Tide's Horizon

So, it is a close tie (for me at least) with the EA acquisition of Bioware/Pandemic, but the biggest news for video games in 2007 is the start of shipments of the XO Laptop -- the One Laptop Per Child initiative.



The OLPC is an education program wrapped in the engineering challenge of building, deploying and supporting a laptop that can handle ownership by children often in developing countries (and often in more rural areas than regular laptop owners) and costs only $100.

OLPC espouses five core principles:

1. Child ownership
2. Low ages. The hardware and software are designed for elementary school children aged 6-12.
3. Saturation
4. Connection
5. Free and open source

The first XO's started arriving at work this past week from the "give one, get one" program, and has elicited a lot of excitement. Why I think this is game worthy is to highlight 1) the effect large numbers of new entrants has had already on video games, and 2) the libraries already being developed for games for the XO.

Firstly, it's important to remember how MMO's changed, let alone video consoles in the late 80's, when games developed in Asia started being ported to the West. As the games moved, so did the players' interests and attitudes. In more recent years, the effect of Asian based players on MMO's like GuildWars and WoW has had a important stamp on the way MMO's are launched and developed. The semi-niche status of MMO's and even video games in the early 90's has long been over. Partly I think because of the success of cultures mixing and sharing a common interest.

So enter the XO, which is being sent to Haiti, Rwanda, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Mongolia. Mexico. Peru and the US are also being planned to have large numbers released. I like to speculate on what will happen with formerly uninterested or disadvantaged children and teens getting into computing. It will not solve all the world's ills, but it will hopefully help with education and community economic development long term. As far as games go, there are several initiatives underway to port games to the XO or to develop little apps specifically on the device.

If you reflect on this or if you were even around for the move from the Commodore 64 to the Apple ][ to the Mac and Win 3.2 you will realize how big this could be for gaming. Huge numbers of new players, developing for themselves and by other people games on a unique, ubiquitous platform should have some effect somewhere on the video game ecosystem. If you disagree, consider the novelty and popularity of the Nintendo DS and how many titles it has and how they have outsold so many generic PC titles. Just because it's an odd platform does not mean there can't be originality or innovation.

I think OLPC is a great education program, and I hope it will help the children and teens who receive the device. And while it may not seem an immediate commercial opportunity, I can see some companies developing titles or portals accessible by the OLPC (e.g. Dwarf Fortress). And maybe more realistically, I can see the kids building and sharing games for themselves. And that will an effect on gaming.

/play Muppet_Show_theme

I haven't been following any of the hype or expectations around Hellgate: London. But enough people who seem to know something about gaming were looking forward to it, so I gave it a try. Apparently, I tried day of launch. Well, here we go with my results. No background, just user experience. Don't care I couldn't subscribe to multi-player day of launch, or it was locked down etc. This is mostly from solo play and then a few hours from online play last night.

Memory Leaks
It seems to have 3 problems. See screenie below. This is after around 5 mins of solo non-online play with 2 zonings, some combat, log in/out, etc. Imagine after an hour. Well, you can do the math from the possible results below.

Now, I know this has been copied all over the place, and will probably become the new Dunbar's Number meme, but I'm coming to it late and this is my own take on it in games.

Dr. Daniel Levitin a cognitive psychologist, neurologist, music producer and no doubt all round good sport, has collated a lot of the current research on music therapy and effects of music on neural development in his book, Your Brain on Music. Amidst other things he proposes democratically that what's most important is not perhaps an innate talent, but a disciplined and regimented practice routine.

... ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert -- in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is the equivalent to roughly three hours per day, or twenty hours per week, of practice over ten years. Of course, this doesn't address why some people don't seem to get anywhere when they practice, and why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery. (courtesy of Tertiary Education)

There you have it. Maybe regardless of domain, if you want to "master" something it takes a dedication lasting no less than 10,000 hours. That's sort of comforting. Inasmuch as it lets me know if I am truly serious about accomplishing something, I ought to spend more time on it. It gives me a limit, but no guarantee.

But turn to games and the old usability chestnut: How long should a level or zone take to master? How long should someone -- particularly with consoles -- be given to complete and "win" the game. I know I never got far into God of War, mostly because I gave up looking for cheats (yes, for that ridiculous first crates puzzle). Should I have got in-game assistance? Should there have been a number of turns the game monitors I've tried this challenge and then offers me a break, for a lesser reward, or a harder penalty later? Otherwise the game becomes a coaster for me.

