Posts Tagged ‘Richard Bartle’

One of the articles that recently caught my attention was the new one over at Gamasutra featuring none other than Richard  Garriottt .  However it is not the fact that Richard Garriott and his company Portalarium are getting into social gaming (i.e. Facebook Applications) that I thought was interesting.  Rather it was some of the comments he made about the subject:

“So, I believe the casual gamer and the social gaming platform represent the largest ever yet seen emergence or change within the gaming industry. And all of us in the development community have a choice to either participate and lead in this journey or get left behind.” – Richard Garriott

“most dialogue in most games are you’re told to go to location A, you might find some monsters on the way to location A, but there’s nothing relevant story-wise to your growth as an individual is going to happen on your way to location A, and when you get to location A, there’s generally one real outcome, which is go to location B.

And I don’t care how good a storyteller you are, that’s never going to be very interesting. You’re never going to feel like you’ve really participated in a truly meaningful way unless you discover things on the journey from A to B, and also when you do get to A and meet that person and have dialogue with, some form of discourse with, that it again has some outcome that for you will be unexpected, as often is not.” – Richard Garriott

Mind you I will always be a big Richard Garriott fan, even if he never returns our messages.  Still, the first thing I ask myself is whether or not Mr. Garriott is correct in his assumption that game developers and publishers who don’t involve themselves and their companies in social gaming will quickly be left behind. After all, the last time I bought off on his assumptions concerning the future of the gaming industry he was calling Blizzard’s “system of inventory management” the “harbinger of failure”. Still, there is a lot to be said for what he says about adding meaning to gaming development beyond simply “go from point a to b and kill monster c”.   In fact right now “state of the art” social games aren’t even that involving.

But what if developers where to add in a good story. What if there were more to social games than “do you want to click button a or b” and wait for a mathmatical formula to tell you if you are the new mafia don, or if your potatoe  crop will be ready for harvesting now or five minutes from now? What if a social game actually told a story? What if I could log on to facebook, create a character and become part of an epic story arch that would grab my imagination? Perhaps the decisions I made wouldn’t simply go from point a to point b but instead branch out to myriad outcomes?

Sounds great doesn’t it?

Would you spend a few bucks to play such a game? I know I would. But wait. I seem to have heard about that sort of game before. What was it called?  Oh yes, it was called…

Multi-User Dungeon

…and Dr. Richard Bartle pioneered it along with Roy Trubshaw.  Apply the same principles as M.U.D. to a facebook application? Perhaps that is a new and inovative idea. Grandma, on the other hand, would have simply said “the more things change the more they remain the same.” Whatever the outcome, and whatever the direction the gaming industry takes, while social gaming may be a new trend, I seriously doubt that any publisher who choses not to partake will consider themselves “left behind.” Time will tell. One thing is for sure, however.  The more choices gamers have, the better they have it.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

(posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster)

Welcome to the “Stand by Your Man” issue…

Stand by your man
And show the world you love him
Keep giving all the love you can
Stand by your man

From “Stand by your man” by Tammy Wynette

No, we haven’t suddenly taken a liking to Tammy Wynette here at No Prisoners, No Mercy. I only say “suddenly” because anyone who knows us knows that Fran doesn’t like country music at all and Julie only has a “hankering” for select songs.  The title as well as the lyrics of the song certainly fit today’s entry in our exploration of the virtual worlds of gaming.

First up on the list is a man you may or may not know – some may know him by his first name. That man is, or course, Dante Alighieri.  Mr. Alighieri is, of course, the much maligned and famous Italian poet of the late 13^th early/14^th centuries. I say “much maligned” of course, not because of his work “The Divine Comedy.”  No, rather I refer to Electronic Arts (EA) and their attempt to turn one third of it, the Inferno, into a hack and slash video game.  For a look at the game by someone who has actually laid eyes, and hands, on the game go over to Arstechnica.com and read Ben Kuchera’s review entitled “Poet, I beg you… give me strength: Dante’s Inferno demo” (available here) Our opinion of the game is, as our long time readers and listeners know,  is based on the pathetic way EA has marketed the game. It is nice to know that the game lives down to the reputation afforded by its marketing. Here is an excerpt:

