While I was writing this, Helistar made a wonderful comment on the last post. Wonderful, because I was just about to argue the other way.
(1)
Games have no natural boundaries. The developers can give you as many epics as they please. More than you can carry, more than you could ever inspect. More than you could possibly conceive.
The developers can make you rich. Rich enough to buy anything. Rich enough to buy everything! They can make you so rich that you can't even fathom the number anymore. It costs them but a few keystrokes.
The developers can reward you. Give you bonus experience. They can make you level as fast as you wish. They can skip the leveling. And they can teleport you wherever you want. Whenever you want. They can make you be everywhere at the same time, if only your limited mind could comprehend this.
The developers can make you a god. They can make you invincible and all-mighty. Your enemies can be crushed by a glimpse of a single eye of yours. They can even make your enemies die even when you don't look at them. They can make you kill all enemies in the entire fucking game if they so desire. And they can even do it for you, so you don't have to bother.
There are no natural boundaries! But boundaries is what we need to have fun.
It is a fact that as soon as we start to think that "we shouldn't have to do that", we don't enjoy 'it' anymore; 'it' has become frustrating. If you think that you shouldn't have to go to the well (last post), there's no way you will ever have fun again in doing so. But it is also a fact that you had fun before this boundary was destroyed!
Games teach us that everything is relative. Not in the physical sense, but in the psychological sense.
(2)
Telwyn wrote about the Rift bonus exp weekends. And I agree. Get prepared for another dating-analogy.
Imagine you are that girl in the night club (the player). And there comes a guy along (the MMORPG) whom you have never met before. And right from the start he tells you that your eyes are the most wonderful and your smile is the stars and all this stuff. And then he starts to buy you drinks. Not one, but three!
Doesn't work this way, does it?
These compliments don't cost him anything. And every guy in that night club is rich enough to buy you three drinks. Or a hundred if he so wishes. That's cheap! If this actually worked, you'd have to sleep with 50 guys a night!
But bonus exp is even cheaper. Imagine he told you that if you spend the night with him, he would actually make it especially easy for you: You two wouldn't have to talk more than necessary! In fact, he has declared this a bonus weekend! For every minute you offer him your attention, you will have to wait one less day to marry him.
I'm not attracted to bonus exp weekends, because they are just as ridiculous. The developers construct artificial boundaries that don't cost them anything and then they destroy them in front of me and this doesn't cost them anything, either. But they expect me to like it. No, I don't. It's cheap!
The art of making great games is making great rules, great boundaries. Because boundaries cause journeys. And journeys, encouraged by goals, are where the fun is actually experienced.
(3)
The destruction of boundaries is what creates nostalgia. We remember that going to the well was so much fun (read my last post). But, just like the boundary, the journey was destroyed by the water tap.
In real life that is okay, because there are a lot of boundaries and overcoming them is actually fun. Not so in MMORPGs. There are no natural boundaries. By destroying those that exist, which is cheap, you steal fun from the player. If you allow everybody to teleport everywhere, all other comanies have to follow in suit, because now the players don't think that they actually "should have to walk". You spoil us and you spoil the fun for us!
At the very least you shouldn't do it without the players even asking for it !
Friday, August 26, 2011
Corrupting Improvements
I was reading the comments over at Oestrus's place. I liked several ones of them. It's interesting what kind of enlightened breed of players a game like WoW managed to produce. You certainly wouldn't expect it.
Humans are really good at accepting the status quo. As long as you think that going five km to the well once a day is what life is, it doesn't cause you any trouble. It's not exactly fun, but if something else, that is fun, depends on going to the well every day, the both things combined can actually be fun.
For example, imagine that every day when going to the well you also meet with friends and you talk about what crosses your mind. There's a good chance that you will miss this when somebody installs a water tap in your home. Now, the tap is a definite improvement of your daily life. But you didn't miss it as long as you didn't have it. And so the improvement is actually not an improvement at all.
However, that doesn't mean that you can turn back time. You can't. Once you got the tap, you won't go to the well. Period. Good memories are all that last.
[..] I didn’t find threat fun… but I didn’t find it unfun, either. I find tanking to be fun, and threat was part of that, so I dealt with it. It never entered into my mind to say, hey, let me evaluate this with my funmeter. [..]Great point, Cynwise!
Humans are really good at accepting the status quo. As long as you think that going five km to the well once a day is what life is, it doesn't cause you any trouble. It's not exactly fun, but if something else, that is fun, depends on going to the well every day, the both things combined can actually be fun.
For example, imagine that every day when going to the well you also meet with friends and you talk about what crosses your mind. There's a good chance that you will miss this when somebody installs a water tap in your home. Now, the tap is a definite improvement of your daily life. But you didn't miss it as long as you didn't have it. And so the improvement is actually not an improvement at all.
However, that doesn't mean that you can turn back time. You can't. Once you got the tap, you won't go to the well. Period. Good memories are all that last.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Raph Koster is Great
The title says it, I think. Not only is he brilliant at holding engaging presentations, he also says a lot of good stuff. And, this time, I am especially thrilled, because he says very bluntly that MMORPGs are like a marriage. Several times.
I agree, Raph.
Here's his presentation.
I agree, Raph.
Here's his presentation.
Goals and Journeys
So, you've read all my latest ramblings and now you wonder what it means for game design?
The Goals
Well, first it means that games need to offer goals. Irrespective of theme park or sandbox, every MMORPG needs to offer the player goals. It can either enforce a few or even one single goal, or it can let the players decide freely. A very common and powerful goal is satisfying ones curiosity, by the way.
Goals can be stacked. For example, a player can first need to go for goal 1 and goal 2 before he can go for goal 3. Goals can also exclude each other. In that case the player needs to make a decision. Decisions, however, are already part of the journey.
We can assign a number to goals that represents how desirable they are. I call that number G.
The Journey
The Journey is were the vast majority of fun is located. Generally, you want journeys to be as long as possible. Even if your MMORPG uses other business models than the monthly subscription. MMORPGs are social games. They become better the more people play them at the same time. It also makes better press if players play your game longer.
But to make the journey as long as possible is also in the interest of the player! Our "fun memory" is quite binary. We either have fun, or we don't. Sure, sometimes we have a hell of a lot of fun, and sometimes just a little. But in retrospect this is usually hard to differentiate. We can differentiate between fun 'moments' (usually, reaching a goal), but not so much differentiate between fun journeys. If we have fun, we want more. The longer we have fun, the better for everybody.
The journey, by definition, is something the player wants to skip. He wants to reach the goal! But giving in doesn't make him happy. Although the player won't support you, you must put a journey in front of each goal.
We can assign a number to the journey that represents how much work it entails. I call it J.
Goal vs. Journey
Generally, G must be larger than J. But just a bit! If the player considers the journey not worth the goal, he will not play your game. But if G is much larger than J, you should make the journey longer, because making long journeys is what games are all about. You are not a nice developer if you allow players to reach goals too fast. Rather, you steal fun from them!
But that's not all. There are good journeys and there are bad ones.
Even if a player embarks on the journey, that journey might harm your game, because a journey can either be fun or frustrating. And this is really the core of the problem of nowadays games, because metrics are very poor at identifying frustrating journeys.
Frustrating Journeys
Definition: An activity is frustrating if the player performs it, even though he feels he shouldn't have to perform it.
Fear of frustrating journeys is what drives most of the "evolution" of games (the rest mostly being technology). Mechanics that were totally acceptable in the past suddenly become frustrating, because players played other games in the meantime and now don't think they should have do this kind of journey (anymore).
It's not easy to turn back the wheel of time, and so most companies succumb to the players. It is usually the right decision, unless you are really good at managing expectations and instilling attitudes.
This is a race to the bottom as a consequence of the competition between game developers. But there's little we can do about it. Developers will eventually sink low enough for some developers to release "radically different" games that turn out to be really good, because they are so different from existing ones (at the bottom) that players don't transfer any expectations.
The problem with frustrating journeys is that players start the journey, but quit your game before they reach the goal. A good example are daily quests or daily dungeons. Players do consider these journeys worthwhile enough to start walking. But at the same time they don't think they should have to do this. Daily quests are damn ridiculous, after all.
Often, a player who performs a frustrating journey, "optimizes the fun out of the game".
Fun Journeys
The job description of a game designer could be: "Design fun journeys".
It's is an art. But a few things can be said about it. First, the by far most important property of fun journeys is that they make players forget time. They achieve this by keeping the player's brain busy enough to not start wondering, but relaxed enough to not become tired.
A few years ago, before competition turned grinding mobs into something players don't think they should have to do, players actually loved to grind mobs. They did it all the time. And when they finished grinding one kind of mob, they started to grind other mobs. Grinding mobs is just varied enough to not become boring. And it is easy enough to not exhaust you or get a headache.
It's similar to gathering resources.
It is important to understand that even good journeys eventually become 'not worthwile' or frustrating. For example, nothing lasts forever, and players eventually (and understandably) became bored of grinding mobs.
Decisions
One important building block of journeys are decisions. Decisions can either be interesting or meaningless. Meaningless decisions can be used to add alternative content that a player can explore with a twink. Often meaningless decisions are superfluous and a waste of resources. (Should I invest mana to cast the highest dps spell? .. yes, always!)
Interesting decisions are either fun or frustrating. We already talked about that.
Good games confront the player with goals that encourage fun journeys which consist of fairly high-frequency decision making. Look at Angry Birds, Tetris, Chess, Soccer, Super Mario, etc.
---
If you forget everything else I wrote, please remember this: "Fun journeys" are not fun in themselves. They are fun because of the goals. And the goals are fun because of the journeys.
The Goals
Well, first it means that games need to offer goals. Irrespective of theme park or sandbox, every MMORPG needs to offer the player goals. It can either enforce a few or even one single goal, or it can let the players decide freely. A very common and powerful goal is satisfying ones curiosity, by the way.
Goals can be stacked. For example, a player can first need to go for goal 1 and goal 2 before he can go for goal 3. Goals can also exclude each other. In that case the player needs to make a decision. Decisions, however, are already part of the journey.
We can assign a number to goals that represents how desirable they are. I call that number G.
The Journey
The Journey is were the vast majority of fun is located. Generally, you want journeys to be as long as possible. Even if your MMORPG uses other business models than the monthly subscription. MMORPGs are social games. They become better the more people play them at the same time. It also makes better press if players play your game longer.
But to make the journey as long as possible is also in the interest of the player! Our "fun memory" is quite binary. We either have fun, or we don't. Sure, sometimes we have a hell of a lot of fun, and sometimes just a little. But in retrospect this is usually hard to differentiate. We can differentiate between fun 'moments' (usually, reaching a goal), but not so much differentiate between fun journeys. If we have fun, we want more. The longer we have fun, the better for everybody.
The journey, by definition, is something the player wants to skip. He wants to reach the goal! But giving in doesn't make him happy. Although the player won't support you, you must put a journey in front of each goal.
We can assign a number to the journey that represents how much work it entails. I call it J.
Goal vs. Journey
Generally, G must be larger than J. But just a bit! If the player considers the journey not worth the goal, he will not play your game. But if G is much larger than J, you should make the journey longer, because making long journeys is what games are all about. You are not a nice developer if you allow players to reach goals too fast. Rather, you steal fun from them!
But that's not all. There are good journeys and there are bad ones.
Even if a player embarks on the journey, that journey might harm your game, because a journey can either be fun or frustrating. And this is really the core of the problem of nowadays games, because metrics are very poor at identifying frustrating journeys.
Frustrating Journeys
Definition: An activity is frustrating if the player performs it, even though he feels he shouldn't have to perform it.
Fear of frustrating journeys is what drives most of the "evolution" of games (the rest mostly being technology). Mechanics that were totally acceptable in the past suddenly become frustrating, because players played other games in the meantime and now don't think they should have do this kind of journey (anymore).
It's not easy to turn back the wheel of time, and so most companies succumb to the players. It is usually the right decision, unless you are really good at managing expectations and instilling attitudes.
This is a race to the bottom as a consequence of the competition between game developers. But there's little we can do about it. Developers will eventually sink low enough for some developers to release "radically different" games that turn out to be really good, because they are so different from existing ones (at the bottom) that players don't transfer any expectations.
The problem with frustrating journeys is that players start the journey, but quit your game before they reach the goal. A good example are daily quests or daily dungeons. Players do consider these journeys worthwhile enough to start walking. But at the same time they don't think they should have to do this. Daily quests are damn ridiculous, after all.
Often, a player who performs a frustrating journey, "optimizes the fun out of the game".
Fun Journeys
The job description of a game designer could be: "Design fun journeys".
It's is an art. But a few things can be said about it. First, the by far most important property of fun journeys is that they make players forget time. They achieve this by keeping the player's brain busy enough to not start wondering, but relaxed enough to not become tired.
A few years ago, before competition turned grinding mobs into something players don't think they should have to do, players actually loved to grind mobs. They did it all the time. And when they finished grinding one kind of mob, they started to grind other mobs. Grinding mobs is just varied enough to not become boring. And it is easy enough to not exhaust you or get a headache.
It's similar to gathering resources.
It is important to understand that even good journeys eventually become 'not worthwile' or frustrating. For example, nothing lasts forever, and players eventually (and understandably) became bored of grinding mobs.
Decisions
One important building block of journeys are decisions. Decisions can either be interesting or meaningless. Meaningless decisions can be used to add alternative content that a player can explore with a twink. Often meaningless decisions are superfluous and a waste of resources. (Should I invest mana to cast the highest dps spell? .. yes, always!)
Interesting decisions are either fun or frustrating. We already talked about that.
Good games confront the player with goals that encourage fun journeys which consist of fairly high-frequency decision making. Look at Angry Birds, Tetris, Chess, Soccer, Super Mario, etc.
---
If you forget everything else I wrote, please remember this: "Fun journeys" are not fun in themselves. They are fun because of the goals. And the goals are fun because of the journeys.
Fun is like a Firefly
In German they say "Der Weg ist das Ziel", "the way is the goal". It is obviously wrong, and yet it is obviously right.
(1)
MMORPGs are perhaps the best way to observe this truth. Virtual items are not only cheap, but really cost next to nothing to produce. And everybody knows that getting virtual items is fun. A lot of people even say that WoW was so successful, because it pushed players into a skinner box. Players would subscribe and as a reward they would get fed with epics.
But that can't be true. If it were true, making a smash hit MMORPG would be ridiculously easy. If that were the secret behind WoW's success, all other MMORPGs would be at least as successful; and they would give the player more epics per re-subscription than WoW. So, what's wrong?
Well, getting epics is fun! That's not a hallucination.
But the fun of getting epics is also diminished with every epic the player gets. And that is, because getting the epic is only fun, because you tried/hoped to get it. Yes, to find a surprise epic can be fun, too. But it is a very short-lived fun. Give players more surprise epics and very, very fast they don't want them anymore.
Hunting for epics is where the real long-term fun is at. Some call it working for epics in a attempt to discredit it. They don't understand. The way is the goal. Going towards the goal is where the long-term fun is. Reaching the goal is the more fun the longer the way was, and as long as it felt worthwhile. The real fun was in the hunt, in the way, not in the goal.
That's why the way is the goal.
(2)
Games should not be frustrating, yes. But what is frustrating? Frustrating is an activity that a player feels he should do, but shouldn't have to do.
Imagine you go to a party. It takes 2 hours by bus and train to get there. Once there, the host tells you to stand on one leg for 1 minute before he lets you enter. Nobody will watch you. There's no way around this.
Now, that is frustrating, because you feel like you should do this (you just spent 2 hours getting there), but then, actually you shouldn't have to. Also, it doesn't make any sense, it is arbitrary and exhausting. But it's also the reasonable thing to do. Actually, even should you decide to return home, you will be frustrated.
