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The catch point of the free-to-play model
With the successful transition of Dungeons and Dragons Online to the free-to-play model, there's a lot of talk about why other games don't move over to the same model, with Warhammer Online frequently being cited as a game that would enjoy a great benefit from the switch. It would bring in more players, certainly, but there's more to the business than just bringing in new blood. The Ancient Gaming Noob makes an excellent point in a recent entry regarding the inescapable paradox of any game offering a free-to-play model -- that razor-edge split between giving the game away for free and making it entirely unreasonable to play it for free. The obvious idea is that more people will try the game if they don't think they have to commit, and if they feel they can keep playing without having to pay money they're more likely to stick with it. However, every player that isn't paying money is essentially a cost - and as the entry points out, your paying playerbase will frequently be a small percentage of your overall subscribers. The entry uses Battlefield Heroes as an example of a game where the equillibrium needed to shift to make it profitable, which is causing serious rumbling in the gaming community, but the example can apply for any free-to-play game. As the model becomes more and more popular, it's important to remember that it's not a certain hit -- and can turn what could have been a moderately-successful subscription game into a failed game if done wrong.
The Daily Grind: Is it lonely in here, or is it just me?
There's nothing like the feeling of going back to an old favorite. You might or might not be enjoying Champions Online, but either way it could inspire you to go back to City of Heroes to see how the old stomping grounds are faring. Final Fantasy XIV might put you in the mood to take a trip into Final Fantasy XI just for nostalgia. Or maybe it's just the time of year that makes you think back to when you first fired up EverQuest and you want a chance to play around a little more. So you reinstall, resubscribe, and... where the heck did everyone go? What games have you headed back to only to find out that the critical mass of players had departed? How do you cope with adventuring again in an empty world? For some older games (EverQuest and Final Fantasy XI spring to mind from the aforementioned) you're more or less up the creek without a paddle if you don't have anyone around to play with, which exacerbates the problem. So how do you deal with being the last one left to turn the lights on or off?
The Daily Grind: What game has generated the strongest feelings for you?
There are some games that you just sort of play. You pick them up, you enjoy them, and then you walk away without any real feelings about them one way or the other. And then there are the games that you launch into a screaming two-hour argument with one of your closest friends about on your birthday, because they happened to say that they didn't like it. Or maybe you finished an intense, epic play session on the game, working your way through an emotional questline and roleplaying all the way, and you find out afterwards that you need to lie down for a little while. Or maybe they're just the games that inspire you to post long forum diatribes wherever you can about why this is the greatest game in history. Whether it be in the game or out of it, what games have generated the strongest feelings in you? Whether it's an intense emotional reaction to a character's death that you would nominate as an exhibit in the ongoing "are games art" debate, or just some impassioned soapboxing off-the-cuff, we're sure you have some moments and games that just resonate with you. Tell us about them. We're all ears.
Achievements across the genre
By now, you've likely heard of the World of Warcraft player who managed to fill out every single achievement in the game, covering every single currently measurable objective. (If not, well, there you go.) Bio Break recently took the opportunity to discuss achievements as an interesting social feature in MMOs, a way of building community, while Overly Positive took the news as incentive to expound on achievements as an alternate venue for advancement. Most of the major titles out at the moment have some form of achievement system in place, ranging from Warhammer Online's Tome of Knowledge to City of Heroes and its variety of badges. The problems with the system are brought up in the comments of the above entries -- achievements can often wind up being used as a form of highly-prohibitive gating, where someone lacking the completion achievement isn't capable of getting a group to move through it. As a whole, though, it allows for people to enjoy an entirely different venue of the game, and offers motivation to perform content that would otherwise be gathering dust after a certain point. Wherever you play, achievement markers are becoming more and more ubiquitous, and the fact that clearing them out is newsworthy just shows the degree to which they've permeated our consciousness and the genre.
The Daily Grind: What games can you just not stand?