“Turning the Divine Comedy into a hack-and-slash game feels almost like satire, and has given the game publicity it wouldn’t have enjoyed if the name were anything else. There is no subtlety on display here; we’re painting in some very broad strokes when it comes to converting the story into video game form. It’s time to kill some skeletons and save your topless girlfriend, bro.” – Ben Kuchera for Arstechnica.com

And if there were any room for doubt, consider the following from the same article:

“Dante doesn’t come up with a single original idea. As I said before, everything is executed well: the graphics are attractive, the animated cut scenes are depraved and eye-catching, and the controls are nice and tight. That just makes this a high class rip-off though, instead of a shoddy one.” – Ben Kuchera for Arstechnica.com

Next up…Tiger Woods

We will be the first to admit that no one here at No Prisoners No Mercy is a fan of golfing (although Julie has played a golfing game or two in her time). Still, the talk of the town these days seems to be Tiger Woods.  Now we are the first to admit that there are two sides to every story. However, as the talk around the water cooler gets louder and longer on the subject of  everyone’s favorite Tiger (aside from perhaps Tony the Tiger) we came upon an interesting article over at gamepolitics.com entitled “How much longer can EA stand by Tiger?” (available here)

National Editor for Forbes Magazine, Michael Ozanian, had this to say on his blog site (via Game Politics):

“Sponsors like Gillette and Electronic Arts are going to drop Tiger Woods regardless of what they are saying now. Near term, Tiger is done as a corporate pitchman. Fallout: companies that throw big money at athletes are going to do a lot of research on them to make sure they are not phony (or make risk-adverse decisions based on information they do have) and funnel their endorsement dough at popular athletes whose image will not blow up.” – Michael Oznian, “Tiger’s Troubles: The Winners” (Available here)

No matter what the future brings one thing is for certain, if Tiger Woods is no longer to be the pitchman for Electronic Arts his spot on the cover of the videogame box will take some big shoes (or in this case golf bag) to fill.

Next up…Dr. Richard Bartle

Now this part isn’t a matter of a pitchman that EA may not stand by, or a poet that EA may besmirch. This is simply about an interesting post over at Virtual Cultures entitled “Winter in Cyberspace” (available here)

While we found the comparison of “lag” to be the virtual equivalent of cyberspace weather, that is not what caught our eye.  Here is the paragraph to which we were drawn:

“We sometimes lament that cyberspace is not the wild, abstract mathematical, gravity-free landscape that Gibson envisioned when he first coined the term. Yet I believe that people need grounding, both literally and figuratively. The need a ground to stand on, an orienting horizon in the distance, something familiar to hold on to, even if “familiar” means imaginary creatures such as elves and orcs that have been absorbed into the collective imagination, or the physical and cultural properties of the “real world, such as gravity, weather, and Christmas!” -  “Gamegrrrl”

The reason this caught our eye is that it is one of the subjects we discussed with Dr. Richard Bartle when he was on our show.  (Parts of which, lamentably, never made the show due to the quality of the recording).  The “Gibson” referred to here is, of course, William Gibson, one of the favorite authors of our own Julie Whitefeather.

Since Dr. Bartle appeared on the show we have given a great deal of thought to what he said both on and off air. We wonder how much grounding those who populate the virtual and gaming worlds of the internet really do need?  Why, for example does “up” have to be “up”? There really is no need for it when creating virtual worlds, other than, as the article suggests, giving the human mind something to which it can relate.  Still, it brings us back to the same place we always reach when we contemplate the discussion we had with Dr. Bartle on the subject – if there are to be advances in the way virtual and gaming worlds are created we here at No Prisoners, No Mercy feel the place they are most likely to come from are the independent game development studios.