Now imagine the same situation, but the host offers the guy, who can stand on one leg the longest, 50.000€. If you are a normally rich person you will consider this totally silly, but worthwhile. Should you even manage to stand on one leg longer than anybody else, let's say for 4 hours, you will celebrate. It wasn't frustrating at all! Arbitrary, yes, exhausting, certainly, but not frustrating. In fact, the more of your competitors gave up, the more exhilarating it got! I promise you, you never had as much fun in your life than during the last 30 minutes of standing on one leg watching your competitors tilting.
Sure, the host is an idiot, but 50.000€! Damn! You will probably thank him with your best fake smile when he hands you the money!
(3)
Every time a player works for something in your game just as much has he would be willing to work for it and then gets his reward, you win. Well, and he wins. Yes, he wins! This is something I need to focus on more I think. Players don't like to be coddled. Yes, they deny it, but it's true nonetheless. Players like to be challenged, they like to hunt! The hunt is what creates meaning. Without hunt there's just nothing in life, only emptiness.
Every rich person can tell you, money alone doesn't make happy. Every playboy can tell you the 25th girl doesn't make him more happy than the 24th. Every 1st world citizen can tell a 3rd world citizen that eating and drinking alone doesn't make one happy.
Nothing makes happy, it seems. But then, most things do.
Most investors continue to invest long after they earned more money than they can ever hope to spend. Most playboys consider the process of 'hunting' much more pleasant than the 'endgame' - especially if the target is hard-to-get! But no western citizen considers hunting for food fun: We think it is frustrating, because we shouldn't have to do that!
That last part is important. It is why you can't turn back time. Once players know that you give in, they will genuinely hate you, and leave the game, if you don't act according to their wishes. Hi, Cataclysm!
Having to do something, that you feel you shouldn't have to do, is always frustrating. But keep the players from developing this attitude, and most things have the potential to be fun!
(4)
Just like giving players ever more epics is no solution, not giving them enough isn't a solution either. This is important to understand. Your game doesn't necessarily become better, just because you reward your players less. The trick is in the balance. The magic question is: How much can I ask my players to 'work', 'suffer', 'hunt', 'walk' before they leave?
The answer to that question is the amount of 'suffering' you should ask of them! They might complain, cry, shout, offend, maybe threaten you. But only if they hope to be able to change your decision. If it is commonly known that you don't surrender to demands, they will suck it. They would fear to appear silly and socially awkward. And if it is even completely obvious to them that there's no other way, they can actually gain the most fun out of it.
The trick is to make a game that seems worthwhile as much as possible! One way to do that is to make it known that a huge amount of players play your game. Another way is to release great trailers. Yet another is to make your players dream about the possibilities in your game. Like one day flying a dragon.
Once you made the game as worthwhile as possible, once you created that really big carrot on the horizon, that is just near enough and absolutely credible to seize, you put as many obstacles in front of the players as possible. Just as much as you can get away with.
Because the fun is not in actually flying your dragon. Every WoW player can explain to you how much fun flying was at first - and how 'unspectacular' it then became very soon. What a game needs is a perspective, a goal that seems worthwhile. And the more worthwhile that goal appears, the more players will be willing to invest into your game. And the more you make them (= allow them !!) to invest into the game, the more fun they have. Because that investment turns out to be where the fun actually is.
Fun is like a firefly: it disappears with a flash the moment you seize it.
(1)
MMORPGs are perhaps the best way to observe this truth. Virtual items are not only cheap, but really cost next to nothing to produce. And everybody knows that getting virtual items is fun. A lot of people even say that WoW was so successful, because it pushed players into a skinner box. Players would subscribe and as a reward they would get fed with epics.
But that can't be true. If it were true, making a smash hit MMORPG would be ridiculously easy. If that were the secret behind WoW's success, all other MMORPGs would be at least as successful; and they would give the player more epics per re-subscription than WoW. So, what's wrong?
Well, getting epics is fun! That's not a hallucination.
But the fun of getting epics is also diminished with every epic the player gets. And that is, because getting the epic is only fun, because you tried/hoped to get it. Yes, to find a surprise epic can be fun, too. But it is a very short-lived fun. Give players more surprise epics and very, very fast they don't want them anymore.
Hunting for epics is where the real long-term fun is at. Some call it working for epics in a attempt to discredit it. They don't understand. The way is the goal. Going towards the goal is where the long-term fun is. Reaching the goal is the more fun the longer the way was, and as long as it felt worthwhile. The real fun was in the hunt, in the way, not in the goal.
That's why the way is the goal.
(2)
Games should not be frustrating, yes. But what is frustrating? Frustrating is an activity that a player feels he should do, but shouldn't have to do.
Imagine you go to a party. It takes 2 hours by bus and train to get there. Once there, the host tells you to stand on one leg for 1 minute before he lets you enter. Nobody will watch you. There's no way around this.
Now, that is frustrating, because you feel like you should do this (you just spent 2 hours getting there), but then, actually you shouldn't have to. Also, it doesn't make any sense, it is arbitrary and exhausting. But it's also the reasonable thing to do. Actually, even should you decide to return home, you will be frustrated.
Now imagine the same situation, but the host offers the guy, who can stand on one leg the longest, 50.000€. If you are a normally rich person you will consider this totally silly, but worthwhile. Should you even manage to stand on one leg longer than anybody else, let's say for 4 hours, you will celebrate. It wasn't frustrating at all! Arbitrary, yes, exhausting, certainly, but not frustrating. In fact, the more of your competitors gave up, the more exhilarating it got! I promise you, you never had as much fun in your life than during the last 30 minutes of standing on one leg watching your competitors tilting.
Sure, the host is an idiot, but 50.000€! Damn! You will probably thank him with your best fake smile when he hands you the money!
(3)
Every time a player works for something in your game just as much has he would be willing to work for it and then gets his reward, you win. Well, and he wins. Yes, he wins! This is something I need to focus on more I think. Players don't like to be coddled. Yes, they deny it, but it's true nonetheless. Players like to be challenged, they like to hunt! The hunt is what creates meaning. Without hunt there's just nothing in life, only emptiness.
Every rich person can tell you, money alone doesn't make happy. Every playboy can tell you the 25th girl doesn't make him more happy than the 24th. Every 1st world citizen can tell a 3rd world citizen that eating and drinking alone doesn't make one happy.
Nothing makes happy, it seems. But then, most things do.
Most investors continue to invest long after they earned more money than they can ever hope to spend. Most playboys consider the process of 'hunting' much more pleasant than the 'endgame' - especially if the target is hard-to-get! But no western citizen considers hunting for food fun: We think it is frustrating, because we shouldn't have to do that!
That last part is important. It is why you can't turn back time. Once players know that you give in, they will genuinely hate you, and leave the game, if you don't act according to their wishes. Hi, Cataclysm!
Having to do something, that you feel you shouldn't have to do, is always frustrating. But keep the players from developing this attitude, and most things have the potential to be fun!
(4)
Just like giving players ever more epics is no solution, not giving them enough isn't a solution either. This is important to understand. Your game doesn't necessarily become better, just because you reward your players less. The trick is in the balance. The magic question is: How much can I ask my players to 'work', 'suffer', 'hunt', 'walk' before they leave?
The answer to that question is the amount of 'suffering' you should ask of them! They might complain, cry, shout, offend, maybe threaten you. But only if they hope to be able to change your decision. If it is commonly known that you don't surrender to demands, they will suck it. They would fear to appear silly and socially awkward. And if it is even completely obvious to them that there's no other way, they can actually gain the most fun out of it.
The trick is to make a game that seems worthwhile as much as possible! One way to do that is to make it known that a huge amount of players play your game. Another way is to release great trailers. Yet another is to make your players dream about the possibilities in your game. Like one day flying a dragon.
Once you made the game as worthwhile as possible, once you created that really big carrot on the horizon, that is just near enough and absolutely credible to seize, you put as many obstacles in front of the players as possible. Just as much as you can get away with.
Because the fun is not in actually flying your dragon. Every WoW player can explain to you how much fun flying was at first - and how 'unspectacular' it then became very soon. What a game needs is a perspective, a goal that seems worthwhile. And the more worthwhile that goal appears, the more players will be willing to invest into your game. And the more you make them (= allow them !!) to invest into the game, the more fun they have. Because that investment turns out to be where the fun actually is.
Fun is like a firefly: it disappears with a flash the moment you seize it.
Please Love Me
One post on this topic isn't enough. Here are some examples on "How to be loved".
Remark: I use some strong language to make the point and sometimes I exaggerate to make it a fun read.
(1)
Imagine you date a supermodel. It is a bright summer's day. Do you keep your sun glasses on? Think about it. The answer is 'yes'.
Imagine you meet Miss supermodel at the nightclub. She asks you to buy her a drink. Do you do it? The answer is 'no'. That fact alone that Miss supermodel asked you, already means that you will not "get her".
Women are fascinating, especially as a man. It requires years, often decades to figure out what they want. And at the same time there are ugly, often even poor, guys who date the most beautiful women. What the hell?
Actually, most women don't understand themselves. Women joke that they try to change their husbands, but stop loving them once they succeeded. Well, it's not always funny and quite true.
Women are fascinating, because they are natural super talents at figuring out how to select the smartest/fittest/etc. guy out of a crowd. After all they can have a baby only every nine months and only a limited number of babies. While men can have, well, endless amounts. No, that's not what the genders consciously think; it is just the evolutionary rationale behind their behaviour.
Vice versa it is much easier, at least theoretically. If a woman wants to appeal to a man, she just needs to look good and be reasonably intelligent. That sounds sexist, I know. But if you look good as a woman, most men will be willing to fuck you. That doesn't necessarily mean that they want a relationship, of course. But if you look bad as a woman you have a big problem. If makeup doesn't help, you have to either stay single, or settle for a "lesser type of guy". Incidentally, they sometimes turn out to be quite a good choice.
(2)
Imagine you want to found a new religion. You dream of being the high priest of billions. Now, one of your minions wants more rights. What do you say? Well, of course you say 'no'; and then you exclude the minion from your community. And then you ask your followers to kill him.
How many religions do you know? Are they comfortable and convenient? Are their high priests lovely guys? Not while the religions expand!
High priests demand that you do not drink and eat during day. They demand that you pray all the time. They demand mass suicide! They demand that you turn the other cheek. They drown the ground in thousands of liters of your blood, while you construct world wonders for their glory. Religions demand that you fight holy wars. They demand of their high priests to never have sex !
Religions don't buy you a drink.
(3)
At the heart of this topic is the question of how to make something that somebody, the consumer, loves. The obvious way is to appeal to the consumer. And this isn't completely wrong. Of course, not buying a drink doesn't make girls fall in love with you. Nor does demanding suicide make people pray to you.
It's not that easy. You still need to convince the consumer/supermodel/minions/etc. that you are worth their attention and eventually love or devotion. But you don't do this by fulfilling their every wish! Instead, you do it by convincing them of your greatness - indirectly.
For example when you see a beautiful woman in the night club, you don't just go for her. Instead, you go for the guys she's out with. (Beautiful women are always out with other guys). And then you talk to the guys. You entertain them. You talk about "manly topics". Of course, you boast a bit, but just a tiny bit. And you ignore her.
Eventually she will try to make contact with you. But you have to ignore her until she starts to try to appeal to you. For example, she will try to add to the conversation by telling you that she likes mountaineering, as well. And that she always wanted to do it. Now, you got a start.
You may even say something like "At first I considered you rather uninteresting, but I might have been wrong". You continue to make her find reasons for why she is worth you. You might have to help her if she's not very good at it. But whenever she is successful, you reward her with more attention and successively more compliments.
Oh - and you never exert physical force outside of sex. I just wanted to have said that. Applying physical force - even a tiny bit, like holding her too fast - is a weakness and as such unattractive.
I shouldn't go into more detail. Read Magic Bullets by N. Savoy. But try not to buy it; it is excessively expensive. You may be able to guess why.
(4)
I've yet to read a book about how to become a guru, but it is very similar. At first you convince your future minions that you are great. Now, that is certainly a challenge; that's why there aren't that many gurus. You must do this without boasting too much or making them feel like you want their love. You despise them! The reason you are talking to them at all is because there's no other way. Figure out some brilliant reason! Oh - and you always have way too many followers already, of course, and not enough time.
Then you make your minions find reasons for why they are qualified to enter your community. And you reward them if they find good reasons. Once they are in the community, you demand of them! The more you can demand without them quitting, the more you can demand next time.
(5)
I write in a funny way. Partly, because the topic is funny. But make no mistake: if you want somebody to fall in love with something, you need to make him/her fall in love. You must not try to appeal unless he/she tries to appeal first.
Good games are funny distractions. They are much better than bad games which are outright punishing to play. Good games constantly try to appeal to you. And that's why you become bored of them so fast.
In contrast to good games, Great games don't try to appeal to you; at least not directly. Great games make promises to you. They make you dream. They make you dream of what you could achieve, but they never allow you to achieve it. Think of Limbo. The main reason to play Limbo is to find out why the hell you are even doing this!! Of course, some 10 hours later you have found out why you do it. And you never touch Limbo again. Limbo is a great game, but it wouldn't work with a subscription.
Good games make you move forward by feeding you with carrots until you hate carrots. Great games make you hunt this one carrot for as long as possible. At all times you think that the carrot is just within reach. You are convinced that soon you will be there - but you are not. The more often you succumb to the carrot, that is you make a step but fail to get it, the more likely you will make another step. Great games enslave you.
(6)
Excuse my drastic language. But I really want to make this point! Getting epics is not as much fun as hunting them. Read the last sentence again, please. And again. Getting epics is not as much fun as hunting them. The trick is not to shower the player in carrots, but to make him hunt them! Showering the player in carrots is harmful. It proves to the player how worthless they are!
Humans aren't rats. Skinner boxes don't really work. We don't like to eat ever more cookies, we get sick of them fast! But we love to hunt for cookies.
In contrast to what Brenda says, players never played MMORPGs because the second-to-second gameplay was so much fun. It was terrible! Please open your eyes! Tell me one smash hit game, especially MMORPG, that was so much fun at the second-to-second gameplay!
MMORPGs - especially original World of Warcraft - seduced the players; they did not appeal to them! Hundreds of hours grinding gold! Tens of dungeon runs until you got one tiny piece of gear improvement. Dreams of beating Ragnaros! Farming reagents first.
MMORPGs used to promise much and demand even more. And this made them successful. The promise was credible enough to make players work for it. Millions complained that it was like work - and they continued working. The promise, the dream, the anticipated long-term reward is what drives players to sink thousands of hours into virtual achievements.
Don't hunt the ghost that is the perfect short-term gameplay. You won't find it. It's not there.
Don't treat the player like the overweight girl from next door. We are supermodels and that's why we don't play games that try to appeal to us too hard. The game needs to be worth our attention and if it buys us too many drinks, then, in our eyes, it becomes a funny little distraction. Not worth a long term commitment.
---
If you haven't read my earlier post on the topic, go do it now. I demand it! ;)
Edit: "Don't treat the player like the overweight boy from next door. We are supermodels ... ..."
Remark: I use some strong language to make the point and sometimes I exaggerate to make it a fun read.
(1)
Imagine you date a supermodel. It is a bright summer's day. Do you keep your sun glasses on? Think about it. The answer is 'yes'.
Imagine you meet Miss supermodel at the nightclub. She asks you to buy her a drink. Do you do it? The answer is 'no'. That fact alone that Miss supermodel asked you, already means that you will not "get her".
Women are fascinating, especially as a man. It requires years, often decades to figure out what they want. And at the same time there are ugly, often even poor, guys who date the most beautiful women. What the hell?
Actually, most women don't understand themselves. Women joke that they try to change their husbands, but stop loving them once they succeeded. Well, it's not always funny and quite true.
Women are fascinating, because they are natural super talents at figuring out how to select the smartest/fittest/etc. guy out of a crowd. After all they can have a baby only every nine months and only a limited number of babies. While men can have, well, endless amounts. No, that's not what the genders consciously think; it is just the evolutionary rationale behind their behaviour.
