After playing some Guild Wars 2 for a while, I finally decided to fire up Mists of Pandaria and see what WoW has been up to. Although I had a higher-level death knight, I decided to yank my good-old level 70 arms warrior from retirement (the undead fellow who still decorates the banner of this site) and see how I fared.

Checking out Pandaria on this guy, of course, required that I play through Lich King and Cataclysm as well. This dampened my enthusiasm, as I’d already played through a lot of that stuff on my death knight, and I hate repeating content. So I opted for dungeon finder, and found myself having a ball. As the ultimate non-commitment tool, dungeon finder allowed me to sail through XP and gear acquisition without having to repeat the Lich King quests I’d previously completed. And if I screwed up, it was no big deal–it wasn’t like I’d ever see any of the people I was grouped with again. The Wrath dungeons are a lot of fun, so I enjoyed myself quite a bit, and my warrior was 80 in no time.

Playing through Cataclysm was less fun. The XP curve from 80 to 85 was slower, and I found the dungeons in this expansion far less enjoyable. It’s not that they were more difficult really; it’s that the same tricks seemed to be used over and over, as I was endlessly looking for burning spots on the ground to avoid. To pad my XP gains, I ended up playing through the whole underwater zone as well, which I found abysmal (pun intended). I mean, it was fine and all, but the design of the quests felt a little uninspired. The one exception was the naga city where you enter a vision and play through the invasion that had happened there–I thought that was a cool line with a nice payoff. I was surprised how buggy the content was after all this time, though. Because Blizzard does such a nice job of polishing their work, any problem really stands out. I ran into several places where I had to abandon quests and do them over again because a trigger didn’t work right or something. Still, all things considered, it was far beyond the level of polish most MMOs attain. I hit 85 and was forced to leave, even though I would have liked to check out Deepholm. I flew around that zone and it looked fantastic.

I’m currently level 87 in Pandaria, and so far I’ve been extremely impressed. Both the solo content and the dungeons have been really well done. Cut scenes and cinematics are regularly worked into the content, and the pacing feels very nice. The WoW team has gotten a handle on using phasing to effectively tell stories and show change. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the culmination of the Jade Forest quests was extremely impressive. This zone felt like the best example of storytelling I’ve seen in any MMO to date–newer titles included.

At this point, the biggest negative I can point out is that WoW feels burdened by its aging quest mechanics. The whole paradigm of walking into a hub and loading up my quest journal feels so old and dated. I much prefer the GW2 approach of entering an area and being given objectives relevant to what I can see going on around me. Instead of being ordered to kill 10 of this and collect 8 of that, I’m urged to defend the keep, drive out the centaurs, and other goal-oriented play. It’s a distinction purely of presentation–you end up collecting X of this and killing Y of that–but one method makes the world feel much more alive than the other. The rare moments in WoW when I can forget about the quest journal and just engage with the content are by far my favorites.

Not sure what I’ll do when I hit the level cap, but for now I’m very much enjoying my return to Azeroth–monkey poop and all.

I was reading an article called “The Psychological Appeal of Violent Shooters” and thought it had some interesting correlations to MMOs.

Here’s a quote:

In their book, Glued to Games: How Video Games Draw Us In and Hold Us Spellbound, Rigby and Ryan describe “self-determination theory,” a fairly well established framework that aims to describe why people pursue certain voluntary activities. In part, self-determination theory says that people are motivated to engage in activities to the extent that they satisfy three psychological needs:

• 1. Competence – progressing in skill and power.
• 2. Autonomy – being able to choose from multiple, meaningful options.
• 3. Relatedness – feeling important to others.

The article asserts that most shooters do a pretty good job of meeting these three needs, although studies indicate the games could be just as satisfying without all the blood and headshots. It’s worth a read.

It got me thinking about how MMOs come at the three needs outlined above.

Competence

One could argue that the entire DikuMUD style (which was a dominant influence on EverQuest, and therefore most of the MMOs that followed it) is built to satisfy this need: you gain levels or skills, hunt for new and better items, take on increasingly more powerful opponents, ad infinitum. And certainly if you look at early games in the genre, they allowed for the types of emergent gameplay that made players feel skilled and powerful. As an EQ monk called upon to pull in Plane of Fear, Temple of Veeshan, or for raids like the Avatar of War, I felt pride in the skills I possessed which made me better than the average player of my class.

However, one of the frequent complaints about MMOs–particularly as they age–is that they’ve been “dumbed down”, made easier for less-skilled players to succeed at. The long list of changes to WoW’s talent system is an often-cited example of this trend.

We have to admit that MMOs today get mixed marks in this category. Accessibility is a key pillar of most triple-A MMO projects so that the game has the best chance possible of recouping its extravagant budget, and in the process, player competence typically isn’t a priority target for developers–even though they often claim that it is. Accessibility is the enemy of player competence.

