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Joined: Fri Oct 01, 2004 5:42 pm
Posts: 1388
Location: ATL
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Hey guys, it's your friendly, neighborhood Thunderstomp. I am taking a class called "Media and Popular Culture," and one of our assignments is to take a product and analyze that product on an economic and cultural level. I chose MMORPGs, because I think they are fascinating in terms of game design (although I'll never play another one). My essay uses some examples from EverQuest, because we have to talk about a product specifically, and I think EverQuest is probably the most influential MMORPG so far. Anyways, I know it's a long paper, but if anyone is incredibly bored and wants to give me some feedback, I'll give you a cookie.
EverQuest and the growing MMORPG
Many video game developers and video game players alike agree that online games are the future of the gaming industry. The ability to cooperate or compete with real people, instead of the traditional computer-generated artificial intelligence, appeals to the gaming industry because of the vast complexities that such a concept entails. While a computer-generated character has a limited amount of actions and responses, human players provide an almost infinite degree of behaviors. In addition, online games allow players to form close relationships with others. Overcoming challenges presented by the video game can result in a bonding experience, which, before the online game, was unheard of. One can see why the video game industry has become so interested in online gaming: because of the level of human interaction, many players simply play the games to be with their friends. Online gaming has become a new sort of “hang-out spot” for all types of people, and video game developers are eager to create online worlds that are also conducive towards social interaction because along with game play, player relationships will keep the players in the game, as well as the monthly fee to play online-games in the developers’ pockets.
One sub-genre of online-games is the MMORPG, or Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. MMORPGs, popularized in the mid to late 1990s, place human players together inside a fantasy or science-fiction setting and provide challenges and subsequent rewards for overcoming those challenges. MMORPGs evolved from both “pencil-and-paper” role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, which features real-life group interaction, and single player role-playing video games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, which allow a player to become immersed in a visible fantasy world, although the only interaction is with the computer AI (artificial intelligence). MMORPG players are expected and many times required to work together to achieve a goal, thus creating the opportunity for a high level of player-to-player interaction. Players are allowed to customize their individual characters, and for the most part they are given freedom to travel through the virtual world at their own pace, although many MMORPGs require a large investment of time in order to gain access to advanced areas of the game. With many traditional video games, a player’s path is mostly predetermined, and the player simply follows the game’s path from start to finish. With MMORPGs, however, the path is largely determined by the player; MMORPGs give the player a relatively large amount of freedom to investigate and interact with the game world, with the player’s choices directly affecting how the game plays. While the growing success of MMORPGs amongst video game players in general is apparent, many game developers still consider the decade-old market to be in its infancy, with the opportunities for exploration still very fresh.
The first MMORPG to gain international attention was developed by Verant Interactive and released in 1999 by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE). The game, called EverQuest, features a three-dimensional fantasy world where human players control a digital character. The game provides all of the clichéd fantasy situations: the opportunity to participate in battles with evil-doers, the gaining of power and wealth as the player advances his or her character, participation in an economy where a player’s wealth can be used to purchase a weapon or armor upgrade, or a more powerful scroll of magic, and maybe most integral to the game’s success, the cooperation between players that’s required to overcome the most challenging portions of the game. Players can group together in numbers as large as a team of 72 different characters, requiring organizational skills and leadership skills (wikipedia.com). In fact, players organize themselves into clans or guilds, with hierarchical ranks comparable to a real life military force. The reward system is simple: spend enough time working towards overcoming a challenge and the game will grant you more powerful items, garnering more power for your character as well as more respect from other players, which is highly valued due to the community-like atmosphere of EverQuest and the inherent competitive nature of the game.
The original design of EverQuest is credited to Brad McQuaid and Steve Clover (wikipedia.com). As a boy, McQuaid was interested Tolkienesque fantasy-themes, and naturally was drawn to play Dungeon and Dragons with his friends as well as early single-player computer role-playing games like Ultima (mobygames.com). Throughout high school McQuaid also became interested in computer programming, and sought to learn how to develop his own computer RPG. McQuaid and Steve Clover were friends, both mutually interested in video game design, and in 1989, they decided to become partners when they co-founded their company MicroGenesis (mobygames.com). They promptly began work on a single player computer role-playing game called WarWizard, which was released in 1993 (mobygames.com). In 1995, the demo for WarWizard 2 caught the eye of Sony Interactive Studios’ director of development, and McQuaid and Clover were hired to head a group of programmers and develop an online RPG (mobygames.com). For the next few years, the team, led by McQuaid and Clover, defined the game’ mechanics, created the basic world layout, crafted the character customization process, and eventually had a finished product ready for distribution, which occurred in 1999. The game required a monthly subscription fee to play, offsetting the price of maintaining an ever-changing virtual world and also the development of new content to keep players interested. Between 1999 and 2004, EverQuest became the most successful North American MMORPG to date, with around half a million subscribers (wikipedia.com).