Vice versa it is much easier, at least theoretically. If a woman wants to appeal to a man, she just needs to look good and be reasonably intelligent. That sounds sexist, I know. But if you look good as a woman, most men will be willing to fuck you. That doesn't necessarily mean that they want a relationship, of course. But if you look bad as a woman you have a big problem. If makeup doesn't help, you have to either stay single, or settle for a "lesser type of guy". Incidentally, they sometimes turn out to be quite a good choice.
(2)
Imagine you want to found a new religion. You dream of being the high priest of billions. Now, one of your minions wants more rights. What do you say? Well, of course you say 'no'; and then you exclude the minion from your community. And then you ask your followers to kill him.
How many religions do you know? Are they comfortable and convenient? Are their high priests lovely guys? Not while the religions expand!
High priests demand that you do not drink and eat during day. They demand that you pray all the time. They demand mass suicide! They demand that you turn the other cheek. They drown the ground in thousands of liters of your blood, while you construct world wonders for their glory. Religions demand that you fight holy wars. They demand of their high priests to never have sex !
Religions don't buy you a drink.
(3)
At the heart of this topic is the question of how to make something that somebody, the consumer, loves. The obvious way is to appeal to the consumer. And this isn't completely wrong. Of course, not buying a drink doesn't make girls fall in love with you. Nor does demanding suicide make people pray to you.
It's not that easy. You still need to convince the consumer/supermodel/minions/etc. that you are worth their attention and eventually love or devotion. But you don't do this by fulfilling their every wish! Instead, you do it by convincing them of your greatness - indirectly.
 |
| Real men don't smile while flirting. |
For example when you see a beautiful woman in the night club, you don't just go for her. Instead, you go for the guys she's out with. (Beautiful women are always out with other guys). And then you talk to the guys. You entertain them. You talk about "manly topics". Of course, you boast a bit, but just a tiny bit. And you ignore her.
Eventually she will try to make contact with you. But you have to ignore her until she starts to try to appeal to you. For example, she will try to add to the conversation by telling you that she likes mountaineering, as well. And that she always wanted to do it. Now, you got a start.
You may even say something like "At first I considered you rather uninteresting, but I might have been wrong". You continue to make her find reasons for why she is worth you. You might have to help her if she's not very good at it. But whenever she is successful, you reward her with more attention and successively more compliments.
Oh - and you never exert physical force outside of sex. I just wanted to have said that. Applying physical force - even a tiny bit, like holding her too fast - is a weakness and as such unattractive.
I shouldn't go into more detail. Read Magic Bullets by N. Savoy. But try not to buy it; it is excessively expensive. You may be able to guess why.
(4)
I've yet to read a book about how to become a guru, but it is very similar. At first you convince your future minions that you are great. Now, that is certainly a challenge; that's why there aren't that many gurus. You must do this without boasting too much or making them feel like you want their love. You despise them! The reason you are talking to them at all is because there's no other way. Figure out some brilliant reason! Oh - and you always have way too many followers already, of course, and not enough time.
Then you make your minions find reasons for why they are qualified to enter your community. And you reward them if they find good reasons. Once they are in the community, you demand of them! The more you can demand without them quitting, the more you can demand next time.
(5)
I write in a funny way. Partly, because the topic is funny. But make no mistake: if you want somebody to fall in love with something, you need to make him/her fall in love. You must not try to appeal unless he/she tries to appeal first.
Good games are funny distractions. They are much better than bad games which are outright punishing to play. Good games constantly try to appeal to you. And that's why you become bored of them so fast.
In contrast to good games, Great games don't try to appeal to you; at least not directly. Great games make promises to you. They make you dream. They make you dream of what you could achieve, but they never allow you to achieve it. Think of Limbo. The main reason to play Limbo is to find out why the hell you are even doing this!! Of course, some 10 hours later you have found out why you do it. And you never touch Limbo again. Limbo is a great game, but it wouldn't work with a subscription.
Good games make you move forward by feeding you with carrots until you hate carrots. Great games make you hunt this one carrot for as long as possible. At all times you think that the carrot is just within reach. You are convinced that soon you will be there - but you are not. The more often you succumb to the carrot, that is you make a step but fail to get it, the more likely you will make another step. Great games enslave you.
(6)
Excuse my drastic language. But I really want to make this point! Getting epics is not as much fun as hunting them. Read the last sentence again, please. And again. Getting epics is not as much fun as hunting them. The trick is not to shower the player in carrots, but to make him hunt them! Showering the player in carrots is harmful. It proves to the player how worthless they are!
Humans aren't rats. Skinner boxes don't really work. We don't like to eat ever more cookies, we get sick of them fast! But we love to hunt for cookies.
In contrast to what Brenda says, players never played MMORPGs because the second-to-second gameplay was so much fun. It was terrible! Please open your eyes! Tell me one smash hit game, especially MMORPG, that was so much fun at the second-to-second gameplay!
MMORPGs - especially original World of Warcraft - seduced the players; they did not appeal to them! Hundreds of hours grinding gold! Tens of dungeon runs until you got one tiny piece of gear improvement. Dreams of beating Ragnaros! Farming reagents first.
MMORPGs used to promise much and demand even more. And this made them successful. The promise was credible enough to make players work for it. Millions complained that it was like work - and they continued working. The promise, the dream, the anticipated long-term reward is what drives players to sink thousands of hours into virtual achievements.
Don't hunt the ghost that is the perfect short-term gameplay. You won't find it. It's not there.
Don't treat the player like the overweight girl from next door. We are supermodels and that's why we don't play games that try to appeal to us too hard. The game needs to be worth our attention and if it buys us too many drinks, then, in our eyes, it becomes a funny little distraction. Not worth a long term commitment.
---
If you haven't read my earlier post on the topic, go do it now. I demand it! ;)
Edit: "Don't treat the player like the overweight boy from next door. We are supermodels ... ..."
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Fun is not a Number
MMORPG designers nowadays seem to be stumbling in the dark. Maybe they have always done it. Maybe. But I think the problem started to become most apparent when game designers stopped wanting to make this fun game, and instead tried to make any really, really fun game. And when they tried to work in a scientifically sound way. Metrics played a very important role.
Guild Wars 2
But first things first. I read a bit of GW2 today and among a lot of interesting stuff I found this:
Subsequently, they tested it and found it to be lacking. Now, I wasn't there. So, maybe they were right and the new mechanic was awful. However, my guess is that they tested something for a few days and then decided that it's unfun to use in a MMORPG which players are meant to play for thousands of hours. Maybe they looked at players playing the game at conventions were the players behave and think radically different than at home.
Fun Fallacy all over again
Let's use one of those chess-analogies. Imagine you test chess to find out whether it's fun enough. You make three moves. It turns out that it is totally boring; each single one. You scrap the project.
At the heart of this evil is Brenda's quote. At the time I first found it, I didn't see it for what it was. I considered it an interesting piece of "wisdom". But, in fact, it isn't even wrong. And that's among the worst things you can say about something.
Game designers nowadays assume that fun adds up. Just like a number. A wonderful way to explain why this is wrong is the soup analogy. You can add a lot of salt to a bad tasting soup and it tastes much better. You can still add quite some salt to a good soup and it tastes better. But you may add just a pinch of salt to a really good soup, otherwise you spoil it.
Salt represents a game mechanic that is the more fun, the worse the game. And there are lots of them. For example exponential character power progression, or starting out as a hero at level 1. These things make the game more fun if the gamer coincidently found out about it and decided to test it for 3 minutes. But ultimately they make the game worse.
What keeps you playing
Looking at metrics, designers found out that the highest potential for more players is keeping them from quiting during the first few minutes of play. Consequently, they figured the most important thing wasn't so much to make a fun game in the long run anymore, but rather to enthuse players during the first few minutes. Now, I don't dispute that it's good if a game is fun right from the start.
Rather, I fear the kind of fun that is used to achieve this. In the beginning, since the player doesn't know the game yet, he has no ambitions, little expectations, no dreams. And instead of giving the player something to dream about, the game designers give him something "awesome" and "cool". This is short-term fun. Just like playing an arcade game is short-term fun. It is a distraction. Salt, a sensation.
Compare that with one of my very first WoW experiences: I was on my way to the first city and saw some guy fly over me. What I didn't know back then: He was just flying on a flight route. And the route had deliberately been bent this way to make new players 'dream'. This dream was a more powerful motivator than short-term gameplay fun could ever be.
What made me play to level 60 in original WoW wasn't the short-term fun. In a way, the game was awful. It was highly, no, it was extremely repetitive.
What made me play to level 60 were dreams about exploration and power. If somebody had given me the isolated leveling gameplay out of all contexts, and asked me whether I looked forward to doing this for 300 hours until I reach level 60, I would have told him that making three moves in chess isn't fun, either. Actually, that's what I told some friends when they asked me how playing WoW can be fun.
Had I played original WoW pre-release at a convention, I would have left dreaming about playing it. I would not have remembered how heroic I felt while I played it.
Dreams of Denial
Game designers nowadays make games that want to be loved; not games that make you fall in love. Game designers nowadays go to conventions like attention whores; wanting to be praised for their badass dragons. And they iterate their game until it is exactly the way you "wanted" it.
Game designers nowadays are like the cute boy in school who did everything you asked of him; until you considered him creepy.
That's not the way it works! The most powerful art has the most agonizing flaws. The most engaging people have the most distressing weaknesses. The most attractive partners never do what you want.
The best games never succumb to you; they keep you dreaming.
Guild Wars 2
But first things first. I read a bit of GW2 today and among a lot of interesting stuff I found this:
The slower-regen idea seemed so good on paper, but in practice the original design was just more fun. As we roll into this next demo season, there are a few major changes that we thought we should tell you about, and without further ado, here they are.To me this is exactly what goes wrong. Apparently the game designers carefully created some kind of slower-regen game mechanic. Maybe they thought about 'interesting decisions' or prevention of 'optimizing the fun out of it' or general flavor.
Subsequently, they tested it and found it to be lacking. Now, I wasn't there. So, maybe they were right and the new mechanic was awful. However, my guess is that they tested something for a few days and then decided that it's unfun to use in a MMORPG which players are meant to play for thousands of hours. Maybe they looked at players playing the game at conventions were the players behave and think radically different than at home.
Fun Fallacy all over again
Let's use one of those chess-analogies. Imagine you test chess to find out whether it's fun enough. You make three moves. It turns out that it is totally boring; each single one. You scrap the project.
At the heart of this evil is Brenda's quote. At the time I first found it, I didn't see it for what it was. I considered it an interesting piece of "wisdom". But, in fact, it isn't even wrong. And that's among the worst things you can say about something.
Game designers nowadays assume that fun adds up. Just like a number. A wonderful way to explain why this is wrong is the soup analogy. You can add a lot of salt to a bad tasting soup and it tastes much better. You can still add quite some salt to a good soup and it tastes better. But you may add just a pinch of salt to a really good soup, otherwise you spoil it.
Salt represents a game mechanic that is the more fun, the worse the game. And there are lots of them. For example exponential character power progression, or starting out as a hero at level 1. These things make the game more fun if the gamer coincidently found out about it and decided to test it for 3 minutes. But ultimately they make the game worse.
What keeps you playing
Looking at metrics, designers found out that the highest potential for more players is keeping them from quiting during the first few minutes of play. Consequently, they figured the most important thing wasn't so much to make a fun game in the long run anymore, but rather to enthuse players during the first few minutes. Now, I don't dispute that it's good if a game is fun right from the start.
Rather, I fear the kind of fun that is used to achieve this. In the beginning, since the player doesn't know the game yet, he has no ambitions, little expectations, no dreams. And instead of giving the player something to dream about, the game designers give him something "awesome" and "cool". This is short-term fun. Just like playing an arcade game is short-term fun. It is a distraction. Salt, a sensation.
Compare that with one of my very first WoW experiences: I was on my way to the first city and saw some guy fly over me. What I didn't know back then: He was just flying on a flight route. And the route had deliberately been bent this way to make new players 'dream'. This dream was a more powerful motivator than short-term gameplay fun could ever be.
What made me play to level 60 in original WoW wasn't the short-term fun. In a way, the game was awful. It was highly, no, it was extremely repetitive.
What made me play to level 60 were dreams about exploration and power. If somebody had given me the isolated leveling gameplay out of all contexts, and asked me whether I looked forward to doing this for 300 hours until I reach level 60, I would have told him that making three moves in chess isn't fun, either. Actually, that's what I told some friends when they asked me how playing WoW can be fun.
Had I played original WoW pre-release at a convention, I would have left dreaming about playing it. I would not have remembered how heroic I felt while I played it.
Dreams of Denial
Game designers nowadays make games that want to be loved; not games that make you fall in love. Game designers nowadays go to conventions like attention whores; wanting to be praised for their badass dragons. And they iterate their game until it is exactly the way you "wanted" it.
Game designers nowadays are like the cute boy in school who did everything you asked of him; until you considered him creepy.
That's not the way it works! The most powerful art has the most agonizing flaws. The most engaging people have the most distressing weaknesses. The most attractive partners never do what you want.
The best games never succumb to you; they keep you dreaming.
My New Computer
I just bought a new computer to play the games my current computer can run just as well. :|
I have a tradition to buy a new one every one and a half year. But this time it was especially hard to justify .. can it be that development has slowed down, finally ?
Anyway, I decided to spend no more than 2000 Euro and got the whole thing including prior dead-pixel test for the monitor, assembly, compatibility/stability test and transport for 1.990,07 € at Mindfactory.de.
Chassis: Fractal Design Arc
Power Supply: 580W be quiet! Straight Power CM BQT E8 80+ Silver Modular
Motherboard: ASRock Z68 EXTREME4 S1155 Intel Z68 ATX
CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K 4x 3.30GHz So.1155 BOX
Heatsink CPU: EKL Alpenföhn Brocken AMD and Intel S775, 1366, 1156, AM2(+), AM3
RAM: 16GB G.Skill RipjawsX DDR3-1600 DIMM CL9 Dual Kit (4 modules)
Monitor: 27" (69,00cm) Dell U2711 6ms 16:9
Graphics Card: 1536MB Asus GeForce GTX 580 DirectCU II Aktiv PCIe 2.0 x16 (Retail)
HD: 2000GB Seagate Barracuda Green 5900.3 ST2000DL003 64MB 3.5" (8.9cm) SATA 6Gb/s
SSD: 120GB Corsair Force Series 3 CSSD-F120GB3-BK 2.5" (6.4cm) SATA 6Gb/s MLC asynchron
DVD: LiteOn iHAS124-19 SATA Black Bulk
Keyboard: Microsoft SideWinder X4 Gaming Keyboard Black German USB
Mouse: Logitech G500 Gaming Laser Mouse Schwarz USB
I have a tradition to buy a new one every one and a half year. But this time it was especially hard to justify .. can it be that development has slowed down, finally ?
Anyway, I decided to spend no more than 2000 Euro and got the whole thing including prior dead-pixel test for the monitor, assembly, compatibility/stability test and transport for 1.990,07 € at Mindfactory.de.
Chassis: Fractal Design Arc
Power Supply: 580W be quiet! Straight Power CM BQT E8 80+ Silver Modular
Motherboard: ASRock Z68 EXTREME4 S1155 Intel Z68 ATX
CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K 4x 3.30GHz So.1155 BOX
Heatsink CPU: EKL Alpenföhn Brocken AMD and Intel S775, 1366, 1156, AM2(+), AM3
RAM: 16GB G.Skill RipjawsX DDR3-1600 DIMM CL9 Dual Kit (4 modules)
Monitor: 27" (69,00cm) Dell U2711 6ms 16:9
Graphics Card: 1536MB Asus GeForce GTX 580 DirectCU II Aktiv PCIe 2.0 x16 (Retail)
HD: 2000GB Seagate Barracuda Green 5900.3 ST2000DL003 64MB 3.5" (8.9cm) SATA 6Gb/s
SSD: 120GB Corsair Force Series 3 CSSD-F120GB3-BK 2.5" (6.4cm) SATA 6Gb/s MLC asynchron
DVD: LiteOn iHAS124-19 SATA Black Bulk
Keyboard: Microsoft SideWinder X4 Gaming Keyboard Black German USB
Mouse: Logitech G500 Gaming Laser Mouse Schwarz USB
Monday, August 22, 2011
Morality, SW:TOR
Ten days ago Scrusi managed to kick off a debate about morality and gear in games, more specifically in SW:TOR.