See you online,

The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team

SIDE NOTE: Heard and breakfast…

 

 ”We’re not talking even grow to beat up the 800-lbs gorilla, we’re just talking survival. We’ve all seen now what happens to MMOs when either they launch and don’t meet the quality bar or they think they can’t meet that quality bar: they don’t survive.” – Scott Hartsman, from “Talking Kunark with Scotts Hartsman”

I doubt there is anyone in the country that has not heard the name “World of Warcraft” (WoW) by now – Activision/Blizzard does a very good job at making sure of it.  After all, they publish their subscriber numbers like McDonalds used to publish their number of hamburgers served on their signs.  When Paul Barnett was on the No Prisoners, No Mercy show he spoke of a time that is sure to come when the 800 pound Blizzard Gorilla will fall flat on its face (mind you that is not likely to happen any time soon). There seems to be no stopping the WoW Gorilla, even in an era of economic downturn.  Mind you, there is that school of thought that believes that the entertainment industry thrives during bad times. After all, the movie industry seemed to thrive (at least one of my professors claimed so) during the “Great Depression” in the United States.  The “Blizzard” in Activision/Blizzard still seems to have as much weight as it always did these days. They are some of the few developers in the industry that can still say “a game is done when it is done” and make it stick with a publisher. Now I will be the first to admit that the famed “Blizzard attitude” was not what it once was.  Back in the days when the Outlands expansion was new, and everyone was trying to “get keyed” so they could have access to the upper level instances Jeff Kaplan was asked about skipping the Karazahn instance and moving on to the next one up the progression ladder.   His reply back then was simply to reply that you could, but “have fun storming the castle.”  But these days even the famous 800 pound gorilla has tempered his famous attitude. Even the developers at Blizzard have heard the hue and cry of players.  Players want more player friendly instances? They got it – much to the dismay of the self described “hard core” raiders.  Go back and make the old classical world new again? They once said they would never do it. But now with the upcoming “Cataclysm” expansion they are.

Even the 800 pound Blizzard Gorilla has changed around WoW to make it compatible with the hopes and desires of as many people as possible. Perhaps, and it is just a thought, players are getting a bit too much respect.  Here is what I mean…

In trying to please most of the people all of the time, it seems easy to please many of the people little of the time.  In other words, it is impossible for any game to be all things to all players. That won’t keep anyone from trying to accomplish just that, however.  That is why, when a game comes along like Darkfall or Fallen Earth it deserves such a thunderous round of applause, no matter what we may personally think about the game. Why? Dr. Richard Bartle said it best:

“I urge you, if you see something you like, that takes MMOs in a new direction, that says something that makes you think (you don’t have to agree with it – so long as it makes you think), then please give it publicity. Then, you’ll have people who genuinely deserve your praise, not someone who is merely where they are through an accident of history. I’d much rather potter away in the garden shed of my blog than have scorn poured on me every time I open my mouth on the subject of MMOs, I can assure you..!”

  – Richard bartle, comment on “Richard Bartle Encourages New Writers and Offers New Insights May 21, 2009”

Each time a new game comes out, players flock to it for the first month. You can call them “virtual tourists from WoW”, you can heap whatever adage on them that you want. But the simple question remains is why do so many players leave after the usual “first free month?” Are they simply taking a virtual tour? I think not, after all, even if the first month is free the cost to buy the game is not.  Certainly there will always be what is called “external influences” in some sectors of business – factors beyond the control of the creators of the game, or difficult to control at best (think “gold seller spam”). Even so, perhaps there is more at work here…

There is line from old song that speaks of “looking for love” in all the wrong places – perhaps it is the gamers themselves that are at fault for this trend in gaming. Gamers go from game to game looking for the next big fix, the next big Wow Killer, something to replace the game they left behind.  In the end, however, there really is no “Holy Grail” of gaming. There is no “ultimate game” that will bring players the happiness they seek.  Perhaps the problem lays not with the game but with the gamers – myself included.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

 

Keen from Keen and Graevs has two interesting posts recently that are a good read on related subjects: “Is too much emphasis placed on our happiness?” (Available here: ) and Mmorpgs are being designed for too many players (available here: )

One of the aspects of gaming that Fran Kosac, the co-host of the No Prisoners, No Mercy (NPNM) show, and I discussed with Doctor Bartle yesterday was the reason that he and Mr. Roy Trubshaw created MUD (the original text based multi-user game).  Doctor Bartle has said that he created the game so people would have a place to be themselves. There is an interesting interview where he speaks on the subject available here:

I would never be presumptuous enough to speak for Doctor Bartle. What I will say, is that no matter what one may think of his original intent, if indeed it was to create a place where someone can be themselves (and that includes those people who are just simply jerks) that not all game developers have followed in this line of reasoning.

