One of my most popular games is METEOR!, which is a four or five hour LARP in which everyone plays an eighties'(ish) movie character, such as Buckaroo Banzai or Darth Vader. It's a hideously chaotic game.
I'm re-running it with the intent to cut some of the flab out. What I'm finding is that I've discovered some absolute gems to include that I didn't include last time. Like Dread Pirate Roberts! How could I have forgotten to put him in? Or how about Zaphod Beeblebrox?
That lets me cut out the weaker characters, such as the 'lectroids.
Heh, this is gonna be fun...
So, if you want to play in METEOR!, I'll be running it here in Worcester on the weekend of March 25th. Wheee! Mail me if you're interested in being there, we'll see if we can break 20 players. :)
Thursday, February 09, 2006
What's "Socialization"?
Usually, the Escapist Lounge kind of just floats through my feed without making much of an impression. But today they posted this little gem.
I think the primary reason MMORPGs have only a very limited amount of social interaction is because socially interacting is so difficult. It takes forever, it isn't very deep or emotional, and it's not intuitive. However, whatever the reason, the fact is undeniable that they aren't popular.
But the strength of an MMORPG still lies in its social interaction! In fact, I made a very recent post on that very subject! "Your social circles are critical," I said. Was I wrong?
Not in the slightest. You see, "socializing" isn't necessarily getting together and forming a party. Socializing isn't necessarily even talking to each other. Socializing is simply supporting each other in any given way.
For example, much of the "social circle" in a MMORPG happens outside the MMORPG. It happens on the forums, it happens when you get advice from a more addicted friend, it happens in the economy.
If you're using significant amounts of player content, a player's social circle is also the content they encounter.
Obviously, this is a bit different from the way "social circle" is used in normal psychology. For example, this social circle has one-way connectivity. You might be part of the forum's social circle, but they're not part of yours. They probably don't even know you exist.
You see, getting a response from a MMORPG social circle takes forever. There's no "real time conversations". The closest you get is typing back and forth, and that's a slow, clumsy process.
The support that a social circle provides, therefore, is one of indirect response. For example, if you post that the Killograth monster is weak to fire, you're not expecting any meaningful direct responses. You might expect some "kthx"-style responses, but no meaningful interchanges.
Similarly, if someone is trying to kill the Killograth and finds your post, they know you aren't telling it to them. It's not a personal interchange. It's just a forum post.
But both of you are socially interacting, in an indirect way. And both sides benefit, one as a maven, the other as a student.
You get similar results from virtually all other kinds of player content. Favorites lists, custom quests, the marketplace, a sweet graphic. It's all part of the social circle, it's all part of this indirect social support net. That is what makes MMORPGs more fascinating than one-player games. There is a social responsiveness even without the ability to actually converse usefully.
That is really the whole point of custom content: to allow a player to communicate with other players indirectly. A giant space ship of doom clearly establishes strength. A vending machine full of cute toys is another kind of indirect interaction. Details as to how to reach level 810 are another indirect interaction.
That's what a MMORPG is all about, and that's what player content is all about.
I think the primary reason MMORPGs have only a very limited amount of social interaction is because socially interacting is so difficult. It takes forever, it isn't very deep or emotional, and it's not intuitive. However, whatever the reason, the fact is undeniable that they aren't popular.
But the strength of an MMORPG still lies in its social interaction! In fact, I made a very recent post on that very subject! "Your social circles are critical," I said. Was I wrong?
Not in the slightest. You see, "socializing" isn't necessarily getting together and forming a party. Socializing isn't necessarily even talking to each other. Socializing is simply supporting each other in any given way.
For example, much of the "social circle" in a MMORPG happens outside the MMORPG. It happens on the forums, it happens when you get advice from a more addicted friend, it happens in the economy.
If you're using significant amounts of player content, a player's social circle is also the content they encounter.
Obviously, this is a bit different from the way "social circle" is used in normal psychology. For example, this social circle has one-way connectivity. You might be part of the forum's social circle, but they're not part of yours. They probably don't even know you exist.
You see, getting a response from a MMORPG social circle takes forever. There's no "real time conversations". The closest you get is typing back and forth, and that's a slow, clumsy process.
