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Website

:: Sounds the trumpetous fanfare ::

Well, I've finally had time to at least put up the Alpha stage of my website. It's the first time I've implemented PHP and XML together, which is what I was mainly focusing on. It's a pretty easy to maintain site. Unfortunately, my hard drive with the majority of my writings has ended up not being recognized by my compy, so I have to figure out what's going on there before I can start putting up the majority of my writings. Keep your fingers crossed.

Oh, and I know it's not the best looking site. I thought my girlfriend, a graphics design masters student, was going to beat me for putting such an ugly thing on the internet before I explained to her why it was so bad looking. Give me some time to get the beta ready and I'll be sure to update the site with a more aesthetic interface. Or, as I'm now quoted as saying from the Summer Seminars with Brenda, "purty-fication".

The Chronicle did a recent article about the internship I'm doing this summer. You can read it here.

I started thinking about the mechanics of MMO rewards after reading a couple of blog entries from someone linked from Raph Koster's blog. The guy has this very interesting take on "instancing", but I disagree with his ideas of moving more towards instancing over away from instancing.

Part of the problem is the focus of MMOs on individual rewards. No matter if you are working with a group, the rewards you gain for completing a mission, quest, etc only affect your player. While there may be a benefit to an organization you are a part of because of your now increased capabilities, the organization is only stronger as long as you are a part of it. As soon as you leave that group, all of the time/effort that the other members put into your character get lost.

Take for instance large raiding guilds in WoW. They run a high end instance constantly in order to get items for various members of the guild in order to increase the capabilities of the guild. This cycle continues. The problem is that as soon as someone becomes dissatisfied and leaves the guild, all of that time and effort from the other guild members is for not.

This lead me to think of some sort of rewards system which promotes social interactions. Perhaps instead of individuals being rewarded, organizations were rewarded. Members that are part of the organization gain group wide benefits (perhaps abilities or items). Leaving the group removes the group granted benefits, but individual benefits remain.

I'm going to try and develop this more and post about it again in the future...

I weep. I weep bitterly. I weep for the industry if this is the truth.

Spore is delayed indefinitely

This makes me very sad, not only as a game player but as a game designer. Ever since I saw the first Spore video from Will Wright's GDC presentation, I've been waiting for this game and telling gamers and non-gamers about it. The ability of the industry to go to procedurally generated art assets was always seen as a threat to the art community, but I was always interested in the actual game play of Spore. Hopefully, it's just delayed until 2009 link Kotaku reports, and it won't join the ranks of games like Starcraft Ghost.

Most modern day MMOs implement some sort of class system in which players' abilities are based off of the class they choose to play. Taken from table top RPG systems, classes allow roles to emerge inside of groups. With multi-player games, such as MMOs (I'm going to talk about WoW in particular, since that's what I'm currently playing), each member of a group has certain roles they fulfill. Most MMOs use three key roles: Tank, DPS and Healer. Tank classes give the ability to absorb damage that enemies deal and keep the enemy focused on them. DPS (Damage Per Second) classes give the ability to do massive amounts of damage to enemies. Healer classes remove damage that enemies have dealt. There are other role types, such as Crowd Control (CC) which enables players to neutralize enemies for a certain amount of time (such as Enchanters in Everquest) or Economist who drive the economy of an MMO (such as Artisans in the original SWG), but the three key roles are Tank, DPS and Healer. They are key because they relate directly to how level progression is achieved in these games IE Combat.

The problem with the class system is the requirement of others to be in your group. Solo game play is limited because of the inability to be all three roles at once. While not a problem in the non-persistent worlds of table top RPGs, where players usually only play if the entire group is available, MMOs exist in a virtual space in which players can play anytime they wish. While there is a large assortment of players to group with, solo game play content must be available or there would be many unsatisfied customers who wish to only play with friends or colleagues instead of joining a group of strangers.

