Monthly Archives: August 2006

NCSoft – Q2 2006 report

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Third article in a series, this time also F13 gave a quick glance at NCSoft subs numbers and financial results.

The .zip file with the original pdf document can be downloaded here.

To begin with, the official words about the results and their plans for the near future:

We have reduced our previous earnings guidance to 330 billion Won from 353 billion Won on the top line and to 20 billion Won from 50 billion Won in operating profit. While Lineage franchise sales remained steady, this revision in guidance reflects Auto Assault’s poor sales performance and lowered Guild Wars sales projection as compared with our previous forecast.

Guild Wars Nightfall, the third and latest campaign in the Guild Wars franchise will launch globally in the second half of 2006.

In North America and Europe, NCsoft will launch multiplayer online games such as Dungeon Runners in Q4, 2006, followed by Exteel and Soccer Fury.

Tabula Rasa will enter a limited closed beta testing stage during the second half of 2006.

Summary:

– Unsurprising bad sales for Auto Assault (as SirBruce anticipated)
– Not so good as expected sales for Guild Wars recent standalone expansion
– Dungeon Runners out before the end of the year
– Tabula Rasa still not near release (as anticipated)

There are so many numbers in these reports that it’s not so easy to draw conclusions but Auto Assault is actually the main reason why they reported a net loss. F13 says that the net loss was of ~US$230,000, while there would have been a net income of ~US$12.8 million without the Auto Assault write off. Oddly enough 1 million Korean Won is about the same of 1 million dollars.

The subs numbers are something I can digest better. Extrapolated data:

Lineage
1,399,909 subs worldwide
9,685 in the US

There was a huge drop of 800k in the first quarter of this year. The negative trend continues but not as bad as it was, the game loses only another 100k or so in the last three months. F13 says the subs are decreasing but still better than how they were a year ago, but from what I see this isn’t true. Exactly one year ago Lineage exceeded 1.8M of active subs. So 400k more than what it has right now. To notice that in December of the last year it had more than 2.2 millions. It basically lost 1 million in six months. In the US the game is stable around those 9k.

Lineage II
1,138,928 subs worldwide
83,221 in US + EU

The game lost 200k from December to March, now it loses another 200k from March to June. During the last year this game lost half of the players it had in Korea and now the numbers don’t look anymore all that crazy as they were. It was holding well because of the launch in China, but even there it went from 700k to 200k in the span of a year. Even in this case I don’t see how the claim on F13 is correct since the game had more than 1.8 millions during the same period of the last year, that’s 700k less, not more. It’s also interesting to notice that in Korea the highest concurrent users peak has remained relaitively constant, even if the game went from 1 million of subs to 500k.

City of Heroes
171,000 subs worldwide (that is US + EU only)

The game loses 1k. There was a rumor again coming from F13 saying that the subs fell to just something more than 100k. I didn’t bite the leaf and it looks like my guess was correct, the game is holding well for the moment. After the release of City of Villains it lost something and that’s probably even the trend for the future. The game doesn’t seem to have a very good stickiness and the players need a motivation to continue to invest on this game. I didn’t see any announcements about a future expansion or new developments, so I suspect the game will start to leak subs at an increased rate if they don’t find ways to rise the interest again (and the patch cycles are abysmally slow).

Auto Assault
?

Uhm.. No subs numbers for this game. NCSoft considered it a failure and I think noone is surprised. Till we don’t have any better source I’ll stick with that 10k guess.

Guild Wars
2M boxes sold worldwide.

That number is almost all about the US+EU market since the game didn’t sell much in the other countries. After seeing the last expansion constantly on top of the charts I was expecting to see the total number of boxes sold at around 2.5 millions, instead it looks like it sold only 400k or less. I still think the game is doing rather well and proportionately to its “worth”, overall. I’ll write some more about this below.

—
General considerations: there’s one aspect in what F13 wrote that is correct, while the subs in Korea for Lineage and Lineage 2 dropped consistently, it looks like the “sales” remained quite constant. So here I really don’t know what to say since I have no clue about how things work and how it can be possible. The game doesn’t look that popular anymore but it seems that NCSoft still gains from it. The two games together represent still 70% of NCSoft total income (of which, 55% just in Korea).