The support that a social circle provides, therefore, is one of indirect response. For example, if you post that the Killograth monster is weak to fire, you're not expecting any meaningful direct responses. You might expect some "kthx"-style responses, but no meaningful interchanges.
Similarly, if someone is trying to kill the Killograth and finds your post, they know you aren't telling it to them. It's not a personal interchange. It's just a forum post.
But both of you are socially interacting, in an indirect way. And both sides benefit, one as a maven, the other as a student.
You get similar results from virtually all other kinds of player content. Favorites lists, custom quests, the marketplace, a sweet graphic. It's all part of the social circle, it's all part of this indirect social support net. That is what makes MMORPGs more fascinating than one-player games. There is a social responsiveness even without the ability to actually converse usefully.
That is really the whole point of custom content: to allow a player to communicate with other players indirectly. A giant space ship of doom clearly establishes strength. A vending machine full of cute toys is another kind of indirect interaction. Details as to how to reach level 810 are another indirect interaction.
That's what a MMORPG is all about, and that's what player content is all about.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
What, Exactly, is a Conspiracy?
First, just to be clear, a conspiracy doesn't have to be secret, and it doesn't have to be wide-spread. Anyone who says there's a conspiracy to do X or Y in the political arena is probably right, since chances are there's at least three or four people working together to undermine the status quo in every conceivable way.
Heck, there's at least five conspiracies in the group of geeks I hang out with. Not exactly uncommon.
But we're talking about the big "conspiracies". We're talking about coordinated assaults for or against science, religion, firearms, medicare - whatever your personal preferences are. Me, I'm a science guy. So lets talk about the apparent wide-ranging conspiracy against science.
Bush has been appointing anti-science people into all sorts of bizarre positions. For example, he appointed Deutsch into NASA. Deutsch proceeded to be one of the main proponents for stifling NASA's scientific publications. It's an interesting story, because the asshole actively admitted it. He recently resigned, but the fact remains: Bush appointed an anti-science propagandist into NASA.
There are a lot of examples. Bush appoints blunt, religious wack-jobs into any position he can slip them into. The FCC, the UN, everywhere. They then proceed to cripple science. A conspiracy against science?
Not on purpose. It's simple social dynamics.
See, Bush is a blunt, religious wack-job. Strangely, the sort of people blunt, religious wack-jobs become friends with are other blunt, religious wack-jobs. The sort of people a blunt, religious wack-job is likely to trust are other blunt, religious wack-jobs. Assuming they are from the same wack-job religion.
If you asked me to appoint fifteen people to assist me in my important duties, you can be sure I'd appoint blunt, pro-science assholes. Because those are the kinds of people I know, and the kinds of people I trust. Would it be a pro-science conspiracy? No, because I would be sure that just having those kinds of people in power would get the job done. There would be no need to conspire. It would be an implicit conspiracy.
We are drawn to others with similar ideals. Perhaps not as lovers, but as friends and allies. When we go someplace, we naturally try to drag this flow of allies with us. When we have more power, our allies are given more power, and they drag their allies with them. So, it quickly becomes a rush of people who are "your kind" of people.
This kind of "sticky friction" drives much of society. I think it's the reason that there aren't many women or black people in the sciences: there's this rush of similar geeks all sticking to each other, and when someone jumps in they either stick or get bounced around. It's much easier to stick if you're travelling in the same way as the main flow - IE, if you have the same features. If you're travelling against the flow, you'll get bounced around.
Two groups which touch each other also feel this pull, and they are pulled into each other, carving swaths of disruption. When a group of religious zealots brushes up against a group of scientific zealots, some of the religious zealots get "pulled in" to the science group. Not to help the group. Not to travel with the group. But to disrupt it by travelling across the grain, impelled by the inertia of their original group.
That is what's happening. Whether there's a smoke-filled back room to discuss the conspiracy or not really doesn't matter. Whether its on purpose or not really doesn't matter.
What matters is that the two groups are touching, and outliers are streaking across both groups, causing chaos and disruption.
"Wait, if that was the case, wouldn't scientists be disrupting religion?"
Well, of coure we are. We always have been. Religion has also always been disrupting science. This is simply an abnormally heavy rain of zealots.
