My brother Fletcher and I placed second in last week's Game Career Guide design challenge, a communication system for a children's MMO. We had a great time designing too.
1up's weekly MMO Update has been posted. Once again, lots of interesting things to read. I have about fifteen tabs open just waiting to be read. Check it out.
1up has posted their latest weekly massively-multiplayer-online game update which you can read right here. Once again the post covers everything under the MMO sun, its pretty amazing how much news and articles writer Michael Zenke can keep track of each week. Lots of interesting stuff comes out of this week's post that I'm working through for myself as we speak. Check it out.
Massively-Multiplayer-Game The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar was recently released. There are many facets to the game worth discussing, but a particular issue has arisen this week that I would like to take a look at from a game design perspective. You may have heard. Male-Male and Female-Female couples are unable to marry in Shadows, and neither are certain race pairings (regardles of sex), such as dwarfs and hobbits. There has been much player resistance to this social limitation. Unfortunately, the game's developer, Turbine, has buckled under the pressure and removed marriage from the game altogether.Very rarely will you see an elf and a human hook up, but it does happen; the door is open. Dwarves don't intermarry with hobbits; that door is shut ... Did two male hobbits ever hook up in the shire and have little hobbit civil unions? No. The door is shut.Davidson goes on to further explain why. The Lord of the Rings novels were written this was because Tolkien himself was a "conservative catholic." But do supposedly legitimate explanations justify a lack in equal rights?
Let us look at the various perspectives shall we? On one end, as Brenda Brathwaite points out, and editor Kris Graft writes, "videogames inherently branch away from their source content and should allow gamers to make their own decisions about relationships." MMO's are social games. A big part of their draw are the in-game relationships players form with one another. Specific restrictions on the development and freedom of those relationships is by definition discriminatory. Freedom of choice is a vital aspect to MMO's, especially when role-playing is so heavily encouraged. However, in real life, the zeitgeist of equal-rights is not polarized towards either end of the spectrum. Restrictions on marriage are being imposed across the United States, state by state. Even so, there are many opponents to these legal barrings. Is Lord of the Rings Online a virtual reflection of real life society? Or, as Davidson has stated, are these marriage allowances and restrictions just an emulation of the game's source material, and not a statement of modern political issues? It's impossible to say which was the actual reasoning. However, as game designers, we can speculate as to which is better, and the pros and cons of developing a game favoring either.
The primary supportive reason for Shadows' marital restrictions is exactly what Davidson said. I think there is something to be said for remaining true to the license. A recent comic at Penny Arcade hits this issue in quite a timely fashion, albeit in a different context and perhaps slightly exaggerated. Regerdless, authenticity can certainly be an advantage. Designing a licensed game cannot be easy, developers must decide early and reevaluate often just how closely they are going to stick to the source. Their is likely a precarious balance in weighing these things. The final cheer for this side of the argument is that players are living in virtual world. This virtual world, Middle Earth, has certain restrictions or cultural expectations of its inhabitants. Turbine had imposed these cultural norms by techincal rule. Just as Middle Earth inhabitants in the books had to follow the rules, so do players living in the same world.We'll go practical this week. Let's say you're working on a typical combat-focused online RPG. One feature requested on the forums is that players that take wounds should perform worse than a fully healed character. Your job is to design this system to work within a game. Don't assume anything special about the game. Assume it's a typical sword-and-sorcery type game. Use WoW as an example if absolutely necessary.Good question, Brian. Lets think about this.
Think about these issues:
What are the potential problems with this design?
How do you work around these problems?
Bonus: What is the motivation for players for asking for this change?
Cons. As Stephen from the official post points out, a big disadvantge to implementing a damage system is that it possibly handicaps the losing player to the point where its impossible for them to win. Another flaw is (assuming we are working off a basic MMO design) that high-damage, faster characters will have an intrisinc advantage over other characters. Rogues would automatically be better characters.
Peter Molyneaux- creator of Fable, Hironobu Sakaguchi-creator of Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, and Ray Muzyka-CEO of BioWare and contributor to Mass Effect.Molyneaux agreed and also added that role-playing games are just that, players in roles. He said it is necessitous for the player to feel like a hero. RPGs should be an emotionally defining journey, to as he put it, “start off as nothing and end up being a hero?”
Finally, Sanguichi stressed these points in addition to the need for the player to feel accomplishment to be felt by the player.
Blue Dragon-Designed by Hironobu Sakaguchi of Mystwalker
The next question asked about turned-based combat, and whether it was good or bad. Molyneaux answered first, stating that real-time combat was the best choice for Fable because they felt it was more of an “immersive” gameplay experience. Muzyka however said that Mass Effect offers both real-time and turn-based, players can choose for themselves. Apparently, they don't want one gameplay type to be a barrier to the enjoyment.
Mass Effect-Designed by CEO Ray Muzyka's BioWare
Following this came character customization. Sakaguchi said it can be good but ultimately liked the RPG experience to a movie. The reasons movies can be so engrossing is because the story and characters are already defined. This moved into branching storylines and their use. Molyneaux started with a very provocative response, the problem with branching storylines is that when players choose, there is always a good possibility that they will regret their decisions and want to turn back or even lose interest.
Muzyka was more optimistic, saying that players new that their choices had consequences both good and bad, and that this would eventually lend itself to the game being more repayable.
Fable 2-Designed by Peter Molyneaux of Lionhead
The session ended with the subject of the MMORPG. Muzyka summarized all three of the panelists thoughts with this: “the story that develops between players--the social interaction--is a different kind of story, something you can't achieve in a single-player game.” He also hinted that BioWare is currently working on a game that blends the story of a single player RPG with the benefits of the multiplayer.
Ico, greatest game of all time, ever.Source: Gamespot
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