Now what I’m noticing with some very rough math is that 40% of Lineage 1&2 subs (1 million of subs) is coming from countries not listed in their region graph:

By region, Korea stood at 55% of total net sales, North America at 18%, Europe 11%, Japan 9%, and royalties accounted for 7%.

This is what NCSoft is cashing, right? If this is true it basically means that 40% of those subs only consist in 7% of the net sales, which tells a lot about how much money is actually coming back from those countries. Apply this reasoning to WoW and all those millions of subscriptions coming from China and you can see how the success of the game needs to be recalibrated (and we already knew how cheap is playing games in those countries).

I mean, the net sales for both of those games in Korea are 47 billion Won, only 0.2 billion Won are coming from other games. But 40% of what we consider subscribers for those games aren’t directly property of NCSoft but come in the form of Royalties. Well, these royalties only bring in their pockets 5.7 billion Won. So those 40% of subs only bring a “real” 12% income.

About Guild Wars. As I wrote above I think the success of the game is proportionate to its worth, even if I was expecting this last expansion to sell more. Now the point is that the expectations of both Arena.net and NCSoft were consistently more optimistic. I don’t know if I read all these numbers correctly but Arena.net still operates at a loss. Despite the latest sales it still loses more than one million won this year (and I really don’t know how to read the charts, are those numbers cumulative between 2Q 06 and 1Q 06 or they need to be summed?). If we look at what happened before we see that it lost 11 billion Won in 2004 and another 4 billion Won in 2005 (even here, it’s 15 billion total or the chart is progressive?). When exactly are they expecting to see profits instead of losses?

They surely have a great technology but it’s still unlikely that Guild Wars will see an increase of sales (if I read those charts correctly). Each expansion will likely sell less than the one before just because the game and technology they sell is still essentially the same, but still sold at full price. I still think that the game IS successful. It is one of the few at the top of the charts and sold more than two millions of boxes. Now the point is to consider if the business model they tried was viable or not, because, again, the game performed rather well.

At the same time the “operating profit”, that is the net sales less the operating costs is still positive everywhere. So Arena.net is leaking money or not?

Payroll costs in overseas consolidated subsidiaries were 9.1 billion Won, up 7% QoQ. This is due primarily to staff increases at the company’s ArenaNet studio in NA.

Total headcount for NCsoft and its subsidiaries was down 1% QoQ.

In North America, revenue increased thanks to the successful Q206 launch of Guild Wars Factions.

A mystery.

I also wonder were are counted the costs of Tabula Rasa development.

Of those 330 billion Won they are “predicting” for the end of the year, only 110 they have collected in this half. So they expect to reach 220 (100% increase) in the next six months? How? The only two games coming out are Dungeon Runners and the new expansion for Guild Wars.

“1 Vs 1” and “1 Vs many”

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Some more random thoughts that are linked to what I was writing here.

One of the limits of the combat in current games is that in almost all cases you are stuck into a boring “1 Vs 1”. Take WoW and you can easily see as the combat is about finding a monster that is roughly around your level and kill it before moving to the next target. If you aggro more than one, you’ll likely die.

The quests point you to the monsters that fit your level, and give a purpose to what you do. But you are still within that “1 Vs 1”. And even when you are encouraged to group it happens when you are forced to aggro. So it isn’t a “1 Vs 1” but a “2 Vs 2”. The ratio is still the same.

There are cases where you are in a group and have to fight another group of monsters, but even in that case the gameplay teaches you to root or mezz the adds so that you fall into an unfair “many Vs 1”.

I was noticing this because it’s something quite limited to the mmorpg genre. Take every kind of hack & slash games and you are always with your character fighting against droves of enemies all at once. And it’s more fun. I’m kind of bored of this “1 Vs 1” standard model used in mmorpgs and I started to think how it could be possible to change it. To arrive at a combat model that is more visceral, dynamic and fun to play both for the solo player and group dynamics.

