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If you enjoy reading this site, you might also want to check out these Think Services sites:
 Game Career Guide (for student game developers.)
 Indie Games (for independent game players/developers.)
 Finger Gaming (news, reviews, and analysis on iPhone and iPod Touch games.)
 GamerBytes (for the latest console digital download news.)
 Worlds In Motion (discussing the business of online worlds.)
 Game Set Watch (the Group's alt.game weblog.) |
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Analysis: Examining Massively Single Player Online Games
by Michael Walbridge
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June 9, 2009
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[In this in-depth analysis, writer Michael Walbridge discusses how asynchronous multiplayer social games build community, finding commonalities between popular titles like Mafia Wars and Kingdom of Loathing.]
Lately some have been arguing that, as far as games are concerned, content is not always king. In the April 2009 issue of Game Developer magazine, Steve Theodore discussed alternative conceptions of games as art. After noting John Carmack's "We're doing entertainment" quote, Theodore writes: "Honestly, not many games can live up to the Romantic ideal [of art].
Recently, Chris Remo pointed out that many games seem to shoot to become epic, and Leigh Alexander suggested that perhaps it's time we stop looking for a “Citizen Kane”. In short: games are games first and foremost, and anything else is incidental.
There is an area of gamingdom that contests the point of content, at least, (though not necessarily art). I refer not to gaming critics, i.e. the “Brainysphere” (which this column has already covered), but to Massively Single Player Online games. The first place I saw the term printed was in the game ForumWarz, though it is certainly not the first of its kind.
A couple I know that plays games both invited me to Mafia Wars on Facebook, an application whose name evokes either a blessing for the bored or a curse for the busy. I received invites from them on the same day.
This wasn’t my friend’s friend or an elementary school memory that were making a request this time--these were very Internet-savvy people, good friends that are well-versed in netiquette who know what stuff online is truly awesome and what is just a fad or yawn. Prodded both by my trust in their recommendations and my guilt for not keeping in touch with them enough, I hesitantly allowed my first Facebook game to be installed on my computer. My wife is playing it now too.
The premise is simple and the mechanics even more so—you are in the mafia, trying to move your way up the ranks. You do this by going up levels by doing varying jobs and by fighting other players.
An attack automatically calculates both players’ stats, mafia size, weapons and armors and does a couple of rolls (critical hits, etc.) and gives an instant result. Whoever deals more damage is the winner. The defending player doesn’t have to be there, and simply receives a notification when he logs in.
Jobs are even simpler; you must have the required equipment, and then spend varying amounts of energy; the higher the energy, the more experience and money. There is a chance to collect loot. Both energy and stamina (the ability to fight) are point-based and refill every 3 or 5 minutes, depending on which class you choose.
Players can also buy properties to increase income (which occurs every 54 or 60 minutes, depending on class) and rob/damage other players’ properties instead of fight. Lastly, one can spend stamina to put another a player on the hitlist. Other players can browse the hitlist and collect money for knocking out another player, which reduces said player’s experience points.
I’ve left very little out. All the game is inventory, cash, and point management, with occasional bickering and feuds. He who has the highest level or most money gets to win. It’s a never-ending race to the top in simplified form. An MSO, not an MMO.
Still, the content is highly mafia-oriented; the sheer number of jobs and loot items forces Zynga, the creators of the game, to get creative. Mugging, hits, robberies and murders are what you’d expect, but “Help a fugitive flee the country”, “Sell guns to the Russian mob”, “Move stolen merchandise”, “Influence a harbor official” and “Run illegal poker” game are jobs that indeed Mafia-related, but not the first that come to mind.
The whole thing is watered down because it’s on Facebook (or Myspace, or the iPhone); it’s popular because it borrows heavily (knowingly or not) from MSOs that have come before it. Kingdom of Loathing, started in 2003, has a large mass of writing and plenty of doodles to represent monsters, characters, places, and items. It has Zelda-style puzzles put in Choose-your-own-adventure form, personal shops, guilds, and a grammar test you’re required to pass in order to enter the chat room.
More recent is ForumWarz, a game based on the Internet itself. Unlike Mafia Wars or Kingdom of Loathing, each fight is long and protracted, each turn represented by an attempt to “pwn” forums by trolling, attention-whoring, or whatever else it is your class does.
One loses by having one’s ego deflated by the responses posted. The automatically generated posts written by the people you “pwn” and the moves you do are classic, satirical, funny, and accurate. With ForumWarz or Kingdom of Loathing, you can attack other players, join guilds, and trade loot, but the games and their successes can be heavily attributed to the unique and rewarding content.
There are plenty of other MSOs (Urban Dead being one of them), but the successful ones all have some attributes in common:
--All are based on stats, money, loot, rank, and clans or guilds
--The best extent to which players can communicate with each other is through messages, forums, or chat, all of which don’t occur “in game”
--All require alternative and creative revenue streams, and must be free to play. Methods include microtransactions, merchandising, and donation requests
--Actions or turns are limited so as to reduce server loads and costs. Some regenerate slowly every few minutes, others simple reset every 24 hours
--Must have interesting or popular content, especially if merchandising is a revenue model
--They generally prohibit multiple character creation
-They encourage player-banding by heavily rewarding group associations in order to recruit new players to expand the player base and sustain merchandise sales.
