Jan 30 2009
Downtime is Necessary for Socialization
This is a concept I have always believed strongly in, and Raph Koster just wrote an excellent blog article about it: Ways to make your virtual space more social. He makes a lot of great points, but I am going to focus specifically on the concept that game developers must engage in some degree of social engineering when they make a game, and for a virtual world game they MUST take steps to force people to slow down, hang out, and socialize with others.
You Can’t Chat While Hammering the 1, 2, 3, Buttons
This is one area where the MUD command line UI always had an advantage. No matter what you were doing, your cursor was always in the right place for chatting. But in graphical games, web games, or even MUDs with advanced clients, you aren’t always right at a command line. So chatting while fighting, running from place to place, etc. is not that easy. If you want people to have meaningful interactions, you need them to stop and take a break now and then.
On a Treadmill, There’s Nowhere to Go but Forward
If your game design pushes people along constantly, always seeking that next carrot, or next level, or next gear upgrade, they will feel like any break in the action is falling behind. In that kind of game world, it is really hard to get people to do anything that is not indicative of “progress.” Players will feel like stopping to watch someone put on a play, or attending a wedding, or participating in a debate, are all things that will simply result in their character falling behind in levels. Heavy treadmill games, or games that always push people from hub to hub and zone to zone make it harder for people to socialize.
What Do You Think?
You readers know by now I mostly love hearing what you think. I like discussion more than I like just spouting off my own thoughts. So give me your opinion. Is downtime important for making social interaction possible? Can you actually hurt the social aspect of a game by making the “game” aspect too “motivating” (for lack of a better word)?
It is important to remember that not all on-line game genres are the same and that different kinds of people enjoy playing different styles of games. For graphical, “treadmill” games, there is WoW. For roleplay required, text based games, there is Threshold RPG. For space-combat/trading/crafting games, there is EVE Online. And so on and so forth. The people who play these kinds of games may want different options of socialization, from “Busy… killing” to “Blahblahblahyakyakyak.”
I think forced downtime is what people do not care for. If they get to choose when they have their downtime, or have better control, then it would not be as obnoxious. Forced downtime is not necessary to get people to socialize while playing a game. With VOiP options becoming more stable and accessible, even “treadmill” style games can benefit from such options to allow players to socialize while continuing their play.
With regards to actual roleplaying games, I believe coded goals, such as leveling systems, can divert focus away from in-game interaction. I am sure that statement, may turn into a topic of its own. ^.^ In short: Giving players the best control over “downtime” may lessen the annoyance felt against such an imposed game feature. Whether or not downtime is needed, how much of it if it is needed and what options players have are all dependent on the kind of game being played.
Forcing downtime would just be a inconvience, people would just log off and watch tv, play a different game or go on your forums and bitch about the downtime.
Game Designers slowly pushed the social side of mmo’s out of thier games with thier improvements.
Guilds are nice they gather like minded players together to accomplish certain goals, but they normally do not promote interact outside of thier clicks. When they do its usually the heads of the guild that do the interacting.
Auction houses and “shop mode” are very convient and allow you to sell and buy goods in a realtive short period of time, but exclude most interact between the players.
LFG cues do the same they are convient because you no longer have to interact with people in order to get a group together.
Zoning general chat instead of having a global chat is easier on the server but makes it harder to socialize with strangers. specifically new players in “newbie” zones that usually are the ones that would use the global chat for questions.
Voice chat stopped the need for text chat, but it hasnt necessarly improved socialization, now you can even limit the commo in your guild to just your buddies on your voice channel.
Downtime is not really useful to make people socialize. The environment needs to change that people want to socialize, without being forced to do so by design, like EverQuest did.
Voice chat indeed broke up guild communication, a lot less people type in the guild channel or just ignore it. Interestingly, only few people talk on voice chat during raids, all others have to restrict their speech to telling if they are dead, with playerchar name and role and whatever. I discussed with people AFTER raids, but not during dungeons. Easier dungeons allowed more communication, but only if I knew the group already.