The first problem is quite stupid. If a single player can kill droves of monsters at once then think about how many of them you would have to fit in Dun Morogh if there are 200 or more characters around waiting for them to spawn. It’s an idea that would probably work better in instanced adventures, but at the same time it could bring to ways to break some bad habits. Like the advanced aggro routines: instead of pulling the goblin camp one by one, while those poor goblins stare their mates getting slaughtered, you would really have to deal with the whole camp, with some of them fleeing to give the alarm, some to attack you from range while another group charges at you. Instead of ONE pattern where you aggro the mob and the mob runs at you, the game would open up to whatever situation you can imagine and in a way that does not directly destroy the immersion. If you can see the monster then the monster will likely see you and react realistically, and not just obeying to its sad experience-dispenser role. Those monsters would fight for their lives, the best they can, instead of just running toward a sure death.

(err, to finish later again…)

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Specialization Vs versatility

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This idea is something close to the old debate about SWG, where I was saying that one of the biggest delusions was that you were somewhat locked into a certain role, instead of taking advantage of all the game had to offer (combat, crafting, trading, social professions and so on).

That debate was also near the release of Jump to Lightspeed, where the characters gained a new pool of points and career so that they could play both the game on “the ground” and the other part in the space. Wouldn’t have been a very bad idea if the players were forced to choose between the planets or the space? So why it is a good idea to force the players to specialize into just one role?

The ideal is that if your game has cool things to offer, then it makes sense to make all of them available to everyone. Like it’s a bad idea to develop a game where the players can only access half of the whole content.

All this while I was thinking again that the best part of Dungeon Siege was the very beginning. Some of the best fun. Monsters pop out all around you and you grab your bow and start to take down some of them, but they are too many and they arrive close to you, so you switch to your sword and finish them off.

So what you would like to play?

– The character that specializes into just one type of attack and have to stick with it throughout the whole game.

– The character that has access at the same time to multiple possibilities, like ranged attacks when the enemies are away from you, melee for when they are close and magic spells to blow them up with spiffy Area of Effect attacks.

The “all around” character is DEFINITELY more fun to play. The game would offer more variation and different kinds of strategies would be possible instead of being forced to repeat the exact same cycle of moves. Having different tricks available is fun, being able to hit something in ten different ways less so.

Then, going back to the example of Dungeon Siege, you notice that the game doesn’t really support the constant switch between melee, range and magic. In fact all three have about the same use of efficiency and their purpose overlaps. You can still use the bow even at melee range with the same effectivity, so what’s the difference between the three? I’m not sure but from what I’ve seen the melee obviously works only in melee range but deals more damage and it’s faster, ranged weapons are a bit slower and weaker and the magic is the slowest between the other two but it should never “miss”. Sure, you could still use all three evenly, but you would have to do it just for “fun” (since there are no actual advantages doing so) and you’ll even risk to gimp your character in the later game.

It’s interesting to notice that in Dungon Siege the quick switch between the three modes isn’t even supported. So that’s the impression I got, what I found “fun” in that game was a way of play that the game didn’t actually encourage. How could have been the game instead if the design was really aimed at giving each of those three “modes” three different roles that complete each other? For example being hit in melee could have delayed the use of the bow, which would have encouraged the player not to switch only because it’s “cool”, but also because it would lead to a better strategy, where using a ranged weapon even in melee wouldn’t be convenient at all. And the same about the magic, instead of developing a “wizard” class, the idea would be about finding a special role for the spells to accompany and complete the melee and ranged attacks, instead of directly replace them.

Then compare those two models. The standard one, directly supported in both DS1 and sequel, that requires you to specialize, and the other one I “guessed” and hypothesized, where your character is required to switch between melee, ranged and magic, where all three fit specific situations and purposes and where you develop a versatile character that has access to multiple styles that you can (and you have) to mix all at once depending on the situation, the environment and the types of monsters you face. That’s what I think would have been much more exciting and involving to play. A mix of situations and gameplay, a mix of different types of attacks to use to plan the best strategy and a “1 Vs Many” type of combat that thanks to the variation could be even more fun to play than Diablo 2.

The next step is to examine the other side of the problem, though. The group play. Dungeon Siege is a game based on a group. Being able to develop a character that can master just every area means that you don’t need other characters in the team who can complete you. So this is a problem to solve, retaining the versatility of the single character, while allowing for character progress and specialization that can be also varied and deep.

