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[Trying to create a roadmap to
delivering an engaging community experience within your game? Here, Peter Ryan,
VP at community site creators Agora Games -- responsible for Activision's Guitar Hero community site, among others -- takes apart these complex web and crossmedia experiences, examining in detail not only the benefit they bring to your games, but
what considerations must be examined when approaching, creating, and
maintaining them.]
The state of the art in community
sites
The
current state-of-the-art community website built specifically for a game can be
seen at Turn 10's Forza Motorsport 2 and Bungie's Halo 3 community sites. Each site provides an experience that is an
extension of the game through the clever use of in-game data and the provision
of a framework to support social interaction around a shared set of active
goals.
The Forza 2 trading system enables users to
swap cars they've made in game for in-game currency. Trading systems are not
new to gaming, but a publisher providing a marketplace which empowers users
with rights to their in-game assets in relation to others is.
This
externalization of the game experience enables individuals to connect around
their common in-game experience, and provides a framework around which a
culture and community can thrive.
Bungie.net
is a technical marvel. The developers on this project clearly worked very
closely with the game code early on during the development cycle. The depth and
richness of data is truly stunning, the presentation of data is outstanding and
the overall experience is good.
The user has very deep access to their entire Halo 3 play history for both campaign
and multiplayer modes. The user can drill down to specific weapons, maps and match
types, enabling a level of analysis and comparison previously not
possible.
The real
commonality between these two sites is the clearly visible depth of planning
and coordination that existed between the game developers and the web
developers to produce the synergies between the game and the web.
What is the community experience
for the user?
The
majority of web users today expect a lot from a website. Facebook and MySpace
have fostered the standards of social networking to a level difficult to
duplicate by most. The requirements for a social site are based on the size of
the network, the functionality of the features available, and the
externalization capabilities of the network.
Facebook allows developers to
create applications which connect to elements external to Facebook. This is
critical to the growth and success of Facebook and in line with the
expectations of Metcalf's Law.
In order
for a specialized and closed community like Bungie.net to succeed, the user
must have a reason to go to Bungie.net instead of Facebook. The value
proposition of the online game community is the expertise of the player
network, the shared interest and passion of the core community members, and the
game data.
Of those three elements, the game data is far and away the most
valuable and the most difficult to duplicate, and understanding what elements
of data has value is critical to building compelling data-driven features.
Looking
again at Bungie.net, the user has access to a wealth of information about the
game, about their gameplay history and about their characteristics as a player.
Heat maps enable the user to view their historical kill and death by geography.
Weapon statistics enable the user to see which weapon they use most effectively
and which weapons the community uses most efficiently. Users desire in-depth
gameplay analysis in order to study their tendencies, strengths and weaknesses
as individual players. As game competition increases with time the level of
analysis will deepen and at some point will match that of professional sports
analysis.
In
addition to requiring substantial amounts of data, users require sophisticated
filtration of data down to their specific interests. Each user has a different
element of the game that they want to track, and each user has different set of
reasons why they want to track those elements. In the case of both cooperative
and competitive players, the desired data is based on the need to know ranking
in relation to others.
The
difference, though subtle, comes down to ranking in relation to what others. To one player it may be compelling to know they
have moved from 10,675 to 10,215 in the global ranking.
However, to another
player it may be better to know that out of their group of friends they have
moved from fifth to second, out of a small group of 10 players. Enabling
customization of data display is important to fostering a broad level of user
interest in following leaderboards.
Assuming
that you have some interesting features based on your game data, you need to
ask whether you have linked those features together in a way that the community
site is engaging enough to compel a user to spend time on the site instead of
in the game, or on a larger social networking site (again, Facebook).
The
opportunity costs for any user to spend time on your highly-focused and
product-based community site are very high. What are you giving them that keeps
them around? Data alone doesn't make a compelling site.
You need to provide a
socially interactive experience that is based on the gameplay data, yet which
is self-contained and self-sustaining. In order to do so the community needs
its own game mechanic.
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Since the only work of Agora's I'm familiar with is the Guitar Hero community site, I'll skew my comments towards that.
Do you feel that the community you and your team built for Activision was successful? Not just in a bottom-line manner either, do you think that a solid community of GH players has embraced the site and tools you've given them?
I haven't visited the site in quite awhile even though I still constantly play the game, partly because of the design of the site and tools and partly because of the community of players. I can certainly elaborate more on my reasons later on should you choose to indulge my questions, I'm mainly curious if you feel that the GH community site followed the guidelines you laid down in this article or if the guidelines we're derived based on your experience in setting up that community.
Thanks!
One thing I noted was the significant attention paid to framing games as rules-based, numbers-driven competitive activities, and the relative lack of interest in gameplay that's focused on character development and immersion in the gameworld. While that focus makes sense for arcade-like games such as Forza and Halo 3 multiplayer, it doesn't offer much useful guidance when considering how to "communitize" games that place more emphasis on storytelling.
With Turbine announcing plans to enhance the links between its online game services and its Web-based community services, it would have been helpful to see more attention paid in this piece to the particular needs of community service design for MMORPGs and character-driven, story-based single-player games (such as, for a couple of random examples, The Witcher and Half-Life). For example, what does allowing game data to flow into the game from outside do to the "magic circle" of experiencing a story-driven gameworld as a secondary reality? How can a Web-based community service that's external to a gameworld support and enhance the internal narrative of that world?
I'd enjoy reading a follow-up article to this one that addressed the challenges and opportunities of more effectively integrating Web communities with MMORPGs and story-driven games.
Careful with the contests... When they disappear so do alot of the players. Try to keep something going most of the time if you start doing that.