We all have games we love, that's a given. But some of us also have games that we have a deep and abiding resentment toward. Maybe you were so disappointed with Champions Online that now even the mention of the game gets you annoyed. You might have disliked the grind in Aion to the point where you're actively happy to hear about people unsubscribing from it. Or maybe you're annoyed at World of Warcraft being as huge as it is and want it taken down a few pegs. Even as you know it's silly to dislike something that brings people happiness (we hope you do, at least), we can't help but do it here and there. As long as we're getting things off our chests lately, here's the question: what game do you just not like? You don't play it if you ever did, you have no real investment in its success or failure... but you really just plain dislike it. Do you dislike it because of changes, because of what you think its presence did to other games, or just for silly personal reasons that you know are ridiculous but you can't help?
The Daily Grind: When is it time to give up?
It's almost the end of the year, time for us to evaluate what we're doing and consider dropping our bad habits. And... well, sometimes your favorite game becomes one of those. Sometimes your most-played class gets hit with the nerf bat so hard you can barely walk any longer, or the game's updates are constantly dropping more and more content you find boring or don't even get to play. You might have loved the game for a long time or even just a little while, but time isn't aging it well and you're increasingly dreading logging on. Today, we ask a sad question: when is it time to shake your head and decide that enough is enough? Does one major power-down on your character of preference tell you that you're not really wanted, or do you stick around until everything has been drained dry? Are you the sort who gives the game time and chances to win you back, or do you leave and never even glance back at where you came from? Or do you never say goodbye and just keep playing in the hopes that things will turn around and you'll be glad you waited?
The Daily Grind: What's your favorite villain group?
There are some groups of enemies that are just there in any game. You have to deal with them, but you don't really think about them after the fact. Then there are groups you actively dislike, either because they're obnoxious to fight or because of meta-game reasons. But then there are those other groups. The ones that are just pure fun to fight against, the ones you always take quests or missions for once they become available. They've got interesting story elements, they look visually distinct, and they're challenging but not annoying. It's at that point which you almost want to be allied with the villains in question, just out of sheer awesomeness. (EVE Online might have had this in mind when they first let you do precisely that.) We ask you, our fine readers, what's your favorite antagonistic group? Are they a low-level enemy that you remember fondly, or a high-level group that you still fight against at the endgame? Have you liked them ever since you first encountered them, or did you slowly grow to like them as you were flung against them? What is it you like about them? It's silly, but we can't play a game for too long without forming attachments, so share yours with us this morning.
The trouble with goals in MMOs
One of the major problems of a game in which you can do anything is that... well, there's not necessarily much of a reason to do anything. That's a Terrible Idea recently had an interesting piece on the difficulty of generating goals and objectives in MMOs, especially in contrast with single-player games where your goals are equally pre-generated. The difference, as the article notes, is that single-player games have individual characters with a large impact on the game world. There's no issue of making quests compatible with a wide variety of characters of different races and classes, until the individual motivations and goals can no longer fit into the equation. You don't have anything but the end of content to shoot for. So what's the answer? The original post notes that it's not really possible to reconcile anything but achievement-oriented goals within MMOs due to the fact that the character will still inhabit a static world no matter what you do. Certainly, there are attempts to create larger-scale impacts for individual characters, but so long as every character goes through the same content or has the same opportunities, there's less of a sense of distinct accomplishment. Player-generated content in games such as City of Heroes offers an opportunity for a different path for each character, but there's still not much of a difference in the actual process. Procedural generation is also bandied about as a solution to the issue, though it lacks any truly successful implementation at this point. Is there even a solution, or is this simply part of the weakness of the genre?
Lore is important
Lore matters. It's often considered to be low on the list of game features, it won't save a game that is otherwise lackluster or missing content, and it can't be the only reason you play a game. But it still matters, and it still has a lot of importance, and Kill Ten Rats has offered a long essay explaining exactly why lore is so important to the games we play and enjoy. Even if you generally don't think of yourself as someone who enjoys lore, it matters to you, and you would notice if it wasn't there. The image above is a dramatization -- which looks more interesting, an elaborate piece of concept art of a character class or a square black box blankly listing attributes? As the essay points out, would you rather be fighting dragons and ogres, or hexagons and trapezoids? There's a very good reason why we need lore in our games and why we don't see any games that don't attempt to provide it, and it's explained here very, very well. Whether or not you consider yourself to be a fan of lore, you owe it to yourself to read the essay, and perhaps re-evaluate the way you see the backstory of the game.