WoW could be taken as an example here. The “talents” are a design idea that doesn’t usually remove or add skills, but just directs certains types of patterns you use. In DAoC, as a contraposition, the specialization paths give you directly skills and spells to use. A fire wizard won’t have access at all to ice spells. In WoW instead all the skills and spells are “open”, while the talent system still allow you to define your character into a more specific role.

In the case of my dream mmorpg I’ve fiddled with all of these ideas without never finding a definitive solution that I felt satisfying. But the overall idea was about giving each character a lot of variation, while specializing in a “fighting style”, more than a role or class as we currently consider them (give a look to this). In the case of Dungeon Siege this would be about specializing with a certain type of melee weapon, developing particular attacks, and the same about the magic, only having access to certain types of spells. But still having access to melee, ranged and magic all at once. So you retain the access to different “roles”, while you specialize into the way these roles behave.

A small detail? Not really, because it would completely overturn the group gameplay in a mmorpg. So that’s something to consider and figure out if the idea could open to interesting new way to conceive the “combat”, or if it would just cripple that part of the game.

To Game or not to Game

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Hi im new to this website and i havent looked through it throughly enough to see that maybe someone already wrote on the same or almost on the same topic.

What i want to express is my confusion about the world of games ; Single Player , MMO’s or whatever the case may be. I have recently noticed that in the last 6 or so months i havent played a game though would immediately spring into mind if i try to remember a good game that i enjoyed. There just have not been any good games that i remember, if i try to remember further i think of a couple. My point being , is it just me or has the game industry deteriorated ? I mean seriously lets take The Movies or Black and White 2 or one of those “promising titles thats gonna change the way we think about games” , didnt change much for me just the fact that it was total crap. So those failed games were maybe good to someaudiences but now Microsoft bought Lionhead and now they are probably gonna happily stamp clone games for PS3,Xbox and so on … =) The revolutionary game Doom 3 with its new gen graphics bla bla bla ; personally i played the game for 10 minutes and the only thing i liked in it was the flashlight then i erased it and never even thought about installing it again, same with Quake 4 . Im not talking about the complete failure of the multiplayer in those games (my opinion anyway). What else was a big mess up …. hmm almost all the games that have come out recently , EA games im not even going to mention , its not worth it. Last good game i played was Vampire Bloodlines and i didnt sell well enough so Troika went bankrupt , so the way it works is a good company makes a good game and then it goes bankrupt because everybody is playing PS2.

Same story with MMO’s ; Star Wars Galaxies came out and the only way i found out that it was out was from Allakhazam where i was looking for WoW stuff, so that cant tell me its good can it ? Same with The Matrix Online , for the hardcore fans only . WoW i dont know its a confusing game to me, i play it eagerly but at the same time i think that im being spoonfed and there isnt a point to the game . I think WoW’s success lies in the fact that it was such a popular universe before the game was even in concept stage. Blizzard just had to pick out the best of MMORPG’S available to that day and put a Warcraft theme to it. Done. You have a Winner. Nothing original but the most played MMO. No Comments.

This is only my opinion but maybe its right:)

Bioware takes the shortcut

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I wrote recently about the risks of not developing proprietary technology and we have yet another mmorpg studio who wants to cut the time and bypass that level of development that looks now undesirable for just everyone.

Bioware is going to use for its own unannounced mmorpg project the engine of an unreleased other mmorpg coming from a much smaller studio. The press release is kind of amusing:

Simutronics announced today its first licensee for its new HeroEngine, a complete integrated platform for development of massively multiplayer online (MMO) roleplaying games (RPGs).

BioWare Austin will use HeroEngine for development of its new MMO project. This game will be the first project for the new Bioware Austin studio.

To notice that it’s not Bioware announcing this, but Simutronics, who probably still couldn’t believe that they managed at least to sell their engine, if not their game.

Then there’s that suspicious “first project” claim. That I find so irritating because once again we have another mmorpg studios who hasn’t even started moving the first steps that already hints about what comes after. It may be stupid, but there’s already a quite relevant suspect there.