Unfortunately, it's our precious memetic infrastructure they're damaging. Our inertia. We can't afford to flounder, not if we want to achieve our goals of curing cancer, living forever, colonizing the moon, and creating orbital mind-control lasers.
But maybe we could gather inertia like a space probe: by leeching it from nearby passerby. If we can adjust our vectors to pass close to neutral targets, we can pull them in and accelerate. It's bad physics, but good memetics.
Fighting the religious nuts is idiocy. We don't want to fight religion - which is what we are doing now. Religion is too big and has too much inertia. What we want to do is simply get bigger and go faster. Religion can't hurt us as fast as we can gain strength, and once we get up to speed, religion won't dare to attack us.
Religion has the media, a powerful advantage. But science has actual accomplishments, and a face-to-face is always stronger than a television show, so long as the face appears to know what they are talking about. And we have an advantage when talking about real scientific accomplishments: these are concrete and provable.
So brush up on your scientific accomplishments. Next time there's a good point for small talk, don't talk about sports or whether. Talk about one of those accomplishments. Most people don't really understand that those accomplishments were created by scientists - they kind of assume communication satellites are a natural part of nature. Your job is to remind them that surgery, the internet, shopping trips, planes, swim suits, photography, electric lights, and everything else you can point at in a city is the result of science. Not religion.
And, hey, you know those religious accomplishments? Cathedrals, bibles, your local church? Science. Without science, your religion would be gathering in a forest clearing waving sticks around, trying to keep the whole of your mythology in your head. Every brick, every buttress, every stained glass plate, every acoustically perfect auditorium, every speaker system: science. Not religion.
Heck, there's at least five conspiracies in the group of geeks I hang out with. Not exactly uncommon.
But we're talking about the big "conspiracies". We're talking about coordinated assaults for or against science, religion, firearms, medicare - whatever your personal preferences are. Me, I'm a science guy. So lets talk about the apparent wide-ranging conspiracy against science.
Bush has been appointing anti-science people into all sorts of bizarre positions. For example, he appointed Deutsch into NASA. Deutsch proceeded to be one of the main proponents for stifling NASA's scientific publications. It's an interesting story, because the asshole actively admitted it. He recently resigned, but the fact remains: Bush appointed an anti-science propagandist into NASA.
There are a lot of examples. Bush appoints blunt, religious wack-jobs into any position he can slip them into. The FCC, the UN, everywhere. They then proceed to cripple science. A conspiracy against science?
Not on purpose. It's simple social dynamics.
See, Bush is a blunt, religious wack-job. Strangely, the sort of people blunt, religious wack-jobs become friends with are other blunt, religious wack-jobs. The sort of people a blunt, religious wack-job is likely to trust are other blunt, religious wack-jobs. Assuming they are from the same wack-job religion.
If you asked me to appoint fifteen people to assist me in my important duties, you can be sure I'd appoint blunt, pro-science assholes. Because those are the kinds of people I know, and the kinds of people I trust. Would it be a pro-science conspiracy? No, because I would be sure that just having those kinds of people in power would get the job done. There would be no need to conspire. It would be an implicit conspiracy.
We are drawn to others with similar ideals. Perhaps not as lovers, but as friends and allies. When we go someplace, we naturally try to drag this flow of allies with us. When we have more power, our allies are given more power, and they drag their allies with them. So, it quickly becomes a rush of people who are "your kind" of people.
This kind of "sticky friction" drives much of society. I think it's the reason that there aren't many women or black people in the sciences: there's this rush of similar geeks all sticking to each other, and when someone jumps in they either stick or get bounced around. It's much easier to stick if you're travelling in the same way as the main flow - IE, if you have the same features. If you're travelling against the flow, you'll get bounced around.
Two groups which touch each other also feel this pull, and they are pulled into each other, carving swaths of disruption. When a group of religious zealots brushes up against a group of scientific zealots, some of the religious zealots get "pulled in" to the science group. Not to help the group. Not to travel with the group. But to disrupt it by travelling across the grain, impelled by the inertia of their original group.
That is what's happening. Whether there's a smoke-filled back room to discuss the conspiracy or not really doesn't matter. Whether its on purpose or not really doesn't matter.
What matters is that the two groups are touching, and outliers are streaking across both groups, causing chaos and disruption.
