Development of online gaming on consoles and a switch
in the use of the PC
Consoles have been lagging behind the PC for
multiplayer gaming. There are many reasons that explain that and many more to
argue that the situation will change.
Xbox Live has already attained over 14
million subscribers. Sony, with its PS3, PSP, and PlayStation Network, is now
offering the right hardware and network infrastructure. Nintendo is developing
its online offerings in a very smart way. Broadband access is spreading fast,
including in China and India.
In a few years, consoles are likely to become the
leading platforms for multiplayer gaming as we know it today (on mobile
platforms, we are more likely to see the emergence of new genres of casual
multiplayer gaming). Shooters are far from restricted to the PC anymore, and
strategy games will probably make a breakthrough on consoles as well.
New
control mechanisms and viewing modes will have to be defined but most
publishers have projects in that direction. Ubisoft's voice-controlled Endwar could show the way. By the same
token, MMOs will probably proliferate on consoles as well, since most of them
now offer mass storage devices.
Ubisoft Shanghai's EndWar
Will it mean the death of the PC as a multiplayer
platform? Not at all. The PC will probably cease to be the main platform for
hardcore multiplayer gaming, as it becomes an important one for casual and
social gaming. The PC is also a hotbed for creativity. New multiplayer game
concepts are likely to appear on the PC first.
The challenge of gamer behavior
The experience of playing online has little or nothing
in common with that of solo gaming. The main difference lies in the behavior of
the player's opponents -- or his allies, as the case may be. Whereas AI behavior
is strictly controlled by designers in single-player games, the online player
is potentially confronted by the whole broad spectrum of human behavior.
What
sorts of things must the player contend with in such a situation? Here are some
typical scenarios, no doubt quite familiar to network gaming aficionados:
-
Cheaters who abuse a game's bugs or design errors
-
Bad players or sore losers who log off during a
session and leave their team-mates hanging
-
Pro gamers who have mastered a game so thoroughly that
their presence leaves no chance of survival to newcomers... or to anyone else!
-
Players who lack the team spirit necessary for
tactical play
-
Thugs with rude or even outright xenophobic or racist
behavior
Online gaming is sometimes like a jungle. Anonymity,
coupled with an absence of regulation or any real consequences, tends to encourage
all of the excesses of behavior characteristic of humanity. If multiplayer
gaming is to become a mode of play accepted by all, it will have to become more
civilized in the process.
Design solutions to such behavior problems are not so
obvious. On Xbox Live, Microsoft allows players to
rate each other, but this is effective only against the most blatant kinds of
abuse. Another possibility lies in developing games that are reliant on
cooperation, rather than on having the players confront one another.
Lastly,
games should feature ranking systems only if they target hardcore gamers. Only these
players really care about leaderboards. Experience has shown that ranking
mechanisms tend to incite the most aggressive and least honest of players to
cheat and take advantage of all of the exploitable quirks present in a game.
Innovative solutions for dealing with the gap between
newcomers and veteran players will need to be explored. Here are some of the
possibilities:
-
Implementation of handicaps (negative or positive).
-
Automatic detection of a given player's level, and
subsequent integration of the player into an appropriate level group
- Interfaces and control mechanisms adapted to a given
player's skill level
-
Determination of accessible equipment or missions
according to a given player's skill level
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If the issue isn't taken seriously it might perhaps result in automatic high age restrictions on the mmo genre.
A good read indeed!
The big problem is the quality of life of a lot of people in general.
http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/qna.html
How would you redesign poker to motivate people to play less? Can you cure gambling addiction by having people gamble with redesigned games? Gamblers Anonymous would disagree.
"The arrival of cooperative gaming modes has allowed players of different skill levels to have fun together. I think it is one of the main reasons for Counter-Strike's success, where players of any level are playing together as a team."
The first sentence in this quote makes perfect sense. The second sentence is...well, have you ever played Counter-Strike? We're talking about the same Counter-Strike, right? The one where new players get killed in under a minute and spend 80% of their time waiting for the round to end so they can killed again really fast - that Counter-Strike?
