Gamers want games

November 26, 2006 on 9:40 pm | In MMO (Live), General Gaming, Playstyles

A few years ago, many in the MMOG community foresaw a fairly steady, but shallow, growth in the overall number of players. There were a lot of reasons for this, from the sheer inability to deliver a game with the same polish and stability as an offline title, to the required internet connection at a time when developers still designed for 56kpbs dialup, to the rather unique nature of the concept itself.

As has been said countless times, World of Warcraft proved us (myself included) wrong. Way wrong.

There's a lot of reasons for this. But chief among them, in my opinion, was because at its heart, it's a game. For gamers.

Gaming is what has been on the rise since the 70s. It's people who want a good time, fun alone or with friends.

Meanwhile, The MMOG genre was growing at a steady clip based mostly on people who wanted a cool online experience, live a virtual life. The advertising of the day speaks volumes for the audience companies were attracting. People were compelled to roleplay in these emerging graphical environments. They could build houses, host vendors, found settlements, all the stuff someone seeking a virtual existence would love.

The steady growth of the genre had this playstyle at its root. Everquest was one of the early departures from this, but even it was the sort of environment in which societies could be born. As has recently come up again here, EQ had the sort of downtime that people simply wanted to fill with conversation. But this was still mostly between people who came here to have a virtual life.

WoW did not go after this audience. That it happened to capture a great deal of them is expected, since the core experience bears more similarities to EQ and other diku-inspired games than not. However, WoW also did what few other MMOs did before it: capture lots of gamers.

Gamers want different things than virtual lifestylers. One need go no further than compare Second Life to Guild Wars to see that difference. One also doesn't need tea leaves to see which crowd is more numerous, and therefore understand why business is leaning towards delivering more online game than online roleplaying game.

Veterans lament the demise of roleplaying. But that happened concurrent to the sheer explosive growth of the genre. That growth has come from attracting gamers, who come with their own expectations, borne of experience in games of other genres. And even the veterans have benefitted, because to deliver against a gamer's expectation, certain elements must be in place:

• Can I get into it right away? None of this nonsense about having to look all over the world for my first quest NPC. No being able to kill oneself by hitting the wrong key with that NPC. No crazy-kludged interface showing me stuff I won't need to worry about for 20 or more hours of game time.
• Does it work? The days of unplayable instability are over. It works or it doesn't and the latter gets roundly villified. And then ignored.
• Am I having fun right away? 20 levels before I can start having fun? 10 levels before my first real ability? No thanks. That may work in some games, but the most obvious examples are either in decline or built for a different culture entirely.
• Am I winning? Gone are the days where twinking has been the only way to achieve good equipment in the first 15 hours of play. The game giveth or the players walketh.
• Are others in my way? Liking other people is very different from wanting them between you and the objective set for you by the game. Unless they are specifically in your way because of objectives set by the game for them (as in, a WoW Battleground), other players in public-space adventure areas can be a huge source of annoyance. Some games try to solve this through crazy contrived systems. Others just put the best content into instantiated zones created just for you or your group.

Notice has been served to the genre by the newcomers who brought games, and gamers, to the fold. That is where the growth was always sitting. Looking back, it's obvious. Lots of money in video games, lots of people buying and playing. Lots of money in MMOGs, but not nearly as many people. I think we finally understand why that was.

And it's about damned time.