And similarly, how about MMORPG's? How long should designers give users to reach the cap? There's lots of evidence for how people pace themselves, but sometimes I sense it gets lost. For example, we hear more about racers in the Burning Crusade reaching level 70 within 28 hours and some wag finishing all of DDO in the same time, but dismiss the lone whiner who may still be stuck at the start (on some crates...). Reaching a level cap is not a mastery, but it does respond to the same desire. And maybe the same built-in bio-cognitive need. Dedicating time, often alone, to reach a limit for self-reward and public acclaim may be a real human drive. But likewise when the challenge does not meet the realistic effort required, then most people who can't succeed turn to other things to help their advancement. In MMO's, the obvious ones are RMT, cheats, hacks, powerlevelling services. In music or athletics, it might just be a better coach. Or drugs.

David Seah on Levitin has a nice break down, and so a critique, on how mastery could be reasonably seen. The point, as every game designer knows, is to offer a carrot and an encouragement (ding!) through ones' advancement. It's not about 10,000 hours or bust -- it's about maybe 100 hours and a pat on the back.

at 1 hour … you know some basics

at 10 hours … you have a pretty good grasp of the basics

at 100 hours … you are fairly expert

at 1000 hours … you are an experienced expert

at 10000 hours … you are a master

If you know your limit -- in this case, the almost mythical 10k of investment -- you can offer a realizable training program for people. And that circuit of gradual achievement and self-esteem reinforcement is maybe vital for someone to continue.

While 10,000 hours over 10 years is a daunting proposition, consider this:

1000 hours is pretty doable. That’s a little less than a year of full-time work.

100 hours is even more achievable…you could do that over a few months on the side, or just slam through it in a very intense couple of weeks.

Even spending 10 hours practicing something is going to make you significantly better at it. If you spent 10 hours practicing one song, or learning how to juggle, or learning how to bowl strikes…you’re going to learn something.

One hour? That’s worthwhile too. You could spend an hour writing your signature over and over again to make it cooler. I’ve done that at least a couple of times in my life.

I bet understanding and planning the least and mean time for a user to finish your game (or a part of it) is actually in the back of every designer's mind. After all, it's how we got "levels" and intro tutorials in the first place. And it affects how they introduce new content as well. I remember, for instance, very clearly in the first few months of SWG a poll on the forums asking how much time people spent playing. It came out near the same week as official survey results on the number and types of classes people were picking. Why that was important is that SOE was trying to see how to shoehorn in the Jedi class. Once they could show users where they were spending their time already, they might have a better sense of how long the class might take to unlock and then master. And then reconcile players to that required grind. Needless to say, it wasn't 10,000 hours, but after 28 professions for me it felt bloody close.

So much of play testing is functional tire kicking. However, the tuning which happens with character stats and abilities and their mean-time-to-success, whatever the genre or platform, I bet is also carefully scrutinized. Or it should be. We don't need 10,000 hours on any game, and certainly my time on Jedi I know now was not healthy. I knew there was a carrot, but I didn't know how long the stick was to reach it. If I knew then what I know now... I would not have tried. I think it would be healthier (and would help overall retention) if players had a better sense of the kind of investment they're going to be required to make. The kicker is if they know, they probably won't bother. But conversely when I play Scrabble online with my girlfriend, I know there's a limited number of tiles that gradually get used, and part of the key to that game is knowing how much time is left via their diminishing number. If users knew what might be required of them hypothetically, the grind might have more appeal. Ultimately though, I really wish designers would just give us more of an opportunity for challenges that scale. Gameplay that didn't assume infinite time and didn't reward the racers. That's ultimately why people hate the DIKU MUD model. And there ought to be by now some opportunity for improving play in a game the more you learn, other than just leveling to cap or finishing off some crates.

NYT article on Your Brain on Music

If you remember that the next best thing to playing a compelling and challenging game of drama and inventiveness is creating a game with yourself and your closest thousand friends with drama and inventiveness, you may have caught the spirit that is the Web. You also thereby are a great candidate for games on the Web. And games, which are designed only with the Web and a peculiar set of behaviors in mind, all seem to follow the same designs. Here are some example features:

1. Turn Based – wait for a player, wait for a content server or more likely, a Microsoft SQL server to go before committing play.
2. Synchronous Advancement – everybody is rewarded at the same time.
3. Linear Power Curves – everybody has an unlimited advancement theoretically available based on time in the game.
4. Unlimited Resources – no constraint on the availability of play or the issuing of resources to advance.

