From an interview on Massively, the interviewer asked Bartle about his thoughts on Age of Conan and Warhammer Online, leading into a short blast…
I’ve already played Warhammer. It was called World of Warcraft.
…which immediately segued into a somewhat more nuclear explosion:
Age of Conan – that’s PVP. Wow, gosh, PVP – it’s pretty hardcore, PVP, isn’t it? No. When you played [older MUDs] you got killed after three months of playing, your character was gone. Yeah, hardcore PVP – yeah, we’re hard, aren’t we? We’re evil. No. You don’t know anything.
But of course, if you fixate on the explosions, you miss the interesting bits.
I might have a look at it from a point of view of seeing what things – the class balances are like, seeing how they’ve implemented the – I really ought to write up a book on how to read a virtual world so that I have a vocabulary in order to explain it to people. But there are a number of things you can do with player versus player, and I want to see the way they’ve done it not because whether it’s cool or not but because of you chose that way. Now, why did you choose that way?
You chose that way because you’ve got a particular vision for your virtual world. Your particular vision for your virtual world is saying something. You made this the center of your virtual world. That tells me something already in advance. What it tells me is you want to compete with the games that don’t have it so that you’re carving your niche. But why did you choose that niche? You chose that niche or a particular reason. How did you implement it? You’re trying to rip off Dark Age of Camelot?
Well, that probably was a motivation, but there were a number of things you could have done. EVE Online, for example, was player versus player, and it’s got player created units or guilds. You’re doing it that way, and now you’re saying things that way. But when you create it, you’re actually saying something through the design. What is it you’re trying to say? Why are you trying to say it? How are you trying to articulate something? This is from the designer’s point of view what I really want to know. What are they trying to say? Why have they done it this way? Did they know about the other ways?
They’re designers. They’ve got millions. They must have known about the other ways, but they didn’t do it the other way. They did it this way. Why did they do it that way?
My immediate snarky response, from working on several MMO teams now, is that assuming that designers have any knowledge of games that came before their current favorite is not a safe assumption, and that what the designer may be saying is simply “I really liked Everquest” or “City of Heroes seemed fun, let’s nick those bits”, or more regrettably, “Yeah, World of Warcraft, make it more like that, because we like money hats.”
But of course, Bartle has a response to that too:
Did you know one in 100,000 people are psychopaths? Well, you do now. So figure out how many psychopaths there are in World of Warcraft. I don’t want any of them actually coming around to me in the belief that I am saying dreadful things about World of Warcraft.
Methinks someone received some blistering email…
#1 by Iconic on June 27th, 2008
“Iconic > Still not getting it, are we? This is just getting tiring after a while. Beatles = Rock’n’Roll, Smashing Pumpkins = Rock’n’Roll, ergo by your definition the entire media of music has to consist of Rock’n’Roll.”
No. SP and the Beatles are both rock n’ roll, so compared to the entire media of music they are more similar than different. Ergo, SP or any other modern rock n roll band is just the same as some earlier band, and therefore not worthy of being judged on their own merits. This is the argument (in another form) that says WAR = WOW, therefore I don’t need to play one to judge it, as long as I’ve played the other.
Unless you are really of the opinion that all Rock is just low, derivative art, it should be obvious how stupid it is to dismiss more modern artists. Ergo, you should also realize how stupid it is to simply dismiss a newer MMO because it is similar to other successful games.
” Where do Mozart and Stevie Wonder jump in? It’s been stressed over and over again, yet you (not Iconic specifically) are still missing the big picture. Read what has been written, then think about it from a global point of view.”
Where do they fit in? That’s easy. Mozart = WOW. Yea, that’s right, Mozart was just refining what he’d learned from the artists of his time. He didn’t invent the orchestra, nor add any instruments to it, he just executed the basic premise to a degree that no one before him had done. Maybe people told Mozart “Young man, your music isn’t revolutionary. Your fantastic success is keeping people from discovering the hidden gems of music” but history doesn’t record that conversation, because Mozart’s music is not measured against the entire universe of music, it is measured against the corner of that universe that he chose to inhabit. Mozart dominated that coner of the universe. He refined the formula to the point that no one since has been able to do it better.
If you want to make art for your self, then you make whatever you want. If you want to make art that is timeless and classic, then you make art that other people want with a degree of excellence that no one else can match. You establish your greatness by playing the same game as every one else, and beating them at it.
[quote]And no, as a good designer, you do not build your creations by a known formula. You can learn from the previous designs, but in order to create something revolutionary successful, you have to start building from ground up.
[/quote]
What’s a “good” designer? How do you know? If you create a work of art and no one cares, how do you know that you are any good at all? I think a “good” designer is some one who understands that form follows function, and designs to please the audience of which he is a part. This is one of the problems I think with Dr Bartle’s “I can’t enjoy games as a player, only a designer” outlook. How can you design games that will delight people who don’t design when that’s the only way you can enjoy? If you can’t, or you don’t care to, then why should you care about the market as a whole? Design for yourself and shut up. If want to design for the market, and you aren’t a part of the market, then you can only listen to the voices of other people, and then your only hope is to do exactly what you claim a good designer doesn’t: execute a formula that has been handed to you by some one else.