It is a hard problem to solve in an MMORPG. On the one hand side you want the player's choices to matter. That means that there needs to be some kind of consequence that has an emotional impact on him. On the other hand, you don't want players to game the system in a way, that they make their decision based on that consequence alone instead of morality.
(1)
Let's have a look at how it works in real life. In real life most of us feel a strong emotional impact if we decide to do or support something that is immoral. But that's because there are no resets. If I could destroy my neighbor's car and a minute later it respawned, it wouldn't have much of an emotional impact. Furthermore, if my neighbor were a MMO-like NPC there would probably be no emotional impact at all.
So, the first problem is that the emotional impact is extremely hard to achieve with frequent resets of the consequences of the player's choice. The second problem is that all the player's choices are about NPCs. The resets are the bigger problem of the two.
(2)
A morally wrong action is one thing. But the choice isn't really a choice without a temptation. Destroying or not destroying my neighbor's car isn't really a choice, because I have no reason to do it.
For the choice not being a no-brainer, the temptation needs to be about as strong as the emotional impact of the wrong moral choice. And, for the reasons just outlined, this emotional impact is extremely weak in SW:TOR.
In MMOs the overarching goal is usually to create a strong character. This kind of temptation is much too strong compared to the weak emotional impact of the moral choice. Thus, gameplay goals as temptations don't work.
A comparatively good implementation is via moral dilemma. Would you kill two children to prevent somebody else from killing four children? Moral dilemma still suffer from the very low emotional impact of moral choices (resets, NPCs), but are automatically balanced.
(3)
Summing up, for a moral choice to be anything but a no-brainer, the emotional impact of the consequence of a player's choice needs to be balanced against the temptation to do the wrong thing.
Since the emotional impact of doing the wrong thing is very weak in MMORPGs (resets, NPCs), the temptations needs to be equally weak. Since moral dilemma are automatically balanced, they are natural candidates. Implementation of a good moral dilemma is, however, not always easy from a story-telling point of view.
(4)
Biowares tries to solve the problem by carefully designing temptations. They create mini games, like collecting light/dark points or story points which have no or little impact on the player's performance.
Problem is that if those points have no effect at all, a lot of players ignore them. And as soon as they have some kind of effect, like slightly changing the character's appearance, they may already be too strong a temptation.
(5)
Will Bioware succeed? I doubt it. They may find some not completely terrible way to implement moral choices into a MMORPG, but I don't see how even a mildly satisfactory implementation is possible without moral choices affecting players, instead of NPCs, or having consequences that are not frequently reset. Resets and NPCs make the choices just not meaningful enough, to matter to our moral decision making.
Maybe Bioware should not try to actually implement moral choices, but rather encourage us to select some kind of moral alignment in the beginning and then incentivise us to maximize the corresponding points. This is the "embrace your enemy, if you cannot defeat him" - kind of solution.
It would work comparatively well, I think. But the reason is not that the 'choices' would actually be choices or even 'interesting decisions'. Rather, it would work well, because mindlessly succeeding at playing a good/bad guy is pleasing from a narrative point of view.
Of course, this doesn't work once the engame is reached and the narrative has ended. But SW:TOR's endgame will be a completely different game, anyway.
Finally, there's still the awkward problem of random players of different moral alignments playing together. For as far as I know, it's going to be like that: I meet a random stranger, we do an instance. We can either slaughter the innocents or save them. I select 'save them', he wants to slaughter them. We roll a dice. He wins. We slaughter the innocents. I get light side point. Yeah, right.
This never-inconvenience-the-player attitude creates a game that tastes like a worn-out chewing gum.
It is a hard problem to solve in an MMORPG. On the one hand side you want the player's choices to matter. That means that there needs to be some kind of consequence that has an emotional impact on him. On the other hand, you don't want players to game the system in a way, that they make their decision based on that consequence alone instead of morality.
(1)
Let's have a look at how it works in real life. In real life most of us feel a strong emotional impact if we decide to do or support something that is immoral. But that's because there are no resets. If I could destroy my neighbor's car and a minute later it respawned, it wouldn't have much of an emotional impact. Furthermore, if my neighbor were a MMO-like NPC there would probably be no emotional impact at all.
So, the first problem is that the emotional impact is extremely hard to achieve with frequent resets of the consequences of the player's choice. The second problem is that all the player's choices are about NPCs. The resets are the bigger problem of the two.
(2)
A morally wrong action is one thing. But the choice isn't really a choice without a temptation. Destroying or not destroying my neighbor's car isn't really a choice, because I have no reason to do it.
For the choice not being a no-brainer, the temptation needs to be about as strong as the emotional impact of the wrong moral choice. And, for the reasons just outlined, this emotional impact is extremely weak in SW:TOR.
In MMOs the overarching goal is usually to create a strong character. This kind of temptation is much too strong compared to the weak emotional impact of the moral choice. Thus, gameplay goals as temptations don't work.
A comparatively good implementation is via moral dilemma. Would you kill two children to prevent somebody else from killing four children? Moral dilemma still suffer from the very low emotional impact of moral choices (resets, NPCs), but are automatically balanced.
(3)
Summing up, for a moral choice to be anything but a no-brainer, the emotional impact of the consequence of a player's choice needs to be balanced against the temptation to do the wrong thing.
Since the emotional impact of doing the wrong thing is very weak in MMORPGs (resets, NPCs), the temptations needs to be equally weak. Since moral dilemma are automatically balanced, they are natural candidates. Implementation of a good moral dilemma is, however, not always easy from a story-telling point of view.
(4)
Biowares tries to solve the problem by carefully designing temptations. They create mini games, like collecting light/dark points or story points which have no or little impact on the player's performance.
Problem is that if those points have no effect at all, a lot of players ignore them. And as soon as they have some kind of effect, like slightly changing the character's appearance, they may already be too strong a temptation.
(5)
Will Bioware succeed? I doubt it. They may find some not completely terrible way to implement moral choices into a MMORPG, but I don't see how even a mildly satisfactory implementation is possible without moral choices affecting players, instead of NPCs, or having consequences that are not frequently reset. Resets and NPCs make the choices just not meaningful enough, to matter to our moral decision making.
Maybe Bioware should not try to actually implement moral choices, but rather encourage us to select some kind of moral alignment in the beginning and then incentivise us to maximize the corresponding points. This is the "embrace your enemy, if you cannot defeat him" - kind of solution.
It would work comparatively well, I think. But the reason is not that the 'choices' would actually be choices or even 'interesting decisions'. Rather, it would work well, because mindlessly succeeding at playing a good/bad guy is pleasing from a narrative point of view.
Of course, this doesn't work once the engame is reached and the narrative has ended. But SW:TOR's endgame will be a completely different game, anyway.
Finally, there's still the awkward problem of random players of different moral alignments playing together. For as far as I know, it's going to be like that: I meet a random stranger, we do an instance. We can either slaughter the innocents or save them. I select 'save them', he wants to slaughter them. We roll a dice. He wins. We slaughter the innocents. I get light side point. Yeah, right.
This never-inconvenience-the-player attitude creates a game that tastes like a worn-out chewing gum.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Need .. to .. streamline .. iterate ..
Lately I enjoy thinking about how to streamline games like WoW even more. It's partly an ironic endeavor, and partly quite interesting.
For instance, let's look at item progression systems. WoW uses the typical str/dex/end/hit/crit/... kind of system. It has already been streamlined a lot. Nowadays you can safely assume that any item with a higher item level is a good choice. There's a bit of reforging going on and you can min/max a bit, but most players just go for the higher item level.
Blizzard wanted it this way. They didn't want players to encounter a complex world that has not been fitted to their desires. They believed the forum posters who cried: "My chest has too much str and not enough dex, stupid Blizzard!!"
Now, if you ignore the bit of min/maxing, that only a few would describe as 'interesting decision making' anyway (you just load a web page to optimize your gear), we can indeed streamline this system without losing anything; and gain a lot!
Instead of increasing character power by increasing an item level, then calculating attributes for different speccs and then balancing it so that each specc does perform similarly, we could just increase the character's performance (dps, hps, survivability) continuously with the item level.
The attributes were severed from their simulation-roots long ago, anyway ("Oh, you are 2531 times as intelligent as I am, interesting!"). We gain a system that is very easy to balance, because everything depends on just one 'attribute', the item level. You gain item level to become more powerful. No designer has to think about e.g. which rotation profits more from str than from dex and how to balance accordingly.
On the other hand, this shows the trouble with Blizzard's purely iterative approach. Without a long-term vision for your game, you run into problems like this. It's like a slightly flawed local optimization algorithm working on a very complex game design possibility space with the vast majority of local optima not even near the global maximum. You might end up in blind alleys.
This, by the way, applies to all complex systems. It is no coincidence that one of the least flexible political systems has been one of the most successful in recent centuries. Regarding MMORPGs, as well as regarding political systems, it is important to understand that most things that seem good at first glance turn out to have serious side-effects.
What is problematic, of course, is if the environment starts to change. If the speed of technological change becomes ever faster, the optimal balance between conservation and progression is changed, too. I fear that's the root problem of many political systems today.
For instance, let's look at item progression systems. WoW uses the typical str/dex/end/hit/crit/... kind of system. It has already been streamlined a lot. Nowadays you can safely assume that any item with a higher item level is a good choice. There's a bit of reforging going on and you can min/max a bit, but most players just go for the higher item level.
Blizzard wanted it this way. They didn't want players to encounter a complex world that has not been fitted to their desires. They believed the forum posters who cried: "My chest has too much str and not enough dex, stupid Blizzard!!"
Now, if you ignore the bit of min/maxing, that only a few would describe as 'interesting decision making' anyway (you just load a web page to optimize your gear), we can indeed streamline this system without losing anything; and gain a lot!
Instead of increasing character power by increasing an item level, then calculating attributes for different speccs and then balancing it so that each specc does perform similarly, we could just increase the character's performance (dps, hps, survivability) continuously with the item level.
The attributes were severed from their simulation-roots long ago, anyway ("Oh, you are 2531 times as intelligent as I am, interesting!"). We gain a system that is very easy to balance, because everything depends on just one 'attribute', the item level. You gain item level to become more powerful. No designer has to think about e.g. which rotation profits more from str than from dex and how to balance accordingly.
On the other hand, this shows the trouble with Blizzard's purely iterative approach. Without a long-term vision for your game, you run into problems like this. It's like a slightly flawed local optimization algorithm working on a very complex game design possibility space with the vast majority of local optima not even near the global maximum. You might end up in blind alleys.
This, by the way, applies to all complex systems. It is no coincidence that one of the least flexible political systems has been one of the most successful in recent centuries. Regarding MMORPGs, as well as regarding political systems, it is important to understand that most things that seem good at first glance turn out to have serious side-effects.
What is problematic, of course, is if the environment starts to change. If the speed of technological change becomes ever faster, the optimal balance between conservation and progression is changed, too. I fear that's the root problem of many political systems today.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Martingales
They appeared in 18th century's Roulette. Let's ignore the bank for a second. You can bet on red or black numbers and the chance to be right is 50% for both. If you are right you gain 1€ for every 1€ you invested. If you lose, you lose everything.
Now, if you play once this is a pretty dangerous game, especially if you invest a lot of money. But you don't have to. In fact, you can use a betting strategy that will make it extremely likely that you will win money in the end. It is called Martingales.
It's not even hard:
1) Bet 1€ on any color. If you lose you ..
2) .. bet 2€ on any color. If you lose you ..
3) .. bet 4€ on any color. If you lose you ..
4) .. bet 8€ on any color. If you lose you ..
5) .. bet 16€ on any color ...
As long as you go on with this system you will always gain 1€ eventually.
For example, let's assume you lose four times in a row, but win the fifth game. You lose 1€+2€+4€+8€=15€. And you win 16€ in the fifth game; 1€ profit. More mathematically, 1+2+4+8...+N^2=(N+1)^2-1
Now, there's nothing that keeps you from starting the same with 1000€ instead of 1€. In that case you always win 1000€ eventually. Of course, casino owners know this. That's why they have a limit.
Let's assume you play with a limit of 100€. To reach the limit you need to lose seven times in a row: The probability of losing seven times in a row is 1/128. That means that on average your strategy is successful 127 times out of 128. And each of these 127 times you win exactly 1€ for a total profit of 127€. But once in 128 games you lose seven times in a row and can't continue, due to the limit. You lose 1+2+4+8+16+32+64=127€. So, on average you make 0€. In fact, it is mathematically proven that there is no strategy that changes the expected value. All you can do is change the structure of the risk; repackage the risk.
Now let's move to financial markets. Let's assume that you have no idea where the stock prices are going to go. So you start playing Martingale. You invest 10,000 €. If you lose, you double, if you win, you start again. Other people in the industry see that although the market is extremely volatile (they win/lose 50% of the time), you win all the time. Consequently they give you their money. This raises your limit. You make more money. A lot of money. Your peers recommend you, because you can turn a risky market into a safe market, it seems. The volatility of your hedge fond (or whatever legal construct you use to pay yourself a very high risk-free salary) is almost non-existent.
Unfortunately, some day, you lose some 20 times in a row. Now that was unlikely .. unfortunately you don't have enough money to double again, and thus, you lose it all. Every single cent.
Next time someone argues that an investment is safe because volatility is low, you hopefully know better.
Now, if you play once this is a pretty dangerous game, especially if you invest a lot of money. But you don't have to. In fact, you can use a betting strategy that will make it extremely likely that you will win money in the end. It is called Martingales.
It's not even hard:
1) Bet 1€ on any color. If you lose you ..
2) .. bet 2€ on any color. If you lose you ..
3) .. bet 4€ on any color. If you lose you ..
4) .. bet 8€ on any color. If you lose you ..
5) .. bet 16€ on any color ...
As long as you go on with this system you will always gain 1€ eventually.
For example, let's assume you lose four times in a row, but win the fifth game. You lose 1€+2€+4€+8€=15€. And you win 16€ in the fifth game; 1€ profit. More mathematically, 1+2+4+8...+N^2=(N+1)^2-1
Now, there's nothing that keeps you from starting the same with 1000€ instead of 1€. In that case you always win 1000€ eventually. Of course, casino owners know this. That's why they have a limit.
Let's assume you play with a limit of 100€. To reach the limit you need to lose seven times in a row: The probability of losing seven times in a row is 1/128. That means that on average your strategy is successful 127 times out of 128. And each of these 127 times you win exactly 1€ for a total profit of 127€. But once in 128 games you lose seven times in a row and can't continue, due to the limit. You lose 1+2+4+8+16+32+64=127€. So, on average you make 0€. In fact, it is mathematically proven that there is no strategy that changes the expected value. All you can do is change the structure of the risk; repackage the risk.
Now let's move to financial markets. Let's assume that you have no idea where the stock prices are going to go. So you start playing Martingale. You invest 10,000 €. If you lose, you double, if you win, you start again. Other people in the industry see that although the market is extremely volatile (they win/lose 50% of the time), you win all the time. Consequently they give you their money. This raises your limit. You make more money. A lot of money. Your peers recommend you, because you can turn a risky market into a safe market, it seems. The volatility of your hedge fond (or whatever legal construct you use to pay yourself a very high risk-free salary) is almost non-existent.
