jessica Mulligan
Executive Producer for the Asheron's Call Franchise
Turbine Entertainment Software
Others talked about a variety of models:
"We’re starting to see the emergence of “prestige”
accounts. These are for players that, for a few extra dollars a month,
gain access to a greater set of features. In some cases this means faster
access to customer service or custom/exclusive content. In this respect
we’re seeing the industry beginning to look very seriously at
the model used by mobile phone service providers. A variety of pay-to-play
plans that ramp up feature access for a variable fee that allows folks
with different levels of commitment and expendable income to find the
contract that’s right for them."
Matt Wilson
Executive Producer for Mythica
"The subscription model inherently limits the number
of potential customers to a smaller group of hardcore players. I believe
that there is a much larger segment of gamers out there who want to
play MMGs, but don’t because of the requirement that they pay
a monthly subscription fee... Guild Wars will not require a subscription
fee, but instead will be built around an expansion model in which players
can choose the content that they wish to purchase, and then play online
for as long as they want without additional fees. We believe that this
model is much more accessible to the majority of gamers, and will encourage
more people to play MMGs."
Mike O'Brien
Lead Designer for NCSoft's Guild Wars
"The monthly subscription model is what drives the
development of these games in the first place: that will continue. If
anything, look for prices to increase to whatever the market will bear.
We may see tiered subscriptions to try to wring more money out of the
hardcore players, or at least more premium services."
Andrew Kermse
Lead Programmer at LucasArts
One of the original Meridian 59 Developers
Several developers pointed out the attractiveness of a micro-payment system,
where the core game was inexpensive but players could choose how they
spent their money on different elements within the game:
"In the long run, however, I think hybrid models
will dominate, where players can choose to pay for things in a variety
of ways, either through a subscription or a la carte. Micro-payments
will probably be necessary before some of the more complicated business
models can really take off."
Mike Goslin
VP of Disney's VR Studio
Developer of ToonTown Online
"We’re starting to see a push towards micro-transactions,
in my opinion. Companies are leaning more towards higher numbers of
small charges, rather than charging by month like they do now, or by
the hour like they used to.
There are even a couple of games out there that
have no 'subscription' charge at all. You can play the game for free.
But you can buy virtual objects that give you an advantage, or more
flexibility, or just plain bragging rights. Maybe there are a few thousand
different digital objects you can buy, and each one is only a dollar.
Do the math. If you can get people to buy just 5% of the digital objects,
you’ll probably make more money (and a lot faster) than you would
have by a subscription."
Rick Hall
Senior Producer Origin Systems
Developer of Ultima X: Odyssey
And here's a thought that scares most gamers, even though it's already happening:
"One potential business model would be "product
placement", where advertisers pay to have their brand attached to
items in the world, There.com (Nike, Levi's) and The Sim's (McDonalds)
have already taken the first steps in this direction. If that business
model takes off, it will have profound consequences on the kinds of games
that are available. One of the reasons you see very few Westerns on TV
anymore is that it's almost impossible to use them as vehicles for product
placement. Something similar could happen to these games, where any setting
that was incompatible with putting Coke machines in the background was
unusable on any significant scale."
Dave Rickey
Lead Designer Mutable Realms
Developer of WISH
A Question of Economics, Part II: Owning Digital Property
Today's "State of Play" conference at New York Law School underscores
the fact that big changes are in the works in how we look at -- and regulate
-- digital property. "I expect that anything that evolves into consistently
generating real-world dollars will find the government regulatory agencies
following quickly behind," says Michael Lewis, CEO of Cryptic Studios,
developer of City of Heroes "However, it remains
to be seen if a virtual economy can be intentionally tied to a real-world
economy and thrive. I expect we’ll find out in a few years, when
some big-name company decides to give a try."
Things are happening faster than you might expect. In the online community
of There, a virtual currency of "Therebucks"
exists with its own economy. Some players have become digital banking
institutions, buying Therebucks from other players on the cheap and selling
them at a profit when the economy shifts. It's clear that these virtual
economies aren't going to be theoretical anymore. But what happens next?
