November 12th, 2008 by Kyle Maxwell
I recently started playing a new MMOG on a trial basis because I have family members who play it. The game itself doesn’t seem to be holding me for any number of reasons, but two things stood out to me as the trial has progressed:
First, as noted, what pulled me to the game had nothing to do with the content, the mechanics, or anything directly controlled by the developer and publisher. My social connections pulled me into it: I have a sibling that lives halfway across the country. We didn’t grow up together, but now that we’re adults, we’re trying to find ways to have something approaching a normal relationship. Since we both are definitely gamers, this fits naturally. We’ve tried three different games so far, including this one. Whether we stick with the same game or not doesn’t really matter, but trying to does.
Second, when I mentioned all this to some friends, several immediately asked what server I was on, class, faction, etc. This includes folks I didn’t even know played the game. I’m confident that it holds true across other games, too. I likely have friends in a lot of games and don’t know it.
Why can’t I find friends from Twitter, email, other games, social networking sites, IM, even forums? Because they don’t share their graphs. (Any such architecture clearly would need an opt-in design; privacy is a sine qua non.) I don’t know who I know there, even if they’d like me to know. Web 2.0 and social networking fit naturally with MMOGs for any number of reasons, but the fact that “community” always represents a core building block should rank high among them.
Developers really miss major business opportunities for customer growth and retention here. If they make it easy for me to see that I have 17 friends in a game and that 10 of them are on the same server, I’m much more likely to want to try it, no matter what. And if they can provide the tools to stay tightly connected to my friends in their game, I’m likely to keep playing and even go out and try to get other friends to play.
CCP says that EVE Online will be adding some social networking tools in 2009, though I have yet to see any meaningful details on that. Bioware’s SWTOR has some rudimentary social networking in their forum site, and hopefully that will carry over to the game design. Metaplace really focuses heavily on this, though they’re not a traditional MMOG. I believe some of the more casual, youth-oriented worlds get this right, and that could partly explain why worlds like Habbo Hotel have so many more subscribers than traditional MMOGs.
They could include something like the Facebook home page, so you can see when a friend gets a new badge or new achievement, or hits max level, or anything else public about the character. Or maybe micro-blogging (think Twitter) so players can put out very short updates of what they’re doing. Export these things as RSS feeds so I don’t have to log into your game or even subscribe, because they will make me want to subscribe and log in to play with my friend.
In other words, we already form tribes. If we can strengthen our tribes, if you give us the tools to connect to our friends and we’ll stay in your world. If you don’t, somebody else will, and we’ll head over there instead.
Update: GamerDNA seems like it’s doing a pretty good attempt at this stuff.
September 19th, 2008 by Kyle Maxwell
EVE Online players frequently cite the skill training system as one of their favorite aspects of the game. No grinding for experience points; rather, a player sets a skill to train, then waits for skill points to accumulate as a function of his character’s existing stats. You can do a few things to increase your stats (Learning skills and implants), but in general after that initial flurry, skill training functions based on real time, as it continues even when the player hasn’t logged into the game in some time, or even remained subscribed, as long as the skill hasn’t completed. You do have to log in to be able to change the skill under training, including changing the planned level, however.
With that in mind, I thought I’d take a cue from some other EVE bloggers and talk a little about my current skill planning.
Kudon Astraisx, currently a Minmatar militia pilot, has about 8.4m SP primarily in Gunnery, Spaceship Command, and Electronics. At the moment, he’s working on Electronics Upgrades 5 in order to fly Covert Ops ships. Specifically, I want to be able to fly stealth bombers and, eventually, recon ships. Other than that, I’m still working on support skills (engineering and a bit of mechanics) and some missile skills to increase the damage from the stealth bomber.
Casiella Truza is a cyberpunk-style hacker and researcher with 8.6m SP. She has hacking, archaeology, Minmatar invention, and lots of trade skills. She’s also got T2 Minmatar transport skills. My current plan for her is to get into exploration and build a research-focused starbase. So right now I’ve got Covert Ops 4 going; she already has Cloaking 4 and Astrometrics 4, plus the other scanning skills at level 2. I’ll train them up to 4 once this one is done, as I really want that covert ops cloaking module. In a few weeks, I’ll switch back to research skills for a while. A lot of the gameplay on this character centers around roleplay.
My third alt will remain unnamed for now, but I intend him as a combat escort pilot on Casi’s exploration ventures and maybe eventually running missions for pirate factions. At 2.6m SP, he’s just now becoming viable for that. He’s got Caldari Cruiser 4 and some missile and shield skills, but both of those areas (plus fitting) still need a lot of work. Probably in a week or so, I can get him into a Moa (unlikely, since it wouldn’t kill much) or even a Drake. Long-term, he’ll become a command ship pilot with lots of warfare link skills in case I ever really get into 0.0 warfare or such.
August 1st, 2008 by Kyle Maxwell
Given their focus on near-future technology and networking, and the pervasiveness with which the future is infiltrating our lives, cyberpunk-themed MMOGs should in reality rank among the most popular. But they don’t.
Neocron and Matrix Online have both managed to stay online for now, but they never achieved much popularity and have well-publicized business problems. Neocron recently cut their sub fee in half (to $5/month) and eliminated multi-month subscriptions; MxO nearly folded before SOE bought it and never managed to take off due to implementation problems. EVE Online doesn’t really fall into this category, although it retains some cyberpunkish thematic elements.
So the reasons why this genre flounders really escape me. Surely there’s more demand out there for a solid near-future science fiction MMORPG, cyberpunk or not. In fact, there are so few SF MMOGs out there: add Tabula Rasa and Star Wars Galaxies to the list and you’ve basically completed it. Developers have announced several games, but until they’re released or at least reach beta, they don’t count.
Markets abhor vacuums. Someone will fill the niche. Someone will get it right. I want to believe.
July 31st, 2008 by Kyle Maxwell
Not sure about the accuracy of the results, but I enjoyed taking the test and the results bear at least some semblance to reality. I think of myself as a RPer first and foremost, and I like the sandboxiness of EVE Online, so the open PVP aspect of EVE is great for immersion. But I really like the “flavor” in EVE, too, including (yes) production and research.
Industrialist with teeth
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Created with Rum and Monkey’s Personality Test Generator.
You enjoy Eve’s economic model and you find that the greatest challenge of the game lies in mastering the market. System security status is a matter of profit/no profit for you, and you always factor in the possibility/probability of PvP in your estimates. To you, Eve isn’t a PvP or a PvE game. It’s a simulation of capitalizm in its purest form, and a place where the savvy wins the day.
July 17th, 2008 by Kyle Maxwell
Confirmed by Portfolio: a KOTOR MMORPG. More after I can start breathing again.
July 12th, 2008 by Kyle Maxwell
Like Fox Mulder, I WANT TO BELIEVE.
Lucasfilm Entertainment Company filed several trademark registrations in the last week or so.
The trademarks are classed as online computer games. Is this the Bioware MMORPG project? Because… squeeee!
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