MMO games are the fastest growing segment of the video games market, with $2 billion in global revenues and growing at a projected $1 billion per year according to DFC Intelligence. Millions of people around the world come together in online games such as World of Warcraft, EverQuest, and Star Wars Galaxies to cooperate and compete with each other.

“At BioWare we selected HeroEngine because it had the most sophisticated and complete development tools available for building an amazing online experience,” said Gordon Walton, Co-Studio Director of BioWare Austin. “Our team wanted a great rapid prototyping environment and to work with experienced MMO developers.”

The first paragraph here is more interested to hype the market than the specifics of the games made. Kind of fun how SWG was put in there as a legitimate third.

Then there’s Gordon Walton, who was behind this choice and that motivates it by saying that they decided to avoid to develop proprietary technology so that they could start working right away on the game itself instead of on the premises for it to happen.

But if *Bioware* doesn’t have the resources to develop their own tools and technology, then who should have them? That’s the point. Bioware isn’t one of those small, amateurish dev studios who are going to tank. You would expect at least a great execution and production value from them. And instead we see them climbing on the shoulders of the much smaller guy.

Yes, it’s obvious that as time passes this particular genre will further specialize and fragment (still a negative trend, but kind of unavoidable), but again I say that jumping that level of basic development is a risk. Instead of developing and *pushing* the technology to achieve your goals, you plan your goals around the limits of the technology you have. This isn’t positive at all. I’d say that you can start sooner, but you’ll also end sooner.

We won’t probably see the results of this for some more years, but even in this case I’m quite skeptical and not all that excited about seeing the result. Considering the overall stickiness of those “VIP” developers to a project I’m not even sure if this studio has legs. It smells a lot of “already seen” and “short lived”.

This “new” Bioware Austin studio doesn’t look like anything new in the mmorpg space (where “new” would be welcome) and instead it looks like it has little to share with the rest of Bioware (that could have been a guarantee of quality). I mean, we were expecting an AAA studio to come in the mmorpg space to build something with a great execution and production value. Where it was Bioware (old) to do something (new) in the mmorpg space. Instead we have a brand new branched studio without experience that has little to share with Bioware’s previous track record (new) with a team built of previous mmorpg veterans external to Bioware (old). New and old are inverted there. The point is: what is left of Bioware beside the name?

To consider also that Bioware’s games have gone through highs and lows depending on which team was working on them (I’m one of those who loved all the Baldur’s Gate-like titles and disliked NWN).

If this announce was their very first move, then forgive me if I don’t take it as a positive sign.

It would have been instead quite interesting if they took their Bioware heritage and made some sort of online version of Baldur’s Gate, within a PvP world and all rendered in beautiful 2D. Take my old idea:

– We take the 2D Infinity Engine and keep it “as is” to create locations. Then we tweak it so that you don’t have just rectangular zones, but instead a seamless world without any zone loading (with UI enhancements to not get lost in perpetual scrolling). All done with “painted” 2D locations, but as a seamless world, like a huge fresco.

– We replace 2D PCs, NPCs and monsters with a layered 3D engine that moves things on top of the 2D backgrounds (which will help to reproduce and detail graphically all the equipment variations and differentiate the characters).

– Ditch the D&D ruleset to start with a new one made from the ground up to be fun and well-paced.

– Develop a completely new character development system that can provide much more personalization. Skill based with loose classes.

That’s something I’d definitely play more gladly than another “cutting-edge”, recycled 3D engine. And I don’t think that Hero’s Journey is cutting edge, also.

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The “Lum the Mad” chair is still vacant

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An answer to an inappropriate link on the Camelot Vault message boards.

I hate when what I write is linked inappropriately on a message board. I write mostly for my own use and I really don’t fit well the role of the flag-carrier against someone or something. In fact it’s exactly because I know build no consensus that I can be as direct and harsh as I want. Otherwise I would have to be much more careful if what I say could have a negative influence.

I’m not even sure why we’d start a thread about some unknown guy’s blog.

Well, I know. There are two reasons.

The first is that there isn’t any other place that discusses Mythic and DAoC from a critic perspective. No commentary out of the direct control of Mythic that forces them into a real dialogue. If there was one, then I would probably read it. So get a good writer and I’m sure you won’t feel anymore the need to link what I write. It wasn’t linked because I’m that good writer, it was linked because there just isn’t anyone else good around (read as: the “Lum the Mad” chair is still vacant, and even more in demand now than how it was at that time).

