Amongst the seemingly never-ending navel gazing prompted by any public mention of SWG (and especially the NGE), Steve “Moorgard” Danuser brings up a point that’s been rubbing me the wrong way for a while now:
Online games and virtual worlds are not the same thing. If you’re building an MMO, you better be sure which one you intend to make.
Funny. I thought virtual worlds WERE online games. I know, I know, the endless navel-gazing discussion of “game vs. world” that preoccupied myself and many of others for pretty much the first four years of UO’s conception, but that’s more political posturing than anything else (PvP! PK switch! Trammel noob!). What’s rubbing me the wrong way specifically, though, is that I think the waters are becoming very muddy as to what exactly makes “a virtual world”.
A lot of this, I think, is due to the current media fascination with Second Life. SL certainly isn’t a new type of game, but the media, eager for anything to hand their Winchell hat on for some good copy, consistently brings up SL as the next coming of the Holy Metaverse, a posture that is encouraged by its makers. (And why not? If you sell a game to just the subscribers of Wired magazine, you’re probably doing OK. Plus, you probably will only need servers on the West Coast!) And the one thing constantly hammered home by SL’s analysts and avatars: it’s not a game. It’s a virtual world. Even the largest corporations are starting to get in on the act. And thanks to the constant drumbeat of this, I’ve seen more and more industry analysis that describes the differences between SL and its competitors and traditional MMOs as such:
The attention surrounding MMOs (massively multiplayer online worlds) has never been greater. But it’s not just role playing games along for the ride; non-game, avatar-driven virtual communities are just as popular, if not by more, and we’re not just talking Second Life here.
By that, GigaOM’s list (which is seriously flawed, by the way: Webkinz is listed and Neopets isn’t? Ooookay then.) is defining games such as Habbo Hotel and Club Penguin as SL-style virtual worlds. What does Habbo Hotel have in common with SWG? Anything at all?
Clearly, games like Second Life and Habbo Hotel and the like are social games. They exist primarily as chatrooms; some, like Club Penguin have game play, some, like Second Life, only have what the users bring with them. Are they virtual worlds, then?
What is a virtual world? Let’s roll back a bit and look at what comes to mind when people think of VWs like SWG and UO.
Open character development. Basically, you can make whatever character you can dream up.
Complex economy. Ideally players make, buy, and sell everything.
Few amusement parks. By that, I mean the guided gameplay familiar to MMO players. Amusingly, the few areas in SWG that tried to bring that kind of gameplay to the table were called “theme parks”. Ride the Sarlacc!
Players can harvest, make, and build. Crafting, in other words, and intimately tied to the complex economy. Most involve players building entire cities of their own design, as their online “home”.
Open player vs. player. Always a contentious topic, but advocates of Ultima Online especially point to its wild west atmosphere as a catalyst for community building.
And… that’s it? Did I leave anything out? We’ll come back to the list in a second, but most people would pick something from the above when describing why they like VW-style MMOs.
So, let’s look at a few games out today. Start with Eve Online. Open character development? Check. Complex economy? Oh lord, yes. Players can harvest/make/build? Yep. Open PVP? The game’s main selling point. Most people agree that Eve is a VW-style MMO.
Next: Everquest (the first one.) Few amusement parks? Uh… the whole game’s an amusement park. Open PVP? Nope.
But it starts to get fuzzy after that. Players can harvest/make/build? Well… kind of, yes. Not the quickest path to the cheese, but you certainly can. Complex economy? There’s a whole zone full of player-run shopkeeper bots. Open character development? At first glance, no. You’re a 20th level paladin. But at second glance? There’s a lot of post-max character development that’s been bolted on over the years. It might be an arguable point.
Let’s get even more heretical. World of Warcraft? Pretty much the same arguments I made for EQ, since it’s a direct descendant. The economy’s fairly shallow, but it’s certainly active. Player crafting is the most simplified ever seen in an MMO to date — yet that simplification encourages everyone to dabble in it. There’s no open PvP UO/Eve style, but factional and arena PvP certainly exists. Character development’s fairly closed… but try asking people about their talent builds sometime. Would someone actually argue the case that World of Warcraft was a virtual world?
So what the hell is a virtual world? Has the term been bandied about so much as a political punching bag that it’s now devoid of all meaning?