Grouping versus soloing as the genre evolves
Back in the day, there were two ways to play most MMOs -- you could form a group with other players, or you could stay inside the cities and wait. Those days are long gone, of course, and it's a rare game that doesn't allow a player to do quite a bit without the support framework of a group. But there's a point to be made about what's been lost in the process, and We Fly Spitfires has an interesting take on how we now have to be pushed and prodded into grouping. There was a time when people were expected to group to complete tasks, but players are increasingly opposed to the idea as more and more becomes possible to solo and we grow less and less patient for finding a group. Unsurprisingly, Game by Night brings up the obvious counterpoint: that evolving game design has relegated forced grouping to the past. There are more MMO players now than there were back then, and the majority of them started on games such as World of Warcraft or City of Heroes where grouping was only occasionally necessary, and even then only for specific tasks. By removing the requirement, player expectations become different, and there's no longer a sense from most of the playerbase that soloing should be possible for a majority of tasks. It's a debate that's been had over and over through the years, but as the solo play model becomes more and more expansive, it no doubt will be revisted time and again -- and attitudes toward it will shift as the playerbase does.
Take part in space exploration with NASA's coming MMO
How would you like to take a trip into space? No, not the stylized science fiction that Star Trek Online promises, or the fantasy-with-spaceships of Star Wars: the Old Republic. We've heard the announcement about NASA's coming space MMO, Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond, but the game hasn't been making the rounds in the usual gaming circuit. An in-depth article about the game's development and planned release is interesting for any fans of the rigors and challenges of spaceflight, not mention a look at a game that's moving far outside the usual realm of our genre. Much like America's Army, the goal of the game is to try and give players a taste of what it's like to actually work in the field being simulated. While the game is focusing on creating enjoyable gameplay first, players can expect to see landscapes and tasks grounded in solid scientific principles and based upon actual astronaut missions, complete with the real and tangible challenges of exploring inhospitable worlds. The article also discusses the MoonBase module, which is set to be launched as a free standalone component on Steam in January to serve as both a preview and a testbed for the game. Take a look at the full article for a closer examination of what the game could mean, and what it might be like to play a space game where you were less concerned about arming weapons and more concerned with understanding the world around you. (Or, if you have to, start imagining an expansion set in the 1980s adding the Soviet space program as a new faction. Which is only slightly less realistic.)
The Daily Grind: What's the threshold for an MMO?
This question is an old one, but it's always one that brings out some interesting opinions. As technology becomes more and more connected, people continue to move their games into connectivity further and further, we have to ask -- what's an MMO, precisely? The recent release of Borderlands has brought the question into the forefront for many people, as it features a rather steady and all but required online mode... but it's not absolutely required, and there's no world persistence. Does that qualify, or is it just an offline game with some MMO elements? You can certainly argue that they're only distantly related, or you can argue that they're both part of the same genre. By the same token, you can make the case for or against the now-ubiquitous Facebook games -- which are persistent and spread across several players, after all. Today, we ask our readers where they draw the line between MMO and a game that just happens to have an online component. Where do you draw the line, and if you're so inclined, what's your reasoning? Persistence of world? Depth of play? Or is it a knee-jerk reaction where you might not be able to define an MMO, but you know it when you see it?
A video guide to the Second Life Terms of Service
'I cannot read the fiery letters,' said Frodo in a quavering voice. 'No,' said Gandalf, 'but I can. The letters are English, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Lawyers, which I will not utter here. But this in the Common Tongue is what is said, close enough: 'You agree to review and adhere to the guidelines on using "Second Life," "SL," "Linden," the Eye-in-Hand logo, and Linden Lab's other trademarks, service marks, trade names, logos, domain names, taglines, and trade dress..' He paused, and then said slowly in a deep voice: 'These are the Master Rules, the Terms of Service that rule all accounts.' Well, a joint-project of Rhys Moult with Curtin University and the Tabor Adelaide iYouth Project has produced a video which essentially summarizes the 7,500 word Second Life Terms of Service in a straightforward and easy-to-digest form. It's top work, and you can check it out, after the fold.