The second is exactly because it’s “some unknown guy’s blog”. Because if there was on the header a name such as Mark Jacobs or at least someone who doesn’t directly claim to have zero influence right away, then what I write would suddenly become so much more interesting and entertaining.

In regard of this place: I don’t write to entertain because I know I’m not good doing that. Nor I write to move the masses because I know I don’t fit that role and don’t have those skills. I write about design, and not that kind of design that writes text in the game. It isn’t written anywhere that game design analysis or ideas have to be fun to read to be valid.

To each, his own ;)

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Genesis: the world, to the players

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I was looking at Vanguard’s concept art and it made me think about other ideas in my dream mmorpg completely unrelated. The idea of the game world finally truly in the hands of the players.

What should this mean? You can follow what made me think again at that idea. You can go admire some of the concept art for Vanguard, the environments in this case.

People say it’s cool, but at the end that’s just a backdrop. Even WoW has some places that make you feel the sense of wonder, but it’s still just a passive frame. Think about the capital cities for example. You just go there to get quests, take the gryphon, repair, buy/sell. At the end you aren’t really there because that place is owned by passive NPCs.

The world, to the players

So the idea: whould you want to own one of those places? That’s the point. I want to give that kind of awe inspiring, fantasy world to the players themselves. Not to passive NPCs. Those luscious palaces should be owned by the players. They should live there. Their homes.

What we have instead? Well, Ultima Online gives you bigger or smaller houses that you can completely customize, EQ2 gives you instanced room that you can fill with garbage, DAoC gives you a few house models that you can buy on a pre-defined, generic land. I mean, the players get the crumbs, the NPCs instead get gorgeous palaces, castles, temples and so on. How’s this fair?

I want that kind of immersive and yet incredible world that you can see from the concept art in some games. But then I want to take those zones and tell the players: here, this is all yours. That’s the idea.

What we have instead? We have instanced PvP spaces, where you can fight around an handful of same-looking keeps. Without context, without “feel”. Just four walls and a flag in the middle. How’s this fair?

So let’s overthrow this status. Let’s be subversive. We take the best artists and world builders and we make them create the most luscious, fascinating and awe inspiring world. Something that can totally make your jaw drop. But when it’s time to populate it with mindless NPCs, we invert the trend and, as God with the Eden, we put there the players and say them: this is all yours.

That’s the idea. The world, to the players. It’s theirs. They do with it what they want.

The context: the war and full PvP

Then we need to give them something to do. It’s a game, afterall. So we say: this world is PvP. Fight for your domains.

And it’s here that you learn that the world is persistent. There’s is no “castle in a pocket”, no private rooms. You see that palace and you want it for you? Ok, go take it for yourself. Fight for it. Your house isn’t a safe place because there’s war in this world and nothing you have is secure here. You have to protect your domains, you have to find allies, you have to coordinate.

There are two factions at war (with a third not directly involved in the war), you pick your side, with the possibility to betray it, if that’s your choice (permeable barriers). You can then switch sides or even establish your own faction, and fight your own war against everyone else.

The conquest system

The world is big. Too dispersive for PvP? No, because we take inspiration from wargames and use a simple conquest system: you can only conquer adiacent regions to your domain. You can then lay sieges and annex regions to expand your domain. The PvP should be easy to locate and reach because it should focus on a “battlefront”, the border between one faction and the other. Always visible on a map.

You can then penetrate in enemy lands, if you want. But you cannot siege inner locations that way. To reach those places you’ll have to escape patrolling guards and move past roadblocks. If the guards find you then everyone will know where you are. While you cannot siege and conquer regions outside the battlefront, you can “pillage”. The pillage is a possibility, but it has also a purpose. During a pillage you can damage enemy structures and steal or destroy their resource.

Full loot and economic system

This world is full loot. But wait. You cannot kill other players and steal their hard earned magic weapons and armors. The idea is instead that you can loot or destroy the resources that are used at the higher level of the community. The economy of the conquest system. The game is based on a similar model of an RTS. You’ll have to gather resources such as stone, wood, iron and gold. Build farms to produce food, horses and so on to include a degree of complexity and virtual world.