The phenomenon of online gaming reflects many changes within society. As the Internet becomes increasingly important in the average gamer’s daily life, the video game industry has taken advantage of the opportunity to combine video games with the Internet, opening up a vast number of new of possibilities for video game design. Games are no longer traditional in the sense that when the player stops playing, the game world is non-existent; with MMORPGs the game world occurs in real-time and is active whether or not the player is online. The MMORPG’s autonomy from the player’s actual engagement of the game creates the impression of an alternate virtual universe where the player experiences the same type of cause-and-effect system found in reality. The player does not have to participate in the game for the game to undergo change. The effect on the psyche of the player is that their game character feels much more natural because many of the same rules that define reality are present in the MMORPG world.
MMORPG designers create the game so that the player forms a bond with his or her character. The character is meant to be an extension of the player’s person. The character represents a player’s personality, desires, motivations, and to an extent how the player wishes to visualize his or her virtual self. All MMORPGs begin with a character creation stage, where the player chooses how a character physically looks, which can involve choosing a character’s name, race, gender, body type, hairstyle and color, and many other facial and body features. In the world of MMORPGs, uniqueness is desirable because the player wants to be recognized within a community of hundreds and possibly thousands of players. Recognition leads to popularity, and popularity is an advantage in a game that requires cooperation amongst players. EverQuest features fifteen different races to choose from, ranging from dwarves, ogres, trolls, three different varieties of elves, and other clichéd fantasy characters (http://eqlive.station.sony.com). Each race has its own strengths and weaknesses, so the player’s choice decides what types of roles they will play in the game. For example, the gnome race is more adept at magical skills than physical combat, so a player that chooses a gnome will experience the game much differently than a player who chooses a barbarian, which is more adept to physical combat. Most players subconsciously choose their characters based on a projection of themselves. If in reality a player has dark hair and is tall in stature, than he or she will most likely mimic their physical traits with their game character to enhance the bond between themselves and their characters. Other players choose character based on their own shortcomings; if a female player wishes she were skinnier in reality she can choose a slim character body, or if a male player wishes he had larger muscles he can create a character in that image. How a player represents his or her self within the game world is a reflection on conscious and subconscious desires over what role they want to play within the game, as well as being influenced by their own concepts of self-image.
Once in the MMORPG game world, players experience much more complex gameplay than in traditional single player games. Single player games are based on a finite number of choices, meaning players can elicit only a certain number of responses from computer-generated characters. Also, with single player games the outcome of the game is clear and usually involves defeating a challenging enemy in order to restore order to a disorderly universe. MMORPGs changed these traditional concepts of how a game should be organized and presented. Instead of interacting with computer generated characters whose dialogues are based on prewritten lines of code, human players interact with each other, and dialogue obviously becomes infinitely more complex because responses are not predetermined. Player interaction occurs reciprocally between a player’s character and every other human player within the game world, creating scenarios that would be impossible to create in a single player game. Players are much more in control of their own fate within the game; a player’s path is relatively unregulated and undetermined, appealing to a player’s desire to experience adventures based on their own choices, and just as importantly, adventures that the player realizes would not happen in the same way if he or she were not involved. Every time the player returns to the game world, the opportunity exists to create and experience a truly unique story.
This unpredictability keeps players interested in the game world, but players will not keep playing the game indefinitely unless the game designer continuously produces more challenging game content. As players become better at the game, they require a constant stream of new game content that increases the challenge of the game, as well increasingly powerful rewards earned from overcoming the new challenges. MMORPG players thrive on new character abilities and “items,” meaning anything that a player can equip on his or her character to increase its power. Game designers are in charge of maintaining a balance between the difficulty of the game’s challenges and the character enhancements provided as rewards from overcoming these challenges; game designers cannot let players become too powerful because this would upset the balance between challenge and reward. New game content also serves another purpose: MMORPGs inherently have no conclusion. Traditionally, one plays a game to the end, and once the game concludes, one moves on to another game. MMORPGs like EverQuest have solved this by continuously adding new content to their games in an effort to keep players playing the game for as long as possible, in order to continue collecting the monthly subscription fee. The traditional challenge of completing a single-player video game is slowly being replaced by MMORPGs and other online games, due to the appeal of human interaction and seemingly endless opportunity for virtual adventure.
Compared to other popular online multi-player games, such as first-person shooters, fighting games, strategy simulators, and so forth, MMORPGs attract the broadest demographic of players: both males and a relatively high percentage of females (compared to other game communities), ranging from kids in school to retirees in their sixties and seventies, and encompassing virtually every ethnic background, from Asians to Americans to Europeans and all over the globe. Many times game “servers,” or individually controlled online game worlds, contain players from all over the globe, in an effort by the game designers to keep the world continuously populated at all hours of the day. One would think that inside the virtual world of MMORPGs, racial tension would not exist, but this is not always the case. Tight-knit groups within the larger MMORPG community are often divided by ethnic backgrounds, which is due to a player’s own comfort level in the customs and traditions of their own ethnicity. Other factors include language barriers and the actual time of the day players are online (for example, due to time-zone differences Asian players do not interact as much with American players). Groups of players are very loyal to their online friends, and often times they formally organize themselves into what’s called a clan or guild. Guilds often include people from similar backgrounds, due largely to language issues, and the guild leaders take it upon themselves to organize game events for the larger guild. A hierarchical level of leadership exists within MMORPG guilds. Usually one person presides over the entire guild, doing so with the aid of assistants, typically other veteran members of the guild. Guild formation is simply the extension of the human instinct that encourages cooperation to achieve a common objective.