"Wait, if that was the case, wouldn't scientists be disrupting religion?"
Well, of coure we are. We always have been. Religion has also always been disrupting science. This is simply an abnormally heavy rain of zealots.
Unfortunately, it's our precious memetic infrastructure they're damaging. Our inertia. We can't afford to flounder, not if we want to achieve our goals of curing cancer, living forever, colonizing the moon, and creating orbital mind-control lasers.
But maybe we could gather inertia like a space probe: by leeching it from nearby passerby. If we can adjust our vectors to pass close to neutral targets, we can pull them in and accelerate. It's bad physics, but good memetics.
Fighting the religious nuts is idiocy. We don't want to fight religion - which is what we are doing now. Religion is too big and has too much inertia. What we want to do is simply get bigger and go faster. Religion can't hurt us as fast as we can gain strength, and once we get up to speed, religion won't dare to attack us.
Religion has the media, a powerful advantage. But science has actual accomplishments, and a face-to-face is always stronger than a television show, so long as the face appears to know what they are talking about. And we have an advantage when talking about real scientific accomplishments: these are concrete and provable.
So brush up on your scientific accomplishments. Next time there's a good point for small talk, don't talk about sports or whether. Talk about one of those accomplishments. Most people don't really understand that those accomplishments were created by scientists - they kind of assume communication satellites are a natural part of nature. Your job is to remind them that surgery, the internet, shopping trips, planes, swim suits, photography, electric lights, and everything else you can point at in a city is the result of science. Not religion.
And, hey, you know those religious accomplishments? Cathedrals, bibles, your local church? Science. Without science, your religion would be gathering in a forest clearing waving sticks around, trying to keep the whole of your mythology in your head. Every brick, every buttress, every stained glass plate, every acoustically perfect auditorium, every speaker system: science. Not religion.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
This Week's Escapist
Someone wrote in to the Escapist this week and griped about the fact that the articles don't really have much content in them any more. I agree: when it started, I liked 2-3 of the articles in each issue. Now, I'm down to only one per issue. (And the editor's comments and one or two of the letters - those're always interesting.)
This issue, for example, starts off with a whimper: Pat Miller writes an essay about SecondLife. It's a painfully pedestrian story which says literally nothing that hasn't been said before in the Escapist itself. He (or she, I suppose) also skips some of the most important points to the modern SecondLife situation: the way the economy is fluctuating due to Linden Lab's hostile takeover of real money transactions and the sudden changes in the teleportation rules.
It doesn't even contain any up-to-date content. What other purpose do magazines serve?
Patrick writes an article about alternative challenges and goals which probably interests someone, but is pretty old hat for me. No offense, Patrick. Just not news to me.
Bruce Nielson writes about money, and the expense of maintaining a game. Unfortunately, he doesn't actually say anything. At all. He says, "sometimes, customers want too much for too little. Maybe it would be best if they could create content for you, but maybe not. Maybe something else - I don't know what - is best." Except he says it in 1000 words.
Why not talk a bit about the fun chaos that is content creation, Bruce? I know you only had a spotlight - not many words to bandy about - but you wasted many of them on the rather pointless NWN example. I understand it's near and dear to your heart, but you didn't have enough words to talk about yourself.
Joe Blancato's essay on "Fraternizing With the Enemy" is probably the only essay I like in this week's issue, assuming Friday doesn't pull something amazing out of its ass. And it's not a "wow! Woo-hoo!" like. It's a "Huh, that's interesting" like, like the like I get from an article in a local newspaper. It's the same interest I get from reading that Boeing laid off its workforce again.
This is pretty much the standard success rate for me and the Escapist. It's been quite a while since I've given an essay in the Escapist two thumbs up.
I think the Escapist is in a good position, but, like a photon, I can't tell where it's going. Or if it's going. I hope that they can get some really solid content up soon, or they'll lose their inertia and some of their critical readership. However, looking at their future issues - concentrating on Blizzard, for example - I don't see how they could get more than one solid essay in any given issue.
Sigh...
In the interest of revealing potential bias, I must say that the Escapist did turn down my little pitch. However, this was due (I'm pretending) mostly to me thoroughly misunderstanding the deadlines. It doesn't change the fact that the most entertaining pages of the Escapist are the first three.