The RTS: NPC bots for the boring duties

But then it’s not your character to have to be in charge of those boring duties, because we value “fun” in games and we don’t want any downtime. So we wait a moment and think what we left out of this game. We left out the NPCs. And that’s the idea. We take those NPCs and we use them to perform the boring tasks. We tell them to mine the gold, to go cut wood, to produce food. All this while you, as the player, can leave them work and go fight for your realm.

A completely BOTTED farm system. The paradise of goldsellers and farmers? We’ll see (two paragraph below).

You will want to create groups of guards, patrols, spies to defend your territories while you aren’t watching, or plan the best strategy for an offence. But those guards need the food, they need the weapons, they need armors, horses, carts to transport your goods and so on. That’s the RTS level. You don’t smelt iron to produce weapons to be used by players. Because the players have spiffy magic items bound to them and they would cry aloud if they’d lose them. Instead you smelt that iron because your guards need to be outfitted. You need to breed horses for them to patrol better your territories, you need to give them food so that they don’t get ill and will fight strongly.

RMT out of the door

That’s the purpose of the “pillage”. To destroy those resources, damage buildings, weaken your enemy, kill or kidnap those guards to use them as slaves in your own mines. The world is full PvP, and full loot. Say hello to goldsellers and farmers, this is your game. But to be preys instead of predators. The iron you produce doesn’t log out safely with you. There’s no untouchable vault. Your enemies can pillage your city, set it on fire and destroy all you have produced. They can decide to break in your depots and instead of setting them on fire, take what they find for themselves. But their pockets cannot hold tons of wood, gold or iron. So they would need to bring there their caravans to take those resources and move them into their territories. But those caravans only move on roads and are slow and are easy to spot.

Those farmers who want to use the game for real money profit won’t be banned. But they will have to play along the rules of the game. And they will have to protect what they gathered and they will have to take the risk of losing *everything* after a well executed pillage by the enemy. Say hello to all those lone farmers who aren’t even capable of coordinating together. This is no solo game. You cannot conquer the world and manage your territories alone.

And those are some basic features of the “dream mmorpg”, described exactly as they were originally thought, in that order.

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I was also thinking about brainstorming sessions. The way game companies work on the inside is kind of inscrutable for me, so I don’t know if they do already brainstorming sessions. The idea is that you gather all developers around a table. If the group is too big you can divide it into smaller groups but everyone should participate, not just designers. So maybe one day you take designers + programmers, the day after designers + artists and so on. During a brainstorming session everyone is at the same level and has the same right to speak. There’s one coordinator and a blackboard. Each of these sessions shouldn’t last much more than 30 minutes and the only purpose is to gather all kind of crazy ideas. You provide a theme, like “PvP and massive battles” for example, then everyone can raise his hand and start with an idea, while the coordinator lists all the ideas coming up on the blackboard.

The “rules” are quite simple, the ideas proposed shouldn’t stay within limits such as time constraints, budget, technical possibilities and so on. You just say whatever passes in your mind and that you think could be cool, without analyzing at all. The purpose of a brainstorming session isn’t about planning the development. Not all the ideas will be used. Their purpose is just to suggest someone else another idea, a source of inspiration. You go with the flow without stopping with your reason to analyze and judge the idea itself. Only after the brainstorming session the ideas will be pruned, analyzed and then, maybe, slowly enter the production.

“Money Vs time investment” and “The good game is the one where EVERYONE WINS”

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Two controversial comments I wrote over at Raph’s blog about RMT, money vs. investment of time and the problem of the accessibility and processes of inclusion.

Disclaimer: To those quoted, I used those quotes as an excuse for context, not because I want to paint those who wrote them in a certain position.

The title is obviously a provocation.

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Allen Sligar: As far as MMO players go, the demographic is a broad one. Some players have more money than time, some more time than money. Arguments premised on what is “fair” from either side are from the POV of investment of money vs. investment of time.

Like if the main reason why someone plays is to “invest”. On what? Two, three years later he will probably abandon the game anyway or the game and character not being there anymore.

