Post by Morreion on Oct 23, 2014 13:17:11 GMT -5
The Think Tank: Confronting the 'unbundling' of MMORPGs (Massively)
Last month, the long-running, scholarly virtual world blog Terra Nova updated with a post suggesting that the blog, like the worlds it covered, might be coming to an end (the blog, at least, has been saved in the interim). Founder Dr Edward Castronova argued that virtual worlds and MMOs have seen a recent "unbundling," with sociality, story, multi-player combat, and economy splitting off into different directions and platforms instead of staying unified in MMOs. The only MMO element that stayed were the people, and "it proved impossible to construct mechanisms that allowed people to find fulfillment from their fellow-players rather than frustration. In the end, the concept of a multi-player fantasy world broke on the shoals of the infinite weirdness of human personality."
It's pretty depressing. But is it true? Are MMOs and virtual worlds doomed to forever splinter apart thanks to niche-ier media and be ruined by their own players? That's what I asked the Massively crew in this week's Think Tank (and our writers rose to the challenge -- every single one of them).
Jef Reahard:
It rings true for me, particularly the ruined by players bit, but I wouldn't say that MMOs are doomed to splinter apart. I would say they need to splinter apart even more because that's the only way all of the diverse groups with incompatible preferences will get what they want.
I've always held that actual MMORPGs are in fact niche enterprises because they're more virtual world than game and as such they require more time and effort than most people want to spend. Over the last decade, though, "MMOs" changed dramatically and came to closely resemble single-player RPGs even though initially they were much more/much different than all other game types.
So yeah, I think Castronova's right in this case. More people did ruin MMOs (for a time), particularly from an early adopter's perspective. The most relevant part of his goodbye post to me was the following: "It proved impossible to make everyone feel like a hero in a world populated by millions of would-be heroes." This has been the primary failing of MMOs for years now, and I've never understood why so many people want to replicate the single-player RPG experience in an MMORPG that is literally incapable of doing it as well as a single-player RPG can do it.
Brendan Drain:
Players may be splintering off into other genres, but that says less about MMO design than it does about the preferences of gamers. When League of Legends officially kicked World of Warcraft off its throne as the most-played game in the west a few years ago, it proved that there was big money out there for games that specialise in one particular type of gameplay. That's hardly surprising though; Singleplayer games have always had the monopoly on epic stories, co-op games like Diablo had polished group dungeons before EverQuest was even released, and the core of today's MOBAs and MMO battlegrounds have also been around as DotA since around 2003.
MMOs may offer a lot of that gameplay in a single unified universe, but recent market trends have shown that people prefer games to focus on and perfect just one type of gameplay. We can get our exploration and construction fix from Minecraft or Terraria, our daily dose of group PvP from Dota 2 or CS:GO, and our singleplayer RPG experience from Skyrim or The Witcher. The main thing MMOs have that a more specialised game can't outperform them in is the collective social multiplayer element and the idea of huge living worlds filled with real people. I think that the MMO genre is starting to head in that direction already as Star Citizen and Landmark appear to have positioned themselves as virtual worlds, and I'm pretty excited to see if this trend continues.
Last month, the long-running, scholarly virtual world blog Terra Nova updated with a post suggesting that the blog, like the worlds it covered, might be coming to an end (the blog, at least, has been saved in the interim). Founder Dr Edward Castronova argued that virtual worlds and MMOs have seen a recent "unbundling," with sociality, story, multi-player combat, and economy splitting off into different directions and platforms instead of staying unified in MMOs. The only MMO element that stayed were the people, and "it proved impossible to construct mechanisms that allowed people to find fulfillment from their fellow-players rather than frustration. In the end, the concept of a multi-player fantasy world broke on the shoals of the infinite weirdness of human personality."
It's pretty depressing. But is it true? Are MMOs and virtual worlds doomed to forever splinter apart thanks to niche-ier media and be ruined by their own players? That's what I asked the Massively crew in this week's Think Tank (and our writers rose to the challenge -- every single one of them).
Jef Reahard:
It rings true for me, particularly the ruined by players bit, but I wouldn't say that MMOs are doomed to splinter apart. I would say they need to splinter apart even more because that's the only way all of the diverse groups with incompatible preferences will get what they want.
I've always held that actual MMORPGs are in fact niche enterprises because they're more virtual world than game and as such they require more time and effort than most people want to spend. Over the last decade, though, "MMOs" changed dramatically and came to closely resemble single-player RPGs even though initially they were much more/much different than all other game types.
So yeah, I think Castronova's right in this case. More people did ruin MMOs (for a time), particularly from an early adopter's perspective. The most relevant part of his goodbye post to me was the following: "It proved impossible to make everyone feel like a hero in a world populated by millions of would-be heroes." This has been the primary failing of MMOs for years now, and I've never understood why so many people want to replicate the single-player RPG experience in an MMORPG that is literally incapable of doing it as well as a single-player RPG can do it.
Brendan Drain:
Players may be splintering off into other genres, but that says less about MMO design than it does about the preferences of gamers. When League of Legends officially kicked World of Warcraft off its throne as the most-played game in the west a few years ago, it proved that there was big money out there for games that specialise in one particular type of gameplay. That's hardly surprising though; Singleplayer games have always had the monopoly on epic stories, co-op games like Diablo had polished group dungeons before EverQuest was even released, and the core of today's MOBAs and MMO battlegrounds have also been around as DotA since around 2003.
MMOs may offer a lot of that gameplay in a single unified universe, but recent market trends have shown that people prefer games to focus on and perfect just one type of gameplay. We can get our exploration and construction fix from Minecraft or Terraria, our daily dose of group PvP from Dota 2 or CS:GO, and our singleplayer RPG experience from Skyrim or The Witcher. The main thing MMOs have that a more specialised game can't outperform them in is the collective social multiplayer element and the idea of huge living worlds filled with real people. I think that the MMO genre is starting to head in that direction already as Star Citizen and Landmark appear to have positioned themselves as virtual worlds, and I'm pretty excited to see if this trend continues.
