MMO Gaming

I read a few days ago, possibly on Tobold’s blog something that caught my eye. He said (if it was indeed him, and I’m going by memory here so I could be wrong) that there is a split between “worldy” and “gamey” design. I’d say that’s a more than fair assessment. Over the weekend though I picked up EVE and I have to say it is probably one of the best mixes of the two that is currently out there. EVE, while popular, is certainly not record breaking in numbers. That is another topic entirely though, one I’ll dedicate to a post just about EVE after I’ve given it some more time. The question is why, if players want both good games and strong worlds, do we have such a hard time finding more of them out there?

The answer lies in freedom. Current design seems to believe that as a player is given freedom there must be added to that layers upon layers of complexity. They call this depth. Don’t be fooled here. There is no depth to what they are giving you, just a jumbled mess for you to work through. The game does not build layers on itself in a neat, even stack that a player can work his way up and around, it just throws one thing on top of another and tells the player to figure it out. Proponents of this call it “hardcore” it is actually just poor design in action.

Going back to EVE for a moment, as I was playing over the weekend a question popped up in one of the chat channels about what the “learning curve” is like in the game. He got one response that pretty much summed up the EVE experience. “There is no learning curve in EVE, there’s just a brick wall you have to scale.” For those of you who play, or have played, you probably agree. When I first played the trial of EVE, quite a while ago, I couldn’t figure it out. Since coming back they seem to have redesigned the tutorial. It is much better now than it was before. Currently the game tutorial, while still one of the lengthier tutorials out there, is doable. It introduces you to what you need to know, and then allows you to get tutorials on other subjects later, as you encounter them.

There is still a wall to scale still but it can be done now, even for those, like me, who don’t have the patience, or desire, to play through a 2+ hour tutorial and still not know what is going on. With the redesigned tutorial and the ability to ease into the game world they have combined even more successfully the “gamey” and “worldy” traditions.

Depth. It is still a problem. I’ve mentioned before how designing an innovative game, one that has depth, would not be a formula for success. It is sad, sure, but true. What is “depth” though? It is hard to define really. You could argue that all games have depth, that as you get farther into them more things are added and deciding what you want to do, or how you want to use something is more important. So, to say games don’t have any depth may be too much. There is some limited amount of depth to all games but the problem is that it isn’t enough.

Depth isn’t just adding more of something, it’s about making people think. If, from one end of the game to the next your players are not challenged to think about their actions then there is a problem. Think about the first time you load up a new game. Generally speaking you may know what to do but you’ll know it is going to be a different experience for you than other games so you don’t know exactly how it’s going to work. That isn’t to say you are lost when you load up the game but you don’t yet have a full grip on what this new world will entail.

That is what needs to be added to games. I should have to think about what I’m doing all the time. Blindly pressing buttons can be fun occasionally but it gets boring quick. If there is more to your game than that, if there is a living, breathing world behind it, then you greatly increase longevity. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

virtual world, game, mmog, mmorpg, game design, design, depth