Unfortunately, some day, you lose some 20 times in a row. Now that was unlikely .. unfortunately you don't have enough money to double again, and thus, you lose it all. Every single cent.
Next time someone argues that an investment is safe because volatility is low, you hopefully know better.
The Reasonable President
I had some fun watching Obama's townhall meetings. Especially this one. Go fast forward to 42:10.
Firstly, the questioner is really good. Secondly, the answer to this question is probably the key to understanding this president. He honestly believes that just being reasonable and not playing any games at all is what he should do.
And, ironically, that makes him a rather good politician. In the US's two-party system there's just no acceptable alternative to him. Will this help him win the next election? It probably does. The votes he loses on the left don't go to his opponent, but the votes he gains in the center and, frankly, on the traditional republican territory not only help him, but weaken his opponent. Also, if left voters were reasonable, they would vote for him, anyway.
Most importantly, he pushes his opponents ever more right, the more he himself moves to the right. Mrs. Merkel governs similarly here in Germany. It leads to low popularity and certain reelection.
So, I don't think being reasonable the way he understands it is the worst reelection strategy. But it makes him a bad president. For some reason he assumes that telling people to become more reasonable helps. As if voters were reasonable. Churchill was right when he said:
By the way, apparently Churchill also said:
Unfortunately, as the reasonability-strategy turns into the unpopular, but rather effective become-your-opponent-to-defeat-him strategy, the country also loses something: A honest discussion of good ideas. I just read Mr. Stiglitz latest book. And I agree 80%. My guess is that the President also agrees 80%. But his reasonability-approach prevents the country from discussing good ideas. The public dabate is all about how bad/good republican ideas are, and nobody is talking about any other ideas. That's bad for America.
Firstly, the questioner is really good. Secondly, the answer to this question is probably the key to understanding this president. He honestly believes that just being reasonable and not playing any games at all is what he should do.
And, ironically, that makes him a rather good politician. In the US's two-party system there's just no acceptable alternative to him. Will this help him win the next election? It probably does. The votes he loses on the left don't go to his opponent, but the votes he gains in the center and, frankly, on the traditional republican territory not only help him, but weaken his opponent. Also, if left voters were reasonable, they would vote for him, anyway.
Most importantly, he pushes his opponents ever more right, the more he himself moves to the right. Mrs. Merkel governs similarly here in Germany. It leads to low popularity and certain reelection.
So, I don't think being reasonable the way he understands it is the worst reelection strategy. But it makes him a bad president. For some reason he assumes that telling people to become more reasonable helps. As if voters were reasonable. Churchill was right when he said:
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.Perhaps what the US needs is a change of the political system. The current one doesn't seem to be as efficient as it has been a hundred years ago.
By the way, apparently Churchill also said:
You can always count on Americans to do the right thing — after they’ve tried everything else.So, perhaps Americans will indeed elect one of those Republican candidates. The following years could be fun to watch - from afar.
Unfortunately, as the reasonability-strategy turns into the unpopular, but rather effective become-your-opponent-to-defeat-him strategy, the country also loses something: A honest discussion of good ideas. I just read Mr. Stiglitz latest book. And I agree 80%. My guess is that the President also agrees 80%. But his reasonability-approach prevents the country from discussing good ideas. The public dabate is all about how bad/good republican ideas are, and nobody is talking about any other ideas. That's bad for America.
You're welcome, Blizzard
Blizzard is once again looking at all options to make the LFD work. But, just like in the past, they are not radical enough. Here I present to you what will be needed to balance the LFD roles.
1) Don't allow non-tanks to pull mobs. Don't allow misguided individuals to cause a bad mood.
2) Always have mobs attack the tank, no matter what. Don't inconvenience the tank.
3) Don't allow any group of mobs to be pulled that is not in line. The dungeons are linear for a reason. Remove aggro ranges.
4) Add a minimum dps that is sufficient to beat the dungeon. This minimum dps magically removes the hitpoints from mobs in combat. The question should never be whether a group successfully finishes a dungeon, but only how fast. The worst possible group should not need more than about 15 minutes to beat a dungeon; your customers live busy lifes. Always encourage time investment, never enforce it.
5) Don't allow the mobs to kill the tank just because the healer doesn't heal him. Instead, tanks should become immune to damage when at about 10% life. Don't allow anybody, including the healer, to affect the tank's mood in a negative way. Rather, encourage the healer to keep the tank's health over 50% by increasing his chance at acquiring minipets/titles/beta invites/etc.
6) Add lots of messages that automatically pop up when a player's performance drops below average. Tell the player that it is your mistake and how sorry you are. Make the customer's computer download a 'hotfix' next time he starts the game.
7) Develop an AI that praises each player every few minutes. Make it appear as if the other players are the source. (You might think that players are too smart for this kind of thing, and you're right. But it makes them happy, anyway.)
And a general advise: in case that your customer numbers drop further I suggest to give out more legendaries.
Much luck, Blizzard !! Only a few more steps and paradise awaits!
1) Don't allow non-tanks to pull mobs. Don't allow misguided individuals to cause a bad mood.
2) Always have mobs attack the tank, no matter what. Don't inconvenience the tank.
3) Don't allow any group of mobs to be pulled that is not in line. The dungeons are linear for a reason. Remove aggro ranges.
4) Add a minimum dps that is sufficient to beat the dungeon. This minimum dps magically removes the hitpoints from mobs in combat. The question should never be whether a group successfully finishes a dungeon, but only how fast. The worst possible group should not need more than about 15 minutes to beat a dungeon; your customers live busy lifes. Always encourage time investment, never enforce it.
5) Don't allow the mobs to kill the tank just because the healer doesn't heal him. Instead, tanks should become immune to damage when at about 10% life. Don't allow anybody, including the healer, to affect the tank's mood in a negative way. Rather, encourage the healer to keep the tank's health over 50% by increasing his chance at acquiring minipets/titles/beta invites/etc.
6) Add lots of messages that automatically pop up when a player's performance drops below average. Tell the player that it is your mistake and how sorry you are. Make the customer's computer download a 'hotfix' next time he starts the game.
7) Develop an AI that praises each player every few minutes. Make it appear as if the other players are the source. (You might think that players are too smart for this kind of thing, and you're right. But it makes them happy, anyway.)
And a general advise: in case that your customer numbers drop further I suggest to give out more legendaries.
Much luck, Blizzard !! Only a few more steps and paradise awaits!
Friday, August 19, 2011
Guild Wars 2, Gamescom 2011
Here's the latest commented gameplay video of Guild Wars 2. Nice graphics, I think. Generally, a rather innovative game in a lot of ways, too. So I continue to plan to have a look into it when it is eventually released.
I won't say much about the gameplay, because the presentation was unable to tell me anything about how it feels to play GW2! Which leads me to what I want to say.
(1)
The commenter is a complete disaster. When you want to convince somebody about a product you don't compare yourself directly. You don't say "Isn't THIS awesome!? No other MMO does this!".
That's like saying: "I am richer than most guys you have ever met, which is why I am qualified to spend time with you this evening".
It's wrong for two reasons.
First, you want the audience to draw its own conclusions. To tell them what they have to think doesn't work. ... Unless you have the game magazine press in front of you and want to make it especially easy for them to "analyze" your product.
With customers that are not interested in writing about the game to make a living, but rather interested in playing the game, this just doesn't work.
Secondly, you want to behave as if extraordinary things are completely normal to you. To say "This really big dragon is actually one of our smaller ones", is like telling the job interview guy "Actually, I am even more awesome than I have just proven!".
(2)
Even ignoring the commenter, the whole presentation is set up the wrong way. I didn't get the feeling as if I were on some kind of adventure, instead I felt like a tourist and not really interested in anything. That's an inherent problem with current gameplay-presentations.
Generally, this kind of presentation is like showing one-minute-long snapshots of 20 different soccer games to prove to me how great soccer is at building tension.
Don't say what you want to prove, instead prove it! Or, at least, send an emotional message. Make me understand what playing Guild Wars 2 feels like.
(3)
Have a look at TV ads. For instance, if they want to sell you a car, they don't say "The new steering technology makes the car more dynamic. No other car company does it this way". Instead, they show you stuff like that*.
Now, you know that they are overexaggerating, of course. But they get an emotion across, instead of just bragging about it.
While a MMORPG TV ad should be similar to the linked one, a 45 minute presentation should, of course, be more truthful.
(4)
Current MMORPG presentations are set up as if by game designers for game designers, while cutting all the stuff game designers would actually be interested in.
The perfect MMORPG presentation feels as if your big brother plays this fascinating game that you don't really understand. Yet.
---
* Notice how this ad is about a succession of interesting decisions. More specifically, evading ground effects. Notice how you wonder how it will end. This curiosity makes you watch it until the end.
** Of course, if this ad were a MMORPG ad, the car would be showered in lightning effects and destroy the clouds with two-mile-long nuclear missiles that appear out of nowhere.
I won't say much about the gameplay, because the presentation was unable to tell me anything about how it feels to play GW2! Which leads me to what I want to say.
(1)
The commenter is a complete disaster. When you want to convince somebody about a product you don't compare yourself directly. You don't say "Isn't THIS awesome!? No other MMO does this!".
That's like saying: "I am richer than most guys you have ever met, which is why I am qualified to spend time with you this evening".
It's wrong for two reasons.
First, you want the audience to draw its own conclusions. To tell them what they have to think doesn't work. ... Unless you have the game magazine press in front of you and want to make it especially easy for them to "analyze" your product.
With customers that are not interested in writing about the game to make a living, but rather interested in playing the game, this just doesn't work.
Secondly, you want to behave as if extraordinary things are completely normal to you. To say "This really big dragon is actually one of our smaller ones", is like telling the job interview guy "Actually, I am even more awesome than I have just proven!".
(2)
Even ignoring the commenter, the whole presentation is set up the wrong way. I didn't get the feeling as if I were on some kind of adventure, instead I felt like a tourist and not really interested in anything. That's an inherent problem with current gameplay-presentations.
Generally, this kind of presentation is like showing one-minute-long snapshots of 20 different soccer games to prove to me how great soccer is at building tension.
Don't say what you want to prove, instead prove it! Or, at least, send an emotional message. Make me understand what playing Guild Wars 2 feels like.
(3)
Have a look at TV ads. For instance, if they want to sell you a car, they don't say "The new steering technology makes the car more dynamic. No other car company does it this way". Instead, they show you stuff like that*.
Now, you know that they are overexaggerating, of course. But they get an emotion across, instead of just bragging about it.
While a MMORPG TV ad should be similar to the linked one, a 45 minute presentation should, of course, be more truthful.
(4)
Current MMORPG presentations are set up as if by game designers for game designers, while cutting all the stuff game designers would actually be interested in.
The perfect MMORPG presentation feels as if your big brother plays this fascinating game that you don't really understand. Yet.
---
* Notice how this ad is about a succession of interesting decisions. More specifically, evading ground effects. Notice how you wonder how it will end. This curiosity makes you watch it until the end.
** Of course, if this ad were a MMORPG ad, the car would be showered in lightning effects and destroy the clouds with two-mile-long nuclear missiles that appear out of nowhere.
WoW Threat
Removing threat from WoW. Oh, this is just silly. I don't even think it's necessarily a bad idea. But I lose all respect for this WoW team. Once again, they seem more driven by the 'unforeseen' consequences of their past actions than by conscious game design.
Oh Blizzard! Why don't you just make a new game when you want to make a new game !?
Oh Blizzard! Why don't you just make a new game when you want to make a new game !?
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
An Anthem
Reading lots of news about lots of different opinions about Europe's future, I eventually stumbled over Europe's anthem.
That's right, we actually have one ;)
Naturally I tried to find some music videos. That wasn't at all easy. At first I found this guy. Now, that wouldn't even be all that bad, if he hadn't recorded himself on video. Perhaps, in the far future people will look back on our age and determine that this kind of video was characteristic; I hope not.
Anyway, I continued my search and really couldn't find the English version being performed by a professional. So I will link you to the original German version.
However fitting it may seem to have an European anthem with German text, it's not a good idea, in my opinion. Anyway, you might want to know what the text actually says. That's a challenge even if German is your mother tongue.
At first I found this. Oh my god! That's actually funny!
Eventually, I found a nice German/English translation of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Enjoy ;)
That's right, we actually have one ;)
Naturally I tried to find some music videos. That wasn't at all easy. At first I found this guy. Now, that wouldn't even be all that bad, if he hadn't recorded himself on video. Perhaps, in the far future people will look back on our age and determine that this kind of video was characteristic; I hope not.
Anyway, I continued my search and really couldn't find the English version being performed by a professional. So I will link you to the original German version.
However fitting it may seem to have an European anthem with German text, it's not a good idea, in my opinion. Anyway, you might want to know what the text actually says. That's a challenge even if German is your mother tongue.
At first I found this. Oh my god! That's actually funny!
Eventually, I found a nice German/English translation of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Enjoy ;)
Monday, August 15, 2011
Are Aventurine reading this blog ?
Aventurine produces Darkfall. A game I never played, but always observed.
Now they are about to release Darkfall 2.0, which is considered a new game. I think that's a good idea. Reading some of the changes, I found myself laughing.
Now, if that isn't my role system. The "What you wear is what you are" idea. The transfer of EVE Online to a fantasy MMORPG !
Well done, Aventurine! And thanks for testing my idea ... Is it actually possible to copyright such ideas ? ;)
Now they are about to release Darkfall 2.0, which is considered a new game. I think that's a good idea. Reading some of the changes, I found myself laughing.
Character skill set customization and role selection through the implementation of Darkfall’s new armor system and through attribute boost via achievements: What armor you wear greatly affects which skills you can use effectively and it makes others ineffective. You’re highly specialized in one role making your character extremely efficient and effective in that role. The major attribute boost works exponentially to give your character access to special items and weapons setting him further apart from the hybrids.
New skills are going to be added, and redundant ones will be removed from the game.
Skill and attribute gains have changed considerably. If a new player focuses on a single role, he will excel at that role in a relatively short time frame through casual play. More options and more roles will become available to him. Players can use one specialization at a time however.
Now, if that isn't my role system. The "What you wear is what you are" idea. The transfer of EVE Online to a fantasy MMORPG !
Well done, Aventurine! And thanks for testing my idea ... Is it actually possible to copyright such ideas ? ;)
Warren Buffett on Taxes
Today Warren Buffett published an article on taxes.
He starts with his own example:
He continues by refusing the notion that higher taxes make people invest less or even differently:
He closes by telling his reader that the super-rich are mostly quite willing to pay higher taxes:
If that were an MMORPG, people would comment that nobody keeps him from giving money to the government if he wants to. Just like nobody keeps you from walking instead of teleporting, from looking for a group instead of using LFD or from refusing epics if you want them to be rare to you. Luckily real life is still a bit more serious than MMORPGs (not much).
On taxing capital gains: many people argue that capital gains should not be taxed or that it's good that they are taxed at 15% in the US, because the money has already been taxed before. Mr. Buffett disagrees, and so do I. While the money one invests has already been taxed, the capital gains, the interest or dividend one gains, has not been taxed. And it should be taxed like any other income, because that's exactly what it is.
Investors work hard to find out where to invest the money. In return they earn capital gains. Other people work hard to repair bridges. In return they earn income. There are differences, but none that justify a different tax rate.
On taxes and jobs: an investor is constantly on the lookout for good opportunities. He invests in the best opportunities he can find. If all these opportunities look X% less profitable, this doesn't change his behavior. Keep X reasonable, please. Of course 100% or 99% might change his behavior, but if X = 0%, 15% or X = 50% this really doesn't change his behavior.
And this is true for almost all income taxes. Only very few people would work less if you tax them more. In fact, some people would work more, because they had to, to keep their standard of living. Most taxpayers, especially wealthy people, don't work for money in the first place. They work for prestige and to prevent boredom. They use the money they earn to compare themselves to others, just like everybody else. If everybody pays the same tax rate, the results of this comparison remain unchanged.