I’d argue that one primary feature of a virtual world is context. Simply put, everything has a reason for being there. Monsters aren’t in an area simply because it’s the level 20 to 30 zone, they’re present because something *pushed* them there. Players, or migratory fluxes, or whatever – some context has been added. The game (and yes, they are still games, at least the type that we’re discussing) spends an inordinate time of not explaining how, but also why. And ideally, the players themselves start explaining the why.
And that brings us to the other primary feature of a virtual world: player ownership. The players are the territory, to bastardize Marshall McLuhan. The collective creative mind of the player base can bring forth more compelling interaction than any non-VW MMO can ever hope to match. VWs have been – many times rightfully so – dinged for taking the carefree philosophy of “build it and they will come – and they’ll build it, so don’t build that much”. But it’s true. The best VW experiences haven’t been scripted gameplay, but gameplay frameworks. Toolkits for players to drive their own experiences, which often wildly diverge from what the game designer even conceived of.
Anyway, I’m sure almost everyone reading this disagrees. The passion that drives VW discussions tends to do that to you.
#1 by Slyfeind on June 15th, 2007
We’re all sitting in the living room discussing this. The carpet is beige with beer stains here and there. Most of us are on couches, though some of us are in easy chairs. Scott Jennings is sitting in the corner trying to play Zelda on the Wii, and swearing loudly. Mostly he’s ignoring us. There’s an exit where, if you take it, will lead to the den; people are discussing EVE Online there.
Welcome to Broken Toys the MMO.
#2 by TPRJones on June 15th, 2007
I’d have to rule out this space as being a virtual world. It’s close, and the fact it does not have a graphical interface doesn’t disqualify it. What it lacks is immediacy. A virtual world has to have an immediate interface, in which your actions have immediate consequences. You do X and Y happens right then. Here you make a post and it shows up right away, but you have to come back much later to see responses, if any responses even come. It IS possible to have a turn-based gaming system in a virtual world, but the world itself must have that quality of immediacy to be a virtual world. Without it you can’t get the immersion factor that is a required “feel” for one.
#3 by TPRJones on June 15th, 2007
Note that this doesn’t rule out online chatting, which I WOULD consider a virtual world, but one that is in most cases so barren as to not warrant consideration.
#4 by Abalieno on June 16th, 2007
I agree on the “context” but I would replace that word, or, better, the focus on another term: consistence.
So consistence with a context and the various elements. Which makes for an immersive experience. Every game is a selection of mechanics. So every game is stylized. The difference when it comes to consistence and context is that those mechanics that are picked are also coherent with the setting. Basically you try to pick the essence of the real thing. Its “fun” and myth.
Then what makes a virtual world?
I usually use a simple test to say what makes an RPG:
There’s a chair in a room.
- If the chair is there just as a model, then it’s probably a First Person Shooter or derivate.
- If I can sit down on that chair, then it’s probably a RPG or derivate.
In general virtual worlds AREN’T online. I disagree with you there.. LotR is a virtual world., even as a book. The Marvel Comics universe is a virtual world. Ultima, before the “Online” was already a virtual world.
The definition is about “depth” and complexity. A specific mythology you discover.
More technically you move toward a virtual world the more you move toward a complex system. Whatever it means. A society is a complex system so a game that supports complex relationships easily becomes a virtual world. There’s no definite separation, just a bias. More or less virtual world.
#5 by Joe on June 16th, 2007
Calandryll: So does that mean diablo and diablo 2 are MMOGs too now? How about all the dozens of FPSs? I play DoD:Source with my “guild”, in an instanced zone, in fact its exactly the same way I play guild wars except that each zone is run independantly. So is it a decentralized MMOG? Or do I need to be able to /tell people in other zones? Is a server that records how many miles you’ve run in the hamster wheel needed to qualify as a MMOG?
#6 by Calandryll on June 16th, 2007
No, they’re not. There is no persistent public space in the game world for people to gather outside of the instance gaming zone in D2 or FPS games. The game world is limited to that and only that instance. DDO and Guildwars allow for communication across instances and have public spaces, albiet ones that instance.
I think we’re trying to put too many products under the virtual world umbrella as it is (don’t agree that comics or chat rooms are virtual worlds, at least not in the context we are talking about here), so I’d have no problem reducing the number, but DDO is definitely an mmog. Just because there is no public space to kill MOBs in DDO doesn’t mean people aren’t “playing” in the public spaces provided. A lot of community activities occur in DDO’s public spaces. I didn’t play much Guild Wars, but I am pretty sure their public spaces work much in the same way. If I am wrong, I’m happy to be corrected.