Hardly the first example that pops to mind of a game that's inviting to players of all skill levels. It's a nitpick, but I couldn't not say it.
I agree, and I see a real opportunity for the industry here. An idea I've been knocking around for a while now (http://flatfingers-theory.blogspot.com/2008/06/living-world-massively-single-pla
yer.html) is the possibility of merging the business model of MMORPGs with the gameplay design of open-world games.
The typical business model for developers of single-player games today is built around making one big, complex game, then dropping that product completely (or with at most a couple of bits of downloadable content) to go make some other different game, and hoping that one of them is a commercial hit before the studio runs out of money. The "Living World" business model would be to create a large gameworld space and then, over months and years, extend that gameworld with high-quality content in the same way that MMORPG operators continuously refresh and expand their content.
This model would appear to offer two advantages over today's usual model of making a series of unrelated single-player games and hoping one of them goes big:
1. It designs in a long-term revenue stream for paying back the usually-steep initial development costs, rather than requiring one-time sales to be strong enough to cover all costs. This reduces investment risk.
2. It minimizes loss of revenue due to piracy by shifting revenue generation from a one-time sale of copyable content to repeated sales of download-only content.
Adopting this model would create a game development studio whose core business process is to fund a mid-sized team to create a large single-player gameworld, then spin off to a smaller external development group the long-term enhancement of that gameworld through high-quality DLC in return for a percentage of the income generated by DLC sales. In effect, this builds the business around monetizing the most capable modders.
We can already see small versions of this starting to appear, as with making DLC production for Little Big Planet part of the business plan. It remains to be seen whether some developers will choose to structure their entire business on this model, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that someone's already headed down this path.
However, many games tend to reward addiction, or long term play. For instance TF2, when I play a lot my Steam Rating is "10 - EAGLES SCREAM!" Wow, I'm cool! But when I don't play for a couple of weeks it says something like:
"2 - Nearly Lifeless" Wow, I suck.
Now, I know the Steam Rating is pointless, it's not skill level, but how much you have played over the past couple of weeks. Of course it is meant as a purposeful jab to the user to keep them playing.
In the end, the industry has to create addictive games, the user has to want to play it. But it is the user that must be responsible for his or her time and social well being. So supporting and encouraging addiction may be the real problem. Perhaps reminding the player to take a break after playing for long periods.
Maybe the Steam Rating should say:
10- Dude get a life!
or
2 - Thanks for playing!
So I do agree with Bill, addiction usually is a symptom of problem with the user but games that reward addiction also tend to anger those players with less time on their hands and/or work against them being responsible.
So great article and good comment Bill, i agree.
I couldn't agree more!!!
You know, TV has a lot of channels and a lot of shows on each channel. I bet that if I tried to watch every episode of every TV show one time (no reruns), even if I never needed to leave my TV, and I skipped all the commercials, and I were independently wealthy and lonely enough to do it, I would still die before reaching that goal. In fact, the amount of unwatched material would go up the longer I tried it, because they make new episodes and new shows faster and faster, on more and more channels, and I can only watch one thing at a time.
So does my TV set need a warning? No, it absolutely does not. I need to take control of my life. I need to be responsible on a very basic level for my own actions.
good reading! In this case one should mention the phenomenon called eSports (electronic sports), which relies on multiplayer gaming and that has to deal with the problems mentioned by the author:
1. Cheaters who abuse a game's bugs or design errors
2. Bad players or sore losers who log off during a session and leave their team-mates hanging
3. Pro gamers who have mastered a game so thoroughly that their presence leaves no chance of survival to newcomers... or to anyone else!
4. Players who lack the team spirit necessary for tactical play
5. Thugs with rude or even outright xenophobic or racist behavior
The eSports legues have developed solutions to get along with these problems and to ensure a good development of social gaming. Take the ESL for instance, more than 1000 volontary admins keep the system work. Maybe this should be pointed out the next time!
Best regards
Ibo
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