He starts with his own example:
Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.
He continues by refusing the notion that higher taxes make people invest less or even differently:
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, tax rates for the rich were far higher, and my percentage rate was in the middle of the pack. According to a theory I sometimes hear, I should have thrown a fit and refused to invest because of the elevated tax rates on capital gains and dividends.
I didn’t refuse, nor did others. I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain.
He closes by telling his reader that the super-rich are mostly quite willing to pay higher taxes:
I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.
If that were an MMORPG, people would comment that nobody keeps him from giving money to the government if he wants to. Just like nobody keeps you from walking instead of teleporting, from looking for a group instead of using LFD or from refusing epics if you want them to be rare to you. Luckily real life is still a bit more serious than MMORPGs (not much).
On taxing capital gains: many people argue that capital gains should not be taxed or that it's good that they are taxed at 15% in the US, because the money has already been taxed before. Mr. Buffett disagrees, and so do I. While the money one invests has already been taxed, the capital gains, the interest or dividend one gains, has not been taxed. And it should be taxed like any other income, because that's exactly what it is.
Investors work hard to find out where to invest the money. In return they earn capital gains. Other people work hard to repair bridges. In return they earn income. There are differences, but none that justify a different tax rate.
On taxes and jobs: an investor is constantly on the lookout for good opportunities. He invests in the best opportunities he can find. If all these opportunities look X% less profitable, this doesn't change his behavior. Keep X reasonable, please. Of course 100% or 99% might change his behavior, but if X = 0%, 15% or X = 50% this really doesn't change his behavior.
And this is true for almost all income taxes. Only very few people would work less if you tax them more. In fact, some people would work more, because they had to, to keep their standard of living. Most taxpayers, especially wealthy people, don't work for money in the first place. They work for prestige and to prevent boredom. They use the money they earn to compare themselves to others, just like everybody else. If everybody pays the same tax rate, the results of this comparison remain unchanged.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
The Future of the European Union
I've made similar posts before and I am glad to say that I have not been wrong so far *grin*. However, I haven't been as precise as I will be in this post, I think.
Right now I am quite confident that I can predict three precise scenarios of the future of the European Union, more specifically of the European Monetary Union, the Euro.
(1)
This is the least likely scenario. The large Mediterranean countries, Italy, Spain and France, consolidate their finances. A low, but stable economic growth sets in. China continues to grow fast for at least the next 10 years (unlikely). With support of all institutions, including the ECB, speculators are less and less able to create panic. Eventually the crisis will be over and Europe will mostly look like it looked five years ago.
(2)
This is the second likely scenario. The crisis hits us hard within the next 18 months. Germany has to choose between chaos and Eurobonds. In this scenario our current government, supported by most of the opposition, will draw all jokers and push through Eurobonds, no matter what the population thinks about it. This may be political suicide for the currently governing (conservative) parties, but it will instantly solve the current crisis.
If badly done it will also create a lot of moral hazard that will come back a decade later and kick our asses. Anyway, the current crisis is solved by Eurobonds. In fact, Europeans will find out that the interest rates for the Eurobonds will be as low as the one for U.S. bonds, because it just doesn't make sense to speculate against the Titanic while you are on it. U.S. bonds' interest rates would, however, raise slightly, because there's suddenly an alternative. In my opinion, this is the best scenario. Most people would agree with me a few years later.
(3)
This is the most likely scenario, unfortunately. Somehow the crisis is held at bay with the help of the ECB and inflation. However, it lingers in the background for years to come. Eventually it will turn out that one of the large Mediterranean countries is insolvent. However, the long time that has passed, has allowed many Euro-sceptic parties to take seat in the national parliaments. They will not introduce Eurobonds, because that's the prime reason they have been elected by an ignorant population. The monetary union will dissolve and economic consequences around the world will be drastic. Germany's GDP temporarily drops by 20-30%. Political consequences are unpredictable. A third European/world war, however, is impossible due to globalized trade.
We return to the patchwork landscape Europe is famous for. Two decades later most European countries have a nice standard of living, maybe even higher than under scenario (2). European influence on global politics, however, shrinks to an all-time low and remains there for the rest of the century.
One word about a potential forth scenario that includes the creation of a northern European monetary union or the forceful exclusion of Greece. This scenario would cause great harm to all Mediterranean countries and serious harm to the rest of the world; it would transform Greece into a third world country.
Most Germans think that Greece only has to blame itself. That may be so. However, after starting two world/European wars, Germany would never want to have this on its conscience. Historians would rightfully note that Germany blew up the European project. It's morally unacceptable - unthinkable.
A northern European monetary union might be created in the aftermath of scenario (3). But that's pure speculation.
Scenario (2) is the current direction of German media. Even traditionally euro-sceptic newspapers are reassessing the potential of Eurobonds. It is also for reasons of pride that I favour it.
No matter what happens, this is the world's history in the making!
---
* Note: A "Eurobond" within the context of this crisis is a bond that is issued and guaranteed by all countries inside the Eurozone. That is how the newspapers use the term. Wikipedia defines the term differently.
Right now I am quite confident that I can predict three precise scenarios of the future of the European Union, more specifically of the European Monetary Union, the Euro.
(1)
This is the least likely scenario. The large Mediterranean countries, Italy, Spain and France, consolidate their finances. A low, but stable economic growth sets in. China continues to grow fast for at least the next 10 years (unlikely). With support of all institutions, including the ECB, speculators are less and less able to create panic. Eventually the crisis will be over and Europe will mostly look like it looked five years ago.
(2)
This is the second likely scenario. The crisis hits us hard within the next 18 months. Germany has to choose between chaos and Eurobonds. In this scenario our current government, supported by most of the opposition, will draw all jokers and push through Eurobonds, no matter what the population thinks about it. This may be political suicide for the currently governing (conservative) parties, but it will instantly solve the current crisis.
If badly done it will also create a lot of moral hazard that will come back a decade later and kick our asses. Anyway, the current crisis is solved by Eurobonds. In fact, Europeans will find out that the interest rates for the Eurobonds will be as low as the one for U.S. bonds, because it just doesn't make sense to speculate against the Titanic while you are on it. U.S. bonds' interest rates would, however, raise slightly, because there's suddenly an alternative. In my opinion, this is the best scenario. Most people would agree with me a few years later.
(3)
This is the most likely scenario, unfortunately. Somehow the crisis is held at bay with the help of the ECB and inflation. However, it lingers in the background for years to come. Eventually it will turn out that one of the large Mediterranean countries is insolvent. However, the long time that has passed, has allowed many Euro-sceptic parties to take seat in the national parliaments. They will not introduce Eurobonds, because that's the prime reason they have been elected by an ignorant population. The monetary union will dissolve and economic consequences around the world will be drastic. Germany's GDP temporarily drops by 20-30%. Political consequences are unpredictable. A third European/world war, however, is impossible due to globalized trade.
We return to the patchwork landscape Europe is famous for. Two decades later most European countries have a nice standard of living, maybe even higher than under scenario (2). European influence on global politics, however, shrinks to an all-time low and remains there for the rest of the century.
One word about a potential forth scenario that includes the creation of a northern European monetary union or the forceful exclusion of Greece. This scenario would cause great harm to all Mediterranean countries and serious harm to the rest of the world; it would transform Greece into a third world country.
Most Germans think that Greece only has to blame itself. That may be so. However, after starting two world/European wars, Germany would never want to have this on its conscience. Historians would rightfully note that Germany blew up the European project. It's morally unacceptable - unthinkable.
A northern European monetary union might be created in the aftermath of scenario (3). But that's pure speculation.
Scenario (2) is the current direction of German media. Even traditionally euro-sceptic newspapers are reassessing the potential of Eurobonds. It is also for reasons of pride that I favour it.
No matter what happens, this is the world's history in the making!
---
* Note: A "Eurobond" within the context of this crisis is a bond that is issued and guaranteed by all countries inside the Eurozone. That is how the newspapers use the term. Wikipedia defines the term differently.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Insuring your Neighbor's House
(1)
Imagine you want to insure yourself against your house burning to the ground. How do you do that? Well, in a free market you buy a contract from a financial institution.
The contract says:
"Institution X pays the owner of this contract 100.000 Euros should house Y burn down."
This is great for both of you! Institution X probably can take the risk that your house Y might in fact burn down. And you couldn't bear that risk. That's why you just payed money to get that contract. Instead of having a 99% chance of not going bankrupt and a 1% chance of going bankrupt, you pay a small fee so that you can never go bankrupt.
Wonderful free markets at work!
Actually you might also want to buy that contract for your neighbor's house. Why? Well, perhaps because you are pretty sure that his house is going to burn down soon ...
And we see: Insurance is great, as long as you own what you insure ..
(2)
Imagine you have a lot of money. And you want more money. Now, you could insure yourself against French bonds becoming worthless (France going bankrupt). Luckily somebody has created a contract:
The contract says:
"Institution X pays the owner of this contract 1 Mio Dollars should French bonds become worthless."
Let's assume you buy lots and lots of these contracts. Now, you already bought French bonds over a long time. But you're not stupid. Of course you don't want to own French bonds, anymore. In fact, you sell all of them; at the same time!
French bonds drop by 5% due to this. A lot of people see that and, since they are nervous for other reasons, they sell, too.
Due to that drop a lot more people want to insure themselves against the bonds becoming worthless. And they are willing to pay more money to buy the contracts.
Now, you lost a limited amount of money by first buying the French bonds over a long time and then selling them all at once at up to 5% less. But you also gain a lot of money from selling the insurance contracts. And this money is without limit. You could have bought as many of these contracts as you desired!
And that's why insurance papers, like Credit Default Swaps (CDS), are great as long as the owner owns what he insures, but terrible, if he does not. I'm not the first guy to find out. Warren Buffet called CDS "financial weapons of mass destruction". .. in 2003!
(3)
Why am I unable to buy insurance contracts for my neighbor's house? Because no sane institution would sell me papers that insured my neighbor's house. Just like no institution offers insurance against divorce. And that's the difference between these two markets.
The institutions that create bond-insuring contracts are actually performing terribly (banks, for example). But the people in charge do great. They make great money from selling the contracts and should the insured event occur, the government saves their employer with tax-dollars.
Hell - and even if not! They just got their bonus for selling a million contracts. Moral hazard at work.
Imagine you want to insure yourself against your house burning to the ground. How do you do that? Well, in a free market you buy a contract from a financial institution.
The contract says:
"Institution X pays the owner of this contract 100.000 Euros should house Y burn down."
This is great for both of you! Institution X probably can take the risk that your house Y might in fact burn down. And you couldn't bear that risk. That's why you just payed money to get that contract. Instead of having a 99% chance of not going bankrupt and a 1% chance of going bankrupt, you pay a small fee so that you can never go bankrupt.
Wonderful free markets at work!
Actually you might also want to buy that contract for your neighbor's house. Why? Well, perhaps because you are pretty sure that his house is going to burn down soon ...
And we see: Insurance is great, as long as you own what you insure ..
(2)
Imagine you have a lot of money. And you want more money. Now, you could insure yourself against French bonds becoming worthless (France going bankrupt). Luckily somebody has created a contract:
The contract says:
"Institution X pays the owner of this contract 1 Mio Dollars should French bonds become worthless."
Let's assume you buy lots and lots of these contracts. Now, you already bought French bonds over a long time. But you're not stupid. Of course you don't want to own French bonds, anymore. In fact, you sell all of them; at the same time!
French bonds drop by 5% due to this. A lot of people see that and, since they are nervous for other reasons, they sell, too.
Due to that drop a lot more people want to insure themselves against the bonds becoming worthless. And they are willing to pay more money to buy the contracts.
Now, you lost a limited amount of money by first buying the French bonds over a long time and then selling them all at once at up to 5% less. But you also gain a lot of money from selling the insurance contracts. And this money is without limit. You could have bought as many of these contracts as you desired!
And that's why insurance papers, like Credit Default Swaps (CDS), are great as long as the owner owns what he insures, but terrible, if he does not. I'm not the first guy to find out. Warren Buffet called CDS "financial weapons of mass destruction". .. in 2003!
(3)
Why am I unable to buy insurance contracts for my neighbor's house? Because no sane institution would sell me papers that insured my neighbor's house. Just like no institution offers insurance against divorce. And that's the difference between these two markets.
The institutions that create bond-insuring contracts are actually performing terribly (banks, for example). But the people in charge do great. They make great money from selling the contracts and should the insured event occur, the government saves their employer with tax-dollars.
Hell - and even if not! They just got their bonus for selling a million contracts. Moral hazard at work.
The Mana Mechanic
In the far past magic was considered to be more powerful than non-magic. Unfortunately this lead to too many players wanting to play magic users. Thus, if a fantasy story was to be transfered into a game setting, and if the game designer wanted to allow everybody to potentially play a magic user, he had to balance magic.
Mana is the traditional choice. The magic user can be more powerful than non-magic users, but he exhausts very fast. This was a simple mechanic with a reasonable simulation aspect that introduced interesting decisions in table-top RPGs. Great.
Unfortunately it doesn't really work with modern MMORPGs. The problem is mostly with PvP. (But while raiding the mechanic is problematic, as well). The fact that dying in most PvP mini-games (like battlegrounds) is mostly meaningless, makes the mana mechanic useless.
If the magic user were overpowered while he has mana and underpowered while he has no mana, the result would be a very boring battleground: The magic user would defeat non-magic users until he is out-of-mana, at which point he is defeated by somebody else. Revive. Repeat. Very boring.
Because game designers nowadays cannot (are not allowed to) think out-of-the-box, they didn't replace the mechanic, but iterated it over the last decade. This lead to magic users that have almost infinite amounts of mana and are actually balanced while they have mana. Should they run out-of-mana, they are extremely underpowered, but since this almost never happens, it's not a problem.
This is an unnecessarily complicated mechanic that doesn't introduce interesting decisions and doesn't even balance powerful magic. If you could play a PvP-specced mage in a WoW battleground who had endless amounts of mana, you wouldn't feel a difference, really.
Ok, you could try to arcane-blast everything to death. But actually .. isn't that what's happening and forcing Blizzard to re-balance arcane blast all the time? If a mage were balanced while fighting in a mana-saving way, he were overpowered, because he could just as well fight in a non-mana-saving way. And, of course, most mages would do just that. Which would cause lots and lots of complaining about OP mages in the forums. And this wouldn't even be unreasonable.
The mana mechanic doesn't work in a PvP game that has 30s respawns. It requires harsh death penalties (remember tabletops!) to work. Thus, we could either introduce harsher death penalties, or we could use a different magic system.
Mana is the traditional choice. The magic user can be more powerful than non-magic users, but he exhausts very fast. This was a simple mechanic with a reasonable simulation aspect that introduced interesting decisions in table-top RPGs. Great.
Unfortunately it doesn't really work with modern MMORPGs. The problem is mostly with PvP. (But while raiding the mechanic is problematic, as well). The fact that dying in most PvP mini-games (like battlegrounds) is mostly meaningless, makes the mana mechanic useless.
If the magic user were overpowered while he has mana and underpowered while he has no mana, the result would be a very boring battleground: The magic user would defeat non-magic users until he is out-of-mana, at which point he is defeated by somebody else. Revive. Repeat. Very boring.
Because game designers nowadays cannot (are not allowed to) think out-of-the-box, they didn't replace the mechanic, but iterated it over the last decade. This lead to magic users that have almost infinite amounts of mana and are actually balanced while they have mana. Should they run out-of-mana, they are extremely underpowered, but since this almost never happens, it's not a problem.
This is an unnecessarily complicated mechanic that doesn't introduce interesting decisions and doesn't even balance powerful magic. If you could play a PvP-specced mage in a WoW battleground who had endless amounts of mana, you wouldn't feel a difference, really.