Autonomy

Using the article’s definition of this word, MMOs get mixed marks here as well. On the good side, MMOs tend to give players multiple types of content to choose from: leveling up a character solo, doing group dungeons, raiding, crafting, PvP, pet battles, house decorating, dungeon designing, collecting, achievements, and other forms of play are common in MMOs. That’s a nice variety not present in most other genres.

However, once you delve into each path in detail, it’s apparent that autonomy isn’t really present. Most paths in triple-A MMOs, be they narrative-based or achievement-focused, tend to be very linear and without a lot of choice. You might be able to pick which zone you go to at a given level range or which instance you’ll run, but once that decision is made, you’re locked in. You can’t choose how to solve a quest. You can’t choose the strategy for killing a boss. You can’t make up your own recipes for making items. You’re limited to a certain type of housing item or paint color.

MMOs are better at giving you the illusion of autonomy rather than the reality of it. Problems tend to get solved once, and then that becomes the de facto strategy for achieving the desire result (and you get yelled at if you try a different approach). While there are certainly exceptions to this trend, they are few and far between–at least among triple-A titles.

Relatedness

Importance to others is where MMOs shine. Just about every aspect of MMO gameplay is done better by other genres of games–shooters are better at fast action, single-player RPGs are better at telling cinematic stories, etc.–but at least so far, nobody beats MMOs at the social aspects. (Note: This is changing fast! Developers, plan your careers accordingly.)

Skilled players are crucial to a raiding guild. Helpful crafters are the cornerstone of any social guild. Nice people willing to help out someone in trouble allow for those priceless moments of player-to-player interaction that make these games so sticky. Players are the glue that hold MMOs together.

And yet, even MMOs don’t get a perfect mark here. WoW’s dungeon finder is the best (worst?) example I can think of. While I have fun jumping easily into content and leaving with shiny new items, all I do is select my role and get pulled into the adventure with a bunch of other players I don’t know and probably won’t say a word to unless something goes horribly, horribly wrong. WoW can get away with it because they have so many players and so much to do in the game, yet for smaller titles this would be a terribly depersonalizing experience. Automated matchmaking gets players to the content faster, but ultimately undermine relatedness. When the appeal of the content runs out, players are left with fewer social times to the game itself. This leads to churn, which most MMOs that aren’t named World of Warcraft are unlikely to overcome.

Conclusion

While current MMOs have a lot going for them, in many ways they have strayed from the early principles that actually satisfied competence, autonomy, and relatedness really well. High production values and expensive cut scenes don’t make up for these losses. The more you try to force an MMO to feel like another type of game, the less it feels like a distinct genre and the farther you get from the core experiences that made MMOs so popular.

It should be noted that most of my observations above are focused on triple-A themepark MMOs. There are certainly smaller, independent projects that are doing a better job of hitting these marks. Ultimately, it may be refocusing on these core principles that returns the MMO genre to its glory days; if not, its best features will likely be absorbed into other genres. Depending how you look at things, this has already happened and will only escalate from here.

Looks like it’s been a while since I posted anything that wasn’t mopey. A rough few months will do that to you.

I’m pleased to be able to deliver happier news: I am once again gainfully employed, at the place where my career in games began: Sony Online Entertainment. I lead the design team as Creative Director on Vanguard, which has recently been converted into a free-to-play title.

It was an unexpected turn of events that led me back. Truth be told, I’d accepted a position at another company in a different state, but an old friend called with an offer I couldn’t refuse. Though I’d been away nearly six years, the folks at SOE have made me feel very welcome–a fantastic feeling.

So, why SOE? And why Vanguard?

Though being part of an epic collapse after years spent working on a large-scale MMO tends to have a negative effect on one’s psyche, ultimately I love this genre and couldn’t bear to stay away from it. There’s simply no challenge in game development like it. And yes, it’s risky, but when it works it’s very satisfying. I loved my time at SOE and made many great friends, so being asked back was a true honor.

As for Vanguard, I have a certain personal history with the title. I was community manager on EQ2 while Vanguard was in development, and I heard from a lot of people who told me how the latter was going to stomp all over the former. But despite some initial hard feelings over that flack, I couldn’t help but root for Vanguard; as an old-school EQ fanboy, it sounded like the type of game I really wanted to play. I was genuinely disappointed at the state of the game at launch and how it dwindled soon after.

But things change. After surviving with almost no development support for years, the conversion to free-to-play has breathed new life into the game–enough that SOE has made a serious commitment to it. Thus the hiring of folks like me, as well as bringing back some others who’ve worked on Vanguard in the past. It’s a lean, dedicated team made up of people who love the game and want to see it live up to its potential. Especially after the events of recent months, that’s the kind of redemption story I can really get behind.