If one says DDO isn’t an mmog because the public spaces can instance, then we have to say CoH and EQ2 aren’t mmogs either. Most (if not all) of their public spaces instance as well. The use of instanced adventuring areas and/or the lack of MOB killing in public spaces doesn’t preclude a game from being an mmog.
#7 by Amaranthar on June 16th, 2007
I’m not sure you can call instanced game play part of “massive” online game play. It’s really a multiplayer experiance that’s attatched to the massive game. But since it’s accessed through the massive multiplayer game, maybe.
#8 by Calandryll on June 16th, 2007
Amaranthar – exactly. The instanced areas are all part of a larger world and they’re all accessable from inside that world. Now, DDO is definitely a different kind of mmog than say, something like WoW, but it’s definitely an mmog imo. At any given time there might be a few thousand people in a DDO or Guildwars server. Those people can intermingle, group up, hang out, chat, etc. all without leaving the game world. In an FPS, if I want to visit my friends on another server, I have to leave the entire world (since the world only exists in that one map), find the world they are on in an interface that is completely outside any of the worlds listed, and then log into the new instance. Those are two very, very different experiences. D2/FPS games and DDO don’t play anything alike in that regard.
Again, DDO’s public spaces, like the Market Square can hold quite a few people, probably not that far off from the number of people a CoH instance holds. Just because people aren’t killing MOBs in the DDO public space doesn’t mean there isn’t gameplay going on there.
#9 by Viz on June 16th, 2007
TPR- No. If you want to get technical about it WoW has 52 race/class combinations, times thousands of possible talent configurations, times millions of possible gear combinations but you don’t call that development because–oh, wait–most of them are BAD.
Real development has to do with roles and capabilities, not the precise stats an entity carries.
#10 by Erkht on June 16th, 2007
For all this high fallutin designer talk, it should be noted, having played 87.2% of all the mmo’s, my longtime game friends and I all feel the same:
UO and SWG were the only gameworlds (heh) where we felt we really had a ‘home’, and that wasn’t just the walls and the lockdown count.. It was the open-endedness of it all, the level of customization that was available in so many aspects.. Don’t know why housing in other games didn’t feel quite the same..
My friend Ayla was a tailor in both games, a personal “work with you to create a look” tailor, which was made possible by the sheer number of combinations available through, again, customization level..
I, for one (of the few) think AO was genius, the music, the feel, but it never really felt like a home, or a social success, for lack of another thing we all feel adds to it: non-chatbox chat, but that seems a lost cause now..
So sometimes, it seems it’s down to the simple things: a dye tub, a chat bubble, and thou.
Or maybe we’re all just looking for paradise lost..
Blah blah, bing bang, ramble on..
#11 by Joe on June 17th, 2007
Guild wars is exactly the same as diablo 2. You can’t “play” anything in guild wars public spaces, they are just chat rooms with town graphics. You can talk, and form a group to go start an instanced zone. Diablo 2 just didn’t have a city backdrop for battle.net chat channels. If anything diablo 2 is closer to a MMOG than guild wars is, since in diablo 2 anyone can join any instance any time, with guild wars you need to be in the party when the instance starts or you can never join it. And diablo 2 lets you /tell anyone in any instance, so its definately closer than FPSs.
#12 by Spatch on June 18th, 2007
I think the only reason why The Press has its knickers in a twist over Second Life is that they’ve been waiting for The Next Big New Virtual Thing!!!!1 since 1995 or so, when people stopped yammering on about VR helmets and “home design software.” Frankly I’m surprised they haven’t tried to liken this to the other Holy Grail of future tech wankers, the Videophone.
Amusingly, the few areas in SWG that tried to bring that kind of gameplay to the table were called “theme parks”. Ride the Sarlacc!
To be fair, the “theme parks” consisted of established settings in the Star Wars film universe. There were also non-interactive Points Of Interest, such as the droids’ escape pod on Tatooine, but the theme parks were basically just another progressive quest area. Who wouldn’t enjoy the opportunity to visit Jabba’s palace and kill 10 womp rats in order to gain an audience with Bib Fortuna, who would then ask you kill 10 snarling womp rats in order to gain an audience with Jabba the Hutt, who’d then confide in you that the womp rat problem really is getting out of hand and would you mind taking care of it? There’ll be a piece of composite armor in it for you, even if you can’t wear the stuff.
