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I Thought I Played to Bake Bread?!

Misty Matonis digs into the issues of MMOG socialization structures and details the steps to building a successful community.
By Misty "Beans" Matonis

I'm not your typical gamer. I'm quite weird, in fact. When I go online to play my games (UO and Asheron's Call ), I usually don't load up ICQ in conjunction with the client. I don't go to the usual hotspots to meet friends, or even try to make new ones. I cringe whenever another player talks to me in-game, or worse, get the shakes whenever someone asks me if I'm looking for a patron in AC. I hate going to the popular spawn points to kill monsters, and tend to play when the least people are on so that I won't have to wind up talking with another player. Like I said, I'm not your typical gamer.

I didn't come to online gaming through the suggestion of a friend, nor knew anyone who was playing games online. My background was primarily in console gaming, and some PC gaming, mostly in the 80's. I guess that's why I'm more of a solo player. I spent two decades playing games by myself. It's kind of hard to break a 20-year habit. Wouldn't you agree?

Yet, I happen to know a lot of people in my community. It does come with the territory. I've been a reporter at UO Stratics for two and a half years, and a UO player for a little over three. I once formed an in-game town council, and have written a quest or two. I was even a UO Counselor for a little over two years. I'm active on several UO message boards, and several other MMOG sites.

How do I explain it? How can someone so anti-social wind up being so social after all?

A recent essay by Ralph "Holocron" Koster, creative director of Star Wars Galaxies, spoke of some the issues and questions game developers tend to have when it comes to designing socialization structures in their games. I found it interesting that his teammates couldn't exactly pinpoint how much time an average gamer spends socializing in-game. The numbers ranged from 3% to 50%. Why such a huge discrepancy?

We tend to take for granted what the designers have given us when it comes to socialization in-game. Most games have some sort of group organization, guilds, for example, where players can come together for some common goal. Some games give us tools: chat, vendors to sell our wares in-game, or common areas where we can congregate for a common purpose; a bank for us to handle our affairs, a tavern where we can tell our tales, or housing, where we can relax and go about our chores. Even dungeons qualify, of course. Places where we can fight a common enemy, typically a monster, level our characters, and gain our fame.

Dungeons are great places for socialization, something I never considered when I started playing UO. Like many players, I tend to spelunk in the same dungeon areas. Over time I wound up seeing the same players over and over again. I know what kind of activities they like to perform, how they fight, and when they'll need a heal. We'd sometimes strike up a conversation while waiting for that respawn, or maybe say "hi" after a chance meeting in a town store several months later.

The same thing can happen in most any location or situation the developers throw at us from the time the product enters public Beta to when it's in production. With that in mind, let's do an experiment. Log into your favorite online game; it can be an MMPOG or a MU*, take your pick. Spend an hour or two in game, and count how many times you talk to a stranger. You'll be as surprised as I was, I'm sure.

What I think you'll find interesting in your study is where and when you actually socialize. There may be no specific location, nor time when you will socialize, but you will find it surprisingly frequent. In fact, if you think about it, you'll start to wonder if the game designers even considered all the possibilities of socialization in their games, or even realized if what they designed specifically for socialization is used as intended.

In the real world, I'm a community developer for Websites. My job is to develop the tools and areas users will use to communicate with one another. The goal of the Web community developer, like the game designer, is to (hopefully) build tools that will allow users to develop relationships. Relationships built on the common aspects of your community almost always ensure that your market will continue using your product to continue said relationships. Of course, this isn't an exact science, nor is this the overall goal of game, or Web design. But it is extremely important to have this aspect both within and outside of the product. Without community, without tools of socialization to build said community, your product will not be as successful, no matter how well you design your game.

What basics are required for a game to start building a successful community?

Chat: An obvious one, but sometimes not always well-thought out. Take AC for example -- great game, horrible chat system. If I were to go hunting with a friend, and I needed a heal, I'd have to take myself out of combat, hit the enter key, type my message, hit enter to send the message, and hope that he isn't being spamed by messages from his own battle with a monster. Even in town during downtime, the chat system is horrible. It's like being sucked into one nasty IRC channel from hell where every player and their mother, father, sister, cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents are having the world's worst family reunion. Or, more succinctly, AC's chat system is like running your fingernails down a chalkboard. I hate it. Initially I thought it was because I was so used to UO's over-the-head chat style. However, after a year and a half of playing AC, I can assure you, that assumption was quite wrong. A well-developed chat system that does not interfere with most functions of gameplay should be a number one priority for game developers.

Downtime Areas: Raph's essay, which I mentioned above, has some really great information regarding developing downtime areas. Players need places and opportunities to unwind after their great adventures. They need places to offload their wares, and trade with other players safely. However, some downtime areas, usually dealing with travel, are horrific. I've heard that traveling by boat between continents in EverQuest is about as enjoyable as trying to get to grandmaster status as a beggar in UO. And speaking of UO, remember the old city moongates, where you'd spend 30 minutes trying to get from one city to the next, and everyone gathered around complaining about it? At least I've made a friend or two that way, but at what cost? Developers should make sure that downtime areas are worth the cost of admission. If you make it tedious, chances are, you'll find your player base avoiding them at all costs.

Leadership Opportunities: Guilds are great for community building. Not only do they provide players with the opportunity to unite for a common goal, but in most cases, players can delegate leadership roles amongst themselves. In UO you can elect a guildmaster and can artificially designate lieutenants. UO also has factions, where players can be elected into positions of power by popular vote, and can have a rank in the overall faction structure. In AC, you can become a vassal to a patron who can then teach you the ropes of the game, or travel with you to new locations. Enhanced leadership opportunities allow players to work together for a common cause.

Ongoing Content / New Items: With the addition of new items and/or new storylines, such as a great evil monster and his clan attacking cities, players will have the opportunity to band together to fight, or support, the evil. New items won't just give players something new to own. It will give them the opportunity to seek out items and information from other players. Games such as AC, EQ and UO are successful because they have consistently provided players new areas to explore, new items to uncover, and new monsters to fight. Socialization in most games almost always increases when new content and items are introduced in the game.

This is just the tip of the mountain of successful community building in online games. I don't envy any game designer who has to create the systems by which we all socialize. And I sympathize with any that lose sleep considering the myriad possibilities. But, if you want to build a successful product, you need to build exceptional community building tools. Gameplay is not enough. It's as simple as that.

Originally published on GameSpy 7/1/01