Ok, you could try to arcane-blast everything to death. But actually .. isn't that what's happening and forcing Blizzard to re-balance arcane blast all the time? If a mage were balanced while fighting in a mana-saving way, he were overpowered, because he could just as well fight in a non-mana-saving way. And, of course, most mages would do just that. Which would cause lots and lots of complaining about OP mages in the forums. And this wouldn't even be unreasonable.
The mana mechanic doesn't work in a PvP game that has 30s respawns. It requires harsh death penalties (remember tabletops!) to work. Thus, we could either introduce harsher death penalties, or we could use a different magic system.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
The Crisis of Credit
This video is two years old and nowadays we have different problems. But it is a masterpiece at explaining the most important reason for the 2008/2009 crisis.
Do you know similar videos for the current crises?
Do you know similar videos for the current crises?
Friday, August 5, 2011
Funny, ...
... if it weren't your money ...
http://aktien-boersen.blogspot.com/2010/05/crash-emotionen-live-mitschnitt-vom.html
I was remembered of this.
http://aktien-boersen.blogspot.com/2010/05/crash-emotionen-live-mitschnitt-vom.html
I was remembered of this.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
When Compromise Fails
We're in trouble. I'm saying this for quite some time now. Certainly I feel like being in trouble after watching part of my money melt at 0.3% the hour today. Was a hell of a lot of fun !
.. Europeans are great at compromise. We can get 17 parties at a table with 17 different opinions and walk out pretending that the found solution, while not the best, is good enough. According to U.S. media we live in paradise.
And in many respects we are. But sometimes every now and then there's a problem that cannot be solved with compromise.
.. The U.S. debt crisis is not such a problem. All parties agree that debt has to be reduced and the question is just what has to be cut and what (whether, lol) taxes have to be raised. You can find any compromise here and it's (comparatively) ok. Sure, if you don't do anything you obliterate yourself, but anything else is (kind of) a solution.
The European debt crisis is different. There are two opposed positions and a third way that is the 'compromise'. Unfortunately, that third way is by far the worst. Not just for Europe, but every single human on this planet.
Solution #1 is to create a European Super-state; most powerful economic zone on Earth. Sounds great - but not everybody likes that. It means that Germans have to pay for Greek debt. And there are a lot of institutional problems to be solved. We need some kind of constitution, right? Future moral hazard has to be prevented. We would need to have elections.
Getting something like this right is not easy and it does take a lot of time, even if all parties agreed. Of course, they don't. And we don't have time.
Solution #2 is to split the Euro Zone up again. This is a bit easier to do from an institutional point of view. Unfortunately, it also means that a lot of banks go bankrupt and this would probably lead to a world-wide second great depression. But at least this process could be organized.
And then there's the compromise: We chain ourselves together and at the same time split up ... yeah, right.
Now, this is just as bad as doing nothing! The parliaments of countries like Germany, Netherlands, Austria or Finland might soon not allow their governments to spend the peoples' money at the necessary rate to save Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain or Italy. And if that happens we have numerous unorganized bankruptcies. This will also lead to a second great depression. Just that we would probably have to invent a new name for this kind of crisis.
Right now, we are going straight for the third way; the holy compromise. But not all problems can be solved by compromise .. We need a tea party: a party that somehow manages to push the own agenda through - any agenda - in a totally undemocratic way.
.. Europeans are great at compromise. We can get 17 parties at a table with 17 different opinions and walk out pretending that the found solution, while not the best, is good enough. According to U.S. media we live in paradise.
And in many respects we are. But sometimes every now and then there's a problem that cannot be solved with compromise.
.. The U.S. debt crisis is not such a problem. All parties agree that debt has to be reduced and the question is just what has to be cut and what (whether, lol) taxes have to be raised. You can find any compromise here and it's (comparatively) ok. Sure, if you don't do anything you obliterate yourself, but anything else is (kind of) a solution.
The European debt crisis is different. There are two opposed positions and a third way that is the 'compromise'. Unfortunately, that third way is by far the worst. Not just for Europe, but every single human on this planet.
Solution #1 is to create a European Super-state; most powerful economic zone on Earth. Sounds great - but not everybody likes that. It means that Germans have to pay for Greek debt. And there are a lot of institutional problems to be solved. We need some kind of constitution, right? Future moral hazard has to be prevented. We would need to have elections.
Getting something like this right is not easy and it does take a lot of time, even if all parties agreed. Of course, they don't. And we don't have time.
Solution #2 is to split the Euro Zone up again. This is a bit easier to do from an institutional point of view. Unfortunately, it also means that a lot of banks go bankrupt and this would probably lead to a world-wide second great depression. But at least this process could be organized.
And then there's the compromise: We chain ourselves together and at the same time split up ... yeah, right.
Now, this is just as bad as doing nothing! The parliaments of countries like Germany, Netherlands, Austria or Finland might soon not allow their governments to spend the peoples' money at the necessary rate to save Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain or Italy. And if that happens we have numerous unorganized bankruptcies. This will also lead to a second great depression. Just that we would probably have to invent a new name for this kind of crisis.
Right now, we are going straight for the third way; the holy compromise. But not all problems can be solved by compromise .. We need a tea party: a party that somehow manages to push the own agenda through - any agenda - in a totally undemocratic way.
Diablo 3 RMT, again
I am running out of titles. The more I think about Blizzard's 'new' RMT solution, the more fascinated I am.
Just a few moments ago I found myself thinking:
"Imagine you find this Pet-Of-Überness while you play hardcore mode. Wouldn't it suck to not be able to sell it?"
Remember, I usually hate RMT in games. And still, the idea that you can actually make money by skillful and serious playing is fascinating me. Even though I hate myself for it.
We all consider ourselves skillful and serious players - otherwise we wouldn't read/write MMO blogs. Actually, most of us probably are skilled, because to become skilled in games you mostly need to be motivated and invest a lot of time. And that's what those who read/write gaming blogs do.
But my point is: if even I think along these lines, imagine the average guy ..
I have a feeling (fear) that Diablo 3 is going to be the next business-defining game made by Blizzard. Respect.
Forget the old microtransactions. The new system is light-years better for making money. In the past, many players had problems justifying the time they spent in games. Especially if they were married. But now, suddenly, they can make a bit of money while playing, while the single upper-middleclass guy can finally spend all that money that he can't get rid of during his 50-hours work-week.
Didn't it suck in the past that you earned so much money working your day job and couldn't benefit from it in your daily hobby? If Diablo 3 is a Blizzard quality game with this kind of RMT, it will hit like a bomb, I think.
The traditional microtransactions felt too much like an outside intrusion. The money-making scam that selling virtual items is, left too much of a bad taste in most peoples' mouth. Buying virtual items felt wasteful and was only going to make the company rich although creating the virtual item doesn't cost anything.
But the D3 RMT feels not so much like a scam. The $-AH just redistributes the items that have been found in the game. And that small fee Blizzard wants feels totally ok.
And items are never overpriced - by definition. You are just stupid if you let other players fool you. No way to blame Blizzard.
And it's more than just a game. If you never buy anything, you will be able to earn a bit of money. And rather consistently! That's more than just a game. It is some hobby that can make you money (even if you end up paying more than you earn - the feeling matters).
In the past we were addicted to advancing our characters - finding that one über-cool item. In the future we will be addicted to advancing our finances. This is the oldest business in the world. And it works so damn well that it is heavily regulated nowadays - even in unlikely places like the U.S. !
The possibility to earn money (even if it's just a theoretical possibility) is a game changer, literally!
Unfortunately, Blizzard shares are listed in dollars. What do I want with dollars ?
Just a few moments ago I found myself thinking:
"Imagine you find this Pet-Of-Überness while you play hardcore mode. Wouldn't it suck to not be able to sell it?"
Remember, I usually hate RMT in games. And still, the idea that you can actually make money by skillful and serious playing is fascinating me. Even though I hate myself for it.
We all consider ourselves skillful and serious players - otherwise we wouldn't read/write MMO blogs. Actually, most of us probably are skilled, because to become skilled in games you mostly need to be motivated and invest a lot of time. And that's what those who read/write gaming blogs do.
But my point is: if even I think along these lines, imagine the average guy ..
I have a feeling (fear) that Diablo 3 is going to be the next business-defining game made by Blizzard. Respect.
Forget the old microtransactions. The new system is light-years better for making money. In the past, many players had problems justifying the time they spent in games. Especially if they were married. But now, suddenly, they can make a bit of money while playing, while the single upper-middleclass guy can finally spend all that money that he can't get rid of during his 50-hours work-week.
Didn't it suck in the past that you earned so much money working your day job and couldn't benefit from it in your daily hobby? If Diablo 3 is a Blizzard quality game with this kind of RMT, it will hit like a bomb, I think.
The traditional microtransactions felt too much like an outside intrusion. The money-making scam that selling virtual items is, left too much of a bad taste in most peoples' mouth. Buying virtual items felt wasteful and was only going to make the company rich although creating the virtual item doesn't cost anything.
But the D3 RMT feels not so much like a scam. The $-AH just redistributes the items that have been found in the game. And that small fee Blizzard wants feels totally ok.
And items are never overpriced - by definition. You are just stupid if you let other players fool you. No way to blame Blizzard.
And it's more than just a game. If you never buy anything, you will be able to earn a bit of money. And rather consistently! That's more than just a game. It is some hobby that can make you money (even if you end up paying more than you earn - the feeling matters).
In the past we were addicted to advancing our characters - finding that one über-cool item. In the future we will be addicted to advancing our finances. This is the oldest business in the world. And it works so damn well that it is heavily regulated nowadays - even in unlikely places like the U.S. !
The possibility to earn money (even if it's just a theoretical possibility) is a game changer, literally!
Unfortunately, Blizzard shares are listed in dollars. What do I want with dollars ?
Diablo 3 RMT Prices
What will Diablo 3 RMT prices be?
Well, most players, even if they put most of what they find into the $-AH, will make almost no money. If any at all. Some hardcore players will make a few dollars. Some really hardcore players will make a few hundred dollars.
But only some lucky players will make a thousand and more. You will not be one of them.
At all time there will be many items on the $-AH that go for $20-$80. If not, all market research of microtransaction companies has been wrong. It will be interesting to find out whether they were right. I think they could ask more than just $80 for a monocle.
Now, if Blizzard is serious about the amount of revenue they make with fees, they will do everything they can to prevent those 5% of the players, who are willing to pay money, from running out of reasons to do so.
There are two ways to accomplish this: Either some items are incredibly rare, or we get WoW-like tiers of items.
"Incredibly rare" items means so rare, that your chance to find one is so small that it is safe to assume that you will never find one, no matter how much you play. Therefore, the only players to ever own one are the ones who really spend massive amounts of money on the game. And after they did this, they stop spending money.
Now, Blizzard will argue that it is not fair that the best items go only to the richest player. What they really think, of course, is that they don't want the richest players to only ever buy an item once. And so we will get a tiered system like WoW.
With a tiered system the richest players will be encouraged to buy the best items again and again every few months! And it's even more fair, is it not? See how RMT is not just a business model, but changes the game ?
---
About immersion and stuff. I really don't find this kind of $-AH as bad as normal microtransactions. To know that every item has a history inside the game is just great. Sure, it's much worse than a game in which characters got what they have due to in-game actions. But if you really desperately want RMT, do it this way.
---
What I don't really understand is how Blizzard expects to get through with this legally. Fact of the matter is that playing Diablo 3 will be as difficult as using a slot machine. And if you're lucky you can get a lot of money that less lucky players put into the machine. .. That's gambling ..
Well, most players, even if they put most of what they find into the $-AH, will make almost no money. If any at all. Some hardcore players will make a few dollars. Some really hardcore players will make a few hundred dollars.
But only some lucky players will make a thousand and more. You will not be one of them.
At all time there will be many items on the $-AH that go for $20-$80. If not, all market research of microtransaction companies has been wrong. It will be interesting to find out whether they were right. I think they could ask more than just $80 for a monocle.
Now, if Blizzard is serious about the amount of revenue they make with fees, they will do everything they can to prevent those 5% of the players, who are willing to pay money, from running out of reasons to do so.
There are two ways to accomplish this: Either some items are incredibly rare, or we get WoW-like tiers of items.
"Incredibly rare" items means so rare, that your chance to find one is so small that it is safe to assume that you will never find one, no matter how much you play. Therefore, the only players to ever own one are the ones who really spend massive amounts of money on the game. And after they did this, they stop spending money.
Now, Blizzard will argue that it is not fair that the best items go only to the richest player. What they really think, of course, is that they don't want the richest players to only ever buy an item once. And so we will get a tiered system like WoW.
With a tiered system the richest players will be encouraged to buy the best items again and again every few months! And it's even more fair, is it not? See how RMT is not just a business model, but changes the game ?
---
About immersion and stuff. I really don't find this kind of $-AH as bad as normal microtransactions. To know that every item has a history inside the game is just great. Sure, it's much worse than a game in which characters got what they have due to in-game actions. But if you really desperately want RMT, do it this way.
---
What I don't really understand is how Blizzard expects to get through with this legally. Fact of the matter is that playing Diablo 3 will be as difficult as using a slot machine. And if you're lucky you can get a lot of money that less lucky players put into the machine. .. That's gambling ..
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Eve Online Lessons Learned
CCP has published a nice dev blog.
Among other things there are Lessons Learnt. Most of these apply to any game.
Among other things there are Lessons Learnt. Most of these apply to any game.
Having to do something tedious every day before you can actually play the game is not cool.
As a dev, doing something just "because it would be cool/neat/awesome" is always a bad idea and will come back to bite you later.
Cost is a useful variable to tune but an unwise thing to rely on to enforce scarcity or balance - players will always be richer than you think.
Making something tedious will not stop players doing it if it's very clearly the best option. They'll do it, and they'll hate it.
People like to do one-stop shopping, and will "go to Jita" for everything unless doing so is comparatively very inconvenient.
Diablo 3 RMT Details
(link)If I no longer need an item I bought in the auction house, can I relist it in the auction house?Yes. Once you've purchased an item you can do anything with it that you could if you had acquired it through your own adventures, whether that be using it yourself, or, after a cool-down period, trading it to another character or relisting it on either the gold-based or currency-based auction house. In fact, you can generally do any combination of these things -- for example, you can purchase an item in the auction house, use it for a while, and then relist it or trade it to another character. Aside from certain quest items, there will be very few (if any) items that will be “soulbound” to your character and therefore untradable. Please note that the duration of the cool-down period mentioned above will be discussed at a later date.
Now, that is interesting! It seems this push for "more flexible business models" does finally bring along the elimination of this unimmersive 'soulbound' mechanic.
Blizzard is obviously interested in maximizing the amount of items traded and less concerned about players outfitting their characters too fast. Expect some really, really rare items ...
Ironically, these are things I have always asked for.
Seems a Devil was required to get rid of the Beelzebub :)
---
What is "smart searching"?
When players launch the auction house interface, they’ll be able to select any Diablo III character associated with their Battle.net account. The "smart search" feature will assess which item slots have available upgrades and will sort items available in the auction house based on which upgrades would be most beneficial to the character. You can also search for specific stats to match the requirements of a particular character build.
Honi soit qui mal y pense.Will buying or selling items in the auction house reveal my identity?
No. All player transactions in the gold-based and currency-based auction houses will be anonymous, and neither your real name nor your character name will be revealed to other players.
---
Thanks for the added incentive to play hardcore mode. :)If my character dies in Hardcore mode, will I lose the items that I purchased in the "Hardcore-only" gold-based auction house for that character?
Yes. Again, Hardcore-mode characters will only have access to a "Hardcore-only" gold-based auction house, not the currency-based auction house, and will not be able to trade with non-Hardcore characters. Hardcore is an optional mode designed for players who enjoy playing with the risk of permanently losing their character if the character dies, and that includes the items they acquired with that character.