Ok. That’s still a Game to me. Even though this was a ‘destination’ for fans of the series and added to the flavor of the world, Jabba’s palace (and Vader’s hideout on Naboo and Leia’s cave on wherever it was, I don’t know, I only played Empire) was still another quest area. The rest were just non-interactive POIs existing only to be discovered. You got no reward for finding them, no badge, no exploration exp, but you got to jump up and down in guildchat going “I SAW THE CHARRED, BURNT CORPSES OF UNCLE OWEN AND AUNT BERU! WOO HOO!”
So those were the tourist attractions, really. And I was mighty surprised to find out that you couldn’t go and jump into the Sarlaac pit. So much for interaction. So I ran in a reasonably straight line from Mos Eisley to the Sarlaac pit’s coords, moved back 500m as that was the minimum distance you could place a player building from a POI, and built a souvenir stand. I sold fireworks (natch), cheap drinks, stuffed Banthas I had to go to Anchorhead (and endure Rebel kiddies) to buy, and t-shirts which read “Tatooine Is For Lovers” and “I Was Digested Slowly Over A Period Of A Thousand Years, Learning A New Definition of Pain and Suffering, and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.” Didn’t make a ton of money off it, but I could tell folks were visiting and that’s what counted to me.
But was I still just playing along with the game at that point, or was I helping create a virtual world?
#13 by Nick Stinger on June 18th, 2007
To me its pretty simple.
If I can leave a lasting, persistent impact on the virtual space, then its a virtual world. Online or offline, it doesn’t matter.
If someone else can make an impact on the virtual space and I cannot, then it is not a virtual world.
The answer is completely in the perspective of the individual player. Not the Devs, not the GMs, and not the Uber Guilds.
-Nick
#14 by Dan "Yakatizma" Enright on June 18th, 2007
Perhaps a very lonely one!
So we are saying the “world” part of virtual world implies the simulation of three-dimensional space? Even if only represented as text or simulated in 2d of course. That the lack of an environmental description of a 3d space are what differentiate a blog page comment thread, or message board thread, or chat room between a place to discuss certain topics or socialize and a “virtual world”?
Where do the old aol role-play chat rooms fall into the terminology. They were often given names and descriptions that implied physical three-dimensional locations and people assumed roles and interacted “physically”, and conveyed body language, through the use of emotes much like they do in contemporary mmorpgs and even in chat over IM’s.
*smiles at Calandryll*
*high fives Raph*
This is of course all just food for thought and banter, I’m not agreing or disagreeing with anyone’s individual viewpoint. My personal opinion on topics like this is best described by my favorite translation of a particular Marcus Aurelius quote from The Meditations; “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
#15 by Steve on June 19th, 2007
Raph:
“Honestly, ANY virtual world can have ANY games embedded: big ones, small ones, RPGs, FPS, whatever, all in the SAME WORLD. An MMORPG is just a virtual world with one really big game in it.”
One could say the exact same thing about a single-player game. MMOGs aren’t special in that regard.
#16 by Evaine on June 19th, 2007
I disagree with one thing EQ was not the 1st I was playing UO when EQ came out. This was also before EA ruined it. We had a real community then.
#17 by Sullee on June 20th, 2007
This does seem to be taxonomy or lexicography and what is in a name? As a player I have an intuitive understanding of “virtual world” and a healthy skepticism telling me to pay attention to context (marketing is crap). Do designers need to all agree on a clear definition to communicate? Do you really think the press will ever get it?
I certainly enjoyed reading the glimpse into the decision making process with the specific examples like the eq1 bazaar. As a player I stumble across pieces of games frequently where I question why that design tradeoff was made. I think many of these falls into this conflict of virtual world vs. fun game. For example, why do those shopkeepers spawn with limited amounts of gold such that only a few are able to sell their items? Why was time spent on making mobs attack each other to simulate an ecosystem when systems weren’t put in place to address scarcity or when the combat AI in general is not as advanced? Why were meeting stones a fix attempt at a LFG problem?
#18 by dudeare on July 27th, 2007
wie weet bij habbopagina vraag 12 hoe heet de barman in de sportkantine