Are you going to have to pay taxes for online property? Among the developers
we talked to, this was definitely a monster that will have to be tackled
in the years to come.
"It is not strange at all for gamers to trade items
in a game with money or something else of real world value. However,
social laws and regulations do not currently apply outside the bounds
of physical space. We need to make government officials realize that
this new land is also a place where human beings live and we should
adapt our current systems so they can be applied to these new worlds.
That is the only way people can live happily and safely in the new lands
created by advanced technology and creative minds."
Raoul Kim
Lead Designer of Lineage II
"The tax and property rights issues of these games
are going to stay up in the air for a very long time. If they get resolved
quickly (say by legislation or a sweeping court decision), it will probably
be a bad thing as the rules that are adopted will put requirements on
the design fundamentals of these games that we can't begin to anticipate
the consequences of. Hopefully there will be time for a dialog and exploration
of the potential before hard legal lines are drawn."
Dave Rickey
Lead Designer for Mutable Realms
Developer of WISH
Answers aren't forthcoming, but Sigil Games President and CEO Brad McQuaid
-- a key figure in the development of EverQuest -- sees
only one outcome that would allow online gaming to continue to thrive:
"The whole concept of who owns virtual property
has to be nailed down. And it has to be nailed down in favor of the
developer/publisher/host. The stewards of the game have GOT to be able
to tweak the game to maintain its health without worrying whether their
decisions are affecting someone’s real property. That would handicap
them to the point where, literally, there’d be no need to even
make these games. For example, if the ref in a soccer game can’t
make a judgment call, say ‘red card’ a player, removing
him from the game, because that player has played so long he somehow
owns the field or the ball or some other element of the GAME, then there
is NO game. It ceases to be a game."
Brad McQuaid
Original Producer/Co-Designer of EverQuest
President and CEO of Sigil Games Online, Inc.
Big Changes in GamePlay
We've talked about the biggest shift in direction for online gaming as players
begin to create their own content. But that's not the only change on the
horizon when it comes to gameplay.
Private Dungeons are clearly the next big thing -- several games in development
are taking this approach, including Ultima X: Odyssey.
Here, small groups of characters can being a quest that will take them
into a private area, their own dungeon, free from intrusions from other
players and with a very tight, possibly scripted experience. Not everyone
is enamored of the new approach:
"This type of design is becoming popular with games
in development. Personally I don't like designing games in this way,
because what it does is ignore the online features and keeps developers
from having controllable interactions with the players."
Raoul Kim
Lead Designer for Lineage II
Cutting Out the Crap: Making Gameplay More Accessable
"Massively Multiplayer" for many gamers conjures up images
of fantasy dungeons and level treadmills, even as games try to tear away
from that type of (admittedly successful) design. As our panel moved on
to talk about gameplay changes on the horizon, changing this model was
at the forefront of many of their efforts.
"We need to start focusing on rewarding player skill,
rather than just time invested in the game. The most common reason I
am given by gamers who don’t play MMGs is, 'I just don’t
have the time for those games.' This is a reaction to the fact that
the truly exciting content in an MMG is often available only to high-level
characters, and requires a substantial time investment on the part of
the player to access it. I think that future MMGs need to appeal not
only to the hardcore player who wants to play for a 40-hour marathon
over the weekend, but also the gamer who has 30 minutes before dinner,
or a few hours in the evening. Creating this type of MMG, in which you
spend your time having fun, rather than preparing to have fun, is our
primary design goal with Guild Wars."
Mike O'Brien
Lead Designer for Guild Wars
"Another short and long term game play leap will
be in developing the concepts of active and passive game play. So, for
those players that can only play a title for a few hours a week, they’ll
have more ability to set up actions that run while they’re away,
allowing them to keep up with the power playing Joneses, so to speak..."
[He cites an example from his own game, Mythica
where players can order computer-controlled followers to do thier bidding
while offline.] "This means a player will always
have something to look forward to when the revisit Mythica."
Matt Wilson
Executive Producer for Mythica
Different developers have different takes on the subject of how players
should be rewarded, pointing out a split in the way games are being developed.