Guilds are necessary for a number of reasons. First of all, most MMORPGs include challenges that can only be overcome by a large group of players working together, requiring organization and trust. In EverQuest, a group of thirty players might be required to travel a dangerous trail leading to an abandoned castle, where treasure awaits. Over the course of this adventure, the players are constantly communicating, whether specifically about the mission or just making humorous comments. The players are involved in a shared experience. Shared experiences encourage player interaction, which is another main reasons many people choose MMORPGs over single player games. Forming guilds is the easiest way to forge friendships because after the same players undergo a number of shared experiences together, they learn to trust one another. Guilds also allow players to distinguish themselves within the larger community. Being a member of a well respected guild is a highly sought-after position, usually indicative of a skilled player who has invested a large amount of time towards his or her character. Simply stated, MMORPGs are designed to be multiplayer, with game content facilitating player interaction and the formation of an online community.
Online friendships are an interesting phenomenon. As players spend more and more hours online, online acquaintances often evolve into genuine friendships. Despite the obvious communication barriers surrounding an online relationship, players are often likely to divulge personal information to one another. A nineteen year old female, also an EverQuest player, said the following about his online friendships: “I would say its easier to open up to a person whom you are only writing to and never have to face in RL [real life], I can discuss issues with some of them without worrying that that they will tell my other friends about it” (http://www.nickyee.com). The anonymity of online communication allows players to speak without facing direct judgment. Players are comfortable revealing personal information to each other because they can discuss things without actually involving one another in their own respective lives. They can act more boldly, with more assertion, and without inhibition because they will probably never actually meet each other. People who are genuinely calm and respectful in real life might be much more aggressive online, because the consequences are much smaller, so a person can experiment with risky behavior. The loss of true identity becomes an concern as players spend more and more time within their online persona.
Inherent within all forms of entertainment, including games, is the concept of escapism. MMORPGs take escapism to a whole new level; as players become more and more immersed within the game world, they become emotionally involved with the life of their character. Different factors are involved in a player’s choice to become immersed, including a sense of achievement, a sense of belonging, and a sense of being needed. MMORPGs work by constantly dangling rewards in front of the player. At first, the rewards come rapidly, but they are not very powerful. Later in the game, rewards become much stronger, but now the process takes much longer, spanning hours, days, and even months. For example, a player could spend hours every day competing with other players to get the “claim” on a monster that might drop a very rare weapon. According to an EverQuest player, “The game is set up to make you want the next best thing. ‘Oh look what that guy has! How do I get that?’ The answer is always to spend more time online…” (http://www.nickyee.com). A player might get lucky and complete a difficult task in a few hours, but more often than not attaining the most powerful rewards in the game is designed to be a “time-sink,” or tasks that involves a single player or a number of players to constantly work towards a goal for long periods of time before they are rewarded, usually in terms of months, and possibly years. In addition to the sense of achievement, players also become immersed through their relationships with each other. Whereas a person might feel unimportant or unneeded in his or her real life, the MMORPG community thrives on giving players the opportunity to be a part of a team. As online relationships grow stronger, real life relationships tend to suffer, thus strengthening the need to escape into a world where people feel they belong to something. Escapism leads to immersion, which in turn can lead to addiction. Addiction is the result of players feeling their greatest sense of accomplishment and belonging within the game world, and not their own lives, thus causing them to spend a majority of their time online. Various degrees of players exist in the MMORPG world, including “hardcore” players who spend upwards of fifty to sixty hours a week online, and casual players who only log in a few times a week, but the prevailing persuasion always comes back to achievement and belonging.
In conclusion, it all comes back to money. Everything about MMORPGs is designed to keep the player online, from the emphasis on challenges and rewards, to the encouragement towards forming relationships. Since MMORPGs inherently don’t have an ending, the player is never given an opportunity to finish the game, which keeps the player’s subscription active. New content is advertised months in advance in an effort to keep players active in anticipation of something new to occupy their game time. Upgrades to the game content, called “expansion packs,” are routinely released to the retail market, which is another way for companies to continue making money years after the actual game is released. Staying active in an MMORPG costs money, and as a result game designers are becoming more careful in wanting players to stay active at a healthy rate. Many MMORPGs contain warnings, advising players not to neglect their families, friends, school, or work. These warnings of course have underlying economic reasons, because many players rely on their parents to pay for the game and the subscription; because game designers know the influential power of friends, and want players to keep their social lives active so their friends don’t convince them they are spending too much time in the game; because if a player doesn’t get good grades, their parents will force them to stop playing; and because if a players loses his or her job, he or she will not be able to afford to play. Once again, it all comes down to money, and with profits soaring, game designers have no reason to alter their product or their formula. MMORPGs represent the new frontier in gaming as well as online entertainment, and it will be interesting to see how future games will evolve with our changing society.
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