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GDC09: Applied RMT Design with GoPets and Live Gamer
Massively sat in on a GDC 2009 session this week titled Applied RMT Design which was part of the Worlds in Motion Summit. Andrew Schneider, Founder and President of Live Gamer and Erik Bethke, CEO of GoPets, Ltd. presented a case study on balancing a game's primary and secondary markets, using GoPets as an example of how it can be done. The market for virtual goods in massively multiplayer online games and virtual worlds is worth billions. Not all of this is grey market, and more games are now being designed with microtransactions in mind. Live Gamer aims to bring greater legitimacy to microtransactions through a regulated secondary market providing benefits to companies as well as the players themselves. Thus far they've worked with EverQuest II, Vanguard, and GoPets, with Acclaim's 9 Dragons on the way. Bethke and Schneider kick off their talk by explaining the fact that RMT in MMOs is inevitable, explaining how developers can be proactive about incorporating RMT into their titles rather than having it exist outside of the game. Live Gamer works with developers to create a legitimate system for trading virtual items for real money, one that's safe and secure. Of course, legitimizing RMT can also stir up controversy. %Gallery-48454%
The Daily Grind: Pancakes?
Pancakes, just about everyone loves 'em. They're deliciously light and fluffy and can be sweetened with everything from blueberries to chocolate chips. Just like their flat 'n tasty counterparts, Pancake MMOs are light, fluffy and sweet all over. Hello Kitty Online, Go Pets, Neopets, Free Realms, Club Penguin and the near bouquet-size of franchise-based MMOs coming from Disney seem to be piling up on our proverbial plates. These MMOs can taste great and do tend to venture into fun, experimental game design territory. However, are they also like actual pancakes in that too many will cause everyone to grasp their collective stomachs and painfully moan, "Too many pancakes!" or can we stomach endless amounts of soft, tasty sweetness?
ION 08: A five year forecast for MMOs
There's always a lot of discussion about what's going to be the next big thing in the MMOs industry. We all love to talk about the future and that's largely because it's a very interesting topic. So we just had to attend the "Online Games in 2013" panel at ION 08. This panel was actually introduced by Peter Freese, the ION Conference Director. It was easily one of the most packed panels I've been to thus far which is saying a lot since all the panels have been pretty well populated already.The panel consisted of Erik Bethke (GoPets Ltd), Scott Jennings (NCsoft), Bridiget Agabra (Metaverse Roadmap) and Damion Schubert (BioWare). With a group of people like this I was expecting some varied and compelling conversation on the topic of MMOs in 2013. In the end we got just that and a quite a bit more.%Gallery-22888%
ION 08: Virtual worlds for the masses
What's a virtual world? Why do we even call them virtual worlds when we could easily call them digital worlds, or just simply, worlds? This was just one of the many interesting topics discussed at ION 08 this year in a panel entitled, "Redefining Virtual Worlds for Mass Markert Consumption" which is quite the mouthful. So lets put things in a more understandable -- and far more interesting -- perspective.Whether you're talking about Club Penguin, Gaia Online or Second Life the truth of the mater is that these "worlds" are here to stay and they all share similarities -- social interaction. Not only are they here to stay, but they've only just begun to grow as a market. Which is why this panel was all the more interesting. The panel includes Erik Bethke (GoPets Ltd), John K. Bates (Mindark/Entropia Universe), Craig Sherman (Gaia Online), Rob Lanphier (Linden Lab/Second Life) and was moderated by David Elchoness (Association of Virtual Worlds).%Gallery-22798%
Last Week on Massively: WoW-related stories
This week's round up of WoW-related posts on our sister site Massively covers many different angles of the MMO universe dominated by World of Warcraft. The Game Developers Conference 08 coverage took up much of last week with many people comparing their efforts to WoW's success. You can click on the links below or subscribe to a special WoW-only Massively feed.The Daily Grind: When will you be done with WoW?Akela Talamasca wants know what is it that will end the WoW-affair?GDC08: Massively is Live at the Future of MMOs panel Rob Pardo, VP of Game Design at Blizzard was on a panel at GDC last week debating the Future of MMOs. Massively's Michael Zenke was there to liveblog it. Ask Massively: Show me the MMOney!What will it take to overcome WoW? Massively lays out the battle plan.
GDC08: Why are goal structures important to MMOs and VWs?
The following is a quite excellent session from the Worlds in Motion GDC track given by Erik Bethke, CEO of GoPets. The takeaway message is about what virtual worlds can learn from MMOs in terms of providing intelligent goal structures. Erik: How do we apply MMO goal structures to virtual worlds (and to almost everything)? Virtual worlders tend to hate games like WoW because they're not "erudite" enough but look at this screenshot (shows slide of a UI from a raid) and look at how complicated the user interface is. With 10 million people playing, is it hardcore or is it casual? I get really frustrated with arguments about UI: the raid screenshot proves that even this level of complexity can break through to a larger audience. Shows slide of quest-giver goblin in WoW: "virtual worlds are missing the little guys with exclamation points above their heads." Looking at other examples of goal structures: look at how successful Puzzle Quest got by combining Bejeweled with RPG elements. Look at Chore Wars -- suddenly I get excited about walking the dog (laughter). Even something like the LinkedIn registration process -- I logged in one day and saw that my "progress bar" was only at 40% and how can I live with that?! I had to level up in LinkedIn. I found out I needed to get testimonials from my contacts to get higher -- it was a group quest! I got pissed that I couldn't solo LinkedIn (lots of laughter).
GDC08: What if your mana bar was green?
At a morning GDC session, GoPets' Erik Bethke gave a standing-room-only-crowd some sage advice:People who use green for mana bars instead of blue for mana bars... that's just hubris.Of course what he means by this is that developers who defy basic gaming trends are setting themselves up for failure. To continue the mana bar metaphor, players have become accustomed to blue mana bars and green health bars from a long history of games. Mixing up this very basic element will only make a game less accessible. On the flip side of this, however, is innovation. If no one breaks the traditional molds, we may never see better games. But at the same time it's hard to argue with Bethke's example: why change a game element that players are accustomed to? It could make the difference between a game that's intuitive and quickly picked up by new players and a game that loses players before the tutorial's finished.%Gallery-16369%
GoPets: Konami does DS virtual pets ... on an island!
Arrr, says the pirate cat stranded on Konami's Vacation Island. Squeezing in somewhere between Nintendogs and Animal Crossing, GoPets is Konami's attempt to capture some of the virtual pet niche's market share on DS. Players will be tasked with nurturing the growth of either a virtual cat or dog, and then presumably must send their pets off to an anthropomorphized island community where minigames are the way of life.While derivative, GoPets will support the underused Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, allowing pet groomers to share their experiences through a text-based chat system, complete with universal icons for cross-language communication -- it's unclear if friend codes must first be exchanged in order to chat (a requirement that has limited Animal Crossing's online mode). Apparently, the handheld version will also share some level of compatibility with a planned PC iteration of the GoPets franchise.