Real Life Gold
The ECB will eventually have to inflate the Euro. Just like the FED is already inflating the Dollar. Of this I am (almost) certain. Therefore, I should put my money somewhere else. But where?
Gold is ridiculous right now. I mean, I sure wished I had decided to buy it a year ago. But gold is useless. It's the biggest bubble in human history. The only reason gold is valuable is because people think that it is valuable. On the other hand, in the end, that is true for almost anything.
Alternatively I could buy some Switzerland bonds. Their central bank (SNB) has just decided that a 70% overpriced currency (compared to PPP) is too much. I would agree. The Swiss are currently buying German cars and laughing at the silly amount of CHF we want in exchange. That's not funny anymore. Of course, the Switzerland export industry is laughing as well - in disbelieve. They can't believe what is happening. Nobody here can afford to buy goods from Switzerland anymore.
The SNB is really between a rock and a hard place right now. Not intervening, however, might crush their industry. So .. I can't imagine the CHF to rise even more. Not a good investment, unless you're really desperate and fear some hyperinflation.
The other strong Euro economies, like Norway or Denmark are mostly about oil. And oil prices will decline in the coming crisis - at least in the timeframe that I am talking about.
This leaves me with exotic investments like Swedish bonds of which there aren't that many or some Asian bonds of which I don't know much.
These are the times, I'd really like to save and reload. Or at least be able to make a new char ;)
Gold is ridiculous right now. I mean, I sure wished I had decided to buy it a year ago. But gold is useless. It's the biggest bubble in human history. The only reason gold is valuable is because people think that it is valuable. On the other hand, in the end, that is true for almost anything.
Alternatively I could buy some Switzerland bonds. Their central bank (SNB) has just decided that a 70% overpriced currency (compared to PPP) is too much. I would agree. The Swiss are currently buying German cars and laughing at the silly amount of CHF we want in exchange. That's not funny anymore. Of course, the Switzerland export industry is laughing as well - in disbelieve. They can't believe what is happening. Nobody here can afford to buy goods from Switzerland anymore.
The SNB is really between a rock and a hard place right now. Not intervening, however, might crush their industry. So .. I can't imagine the CHF to rise even more. Not a good investment, unless you're really desperate and fear some hyperinflation.
The other strong Euro economies, like Norway or Denmark are mostly about oil. And oil prices will decline in the coming crisis - at least in the timeframe that I am talking about.
This leaves me with exotic investments like Swedish bonds of which there aren't that many or some Asian bonds of which I don't know much.
These are the times, I'd really like to save and reload. Or at least be able to make a new char ;)
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Leveling Game vs. Engame
This is the third post in response to the comments posted here.
Helistar encouraged me to blog on this:
Helistar wrote more than that. If you're interested, go check out his comment. On the above quote: I agree that this has happened and I agree that it is not optimal.
(1)
Let's first try to understand how it happened. MMORPGs were typically about the 'leveling game'. The designers didn't think about the endgame all that much. They didn't have much hope to keep people in the game after completing the leveling game.
However, it turned out that just attaching some PvP/PvE minigames (endgame) made players play the MMORPG for years! Woah! Nobody expected that. With WoW Blizzard focused more and more on that endgame, because it was so extraordinarily cheap to produce and kept millions of players p(l)aying.
Now, this is a working model. That's why a lot of companies clone it. The leveling game lures players into the game and the endgame keeps them paying for a game they might never have bought, if there hadn't been a leveling game.
The reason there are no pure raiding games is that raiding isn't all that interesting, really. Neither are most endgame activities. These activities are interesting mostly, because they feed on the meaning induced by the leveling game, the community and the simulation (illusion, really) of a world outside the instance.
(2)
Now, after some decade of playing these games, many gamers are bored of it. What can be done about it?
Well, if the single goal of a game is ever increasing character power, not much can be done about it. You can try to find some way to get infinite content. Like Psychochild's storybricks. But if the only goal is to increase character power, all games become boring eventually. And this does not only apply to the specific game, but all games that have character power as goal! Once you played one of them, you played them all.
Humans may be a bit stupid, but they aren't complete morons. We understand quite well that something is wrong when we hit level 77; and it doesn't feel as fun as level 5. This is especially true if all our opponents level with us.
My favorite way to solve the problem is to shift the goal of the game from character power progression (CPP), to other things. For example to defending against an ever-ongoing (and seriously dangerous) enemy undead invasion in a PvE sandbox. You can still keep a weak CPP, but you don't run out of content, if the content is created by the interaction of the players instead of an external designer.
Moreover, the goal of the game is now sustainable indefinitely. There is endless content, because it is created by the inter-player and inter-player-group relations. And we know from the real world that this is interesting for .. forever.
Helistar encouraged me to blog on this:
Several MMOs have been criticized because they turn into "two games packaged at one", i.e. the leveling game (quest-based, mostly solo) and the endgame activities (raiding/pvp), which don't share much in common.
Helistar wrote more than that. If you're interested, go check out his comment. On the above quote: I agree that this has happened and I agree that it is not optimal.
(1)
Let's first try to understand how it happened. MMORPGs were typically about the 'leveling game'. The designers didn't think about the endgame all that much. They didn't have much hope to keep people in the game after completing the leveling game.
However, it turned out that just attaching some PvP/PvE minigames (endgame) made players play the MMORPG for years! Woah! Nobody expected that. With WoW Blizzard focused more and more on that endgame, because it was so extraordinarily cheap to produce and kept millions of players p(l)aying.
Now, this is a working model. That's why a lot of companies clone it. The leveling game lures players into the game and the endgame keeps them paying for a game they might never have bought, if there hadn't been a leveling game.
The reason there are no pure raiding games is that raiding isn't all that interesting, really. Neither are most endgame activities. These activities are interesting mostly, because they feed on the meaning induced by the leveling game, the community and the simulation (illusion, really) of a world outside the instance.
(2)
Now, after some decade of playing these games, many gamers are bored of it. What can be done about it?
Well, if the single goal of a game is ever increasing character power, not much can be done about it. You can try to find some way to get infinite content. Like Psychochild's storybricks. But if the only goal is to increase character power, all games become boring eventually. And this does not only apply to the specific game, but all games that have character power as goal! Once you played one of them, you played them all.
Humans may be a bit stupid, but they aren't complete morons. We understand quite well that something is wrong when we hit level 77; and it doesn't feel as fun as level 5. This is especially true if all our opponents level with us.
My favorite way to solve the problem is to shift the goal of the game from character power progression (CPP), to other things. For example to defending against an ever-ongoing (and seriously dangerous) enemy undead invasion in a PvE sandbox. You can still keep a weak CPP, but you don't run out of content, if the content is created by the interaction of the players instead of an external designer.
Moreover, the goal of the game is now sustainable indefinitely. There is endless content, because it is created by the inter-player and inter-player-group relations. And we know from the real world that this is interesting for .. forever.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Diablo 3 RMT
After reading a few blogs on the announced D3 RMT I feel .. empty.
You might think that I hate it, but actually, no. Diablo 3 is not a virtual world. It is just a game. And apparently I can play solo and I can ignore the RMT. So .. I don't really care. Perhaps I can make a bit of money by selling stuff - probably I won't play D3 long enough for that to happen.
What's bad about this is the influence it does have on virtual worlds. But I can't imagine at that point that Titan is supposed to be a virtual world, anyway. It, too, will be just a game.
I could care less about the requirement to always be online. For me that is a holy war some people fight there. I am always online anyway. And I don't usually play games when I travel or have no access to internet.
I generally am skeptical of player-made mods. A few Elder Scrolls mods were good, but mostly I don't get much fun out of these things. To be able to change the rules of a game by downloading a mod feels wrong and arbitrary.
One last thing about the RMT AH: One big problem game companies are faced with when it comes to MT is how much each thing should cost. By having a player-run market pin-point optimal prices, they not only get the revenue-maximizing price, but also save the work to determine a good price themselves. Taking some percentage off that market-price feels better, too. And it doesn't disrupt the in-game economy.
Of course, I won't play together with anonymous players in D3, as I couldn't respect their equipment or avatar. But I never planned to play D3 multiplayer, anyway. It is just a game.
You might think that I hate it, but actually, no. Diablo 3 is not a virtual world. It is just a game. And apparently I can play solo and I can ignore the RMT. So .. I don't really care. Perhaps I can make a bit of money by selling stuff - probably I won't play D3 long enough for that to happen.
What's bad about this is the influence it does have on virtual worlds. But I can't imagine at that point that Titan is supposed to be a virtual world, anyway. It, too, will be just a game.
I could care less about the requirement to always be online. For me that is a holy war some people fight there. I am always online anyway. And I don't usually play games when I travel or have no access to internet.
I generally am skeptical of player-made mods. A few Elder Scrolls mods were good, but mostly I don't get much fun out of these things. To be able to change the rules of a game by downloading a mod feels wrong and arbitrary.
One last thing about the RMT AH: One big problem game companies are faced with when it comes to MT is how much each thing should cost. By having a player-run market pin-point optimal prices, they not only get the revenue-maximizing price, but also save the work to determine a good price themselves. Taking some percentage off that market-price feels better, too. And it doesn't disrupt the in-game economy.
Of course, I won't play together with anonymous players in D3, as I couldn't respect their equipment or avatar. But I never planned to play D3 multiplayer, anyway. It is just a game.
Trade, once again
This is the second post in response to the comments posted here.
Dàchéng encouraged me to blog on this:
(1)
The point about trade is that it is more than just the process of trading. I wrote before, in one of the posts you linked, that it is impossible to make hauling goods short-term fun for most players. Hauling goods can be safe / dangerous and short-range / long-range. That's it.
There are a few interesting decisions involved, but the real reason I want trade is not because trading is so much fun. Let's face it: For most people trading isn't as much fun as fighting anything.
I already argued that it's not a good idea to make trading any more action-oriented. My point is that trading is fun for a few people and, optimally, safe short-range trade can be relaxing for some players, just like a daily quest. Not really exciting.
The real reason I want trade is because it is fun for all non-traders. They are the majority.
(2)
Imagine a huge fantasy world. One were geography matters. No teleports, two-digit amount of hours required to go from one end to the other. Gameplay-wise each big city and its environment acts like a traditional server. But you can leave this 'server' and can go to another city. (Clarification: It's a completely open world. But most of the environment is empty of players).
The short-range trade is mostly safe, but long-range trade is dangerous for PvE and PvP reasons. Now, imagine we put some magic-deflecting material into the game. It can be mined in just one mine. What happens is this: near the mine this material is rather common and rather cheap. But in lands far away it is very expensive.
Why is this good? Because it offers diversity! The magic-deflecting material changes the balance of the entire game. Warfare between player factions is completely different near that mine than far away from it. Now imagine lots of other items that are area-specific, like that ore from the mine.
The world becomes alive! You can explore the different areas as a player and learn about them. Sure, you can also learn about them on the internet, but to experience them you need to visit these areas. Just like in any good fantasy world, materials from far away are expensive and in combination with other materials from other far places powerful.
The world becomes an interesting place. You can learn about this place. There's even different balance depending on where you are in the world! We replace some finely-tuned gameplay fun (WoW) with an interesting place to explore and interesting interactions between players in an often un-fair, unbalanced world.
(3)
This design contradicts todays industry-standard of finely-tuned gameplay loops: the idea that you first make the first 10 seconds fun, then the next 5 minutes, etc. Instead, it enthralls the players with the promise of adventure and exploration that drives them forward!
If you ask me that is what has driven players forward ever since the first leveling game. That finely-tuned gameplay isn't unimportant, either. But we all know how boring finely-tuned daily quests are!
Abstractly speaking, we don't introduce one finely-tuned pattern into the world that players can explore, but many patterns that interact and thus create new patterns. This interaction of patterns happens via the players. Thus we trade one finely-tuned pattern for many, much more interesting, patterns. This is (passively) player-generated content.
A player-run economy with trade is invaluable for this game. Not because being a trader is so much fun, but because adventuring in a world with trade and traders is so much fun.
Dàchéng encouraged me to blog on this:
I'd like to see more development of your very interesting ideas on hauling goods over trade routes. You touched on it when discussing travel here, and developed your ideas here, where I pointed out that the actual hauliers would get ganked by bandits, or bored by repetition, or both. You followed up on that here, pointing out that the repetitive nature of travelling trade-routes could be soothing rather than boring.
All the same, I think there's some fun missing, from the haulier's point of view. I understand that you may not want "action", but some other enjoyable or interesting activity has to take its place (I like your idea that just building tension can keep hauliers interested).
(1)
The point about trade is that it is more than just the process of trading. I wrote before, in one of the posts you linked, that it is impossible to make hauling goods short-term fun for most players. Hauling goods can be safe / dangerous and short-range / long-range. That's it.
There are a few interesting decisions involved, but the real reason I want trade is not because trading is so much fun. Let's face it: For most people trading isn't as much fun as fighting anything.
I already argued that it's not a good idea to make trading any more action-oriented. My point is that trading is fun for a few people and, optimally, safe short-range trade can be relaxing for some players, just like a daily quest. Not really exciting.
The real reason I want trade is because it is fun for all non-traders. They are the majority.
(2)
Imagine a huge fantasy world. One were geography matters. No teleports, two-digit amount of hours required to go from one end to the other. Gameplay-wise each big city and its environment acts like a traditional server. But you can leave this 'server' and can go to another city. (Clarification: It's a completely open world. But most of the environment is empty of players).
The short-range trade is mostly safe, but long-range trade is dangerous for PvE and PvP reasons. Now, imagine we put some magic-deflecting material into the game. It can be mined in just one mine. What happens is this: near the mine this material is rather common and rather cheap. But in lands far away it is very expensive.
Why is this good? Because it offers diversity! The magic-deflecting material changes the balance of the entire game. Warfare between player factions is completely different near that mine than far away from it. Now imagine lots of other items that are area-specific, like that ore from the mine.
The world becomes alive! You can explore the different areas as a player and learn about them. Sure, you can also learn about them on the internet, but to experience them you need to visit these areas. Just like in any good fantasy world, materials from far away are expensive and in combination with other materials from other far places powerful.
The world becomes an interesting place. You can learn about this place. There's even different balance depending on where you are in the world! We replace some finely-tuned gameplay fun (WoW) with an interesting place to explore and interesting interactions between players in an often un-fair, unbalanced world.
(3)
This design contradicts todays industry-standard of finely-tuned gameplay loops: the idea that you first make the first 10 seconds fun, then the next 5 minutes, etc. Instead, it enthralls the players with the promise of adventure and exploration that drives them forward!
If you ask me that is what has driven players forward ever since the first leveling game. That finely-tuned gameplay isn't unimportant, either. But we all know how boring finely-tuned daily quests are!
Abstractly speaking, we don't introduce one finely-tuned pattern into the world that players can explore, but many patterns that interact and thus create new patterns. This interaction of patterns happens via the players. Thus we trade one finely-tuned pattern for many, much more interesting, patterns. This is (passively) player-generated content.
A player-run economy with trade is invaluable for this game. Not because being a trader is so much fun, but because adventuring in a world with trade and traders is so much fun.
The Lesser Evil
Seems I have been wrong with my last post.
This 'compromise' is bad on almost all levels for the President. It's bad from an economic point of view and bad from a political point of view. The only thing Obama can still hope is that he's the lesser evil in the next elections. He probably is.
But that's not an achievement. You could pick any of 50% of US citizens as candidate for Presidency and he'd / she'd be the lesser evil compared to those republican candidates.
This 'compromise' is bad on almost all levels for the President. It's bad from an economic point of view and bad from a political point of view. The only thing Obama can still hope is that he's the lesser evil in the next elections. He probably is.
But that's not an achievement. You could pick any of 50% of US citizens as candidate for Presidency and he'd / she'd be the lesser evil compared to those republican candidates.
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