Working on a live game again feels good, and making my way back to the forums is exciting too. I’ve even got FanFaire–er, SOE Live this week!

So here’s to homecomings… and happier days.

I have started and abandoned several posts over the past few weeks. I knew I needed to write something… but what story did I want to tell? An angry tirade about being screwed over? A scathing tell-all about what really happened inside 38? A self-pitying plea for a job? So many emotions inside me, a turbid swirl screaming for an outlet.

So this is what I’ve come up with.

Continue Reading »

Over at 38 Studios, we’ve been working on a game for a few years now. We are very proud of the stuff we’ve done. We haven’t talked much about it, but given all that’s been said about us in the last few days, we wanted to answer the best way we knew how.

This is just a glimpse of the world of Amalur as it comes alive in our MMO, codenamed Project Copernicus.

It’s very easy for game designers to come up with lofty, complex ideas. This is especially true for people who take a support role on one project and suddenly find themselves in charge of something on another title; they get the impulse to put their stamp on everything, to show the world how clever they are by embroiling players in complex plots and multi-layered gameplay.

Sometimes, the best thing you can do is take a step back and simplify things.

Every night at dinner, I get asked by my toddler, “Daddy, what did you do at work today?” My answers vary, but often I mention how I looked at pictures of monsters (character art review), saw some fantastic place (environment art review), read a story about some great battle (narrative review), and so forth. Occasionally I even get to talk about something I wrote myself! If I say I looked at a monster, I’m asked “Was he good or bad?” If I say bad, I’m asked “What does he want to get?” And I usually give a little story about that creature’s motivations.

After this ritual had been going on a while, it suddenly struck me how incredibly useful this was to me as a storyteller and designer. If I can’t boil the plots and motivations of our characters down into simple terms that a child can understand, we’ve probably over-designed the experience–which means grown-up players won’t get it, either.

That’s not to say stories and gameplay have to be written like an episode of Dora the Explorer. The nuances and depth should be there for those who want to delve into them. But at the base level, the primary motivations of your characters and storylines need to be clear and obvious. Otherwise, all the fancy dialogue and pretty graphics won’t matter, because the drama of your game won’t resonate with the audience.

The EA Louse blog is all the rage these days, and I’m sure anyone who visits this site will have encountered many observations on its content already. I can neither confirm nor deny the author’s assertions, though of course over the years I’ve heard my share of stories about the dark secrets of various game projects. It’s a small industry, after all.

This phenomenon–disgruntled employees venting anonymously for all the world to see–is hardly new or unique. Any time an MMO or its developer hasn’t lived up to expectations, someone on the inside has leaked “the real story.” You can easily find similar posts by former employees of SOE, Sigil, Cryptic, Origin, and many other dev houses. And of course the fans and watchers of the industry pounce upon these posts and eagerly debate their merits, often with a hearty dose of “I told you so.”

The thing is, while there’s a certain amount of irresistible schadenfreude to be gleaned from these tales, one must keep in mind that they’re often written from a finite perspective. The average employee at a game development house is usually no more privy to the reasons behind the high-level decisions being made than employees in any other industry. There is no shortage of rumors and speculation–some more rooted in facts than others–but often enough bits of truth make their way into the mix to seem plausible and even likely.

Assuming that EA Louse believes everything he wrote to be the truth (which is a mighty big assumption to make, but let’s do so for the sake of argument), that does not mean that everything he wrote is factual. Another person on the same team may agree with some points and disagree with others; that doesn’t mean this person would be a lair, it just means that their experience and knowledge led them to a different perspective on what the truth is.

Again, I write this post neither to agree nor disagree with EA Louse’s post. Rather, I write to point out that everyone who posts on the Internet–me, you, EA Louse, David Jaffe, Perez Hilton, and any other goofball with a blog–does so from a certain perspective and with some kind of motivation or agenda. We mustn’t take for granted that truth is an absolute, even if it fills us with delight to believe so (there’s that old schadenfreude thing again). This is why honest post mortems are so difficult to come by; many of those involved are busy either covering their asses or looking to blame others for mistakes they themselves could have helped to avoid had they put the same degree of passion into fixing problems that they did complaining about them.

No doubt many other perspectives will be forthcoming in the days ahead (some have already been expressed in the copious comments section of the EA Louse blog), but no matter what is said, the objective facts of the situation will probably never be known to the public. Nor should they; even in our gossip-drenched culture, I hope we can collectively realize that it isn’t our right to know the details of what goes on behind a company’s closed doors any more than we’re entitled to know what Brad and Angelina ate for breakfast this morning. The Internet has done funny things to our perspective, to be sure.

That said… yeah, I got a kick out of reading it, too. I’m only human, after all.

I have not given up on blogging, despite all appearances to the contrary. It’s just that, well, I’ve been busy.