Now, I’m not generalizing that all games on the Web are like this. Instead, I’m generalizing that only the most appalling ones are like this. Fun games like DiceWars or DinerDash or BookWorm etc. all have constraints. They lead to a finish. That’s not necessarily because they may be board games or card games ported to the Web. I think this is as applicable for more traditional narrative games as well. But when is there no apparent win condition, when you graft on the openness of an MMORPG and lack of a governing narrative or a similar mechanic to carry and limit play then you have trouble. The innocuous designs mentioned above can lead to the following results, in order.

1. Unresponsive or Inflated Play – players on the Web can either suffer from poor availability and time-out’s, and can’t commit a play when they wish, or they exploit the game logic being controlled on a web server by cron jobs bombing the host or worse kinds of intrusion. Turn based play works best when time is controlled by the action of a competing player. When there is no other player to wait on, when you are competing against an unknown number of other players, then you have to have good technical governance to guarantee your players equity of turn play. You have to actually ensure that when someone wants to “move”, they can, and move only as many times as the rules permit.

2. Anonymous or Mass Play – when there is no known competitor, when the game is open mass play, the sheer anonymity of drive-by interactions I don’t think endears a player to a game. Anonymity doesn’t allow for player reputation creation, doesn’t allow for meaningful interaction. If the only way to meet people is to challenge them and then drive-on, I think necessarily this creates a more hostile culture than when a challenge has to be voluntarily accepted or at least, recognized after the fact. But this is a product of rewarding everyone always at the same time. When you adopt an open, mass kind of play, the only way you can manage advancement and keep people in the game is to issue progress at the same time for all players. That gives the poorer players something to live on. Weak players advance or receive rewards at the same time as strong players, no matter what happens. So, from the start all players are the same and in one way are supposed to remain the same. The problem is, however, there’s no way or incentive for people in their play to distinguish themselves than to hurry up and get on with it. Advancement will come regardless of what they do. Strong players will be rewarded at the same time as weaker players, and unless there is a throttle against bottomfeeding, weaker players are farmed on schedule. There’s no staggering of play in mass play. There’s no cost for success. And because of that interactions are quicker and poorer as people sprint to survive making a more shallow game culture.

3. Godmode -- Likewise, if you adopt the open concept of an MMORPG for your web game and don’t have a level or resource cap, if your power curves are not limited, because you want to retain players on your site for advertising $, you don’t allow for a win condition. No one can win, because the game never ends. But thereby a huge imbalance is created. Veteran players will have advanced far beyond anything new players can achieve, necessarily, since the advancement always occurs on schedule. Players who have been in the game longer will be fewer in number and far more powerful and will never be unseated. In fact, the only constraint that’s assumed by the designers on the power curve for veteran players is popularity. The provider assumes that popularity or just exposure will be a sufficient asymptote for veteran players’ advancement, because less powerful players will organize against them. But that’s naïve because it assumes that collusion or organization doesn’t occur at the highest levels. So realistically there’s incommensurability between differing sets of players depending on when they joined the game. This last state of affairs is the central problem for Eve Online. And like in #2 above, it reinforces a particularly hostile game culture.

4. Inflation, Real and Virtual -- And finally, if you design a game that is turn based, synchronous, with time based power curves you necessarily have to supply endless resources. Since there’s no end state for anyone, resources have to be infinite. Well, if there’s an economy in this game, then there’s inflation and the other usual problems that occur. But for me the other issue is that infinite resources assume an infinite supply of time on the side of the player. When there is no constraint on “moving” in your game, on committing play, and when there is no throttle on advancement, and when there are no costs at all, then the only real constraint is on the abilities and circumstances of the player themselves. People who have more free time, for instance, will progress faster. Sure. But the opportunity for exploiting weaker or less available players becomes popular. Bottomfeeding, mass bombings, even cheats like duping etc. become maybe necessary for survival.

What I’ve described above is largely from my observations of the new Web game “Warbook”, which is a Facebook plug-in. It’s essentially a multiplayer version of Go: you put down some resources, and a number of other players can arrive and take those resources if you fail in their challenge. And you do the same to them. People run around stealing from each other, trying to build up their own homes before they are completely looted by other players. Whatever its outcome, as a game to me Warbook is a cautionary tale to remember. Even though it still seems popular.

Everything I’ve said could be considered just bad game design. But I think the point is that it’s bad design that mimics a lot of behavior people on the Web expect. For instance, always-on, always-turn-available-moves, access to anyone, infinite progress... After all, is not the most popular game on the Web the Forum Game, whatever the topic? The problem I think is that the culture of the Web is not good game culture. The characteristics of the Web don’t translate wholesale into fun games. You have to have boundaries of play. And I wonder how people will deal with that as new kinds of MMO’s are ported to the Web.