[GrimGriz]

Wow. After what Istvan posted in suggestions and ideas, I'm starting to think he might actually have an idea or two that are better than mine....just one or two tho.

[Ambrosius]

For those who may not currently have access to JOSSH forums:

In response to a post about adding additional levels for those who have reached Optimus and have become bored, Istvan wrote:

I do recognize that many people are achiever-type personalities and like to strive for stats. However, I would greatly prefer that the game lend itself to the achievement of these stats naturally, rather than the stats be the reason to play. The idea is that whatever activity you choose should itself be fun and logical within the context of the environment, and you should be accomplishing some goal you have defined for yourself and the game should reward you based on the intrinsic value of your chosen goal. This is obviously idealistic. Most game designers are content to just provide stats and ladders for players to grind through, with plenty of eye candy along the way, and many games have been willing to consider "deep" to mean "lots of stat/levels/grind" to keep players busy for hours.

Now, to apply reductio ad absurdum (reducing it to absurdity) with both eyes open, it's easy to point out that games are games, and playing these engrossing games for any length of time for virtual achievements is itself pointless (Scorch will fire me when he reads this!) and accomplishes essentially nothing in the scope of our lives. The truth of the matter, of course, is that games or toys are played with so that we as players are entertained, and if some type of gameplay is enjoyable to us, that is sufficient justification right there.

I simply would like to see the industry (and myself, since I find I am now a game designer) strive to provide more richness in the game environments for massively multiplayer games. I feel that the great advantage of online multiplayer gaming is the social dynamism that can be obtained from harnessing the activity and creativity of so many people interacting and playing in a single large fantasy environment, and I do not believe that the game industry has begun to scratch the surface of the design potential.

In large part this is because the industry still is writing games, because that is how these MMOG projects have all evolved: the history of the computer RPG is a single-player game that tells a story with the player as hero or leader of a band of heroes. Computer RPGs obviously evolved from the paper&pencil tabletop RPGs we'd sit around playing with our friends after school in the 70's and 80's.

What the industry should be creating is toys: malleable, dynamic environments where the players can each influence each other and the game world individually in small ways, building that influence as they spend more time within the environment, both socially and if necessary in terms of an avatar. Toys are not designed with any kind of endpoint, explicit or implicit. All level ladders have an explicit endpoint. But MMOGs by their very nature are potentially endless sources of gameplay - or at least I assert they should be. As a whole, the defining force acting upon the game environment should be the player community, and the role of the designers of a game world is to provide tools and a starting point. Most games still rely on a static environment. Most visible objects cannot be manipulated, and most missions or quests have no tangible effect on the world as a whole, they are all just window dressing. The story is static, the world is static (unless patched in big new chunks - and those are just additions, not changes), and the game is always the same. Been there, done that. People eventually work through most or all of the painstakingly hand-made content that's the vogue in the industry right now, get bored and leave for the next new game and its fresh, unplayed content. No matter how many content designers you put on the job, and the industry likes to pile them on these days, they cannot keep pace with the players. Note that for many people who stick with one game for a long time, the explanation they usually give for this is "it's the other people who play, I stay for them". Should that not be telling us a thing or two?

As the focus of the industry remains fixed on making the next blockbuster high-tech game, I am concerned that the desire for profit will stifle innovation, and companies will begin churning out "sure successes" that are "sure" because they are only graphical updates to the games that have succeeded in the past. Sony's EQ2, I feel, is a case in point. Beautiful graphics. Technological and structural evolution, to be sure. But is it novel? Is the gameplay richer than that of its predecessors? Sony did better, I think, with Planetside: nobody had done a MMOFPS (massively multiplayer online first-person shooter) before, and you don't have to make excuses that Planetside was the first of its kind brought to market. It stands on its own as a well-done, genre-creating, landmark game.

One reason I am proud to work at NetDevil is that this company is still young enough and small enough and idealistic enough to be consciously trying new ideas in our games. Before Jumpgate, nobody had managed to put together a massively multiplayer flight simulator before. Before Auto Assault, nobody had tried either a massively multiplayer vehicle combat game, or a largely destructible environment before. Scorch believes the online game industry has got to have things besides orcs and elves and swords and sorcery as the big blockbuster games to stay healthy, and I think he's right about that. NetDevil is excited to be working with NCSoft, an online game publisher that appears to be specifically trying to keep innovation alive in the online games market. City of Heroes was NCSoft's first North America release, and it provided a novel genre for online MMORPGs as well as a much more action-oriented gameplay model than most online veterans were used to. Guild Wars was just released by NCSoft, and it approaches online gaming with a very fresh hybrid approach between a classic MMOG and a classic single/group RPG, along with a radical new marketing tactic: no subscription. NetDevil's Auto Assault is expected to be NCSoft's fourth North America release, continuing their line of actiony, different sorts of MMOGs.

I'm lucky enough to be responsible for Jumpgate, which largely because it was not originally designed as an MMORPG, yet feels to most of its players like an RPG, is very fertile ground for trying things that have never been done before. I've haltingly started to do little things here and there with Jumpgate that are in line with my idealistic approach to online toy creation. When still more of the utterly basic and urgent gameplay needs that presently take up most of my time have been addressed, you will see me begin to allow more of my personal design philosophy to define what changes are made to Jumpgate. I hope we all enjoy the results.

Thank you for reading this spontaneous rant about why I'm doing what I'm doing; I apologize for its length. It appears to have been an exercise in self-justification my hindbrain needed to convince the rest of me that the preparations for the current patch are worth the hours and that there is more fun to be had for us all in the future if I just can get us through this.

[GrimGriz]

Mang...not quoting that was mah evil ploy to get them to re-up.

[Radi]

Isty did omit one very important detail. Technical limitation of the Internet (its speed to be exact) prevents developers to go away from the "static environments." For now at least. However, AA is taking a step to change that by adding ability to destroy objects like buildings, trees etc.

[Radi]

Still, he is only one dev.