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GDC Online 2011: BioWare's Damion Schubert takes a wrecking ball to the casual vs. hardcore model
"I'm trying to finish a product, Star Wars: The Old Republic, which I am not going to talk about today." Thus began BioWare's Damion Schubert's seminar, Double Coding: Making Online Games for Both the Casual and the Hardcore, at this year's GDC Online. "This is more of a weary man, sort of stream-of-consciousness design theory talk." Schubert wanted to call the talk "Moving Beyond Double Coding," which is a term that comes from cartoons, of all places. Double coding is content that reaches two different groups of people at the same time. Looney Tunes, for example, would entertain both adults and kids because the writers and animators designed it so. With MMOs, Schubert says that devs are often trying to double code the games for both casual and hardcore players. This is where the well-known slogan "easy to play, hard to master" originates. He held up Blizzard as a primary example of this model. Blizzard's "donut," as Schubert calls it, has a casual outer ring and a hardcore center for both types of players. By double coding, Blizzard ensures that casual players can invite their hardcore friends to experience the game and vice-versa. However, this model is faltering, and Schubert pinpoints why after the jump!
Getting communal with Star Wars: The Old Republic
Star Wars as a franchise is not exactly unfamiliar with the idea of opposing sides, so it's kind of understandable that Star Wars: The Old Republic would eventually talk about the opposing forces in MMO design. No, not Mages versus Warlocks -- freeform or sandbox gameplay versus structured or themepark gameplay. And as BioWare seems to like doing whenever they talk about their game, the answer to these extremes comes down to "neither." Systems Designer Damien Schubert takes the opportunity in the most recent developer blog to talk about trying to place the game in tune with what he considers the most unique defining feature of MMOs -- the community. Schubert affirms that the game's design goals are to reinforce group play and external interaction not by forcing players to group, but making them want to group. Options such as more community-oriented crafting are explored, as well as letting multiple people take part in the game's dialogue trees. After all, nothing builds interaction like a party member accidentally driving a quest contact into a rage through a poorly-timed interjection. The full entry contains more information on both design goals and their implementation in Star Wars: The Old Republic -- and even a year out, it seems the game itself is already doing quite a bit of community development.