That's not good!
This issue, for example, starts off with a whimper: Pat Miller writes an essay about SecondLife. It's a painfully pedestrian story which says literally nothing that hasn't been said before in the Escapist itself. He (or she, I suppose) also skips some of the most important points to the modern SecondLife situation: the way the economy is fluctuating due to Linden Lab's hostile takeover of real money transactions and the sudden changes in the teleportation rules.
It doesn't even contain any up-to-date content. What other purpose do magazines serve?
Patrick writes an article about alternative challenges and goals which probably interests someone, but is pretty old hat for me. No offense, Patrick. Just not news to me.
Bruce Nielson writes about money, and the expense of maintaining a game. Unfortunately, he doesn't actually say anything. At all. He says, "sometimes, customers want too much for too little. Maybe it would be best if they could create content for you, but maybe not. Maybe something else - I don't know what - is best." Except he says it in 1000 words.
Why not talk a bit about the fun chaos that is content creation, Bruce? I know you only had a spotlight - not many words to bandy about - but you wasted many of them on the rather pointless NWN example. I understand it's near and dear to your heart, but you didn't have enough words to talk about yourself.
Joe Blancato's essay on "Fraternizing With the Enemy" is probably the only essay I like in this week's issue, assuming Friday doesn't pull something amazing out of its ass. And it's not a "wow! Woo-hoo!" like. It's a "Huh, that's interesting" like, like the like I get from an article in a local newspaper. It's the same interest I get from reading that Boeing laid off its workforce again.
This is pretty much the standard success rate for me and the Escapist. It's been quite a while since I've given an essay in the Escapist two thumbs up.
I think the Escapist is in a good position, but, like a photon, I can't tell where it's going. Or if it's going. I hope that they can get some really solid content up soon, or they'll lose their inertia and some of their critical readership. However, looking at their future issues - concentrating on Blizzard, for example - I don't see how they could get more than one solid essay in any given issue.
Sigh...
In the interest of revealing potential bias, I must say that the Escapist did turn down my little pitch. However, this was due (I'm pretending) mostly to me thoroughly misunderstanding the deadlines. It doesn't change the fact that the most entertaining pages of the Escapist are the first three.
That's not good!
Monday, February 06, 2006
Content 3, Somewhat.
I tried to make my third content chapter, but it's a toughie. What's worse, it covers much of the same ground that Raph is covering here and here, but from a different angle (and much more tersely).
You see, there's a couple of connected "bits" here. "Trust" is one thing. "Interaction/Friendship" are another thing. "Exploration" is another thing. But all three are intrinsically tied to social networking.
One of my favorite game designs (of mine) is a game called "Spider Space". Utilizing a unique resource allocation system, it encouraged a kind of social networking which would hopefully lead to high-trust environments. But more than that, it would lead to high-interaction (friendship) environments and high-exploration environments.
Because all three of these things are related, and all three of them are related to content creation.
A social network is one of the kinds of player generated content that all massively multiplayer games have. I don't believe it is possible to keep players from forming into social groups, whether you call them guilds or clans or shmurgies.
The key here is to remember that content is a living thing. Rather, it's intended to be a living thing.
Content created by a developer is not really a living thing. Players will waltz through it, barely affecting it and barely being affected by it. If they go back it is more of the same.
Content created by a group of players, such as a social network, is a living, adaptive organism. Interacting with it keeps players entertained and coming back.
Similarly, all the things you might think of as player generated content are really just symptoms of the real content. Someone creates a new quest, or a neat-looking car. You say, "yaaay, another piece of content!" But it's not. Not meaningfully. That car, that quest, it's a tiny blip. And chances are, it's a meaningless blip, since it is a waste of time compared to the very best quests and cars.
The important part of making a car or a quest is when people say, "that's really cool! Have you thought about putting in hamsters?" or "that sucks, I bet I can make a better one."
That's the content. The content is the part of the game which draws the player into making the little pieces of piffle. They aren't the best pieces of piffle. They're probably wastes of time. But the act of creating them and being challenged to do it better - that's the content.
That content is enabled by social networks more than any other thing.