Quest design with follow up quests and levels usually destroy the ability to group for a quest or play together at all. The usual request is to ask a level 80 to drag a level 30-40 through this or that instance, which is not too exciting for the high level player, who probably thinks he could spend his time better grinding for this or that faction…
I think people would talk a bit more during extended downtimes, but boredom would be a problem and it is definitely not the solution for the utter lack of socialization in modern MMOs.
I attribute this to the fact that people do get penalized for grouping, and soloing gets rewarded with more loot, more xp, and you do not need anyone to help you anyways. I think it is a very good thing that people can do stuff on their own.
“Forced” grouping in heavy party based games like EverQuest is awful. I blame the party system for the lack of interaction in many games.
All the loot rights stuff, the need to be in a party or get invited into it… why can I not help players simply by being there and helping them, without the need of forming a party, a concept that only is there for loot right and quest progression and similar things.
The best way to ensure interaction is a good player-driven economy PLUS a world that allows you to interact with it. I had a lot of chit chat with other people while mining ore or chopping trees in Ultima Online. Or meeting them in dungeons, I just asked them to help me for a while, and they did it. Or helped another player running away from a PK.
Roleplaying is not possible, socialization not really needed in a world where stats, levels and gear rule.
Raph Koster defines downtime in a more careful and precise way, he does not speak about forced regeneration of health and mana pools, but for time where players can do what they want, and not be forced to press buttons or travel to the next quest or so. I personally like slow moving ships, as people can talk and trade on them.
FLIGHT totally eliminates one of the few possibilites for WoW to cause people to have some interaction! Because WoW players do not want to travel for longer than 1 minute, they want to be at the mobs now, and kill them in 1 second and collect awesome loot and rewards. Blame the influx of Joe Average and the instant gratification mentality that game designers seem to have to serve nowadays!!!
Raph Koster, on the other hand, does not have to look too far to see how to do it right: Ultima Online and SWG were, despite flaws and not being as successful as WoW, so very much better in the regard of socialization. Because this games were worlds, not progression quest combat simulators.
It make sense - stops the sensory overload - not that I know much about gameing - I just wanted to drop by and thank your for your support - you made my top 10 droppers list for January
I’m totally against forced downtime for the sake of socialization. If the game gives players reasons to speak to one another they will do so. Roleplaying games/MUDs in particular. Give players high stakes things for individuals/groups to fight over, serious consequences and politics is a natural byproduct (even EVE online for example).
Forced downtime inspires what I see as the worst bane of any RP game aka “campfire” or “tavern” chat. A bunch of useless communication between players happening only because they are either forced to have downtime, or nothing happens ingame that is really worth communicating about. It’s way better to have a player SEEK out the tavern because they want to try smoking out rumors on their clan’s foes (stakes need to be high enough in said conflicts for rumors to have a serious impact), or cultivate spies ect ect.
Of course long grinds are also a foe to really serious RP. Either people are too busy grinding to do anything, or they are too afraid of losing “progress” to do anything. High consequences are good, but you need to be able to recover from said consequences quickly as well (for example permadeath with really quick leveling or a skill based system).
EVE Online also has serious downtime: It takes me longer to visit a friend in Gallente Space from Amarr Space than to drive to him with my car for example.
In the “non-PvP” Empire space I can read a book while travelling there. But in the dreaded 0.0 security pvp space I have downtime, too. Not every gate is guarded, and as long as there are no red lights on my radar I can use the chat interface to talk about this or that with other players. So there is definitely some truth to the downtime necessary for socialization. You can indeed not chat or use voice chat if you are busy with this or that.
But how can the lesson applied to other games? More downtime in WoW would not make people more happy. See the infamous “Barrens” chat. People have to walk long distances and the result is not more socialization, but 99,9% flames in the general channel. Of course we can say that a lot of WoW players are just awful, but many players tried this or other MMOs, too, and I doubt they are all kids. I think the nature of the game is also setting the tone and style of conversation.