From my perspective, the designers of WoW are “good” designers, because they made the game that they would want to play, and they did so with a great awareness of what came before them and how it could have been better. If WoW is meant to be the closest thing to a perfect version of EQ and it’s the closest thing to a perfect version of EQ, then they got it right. Whether you think that’s a worthwhile design goal is irrelevant, because the designers and the consumers got the closest thing currently possible to what they want. WOW is a theme park and not a world? So what?
“What you, Iconic, are talking about, in your last paragraph, is overall correct and is precisely the way the management thinks the way virtual worlds should be like. What you fail to understand is that it’s NOT A GOOD THING.”
Management doesn’t think that’s the way it ought to be. They look at the real world and they see that’s how it IS. You, the “revolutionary” designer are the one who has decided how it “ought to be” and now it is your responsibility to bring people with you. Raph Koster believes in virtual worlds, and he screwed it up twice even with a big budget. First he created a virtual world in which society broke down to a Lord of the Flies level, and then he created a virtual star wars that contained NONE of the essence of star wars (you know, space ships, Good vs Evil, the Force and Jedi?).
Because he refused to take incremental steps and refine his vision a few steps at a time, the entire thing fell apart (twice). That’s why designers build theme parks instead of virtual worlds, because a working theme park kicks the crap out of a crumbling world.
Will Wright had some a revolutionary idea, and that did pretty well. It did even better when it became formulaic and EA could just later on the iterations. Expansions, SIms 2, etc. How much money did they make on that? How much money did they piss away on the “revolutionary” Sims Online?
[quote] It’s neither a good thing for designers, nor is it good for the consumers, nor for the virtual worlds as a medium on its own. It is good for the guys, who own the company’s shares, but believe me, as long as you pay, they don’t care about you anyway. This is the sad reality of virtual worlds today.
[/quote]
Yea, but the thing is, as a consumer, I don’t care about them either. That’s not exclusive to MMO companies, that applies to food companies and car companies and any other company you can imagine. A company is an entity that exists to make money. People who fund art for the sake of art are called PATRONS and I’m afraid you must be a bit confused if you think that EA, or Activision, or Sony is going to patronize revolutionary design for the sake of design. THe reason they have hundreds of millions to invest is because they didn’t blow all their money on revolutionary ideas that don’t sell. What you need to find is some sucker, er, appreciative observer, who made billions of dollars making something other than games, and then convince them that your virtual world is a work of art, and get them to foot the bill.
And maybe if your idea is as good as you think, people will even choose to inhabit it.
#2 by Matt on June 27th, 2008
dam tht was a long reply altho it made a lot of sence i tend to agree with the things u say, bt for 1 the designin thing (i would quote bt i can’t find it lol) i disagree tht u can’t design something tht u necassarily don’t enjoy, as a design student i have to design stuff tht i couldn’t really care less about but i enjoy designing it and i enjoy seing the outcome and the ‘magic’ of the creation
#3 by Raph on June 27th, 2008
“he created a virtual star wars that contained NONE of the essence of star wars (you know, space ships, Good vs Evil, the Force and Jedi?).”
I have to point out that it did in fact include all of these things in the design, and after launch gained every single one of them.
#4 by Iconic on June 28th, 2008
“I have to point out that it did in fact include all of these things in the design, and after launch gained every single one of them.”
Okay, it’s unfair to imply that it wasn’t in the design because I obviously don’t have the design in front of me, and I know that space combat was at least included in an accessible way (eventually).
However, whether you had it in the design or not, it wasn’t in the game. I played for three months and never saw a Jedi, never flew in a spaceship, and never got the sense that the Rebellion represented hope or the Empire represented oppression. Maybe a less ambitious design would have allowed some of that in the game at launch.
I will say this to your credit: SWG, minus the bugs, minus the Star Wars name (and whatever restrictions came with that), PLUS deliberately designed content (by which I mean raiding and/or meaningful PvP), would have been a classic game, in my opinion.
It really makes me sad that THAT game was replaced by the NGE, because I’d love to take a second look at that game with years of bug fixes, added content, and class balance. THAT game, or its iterated, evolved successors, would be great. Whatever evil I might say about SWG, simply thinking back on it made me nostalgic enough to want to reopen my account. I’d surely be back to playing my Master TKA/Fencer as we speak, if that option hadn’t been taken away.
#5 by Tinman_au on June 28th, 2008
@Iconic
You know that Beethoven was deaf when he wrote a lot of his music? And yet here we are several hundred hears later and people, even now, can enjoy his music (even though he couldn’t hear it himself).
It seems you do not need to hear to write good music, can’t it then follow that if you know enough about your subject (MMO’s in this case) you do not need to be a “listener/player” to write a good score/game?
#6 by moo on June 30th, 2008
This is another epic thread. Dogpile on Bartle!!