One Answer

I have been ranting about games going to the marketeers I mean dogs. Well J. Radoff had one answer over at Gamesutra. He mentions a lot in the article that is from a marketing point of view, possibly because he IS a marketeer and not a designer, but a many of the things he says holds true.

First and foremost Gamers talk to each other. In any given week 2 or 3 of my gaming friends will pass on a website or a game to me to check out. Some are flash in pan interests for us, some retain our interests. Let me add to Mr. Radoff's list of things that make a game virile as he calls it.

1. Accessibility - people who are visually or hearing impaired or have other needs are a large minority of gamers. Make certain the game can be played by anyone. This includes making a game that you do not have to squint to read the fuzzy font or that you have to be a contortionist to get the move needed to complete a level out of the controller (think fighting games)

2. Cross platform. Over 50% of my gaming friends run some form of *nix. Many games are still too Microsoft dependant. Not all console gamers are on a cable modem. Do not make the game require the latest hardware just to start. We will put up with slow if it does not crash. I liked Cutthroats. Too bad it fragged my hard drive to hell and back every time I ran it. I still liked it enough to run it off a dedicated drive so that i could defrag every time. But as the game progressed it became unplayable. OPTIMIZE the game for a lower end machine.

3. Cross browser I do not use I.E. Most of us do not use I.E. Firefox is the favorite. Opera is up there, Safari, to name a few.

4. Affordable. Make the core game affordable. Guild Wars is a good example. The core game is cheap in comparison to many other games. Pay for stuff is 10.00 per item (pretty much). The mud I play starts at 15.00 per item. That we can probably afford off a paycheck; anything we have to save up for is probably not going to generate as much overall income.

5. Even playing field. It really irks players when someone buys a character in a game. When items are bought make them useful, in game attainable or status items. Extra storage in Guild Wars, the spell pack that saves the player from having to spend 3 years on line to get all of the spells.

6. Humanize the staff. In an online game let the coders owners admins marketing people be seen sometimes. It lets the players know the developers are still involved.

7. Make the game a challenge but not impossible. Skies of Arcadia was fairly easy but people come back to it over and over because of the way the game was put together, the character interaction, the graphics and the storyline. Toy Commander was hard DAMN hard but the story, graphics and sheer strangeness kept that one going. And I swear one day I WILL beat the Lands of Lore series, I even keep an old machine around so I can play it.

8. The above leads to the most important. Your players have to LIKE the game. Something has to keep them interested during the XP grind periods. Character interaction, other player interaction, quests and storyline. In Guild Wars the what will happen next kept me going. In Zork, Lands of Lore, Eye of the Beholder, Doom and even Descent little surprises along the way, red herrings, sub plots and character interaction are all things that kept my interest. These days Overlord, Devil May Cry, Titan Quest and the Fire Emblems are my interest holders. Eldar Scrolls and Assassins Creed beckon to me, but what I would not give for another good game like the Thief series (in no kill mode) or almost any game put out by the old Westwood Studios.

Game makers by all means listen to Radoff. But the thing he says that rings the truest is that gamers talk to other gamers. And if you are not hearing what they say then you need to get out of the business. Because the best games are those made by gamers for gamers.

Old skool vs New Skool

So this evening I am on the MUD doing the usual stuff when one of the older players (in time on the game not in age) logs in. He has been playing pretty regularly for about a year now after a hiatus for a couple of years. He was in a less than happy mood. Perhaps the weather, perhaps he was feeling his age, but he began to echo some of what I have been going off here for a while.

The conversation started off with a discussion of players he suspected were botting. For the few of you who may not know the term, that consists of logging into a game and farming or leveling by using a script to perform repetitive actions. Most online games from WoW to MUDs deem this as illegal and will delete or ban any player they catch doin this. The problem is it is sometimes difficult to catch someone. In a mud environment heavy xp means heavy spam. This means lots and lots of text scrolling so a player may miss a tell from an admin checking on scripters. Add to this a myriad of scripts out there that you can set to respond to a tell and you have a difficult time discerning a scripter from a slow responder.

Now, the question arises why would anyone bother to do this? Well back in the day of door games it made some sense usually you got only so many moves or so much time per player. Many helpers or scripts existed. When MUDS began to spring up and allow unlimited play time, it was logical that some things were moved over. Except, now there were other people around with whom a player could interact. So the game had another dimension of enjoyment added like meeting and talking to people, roleplaying live in an environment and ganging up against a big boss. Now you could work with other people to solve quests or explore the world and you had plenty of time to do this! But there were always the few who felt that they had to be the biggest, best or get to the top fastest. They scripted and when caught they paid for it.

FAST FORWARD
MMOs. Now there is WoW and there are thousands of people online at the same time. People do not know you unless you stand out in someway. So.. again for those who feel the need to impress or think people will be impressed by such things, there are those that spend lots of time online to get to the top. Fine, except, most people have real lives, real things to do and cannot spend a lot of time online. So what is the easiest thing to do? Find one of those big boys make 'friends' with them and get them to lead you to the top. Except where is the fun in that?

This is the point of the conversation WHY play a game if you are not going to play it? Once you are the top dog, why ridicule others that are not anywhere near your level of play for not being higher than you? Most of all why let them use you to get there? You learned to play the game and enjoyed it enough that you wanted to be seen as the best. Help others - yes, add to their enjoyment by challenging them to something they CAN do. But that does not see to be the present mode of thinking. So can anyone tell me why?