As part of the class system, there are usually options beyond just a full fledge Tank, DPS or Healer. These multi-class or hybrid classes allow players to have some of the benefits of multiple classes. Take paladins for instance in WoW. They are a combination of Tank (the warrior class) and Healer (the priest class). While not able to heal as well as a priest, or tank as well as a warrior, they have some of the abilities of both and are able to fill either role inside of a party. The downside to these hybrids is that they aren't as good as the "pure" classes that make up the hybrid. Paladins require mana for both their tanking and healing abilities, for instance, and so can't go head to head against a warrior for tanking or a priest for healing. WoW has implemented their talent system which allows classes to role specialization, though. This enables a hybrid class that wishes to focus on one aspect of their multi-class setup the ability to do so.

The problem that arises from all of this, though, is that most player's prefer to play some sort of hybrid class over a "pure" class because of the solo-ability. In a group, however, if the three core roles aren't covered, the group is doomed from the beginning. If the class with the healing role for instance decides that they would prefer to use their DPS abilities over healing, the group doesn't get healed and the group dynamics fall apart.

One class in particular in WoW is a completely different style: a dynamic class. Druids in WoW implement a totally different hybrid style and so cannot technically be called hybrids. In WoW hybrids, there is some resource (mana) that is shared by both aspects of the multi-class. This limitation isn't so with Druids. Druids have three separate resources for each role (Tank, DPS, Heal). Dynamic classes allow the players to be many different roles individually, instead of multi-classes in which multiple roles are attempted at the same time. The advantage to the group dynamic is there are none of the problems of hybrids and the advantage to the individual is none of the problems for soloability. This blend of pure and hybrid allows players to experience all group roles without having to create new characters.

I have to mention the original SWG here. SWG used a dynamic class style system similar to what I'm talking about. I don't think that any other MMO has attempted as much as SWG did during it's initial launch (an entire player driven economy, dynamic classes, multiple explorable worlds, player created content, etc) so I've always wondered why it didn't do as well as I believe it should have. I think that while dynamic classes are a model that future MMO developers should look at, the problem of being able to be all roles in the game does remove some of the social aspects of MMOs.

So, I was recently talking with Brenda about ARGs and how to design for them (ARG stands for Alternate Reality Game. See I Love Bees as an example). Having never played an ARG, I had no idea how to even begin playing or designing one. With no previous knowledge of how to play an ARG, I was totally lost when I started one. I didn't have an approach to playing the game or what was involved in it.

While this may be specific to ARGs, the idea that games cannot deviate from a core genre because of player confusion made me think. Perhaps game genres are important for players, since they allow an easy learning curve when picking up a new game. This is one of the advantages of the game genre design method used by current designers. As soon as you say "My game is going to be a ", you have certain core mechanics you can start with. Since these core mechanics are inherent in every game in a genre, player's are easily able to "grok" a game.

Of course, the downside to this is stagnant design. When a designer picks game genre over game experience, they limit themselves. They have to build those cores of the genre into the game (RTS will have resource management, FPS will have aiming, etc) that they would otherwise be able to ignore if they design for the game experience. Greg Costikyan talks about this in his Death to the Game Industry articles.

It's a double edged sword, I think. The ability, as a player, to quickly "grok" a game so that they the game play experience the designer wanted can be reached quickly is counteracted by the duplicated/repeated designs that comes from this process.

As a hopeful future member of the game industry, I think this should be something that future designers understand. The balance between genre mechanics and innovative game play.

Well, the quarter is over and I'm done with classes. I have a minor amount of work to do for a follow up in my Studio One class (post mortem, edit of article for Gamasutra submission), but other wise I'm finished.

I'm really looking forward to the summer for all of the work I get to do.( Here's a short break down of my fun filled summer time. )

Microsoft has just released info about their Surface project. It's a multi-touch interface tablet table. I remember hearing about MTIT interface in Survey of Interactive Entertainment and it always impressed me. The ability for multiple users to interactive with the same interface, intuitively, in a single environment makes for some great gaming possibilities.

Of course, with a $10k price tag from what I've heard, don't expect to be able to play with it in your living room any time soon.