One is supposed to play a game because it’s an interesting and fun experience to be had. Like if you read a book because you are interested on it.

Of course this requires time. Everything requires time. If you have no time, then you cannot play a game and enjoy it. The “time” isn’t a currency, the time is just what is absolutely necessary for you to enjoy something. If you don’t have two hours you cannot go in a movie theater to enjoy the movie.

So the point isn’t about *time*. Because if you play a game then it’s absolutely sure that you have time for it. The point is just about if you can have fun for the time you can dedicate to the game.

RMT is an exploit to leech money, not a scheme that leads to better games.

RMT devalues games. I don’t say that the model cannot or shouldn’t be used, I’m saying that those games will suck.

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Michael Chui: RMT is delusory when it confers status normally gained through experience. It is reinforced by game designs where player skill matters very little, and thus the ownership of accounts or their contents typically means equally little, whereas their transfer has great value.

And I also disagree with this because I don’t think that mmorpgs should require “skill”.

The content is there to be enjoyed. The basic requirement is that you want your game to TEACH skill, not to discriminate players on it. If a game fails to teach, then it’s a game’s failure, not player’s failure. A game isn’t a good one if people with “no skill” cannot play and cannot advance in any way. There should be no skill required to enjoy a good story and participate in it.

A virtual world should strive for that ideal. People have different skill sets. A virtual world should give home and deliver fun to everyone, not to the most skilled. Everyone will then contribute with what he can. But there shouldn’t be processes of selection, distinctions of merit and so on. There shouldn’t be “premium” players who can enjoy the game more because they are more skilled.

Of course there should be “challenge” in a game for it to be fun. But the challenge shouldn’t be a way to tell skilled players from not skilled ones, it should be instead something that *everyone* can overcome. Because that’s the DUTY of a game: make everyone succeed.

The best game isn’t the one where a x% of the total players fails while another x% succeeds, because, again, the purpose is to present challenge and then offer all the conditions for that challenge to be overcome by everyone. So a game where the TOTALITY of the players are included, instead of discriminated or selected.

The objection is that in current games the challenge is just about perseveration and time invested. This is obviously not a good model because that’s not real challenge and that’s not what I’m wishing. That’s a devaluation of “skill” and it leads to empty games.

It is possible to preserve challenge and skill in a game, but again not with the purpose to discriminate the players and exclude some of them. Guides, tutorials, HowTos… There are plenty of ways on the internet to overcome the difficulty of a game. Asking other players, creating bonds and have more experienced players helping you and answering your questions are very good ways not TO REMOVE the challenge in a game, but to make it accessible. Instead of a exclusive selection, it’s an acquisition of competence.

There’s one absolute principle about games and virtual worlds: they should be accessible to the largest group of people possible.

I do not want any discrimination about skill, nor discrimination about the wealth of a player in RL.

Of course a 100% success rate is not realistically achievable. But that’s what an ideal is about. The ideal just means that I design games with that goal, having that goal always present. To strive for it even if it’s not possible to fulfill it completely. With the difference that who is still left out, wasn’t left out BY PURPOSE.

On RMT, and ideals (Magneto Vs Xavier)

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About this. Raph wrote:

People seek advantage and they seek convenience.

A golf cart costs money. If you own a golf cart, you’re not getting as tired walking the course. This may help you play better. The club will rent you one. Aha, company-sponsored RMT. ArchLord, like the golf club, is merely charging a premium for the “easy” difficulty setting.

Is it fair? Of course not. Fair and commerce, despite legislative intent, usually do not hang out at the same parties.

My opinion:

Real money should stay OUT of a game world. Stop. There isn’t anything else to add. That rule should be NEVER get touched.

We play games exactly because at least there we can be on equal footing and not getting discriminated by money. Because we can dream of being different and live the utopia. Making games is about dreaming of a better world, not to replicate its darker sides if not to exorcize them.

The ideal of a game world is about being fun for everyone. With the lowest price of admission possible so that EVERYONE can participate.

Processes of inclusion and NOT processes of exclusion and discrimination.

If we are going to make mistakes while trying, at least let’s make them while chasing ideals in which we strongly believe and that we think are positive.

You choose your side.

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