In EVE, talk is centered on the economy and on planning ahead in general. After that you can make friends with people and talk about more private things. I also liked the newbie channels, people WERE HELPING each other and discussing issues of the more complex gameplay, like signature radius, how to aim, how to make money.
Try this in WoW, the cities are overcrowded and the other zones are void of players except the high end zones, but even there mostly dungeons are filled, and people focus on their run.
The question is how Cambios wants to implement time for chit chat and socialization without having people to sit down after every mob for some seconds or minutes to make people socialize?
Because THIS is the question, how to make people socialize. The focus on “having downtime for socialization” is theoretically sound, but how to incorporate the idea in game design without the annoying aspects of downtime.
“OOM. Health low, let’s wait.”
“We are meant to socialize now.”
“Yeah. Damn health bar takes too long to refill.”
“Yeah.”
… 7 seconds
“Ready!”
“Ready & go”
-> I still think the major difference between games that encourage socialization and those that don’t is that EVE is much more and not nearly as combat centered as World of Warcraft. The moment where killing stuff for loot and levelling takes over, downtime is an evil, not time for socialization.
Longsac says: “Downtime is not really useful to make people socialize. The environment needs to change that people want to socialize, without being forced to do so by design, like EverQuest did.”
Tesh says: “If I want to socialize when I play, I do. If I want to play the friggin’ game, forcing me to be social (including forced grouping or high traffic hubs in “travel loops”) is the fastest way to get your game uninstalled.”
Let’s look at the gaming community for a second. There seems to be a trend here that people want to do what they want when they want to- all the time. If you want to kill mobs and quest then by golly you’d better be able to kill mobs and quest or the game is bad. In this way games are now judged by a large majority of gamers by their ability to provide continuous entertainment.
—(I’d like to take a break here to say that I am completely against global chat channels. They don’t work as tools of socialization in my opinion, because the level of social interaction is so shallow. You talk to people you don’t know and in the end they all become in-game chatrooms and I find myself forced to leave or endure the extraordinarily rude/juvenile conversations.)—
If there’s an unwanted “break for socializing” in the game then the game is no longer giving you what you want, and many would see this as a flaw in the game’s design. So with games like WoW we begin to see MMO’s becoming single-player RPGs with optional grouping throughout and raiding end-game.
(Is this a problem? Not for most people, but for me? Kinda. I miss my EverQuest with its 5 minute downtimes for mana, forced grouping, and camping. I enjoy slower-paced games, where intelligence and strategy trump twitch-skills every time, and I loved nothing more than logging on, finding a group, and chatting all day while we butchered mobs)
Keep in mind that most WoW players would never go anywhere near EQ or a similarly styled game, because fundamentally it might as well be in a different Genre. Grouping to level and slow-paced gameplay are ideas that are now shunned in most MMOs.
Cambios says: “imagine if every 15 minutes or so there was an advantage (but not a requirement) to sharpening your blades or doing something else that was moderately interesting but not labor/brain intensive. That would create a natural break where people could chat a bit. That might be a good thing.”
Tesh says: “Tesh says: “Incentivize it, yes. Require it, no.”
Cambios the only problem I could see with this is that then people would take advantage of this combat-break for the sole purpose of getting the upper hand. I’ve tried to play D&D a few times in my life but it was ruined for me by people that would purchase the most random source books so they could make a character that was so powerful that normal campaigns could practically be completed with one character- the equivalent of soloing an MMO instance. This is not just a pen and paper trend though, which is why I mention it, when i played my mage in WoW I constantly had people in my guild telling me that I was the “wrong spec” because the other talent trees could give me more damage output.