You can encourage players to do it better with game mechanics, of course. Most games do this - "levelling up was cool, wasn't it? Now try to level up again!" But that's a shallow method. It (A) doesn't appeal to most people and (B) is tightly constrained and limited.
Using a social network for this kind of encouragement gives a stronger feedback system and a much wider variety of useful producables. In short, it provides better, stronger content creation loop than the insignificant "level up and choose equipment" content "creation" loops in most games.
But a social network needs to have a few features in order to encourage content creation. These features are always the same, regardless as to what kind of content you allow your players to create.
A) Trust. Yes, trust is a critical part of content creation. There are two ways to enhance trust in this kind of environment. The first is to make the ruleset support zero-trust interactions. Like contracts or trades. The second is to keep track of good and bad interaction records - but be careful, that can be farmed and griefed without much difficulty.
B) Interaction. Trust isn't the only important detail. Interaction is, if anything, more important. People will learn who to trust through repeated interactions, even if they don't have any real "trust support" system. But people who don't interact won't interact. So your system has to reward interaction. Not just creating content, but finding content others have created. Not just talking, but talking meaningfully about content. This needs to be balanced, however, because it can easily lead to swamping popular creators. Hence...
C) Membership Control. Your social network is only a help to you at very specific sizes. If it is too small, it is useless. Too large, it is full of noise and gets in your way more than helping you create content.
Therefore, you need to have a way of (A) getting people to have significant social networks and (B) keeping them from being assaulted by every fanboy that notices them.
The so-called "LFG" syndrome falls under here. People without an adequate social network stand by the sidelines, unable to proceed until they get some useful interactions. So they shout, "Looking for group", and cross their fingers.
You need to have something that draws people into social groups. Something which makes even useless newbs into something useful. Simultaneously, you have to have something which gently keeps people from swamping one content creator - both for the sake of that creator and to allow for greater numbers of content creators.
Spider Space had all of these. These ideas really aren't new to me, but they are the subject of chapter 3 of content creation. However, this chapter doesn't taste all polished and textbooky, does it?
Hmmm.
You see, there's a couple of connected "bits" here. "Trust" is one thing. "Interaction/Friendship" are another thing. "Exploration" is another thing. But all three are intrinsically tied to social networking.
One of my favorite game designs (of mine) is a game called "Spider Space". Utilizing a unique resource allocation system, it encouraged a kind of social networking which would hopefully lead to high-trust environments. But more than that, it would lead to high-interaction (friendship) environments and high-exploration environments.
Because all three of these things are related, and all three of them are related to content creation.
A social network is one of the kinds of player generated content that all massively multiplayer games have. I don't believe it is possible to keep players from forming into social groups, whether you call them guilds or clans or shmurgies.
The key here is to remember that content is a living thing. Rather, it's intended to be a living thing.
Content created by a developer is not really a living thing. Players will waltz through it, barely affecting it and barely being affected by it. If they go back it is more of the same.
Content created by a group of players, such as a social network, is a living, adaptive organism. Interacting with it keeps players entertained and coming back.
Similarly, all the things you might think of as player generated content are really just symptoms of the real content. Someone creates a new quest, or a neat-looking car. You say, "yaaay, another piece of content!" But it's not. Not meaningfully. That car, that quest, it's a tiny blip. And chances are, it's a meaningless blip, since it is a waste of time compared to the very best quests and cars.
The important part of making a car or a quest is when people say, "that's really cool! Have you thought about putting in hamsters?" or "that sucks, I bet I can make a better one."
That's the content. The content is the part of the game which draws the player into making the little pieces of piffle. They aren't the best pieces of piffle. They're probably wastes of time. But the act of creating them and being challenged to do it better - that's the content.
That content is enabled by social networks more than any other thing.
You can encourage players to do it better with game mechanics, of course. Most games do this - "levelling up was cool, wasn't it? Now try to level up again!" But that's a shallow method. It (A) doesn't appeal to most people and (B) is tightly constrained and limited.
Using a social network for this kind of encouragement gives a stronger feedback system and a much wider variety of useful producables. In short, it provides better, stronger content creation loop than the insignificant "level up and choose equipment" content "creation" loops in most games.
But a social network needs to have a few features in order to encourage content creation. These features are always the same, regardless as to what kind of content you allow your players to create.