There are some developers who have busied themselves telling the participants of their game world not to “be themselves” but rather “be who we want you to be.”  We saw this downfall with Warhammer Online (WAR) when Mark Jacobs and his staff saw the main focus of WAR as realm vs. realm. Unfortunately, no mater how Mythic Entertainment (or whatever they are calling themselves these days now that they have been reorganized by Electronic Arts) saw it, the players didn’t see it that way.  No matter how Mythic tried to create incentives to cajole players out into realm vs. realm warfare, for most of the game they chose to stay in battlegrounds (scenarios as they are called in War).  Just as with the proverbial horse, you can lead a gamer to water but you can’t shove the water down the gamers throat.

Yet I still see games worlds hit the shelves where the developers feel the need to “educate” the gamers on how to properly play their game.  My reply to which is this:

“Thank you, I already have been playing games on computers since they were programmed with punch cards.  I already have two master’s degrees and a 126 IQ and I am doing just fine thanks. I know what I want out of a game.”

But even if I were dumber than a box of hammers and  couldn’t put 2 plus 2 together without it equaling  a multiple of 3 doesn’t mean the developer has the right to “educate” me.  The whole point of marketing (and this is a lesson I learned in Grad school from the head of marketing of a Fortune 500 company) is MAKING YOUR PRODUCT MEET THE NEEDS OF THE CONSUMER.

Not the other way around.

Say it with me…make your game meet the needs of the gamer, not try and bend the gamer toward how you want them to play your game.  

Several cases in point: It is popular these days to slam World of Warcraft (WoW) and their incentive for playing the game. What is it? It’s the same game mechanic that Richard Garriott once called a “system of inventory management” and that is keeping players interested in better and better armor.  It is done several ways, including creating situations where players need the armor from one “dungeon” to effectively conquer the next. However it is done, no matter how anyone feels about it, the simple fact of the matter is IT WORKS. Tabula Rasa has gone the way of all things; I wished it hadn’t. ( I miss “Lord British” - if you are out there we want to interview you). Yet WoW still has more players than Switzerland  has citizens.

Next case in point:

Games that try to “encourage” team play to the point where it is shoved down players throats.  Two games immediately come to mind.  The first is Lord of the Rings Online by Turbine before they saw (at least to some degree) the error of their ways and allowed the game to have a solo friendly path.  The second game, sadly, is my new favorite game Aion Online.  If you venture into the lands of the Tower of Eternity you will reach a point at about level 16 or 17 where NCSoft has created what is effectively an impasse for the solo player.  It is as if the developers are trying to cram team play down the players throat with a funnel and a hydraulic ram.  I reached that point and felt as if NCSoft was there in the background cackling gleefully saying:

“Be part of the group or CHOKE ON IT YOU BITCH.”

It is at this point that the emails will no doubt start calling me anti-social (it wouldn’t be the first time).  The simple fact of the matter is that I work a 10 and a half hour day and often keep odd hours.  Even if that were not the case I enjoy the challenge of being the “Rambo-esque” scout who faces impossible odds and comes out on top.   I also don’t mind hurling myself against the wall for a bit, but even Rambo would have heard the words of W.C. Fields at some point:

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again: Then quit – don’t be a damned fool about it.”

Now somewhere in the back of our virtual room here, someone will raise a hand and say “but if all that is the case, you need to be taught how to be a team player for pvp.”  My reply (in my best Yoda voice) is simply, “not so my padawan learner. PvE and PvP are two entirely different animals. You can be the best raider in gaming and still get your ass handed to you (and that is only after the opposing player has worn it around as a hat for awhile). 

Be a team player?

Sure…the United States Army did a fine job of that.  And I am, before anything else, a nun and I have no problems whatsoever following orders.  But not everyone enjoys raiding (I don’t). Given the option, I would rather level through pvp. Actually, given the option I would get rid of classes and levels altogether.