This last point is ironic, since these are essentially single player games, but it forges communities based around the culture of the game. In the case of Mafia Wars, that culture is Facebook, which partially explains why player interaction is limited.
Despite the large focus on content, Mafia Wars’ differences with typical MSOs illustrate an interesting point: even single player games can form and stimulate game communities, and the game design still affects them.
This is why in Kingdom of Loathing, the players are so formal, but in ForumWarz, the players are more likely to be vulgar (though they are still required to play and post nicely). Whatever the choice, MSOs are a rare way to make being a part of a game community free.
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The games mentioned as examples are massive in the number of players permitted. But when "fighting other players" and "attack other players" are mentioned as gameplay features (for Mafia Wars and ForumWarz respectively), those are direct player-to-player interactions. At that point, these are no longer single-player games -- I think it's fair to say that they're massively multiplayer games.
I do agree that they're substantively different from the classic massively multiplayer online game, however, and that's because they share the quality of asynchronous play. Rather than players doing things directly to each other in the same space at the same time, the games mentioned in this article allow player-to-player actions to be distributed over space and time. It's basically "play-by-mail," with the difference that there can be a massive number of players.
Maybe a better name for these games would be Massively Multiplayer Asynchronous Games (MMAGs)?
A true Massively Single-Player game would, I think, by definition not include any ability for players to do things directly to each other, whether synchronously or asynchronously. The "massive" qualifier would describe not the number of players in the same world, but the size and scope of the world and the characters who populate it. Such a game could include the "online" qualifier if players are able to share content, either directly (such as through player mods) or indirectly (as the Spore game server does). But a Massively Single-Player game could also be played mostly offline, with only the occasional connection to download new content if the player wishes to do so.
One example of this Massively Single-Player Online Game model would be the "Living World" game I described in my own Gamasutra blog (http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/BartStewart/20090420/1204/The_quotLiving_Worldquo
t_Game.php). In this form, players would explore a massive, persistent world, forming relationships with a few highly-detailed NPCs and interacting with a vast number of stock characters through multiple gameplay activities. Revenue would come primarily not from the base game, but from the ongoing sale of content additions distributed through an online channel.
This is one approach to what I think a true Massively Single-Player Online Game would look like, as opposed to the Massively Multiplayer Asynchronous Games I believe are being described in the above article. But the Living World surely isn't the only possible form of a MSOG -- I'd enjoy reading what features others consider a MSOG to be defined by.
These games are the "door games" of the 21st century. Their designs are very similar to games like Trade Wars 2002, Legend of the Red Dragon, The Pit, Land of Devastation, Barren Realms Elite, and so on. Those games had large player bases, asynchronous multiplayer interactions, and a relatively small percentage of active players online at any one time (especially on a BBS that wasn't multi-node). Their designs tend to be quite similar, with turn limits or other similar limitations on how far you can advance in one day. Browser games like Archmage (appeared in 1999ish) are also quite alike.
I've been doing my own blogging here on what I call "connective games" -- games that are played as single-player but that use direct or indirect connectivity with other players to enhance the experience in some fashion.
Back in the BBS days, we called these "Door Games".
Games like Mafia Wars, Undead LIVE!, Vampires, Kingdoms, etc are all more akin to Legend of the Red Dragon (L.O.R.D.) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Red_Dragon] in both substance and content. You can find an HTML version here: http://lord.lordlegacy.com/main.php
The primary difference is that telnet protocols sending characters have been replaced by hyperlinks. The scalability of the interface as well as the short bursts of gameplay (given move limits per time-slice) make it ideal for iPhone and integrated web apps (such as on Facebook).
Epic Pet Wars is an extension of this style but offers the added ability to create multiple characters, thus self-scaling to the user's desired time investment per day.
Personally, I am surprised that TradeWars and other "classic"/popular door games have not been ported or reimagined for iPhone yet as the platform is ripe for games of that style.
Unfortunately, what I am seeing is the same engine/code being dumped into differently themed apps (goth/vampires, fantasy, street racing, mafia, etc etc). It is a great way to market to various groups with a free-to-play (but pay-for-perks) model, but ... let's hope that the games being developed quickly evolve beyond this... the technology is there... it is just a matter of retreading the PC/BBS curve back to our modern day internet platform. (For me, at least, I hope that day comes sooner than later...)
I remember playing a couple of them (although I remember British Legends on CompuServe better). I wonder if today's asynchronous multiplayer games will follow a similar pattern of development?
As I recall, door games went through a couple of generations at least. The first was the initial profusion of games built completely from scratch, some of which (as Neil noted) were "multiplayer" only serially. Later, as the "door" infrastructure approached something like standardization, the second generation came along. This was based on a more generic engine with gameplay rules split out (as data) to allow for easier customization.
I wonder if something like that might be in progress today.
I imagine a system in two parts. One would be a generic game-rule-parser built on a server that uses HTTP to receive simply-formatted messages from any source, operates on those messages according to selected rules to produce results, and serves up each result as a response message to all of the appropriate devices. The other part would be a front-end, built for whatever device(s) the developer wants to support, that puts a pretty face on incoming message data and makes it easy to produce new messages.
So is anyone working on something like that, which takes advantage of today's plethora of platforms and the standardized server/browser communication model to give asynchronous multiplayer games a new home?