Brad McQuaid is a fan of gradual evolution, applying proven concepts to
online worlds:
"I think you’ll see an effort to minimize
needless downtime and tedious gameplay, yet still build a game that’s
based on time invested (as opposed to a twitch game or some new ‘cutting
edge’ idea)."
Brad McQuaid
Original Producer and Co-Designer of EverQuest
President and CEO of Sigil Games, Inc.
In contrast, you have Phillip Rosedale and Second Life,
which is trying to turn massively multiplayer on its head:
"Rather than having achievement be mostly a function
of total time-in-game, the focus on object creation, acquisition, and
sales allows a much broader and deeper style of play to emerge that
invites a bigger base of users. This is a huge change given how much
history has gone into refining gameplay around questing and leveling.
The game design community knows so little about what will happen as
real economies emerge around in-world objects, land, and services."
Phillip Rosedale
Founder and CEO of Linden Labs
Developer of Second Life
Beyond the Future
Among the developers we talked to, all
had a shared enthusiasm for the potential of this industry in the years
to come. Here are some choice quotes from the crew as they brainstormed
dreams of worlds to come:
"I’d really love to see a massively multiplayer
game that has a fully deformable environment, accurate collisions, physical
properties like friction and elasticity, true liquid and cloth surfaces,
and all the rest. There are a few problems with making physics systems
scalable enough to work on a server handling thousands of people at
a time, but with the incredible advancements we keep seeing in processor
speed and coding efficiencies, it can’t really be all that far
off."
Rick Hall
Senior Producer for Origin Systems
Developer of Ultima X: Odyssey
"The whole arms race going on with graphics is going
to hit diminishing returns. We put beautiful character on the screen
and they act like morons. We're going to see more behavior in these
worlds, more physics, more 'texture' to the game worlds. We're going
to apply our newfound computation to that pretty effectively."
Will Wright
Founder of Maxis
Developer of The Sims and Sims Online
"It is so exciting to imagine elements like huge
fortresses that move on land, large flying airplanes and other modes
of transportation that someday will be incorporated into games. Another
interesting development is to apply NWN-level [Neverwinter
Nights] script to MMP environments, which already has been attempted
on TEXT MUDs. It will be a daunting challenge to apply the script to
more sophisticated graphic expressions in the future."
Raoul Kim
Lead Designer of Lineage II
"Longer term, I think interface technologies that
allow really interacting with others and touching the world you are
immersed in, will bring BIG changes in the way we experience these things.
The various technologies that can rapidly acquire facial expressions
from an inexpensive camera are probably a nearer term example of that
future. Imagine how much easier and fun it would be to communicate in
a world where, just for example, something as simple as the movement
of your character’s eyebrows could follow those of your own!"
Phillip Rosedale
Founder and CEO of Linden Lab
Developer of Second Life
So, when will we get to see these remarkable games of the future? Certain
innovations are already upon us: Second Life and There
allow players to define the world around them, Guild Wars
and Ultima X: Online are soon to unleash new billing
models and private questing areas respectively. But don't expect miraculous
new games to appear out of thin air. Experimental games will have to pave
the way. Many will fail. Brad McQuaid developed EverQuest
based on game principals proven through text-based MUDs, and he predicts
a similar slow evolution moving forward:
"I think MMOGs are going to improve iteratively,
and that’s a good thing – too many changes, too quickly,
in a new genre can be dangerous, especially considering what it takes
to build one of these games... I know other MMOG developers disagree
and feel we need paradigm shifts every few years (and perhaps want to
be credited for these leaps). But look where it’s gotten us...
we have 30 million dollar flops that hurt us ALL, making it harder for
even experienced developers to get the funding they need, and incredibly
tough on the newer developer. It’s just too early to experiment
in major ways... let’s get a few more hits out first and prove
this genre as viable long term, ok?"
Brad McQuaid
Original Producer and Co-Designer of EverQuest
President and CEO of Sigil Games Online, Inc.
But big leaps or little leaps, massively multiplayer is going places:
technologically, socially, and economically. The only question remaining
is how it'll all happen, and who will be at the forefront when it does.
|