I don’t think the focus is on enjoying a game that you play with other people anymore. It seems to me that the MMO world now mimics the capitalist culture of “be better than everyone, make more money (get more loot/treasure) than anyone, get more promotions (raid more bosses) than anyone, get lots of stuff (get the best epic gear!) and enjoy everyone worshipping you for having all this stuff”
That may seem a little extreme but back when I played EverQuest the forced grouping, and in those groups the forced roles of the different classes, was something you came to terms with. You were happy with your “job” or you got a new one! The biggest difference between EQ and games now was the skill-based system (as opposed to loot-based) and because of all the focus on loot in the game groups are just ways to get better gear than you could get solo. In EQ you stayed grouped because you got more xp that way, in WoW (and such) you stay grouped until you get gear, then a lot of people bail on the instance before you’re done (not too many, but a significant number of people have done it to me).
As a result in EQ socialization was part of the norm and so everyone did it, and no one complained. Yes the game forced it, but it forced it through the game’s mechanics (forced grouping) not a manufactured situation put in by the developers to promote a certain behavior.
To me it seems like the bottom line is that if you want to make a game where people feel like they should be socializing, and want to, then you will have to change the game mechanics to force grouping, and I don’t think that’s what anyone wants (but me and a few others). I don’t think you CAN make a game where you give people the option to group or solo all the way up, and where people feel compelled to interact socially. In that situation people will always be using groups to further their own “material” ends (for loot) and then the group will no longer serve a purpose.
I’m not sure a whoel lot of people want the socialization though… how many millions of people are content to play WoW? More adult-oriented MMOs like EQ (hopefully I don’t make enemies by saying that.) will always always have a far smaller audience than games like WoW, and their audience will always have significantly different tastes than that of “the WoW generation” I fear (until they all grow up of course!).
So I have no clue if I provided any useful insight here. I’m still working on being a little more concise…
As an afterthough I thought i should explain the “until the WoW generation grows up” sentiment.
Every generation has different expectations of other and of the world, and of games. This “WoW generation” is also the generation of Halo and WarCraft3, and all of these games have something in common- they require mad twitch skills. Because children learn very quickly there are some insanely talented six-year-olds that crush people at Halo, and the level of micro-managing that can be performed in WarCraft3 has ascended to an art form that if you cannot master it, you have no chance. WoW is a very very FAST game, and I believe that is the reason it has so much appeal to this younger generation of gamers. Fast is what they’re used to and what they like.
I wont go into the whole “TV is making everyone a little ADD” argument, but no one can deny that games are getting much faster (for the most part) and you have to become more twitchy to play them correctly (watching one of my friends play his druid PvP healer in WoW was kind of incredible). These tastes usually don’t go away as peopel get older. This fast pace of gameplay will stick with us- so the more adult-oriented games will continue to get faster and faster still is what I meant.
That was off-topic, I apologize. I felt, though, that it was necessary to clear up what could be a misconception.
Gah! I wish I could edit my posts!
This sentence above needs editing:
The biggest difference between EQ and games now was the skill-based system (as opposed to loot-based) and because of all the focus on loot in the game groups are just ways to get better gear than you could get solo
To look like this:
The biggest difference between EQ and games now was the skill-based system (as opposed to loot-based) and because of all the focus on loot in games now group are just ways to get better gear than you could get solo.
I apologize for some confusing words where I somehow dropped a letter also. I need more sleep.
*shame*
No shame, very good and interesting thoughts, man!
I must say I unfortunately follow the modern trend. I was a much more social player early on, in Ultima Online. I had a totally different focus, I thought about exploring, fighting, not about maximizing my effectiviness and minimizing levelling times or something like that.
I still insist that modern game design thrives on egoism, you play for yourself, YOU killed Kel’Thuzad, not “we”, or “our raid”, “our guild”. YOU got the loot. Or YOU did not get the loot, but some class/player that really did not deserve it.
The ability to play a mmo “solo” was often wanted, but Jedi is quite right when he points out to what it lead in the end.
I wonder if a game that HEAVILY forces grouping would have major success nowadays. Heck, just see Tesh or me, we value the ability to do things on our own. Despite the drawbacks of extreme anti-social gameplay experiences. I think some middle ground has to be found.