A) Trust. Yes, trust is a critical part of content creation. There are two ways to enhance trust in this kind of environment. The first is to make the ruleset support zero-trust interactions. Like contracts or trades. The second is to keep track of good and bad interaction records - but be careful, that can be farmed and griefed without much difficulty.
B) Interaction. Trust isn't the only important detail. Interaction is, if anything, more important. People will learn who to trust through repeated interactions, even if they don't have any real "trust support" system. But people who don't interact won't interact. So your system has to reward interaction. Not just creating content, but finding content others have created. Not just talking, but talking meaningfully about content. This needs to be balanced, however, because it can easily lead to swamping popular creators. Hence...
C) Membership Control. Your social network is only a help to you at very specific sizes. If it is too small, it is useless. Too large, it is full of noise and gets in your way more than helping you create content.
Therefore, you need to have a way of (A) getting people to have significant social networks and (B) keeping them from being assaulted by every fanboy that notices them.
The so-called "LFG" syndrome falls under here. People without an adequate social network stand by the sidelines, unable to proceed until they get some useful interactions. So they shout, "Looking for group", and cross their fingers.
You need to have something that draws people into social groups. Something which makes even useless newbs into something useful. Simultaneously, you have to have something which gently keeps people from swamping one content creator - both for the sake of that creator and to allow for greater numbers of content creators.
Spider Space had all of these. These ideas really aren't new to me, but they are the subject of chapter 3 of content creation. However, this chapter doesn't taste all polished and textbooky, does it?
Hmmm.
Friday, February 03, 2006
The Most Powerful Force in All the World!
Written while mostly dead of tiredness. Read at your own risk.
Nostalgia is the most powerful and underused technique in game writing.
Nostalgia is an exceptionally powerful emotion in general. You distill your experiences and simmer them down into a blend far more potent than the original experience. Add a dash of "how things have changed" or "how things haven't changed", and it's flavored to taste.
Lots of the most powerful stories use nostalgia, especially serial dramas such as Smallville and any fairly long book. Almost all the stories people tell about themselves are seen through a nostalgic lense, condensed and purified. Nostalgia makes people think they were having a great time playing that MMORPG or that they would have been happier with their high school sweetheart.
Nostalgia is most potent when the audience has time to let it simmer. It's really potent in serial dramas because they are spread out over months. However, a dash of nostalgia could be added to nearly every game, given that few of them are less than ten hours long.
The thing is, nostalgia is a complex thing. You can get nostalgia from a number of sources, but they all spring from one basic fountain: memories of a different view point.
For example, you feel nostalgia when a series ends. The viewpoint has changed, and you feel a bittersweet yearning for the adventure of the series. You wish it would continue, that adventurous (or melodramatic, or whatever) view point.
You feel nostalgic halfway through the series when something changes. Maybe someone dies, or two people break up. With just a touch of the artist's brush, you feel nostalgia for the viewpoint that had been developing - perhaps even a viewpoint that had never actually come into being, but you expected. Like the failed love affair - ah, what could have been. That viewpoint that never happened, but could have.
That idealized virtual view point is what nostalgia is about. A few games have used this. Aerith dies, and you feel a painful spike. That spike is caused by the severing of a view point. It is a type of nostalgia, although a brutally sharp one that deserves to be called by a different name: loss.
But you can't really say that loss is the emotion you're going for. What you're going for is a lost viewpoint, a severed future, a reality which no longer exists for you. It is a kind of loss, but the emotions you get vary depending on the kind of loss and how the writer frames it. You could even feel joy thanks to your loss: the loss of a potential future where you're tortured, for example.
The key is that the audience has to have two attributes: they have to know what they lost, and they have to have put emotional attachment into it. The first is relatively easy, and can be done with simple cues such as playing that certain song, or seeing that certain person riding into the sunset, or having a flashback.
The second - emotional attachment - is more difficult. How do you get the audience emotionally attached to your viewpoint? Mostly, it's a matter of time. Emotional attachment's biggest factor is time spent exposed to the matter. The time spent mulling over the matter also counts, and people will spend more time mulling it over (if given time to mull it over) depending on its emotional content. Think of it like this:
Attachment = emotion squared + length
Where emotion is 1-10, and inherent in the squaring is the mulling time.