Lots of great stuff going on at work. As you may have heard, we announced our first product and have been talking about it at various shows. I know many of you are anxious for more news on the MMO, but our promotional efforts are focused on the RPG right now. All good things to those who wait.

If it counts for anything, I have started (or thought about starting) several articles over the past few months, but never finished writing them for one reason or another. So for your own amusement, please pretend that you read timely, thought-provoking, and highly entertaining posts on the following topics:

• Are used video game sales a blight upon the industry?
• The subscription MMO isn’t going anywhere
• “Truth, Lies, and Frogloks: A Cautionary Tale”
• Please buy me an iPad

That last one isn’t really an article; I’d just love for someone to buy me an iPad.

But honestly, you should really be grateful that you’re getting a break from my ramblings. You’ll probably be sick of me again soon enough.

Speaking of which, I’ll be on a panel at GDC Online next month talking about transmedia stories. Looking forward to it!

I’m sure by now you’ve heard about Blizzard’s RealID system, and have seen many of the opinions against the upcoming change to WoW’s forums.

I think the move is lousy too, for most of the same reasons others have stated. I think ultimately the change is dangerous, both to the customers and to the health of the community. And I say this as someone whose “real ID” has been a matter of public record for a number of years now.

But there’s another aspect to this I’d like to talk about which I haven’t seen discussed so far.

My instinct is that this change will peel away yet another layer of the magic of MMOs: that of being able to pretend you’re someone else. Sure, anonymity can empower jerks to act like even bigger jerks, but the illusion of the avatar also does great things. It allows disabled gamers to ignore their physical limitations; it allows the meek to act with confidence; it allows the person with an average job and an average life to become a legend.

The danger of connecting MMOs too closely with real life is that it takes away the game’s function as a vehicle of escape, perhaps even limiting the potential of the game to inspire the imagination. That’s a heavy price to pay for cutting down on forum spam.

Of course the message boards are technically separate from the game itself, but they represent a big part of the MMO experience for a sizable number of players. That connection is being impacted by the RealID change, which means yet another aspect of the classic MMO experience is being lost–if you’re a WoW player, at least.

Now, let me pontificate to MMO developers for a minute.

From personal experience, I know that keeping a gaming forum as useful and troll-free as possible is a huge pain in the ass. Guess what? It’s also the price you pay for coming to the dance. I don’t care how big your community is or how many posts you have to moderate–hire the freaking staff to do the job right. I understand the motive of wanting to create a cleaner environment for your posters, but don’t take the positive experience away from the good folks in the name of shutting up the asshats.

There is a certain charm in the forum hero known only by a clever handle. The MMOs of tomorrow need to hold onto all the charm they can, not let it slip away–regardless of the motive.

I spent the entire weekend angry that the new Clash of the Titans was so horrible. This was one of the seminal films of my youth, a tale that had nurtured my love for heroic fantasy, and it was utterly ruined by an almost unwatchable farce of a remake.

Monday at work I must have vented my frustration a half-dozen times. At one point, I even proclaimed that I would have been happy if only the film makers had reshot the original script and added updated special effects.

After fuming for a while, I realized I hadn’t seen the original film in many years. So over lunch I fired up Netflix and bounded over to my instant queue, where I had the old Clash of the Titans waiting for me.

By the time I was 30 minutes in, I realized how utterly wrong I had been. If the original script were shot today, moviegoers would laugh themselves out of the theater. It was bad. Really bad.

So why did I have such fond memories of this film from when I was a kid? While I’d like to think my tastes in film are more discerning now than when I was a boy, it couldn’t just be the ignorance of youth. Because despite the movie’s terrible dialogue and overwrought acting, I had one thing right: the movie told a really good story.

What I’d done was internalize the myth. I’d taken what was great and resonant about the story and hung onto it, discarding all the nonsense that sticks out like a sore thumb when watching the film today.

We do the same thing with so many aspects of life, including MMOs. Many of us look back on our days in Ultima Online, EverQuest, Asheron’s Call, and other early online games through the haze of selective memory. We internalize the myths that matter: the long camps that netted a coveted item, the fight to survive a Mistmoore train, your raid wiping and recovering in the wee hours of the morning. These tales are as vivid and vital today as they were when first experienced, and serve as the foundation for countless reminiscences with old friends.

But when I go back to EverQuest to check out the latest expansion or run through a familiar area, the game is virtually unplayable to me. The interface feels archaic, a huge impediment that actually gets in the way of my fun. Yet despite many evolutions over the years, it’s largely the exact same interface I spent countless hours interacting with.

Interfaces aren’t memorable. Dialogue and quests fade away.  The myths we internalize are rooted in the heroics of social interaction and the drama of emotional investment. If you can make a game–or movie, or book, or comic–with an experience that genuinely moves the audience, you can make something memorable. Because by doing so, you will have touched he myths that lie at the heart of all of us.