So in the end, the message is this:   Make the game suit the needs of the player, even if that means putting more than one path toward what the ultimate goal of the game – whether that goal is pvp or pve orientated.

 

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

No, this is not a post about Bugs Bunny. It is, however, an interview with a man who, despite deserving to be called “Doctor” insisted from the first that we call him “Richard”.  It is a quick note about our interview with the man himself…

Never announce the interview until the film is in the can, or in the flash drive in this case -  you can never tell what can go wrong.  And go wrong it did.   Our original plans for recording over ventrillo went astray and we were forced to resort to land lines  as they say in the venacular.

 The idea of sitting down to a chat with Richard Bartle made me more nevous that a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs at first.  However Dr. Bartles sense of humor and easy manner made it wasy for my co-host and I to relax into the whole idea all at once.  I made sure, of course, that I apologized at once, now that, a year down the road I saw how he was right and I was oh so wrong about several issues.

Beyond that it was a fun interview and very thought provoking. There were some things the good doctor talked about that not only gave me pause for thought but will give me reason to sit down to ruminate on said issues for some time to come. The fact that the call had to be done over land lines will mean a bit longer in the editing process – but every minute of effort will be worth it. Look for interviews with the Doctor to come out in shows to come.

Not long ago I listened to an interview with Dr. Richard Bartle as the guest. He spoke of when he and Roy Trubshaw created MUD, the multiuser text based game that was to serve as one of the bases of all that would come later in the world of MMOs.  Dr. Bartle spoke of how he “saw the power” in what they had created. What stood out to me the most where the following words:

 “We had a way to make places where people could go and become themselves. For me it was always a thing about freedom. I always wanted people to be able to be free to be themselves.” – Dr.Richard Bartle on the creation of MUD

The monkey wrench that we have all, as gamers, thrown into this particular utopia is a little thing called a global village.  It is a concept engendered by author Marshal McLuhan describing how the world has become small village, brought about by electronic media, facilitated by the instantaneous movement of  information about the globe. Now consider that he made the concept popular back in 1962, long before the internet, and you have a man who was a bit of a prophet.  Yet, as with any case where you bring people in to close proximity to one another for any length of time, even if it is virtually, you will end up with a classic case of “familiarity breeds contempt.”  Add in the perceived anonymity of the internet (and here I say perceived because much of our lives is on the internet) and you have a situation where that contempt will come much sooner than it normally would have. We have stepped out of the mud and simply “stepped in it”.

Enter the “asshats.”

If Diogenes’ “Hermit” was looking for an American retailer that enforced the ESRB rating instead of an honest man, he would still be looking. In an era when the internet has replaced the television as an “electronic babysitter” the age restriction of who should be allowed to play a game has little to do with reality.

Unfortunately the ESRB rating for Aion Online is only “teen” – barely a week into the game and I would pay real money for NCSoft to have thrown enough violence into the game to have it merit a higher rating. The unfortunate side effect of the aging of generation that was around at the birth of the mmo (mine) is that a younger generation has moved in behind us. Now I am not saying that it is unfortunate in all cases; far from it in fact.  But put together enough virtual citizens of enough virtual countries and you will have a great big barrel that will hold more than just a few bad apples. 

I may be free to be myself – free of judgments based on race (other than ones in game faction of course), nationality, religion and what have you.  However, at the same time, others are free to be themselves. This means they are free to have guilds named “We crap on children” and fulfill juvenile fantasies by naming their characters “yourwhore” and “Grabmyrod” (all too common during these, Aion Online’s opening weeks). It’s a bit hard to enjoy a game developer’s well crafted lore, when someone’s 14 year old is crafting names for their character that belong on the stall of a men’s room and not flashed across my computer screen.

Still, any utopian society, virtual or no, is likely to have its problems.  As much as I enjoy Aion Online (especially the visceral, as NCSoft describes it, combat animations) I can only hope the second month of the game holds true to the course of that of most other mmos.  Once the first free month is up my great hope is that the virtual tourists will have moved on to whatever the next “it” game out there will be.  And that, my friends, really will be freedom. 

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

Hang ‘em High…