The gaming renaissance
In the early 70's, some clever chap programmed a pile of circuits to create a primitive game we all know as Pong. Fast-forward some forty years down the line and we're now battling Orcs in Azeroth and flying spaceships in the far-reaches of another galaxy. An entire games industry has erupted from those first simple arcade systems, with people designing and programming games for kids and adults alike. In the 90's, the first generation of kids that grew up with those early game systems became the ones making them and a virtual renaissance in game design ensued. Those kids that grew up wishing they could make their own games started to realise their dreams and the games industry as we know it came forth. More recently, the people that grew up with early MMOs have begun to hit the games industry and we're seeing a rebirth of the genre.In this article, I look at the games industry explosion and how it relates to the generations growing up with games. I ask whether the MMO genre is headed for its own great gaming renaissance and take a speculative look ahead at the future for MMOs and the games industry as a whole.
The gaming renaissance, part 2
Unlike the fledgling gaming industry of the 1980's, the industry today is a robust creature with a huge consumer-base and long-established development houses. MMOs are no longer seen as the risky ventures they once were and some have even secured eight-figure investment deals. Jobs working on a next gen MMO are possibly the most prized in the entire games industry and there is more competition for those spots than ever.
Linden Lab explanation alienates educators
When news broke about Linden Lab sending a takedown notice to the core Second Life education community Web-site, our colleagues over at the Metaverse Journal put a number of questions about the matter to Linden Lab. The Linden Lab response to those questions yesterday seems to have generated a reaction among educators akin to pouring gasoline on a blaze, coupled with a vigorous fish-slapping. While there's a undeniably a spectrum of reaction to the Lab's response, most of what we've seen seems to cluster around the livid end.
Linden Lab punctures education community with newly registered trademark
Jokay Wollongong, one of the premier promoters and supporters of the educational uses of Second Life, and keeper of the largest single resource for Second Life educators, suffered something of a reversal this week, when Linden Lab decided that that very same resource, sleducation.wikispaces.com, infringed on their SL trademark (which has now only been registered for nine days), and sent Wollongong a takedown notice. That's something of a surprise considering Linden Lab's ongoing endorsement of the site on the Second Life Education mailing-list. The site, which has been up since late 2006, documents over 100 case studies of educational projects in Second Life, as well as providing key community resources and information for educators who are just getting started with virtual environments.
Second Life Orange Island experiment comes to an end
Orange Island, a research project of the Orange telecommunications company, is set to close its doors after a long (and quite successful) run in Second Life. Orange Island opened in late 2007 as an experimental project, with the goal of gaining a better understanding of virtual environments, users and their culture, content-creation and collaboration and the challenges of real-time immersive social environments. That experimental project comes to a close on Tuesday, 29 September at 11AM SLT (US Pacific time), with a final open (voice) meeting with the Orange Island team (and guests) to discuss the project and virtual environment experiences. In the days that follow, the team will be publishing a report of their findings and results from the project. During the course of the Orange Island project, Orange brought a lot to the Second Life user community, an example that not every corporate presence has emulated, unfortunately. They will be missed, but we're definitely looking forward to their findings. Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.
Roskilde University to open super-hero city and host machinima contest
Danish Roskilde University in Trekroner, Roskilde is celebrating the art of machinima with a competition kicking off in Second Life later this week. The competition coincides with the opening of the university's new Second Life research-center, "Metrotopia – City of Superheroes." The launch event kicks off on Friday, 28 August at 11:30AM SLT (US Pacific time), and the details of the competition will be announced in conjunction with the opening address at Noon SLT.
Survey says: Nearly half of MMO gamers bought virtual stuff
One of the interesting things we at Massively find about statistics and surveys is how people react to surveys and research results about games, virtual environments and MMOGs. Unexpected results automatically attract criticism of every aspect of the report and data no matter how the results were obtained, from the political leanings of the researchers, to the way the charts are drawn. On the other hand, when the results of surveys or research agree with our expectations, people rarely question the results, again, no matter how they were obtained. Therefore, we wonder what you all might make of this report, that 12% of Americans have purchased at least one virtual item in the last item within the last 12 months, and almost half (46%) of MMO gamers/virtual world users have done so within the same period. Obviously, that would include assorted free-to-play games, so-called 'freemium' games and environments, Facebook and all-sorts. The survey was commissioned by global payment solutions provider, PlaySpan. The results are only available in summary, but we're interested in your reaction. Are the results what you expect, or not? And either way, do you dispute or accept the data? [via GigaOm]