Obviously, this is rather guessy.
Now, a serial drama might have 5 emotion and 25 hours per season. So, we get 5 * 5 + 25, or 50.
A good movie like Aliens might have 9 emotion and only 2 hours. So, we get 9 * 9 + 2, or 83.
A solid game might have 4 emotion and 50 hours. So, we get 4 * 4 + 50, or 64. Of course, this will vary depending on a few factors: how much time the player spends mulling the game over while not playing, whether he is impressed by the gameplay (effectively raising the emotion rating), etc.
By my ridiculous oversimplification, it is fairly clear that games can compete with great movies and mediocre serial dramas pretty easily when it comes to emotional investment.
This means that loss and nostalgia in a video game would be just as powerful.
So use 'em!
Nostalgia is the most powerful and underused technique in game writing.
Nostalgia is an exceptionally powerful emotion in general. You distill your experiences and simmer them down into a blend far more potent than the original experience. Add a dash of "how things have changed" or "how things haven't changed", and it's flavored to taste.
Lots of the most powerful stories use nostalgia, especially serial dramas such as Smallville and any fairly long book. Almost all the stories people tell about themselves are seen through a nostalgic lense, condensed and purified. Nostalgia makes people think they were having a great time playing that MMORPG or that they would have been happier with their high school sweetheart.
Nostalgia is most potent when the audience has time to let it simmer. It's really potent in serial dramas because they are spread out over months. However, a dash of nostalgia could be added to nearly every game, given that few of them are less than ten hours long.
The thing is, nostalgia is a complex thing. You can get nostalgia from a number of sources, but they all spring from one basic fountain: memories of a different view point.
For example, you feel nostalgia when a series ends. The viewpoint has changed, and you feel a bittersweet yearning for the adventure of the series. You wish it would continue, that adventurous (or melodramatic, or whatever) view point.
You feel nostalgic halfway through the series when something changes. Maybe someone dies, or two people break up. With just a touch of the artist's brush, you feel nostalgia for the viewpoint that had been developing - perhaps even a viewpoint that had never actually come into being, but you expected. Like the failed love affair - ah, what could have been. That viewpoint that never happened, but could have.
That idealized virtual view point is what nostalgia is about. A few games have used this. Aerith dies, and you feel a painful spike. That spike is caused by the severing of a view point. It is a type of nostalgia, although a brutally sharp one that deserves to be called by a different name: loss.
But you can't really say that loss is the emotion you're going for. What you're going for is a lost viewpoint, a severed future, a reality which no longer exists for you. It is a kind of loss, but the emotions you get vary depending on the kind of loss and how the writer frames it. You could even feel joy thanks to your loss: the loss of a potential future where you're tortured, for example.
The key is that the audience has to have two attributes: they have to know what they lost, and they have to have put emotional attachment into it. The first is relatively easy, and can be done with simple cues such as playing that certain song, or seeing that certain person riding into the sunset, or having a flashback.
The second - emotional attachment - is more difficult. How do you get the audience emotionally attached to your viewpoint? Mostly, it's a matter of time. Emotional attachment's biggest factor is time spent exposed to the matter. The time spent mulling over the matter also counts, and people will spend more time mulling it over (if given time to mull it over) depending on its emotional content. Think of it like this:
Attachment = emotion squared + length
Where emotion is 1-10, and inherent in the squaring is the mulling time.
Obviously, this is rather guessy.
Now, a serial drama might have 5 emotion and 25 hours per season. So, we get 5 * 5 + 25, or 50.
A good movie like Aliens might have 9 emotion and only 2 hours. So, we get 9 * 9 + 2, or 83.
A solid game might have 4 emotion and 50 hours. So, we get 4 * 4 + 50, or 64. Of course, this will vary depending on a few factors: how much time the player spends mulling the game over while not playing, whether he is impressed by the gameplay (effectively raising the emotion rating), etc.
By my ridiculous oversimplification, it is fairly clear that games can compete with great movies and mediocre serial dramas pretty easily when it comes to emotional investment.
This means that loss and nostalgia in a video game would be just as powerful.
So use 'em!
Side Note...
I dunno, this picture I drew tickles me. It's from a Machine City/Her Majesty's Hacker post.
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