How to build an eldergame

Via Raph, Richard Bartle’s IMGDC keynote on how to build an eldergame is very interesting. He notes one of the problems with many MMOGs today is that once players have leveled all the way up, many of them quit. There is essentially nothing new to do. In a packaged software business that isn’t a big deal. But in a services business (whether subscription or virtual goods) you want to keep your best players around as long as possible. Bartle’s analogy:

• When you start off in a new mmo it’s like arriving in a foreign railway station on a backpacking trip

• With classes and races, The designers have provided trains that are guaranteed to go to interesting places

–You want to shoot fireballs? Board the mage train!

• Quests are the enginesthat pull the carriages along?

• However, trains run on rails

• if you want to disembark and go elsewhere, Well, you can’t!

• The design philosophy is all about controlling the player experience

• The same philosophy is applied for newbies and oldbies alike

• It’s consistent –but players aren’t!

Oldbies (experienced players) get bored when they’ve reached the end of the trainline and they want more to do. That’s where an eldergame can help.

Bartle thinks that many of the elder game options aren’t good, including raiding:

Well, the raiding game isn’t that good…

• Like quests, raiding content is fixed

–There’s only so many times you can run naxx before it’s samey

• Once, in fact

• Other attempts at the elder game also flop

• RvR (Realm vs Realm) is never resolved

–and therefore pointless

• PvP (Player vs Player) isbetter – if you’re good at pvp

–but the results are also pointless

• They provide burst fun, but no fun overtime

He says that to keep oldbies around, you need to let them create history:

• History is the player’s retelling of interesting events

• This means there must have been some interesting events

• No history means nothing interesting happened

–Where’s the fun in that?

• Problem: “interesting” changes over time

Bartle’s suggestion to solve this problem:

• Alice worlds are newbie-unfriendly but provide the depth and freedom that oldbies crave

• Dorothy worlds are very newbie- friendly but oldbies, who don’t want their hands held, feel disenchanted

• So: start off as a dorothy world and switch to alice for the elder game

Dorothy worlds are based on players who are like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, much like newbies:

… Dorothy, upon arrival in Oz, said: “We will go to the emerald city and ask the great oz how to get back to

kansas again”

• Dorothy is wary of the new world she has arrived in

• She wants a path she can follow to get through it

• She represents the modern, game worlds like wow

Alice worlds are based on players who are like Alice in Wonderland, much like oldbies:

When alice arrived in wonderland, her first words were: “curiouser and curiouser”

• Alice finds merely being in another world interesting

• She’ll go wherever fortune and fancy may take her

• She represents the old, balanced worlds like mud1

Barlte presents Eve as an excellent example of an Alice World, and hence an excellent model for an “eldergame”:

• although “user-createdcontent” and “user-generatedcontent” are often used interachangeably, there is a difference

–User-created content is created explicitly by the actions of players

–User-generated content is content created implicitly by the actions of players

• User-generated content is emergent

•Eve’s environment is so rich that interesting things just happen

In other words, allowing oldbies to indulge in freeform play is the best form of eldergame.