Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

MMOG Genre Growth
The most successful MMOGs to date are character development driven. There are
several choices available for players looking to play these character-oriented titles.
Some players complain that it seems like only character-oriented titles are available. I
think titles like PlanetSide (www.planetside.com) from Sony Online Entertainment
are attempting to change this dynamic. We haven’t seen the successful spread of several
popular console or PC platform genres into the MMOG world. Some of the reasons
for the limit of genre availability for MMOGs are all of the inherent technology
restrictions involved in making any MMOG title at all. Another, as we’ve said, is the
huge financial risk. Despite these reasons, developers are constantly looking for ways
to offer expansive gaming experiences. The question becomes: Which genres do you
build around and why?
It seems that MMOGs will only grow out into new genre forms as developers begin
to figure out how to offer other genres (or versions of other genres) built around
many of the technology dependencies discussed in this chapter. These titles will survive
only if the public receives them well and development, promotional, and support
costs can be contained.
NPCs and Familiars
NPCs in many MMOGs are used functionally but often are somewhat sterile and
hollow characters. Familiars or “pets” are used dynamically, and many players seem
to like them. The game Half-life (a non-MMOG title) really raised the bar in the use
of NPCs for first-person shooters. These are exactly the kind of incomplete or underdeveloped
play areas that you want to try to address with your own games. Which
MMOG title will do for MMOG familiars what Half-life did to raise the bar for NPC
use and interaction in FPS titles? Don’t forget that your design focus should consider
what all the competitors have done well. When you understand why it works in play,
you can try to evolve and refine your own play ideas into something exciting that
we’ll all enjoy playing.
Isolating MMOG Strengths
C H A P T E R 8
At this point, we know plenty about MMOG delivery weaknesses (like latency). We
must also identify strengths for the MMOG. One strength, by definition, is that you
have large numbers of players collected together in a game universe of some description.
It should be no surprise that you’ll probably want to tap social forces as inspiration
points for play mechanics. Legendary game designer Chris Crawford wrote the game
Balance of Power long before the advent of the MMOG, but he applied an understanding
of human conflict and human drama that helped to shape and inform
gameplay. Ask yourself the question: How do you make the social forces we take for
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Design Considerations for Massively Multiplayer Online Games