Interesting observations here:
Raph's Website: The Game Without Treadmills
(Via Virgin Worlds)
In which I am reminded why Raph Koster has quite the guru status he does. The piece is short, relevant and to the point, and basically explains why the Treadmill we all supposedly hate, is unfortunately, quite necessary in any MMO that hopes to be a big hit. It particularly struck a chord with me, because I've seen
exactly the phenomena described first-hand, in my month-by month flitting from title to title.
Being "In The Industry", and so on, I expect he can't point fingers at particular titles very easily, but
STILL not having been snapped up for that sweet Community Manager job yet myself, I have no such compunctions. He basically lays out three types of game.
There's the Treadmill Game, which we all apparently hate, but which includes EQ2, WoW, Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar, Vanguard, etc, etc, which all do well enough, or in those cases where they don't, usually seem to fall due to other problems than basic gameplay.
Then there's what he calls 'Games of Skill' - which mostly seems to mean PvP - the PvP elements of the above games, true FPS, a great deal of EVE Online, and so on. Games where you can lose, and hard, usually to another player. In my experience, this is
Planetside, in a nutshell. He then outlines the problem with this genre - i.e. 10% of the people will do 90% of the ownage, and the rest are either masochists, (Hello there!), or decide 'Screw this, I'm off.' Not good for Bums On Seats, and will mean that the game won't keep most people playing for very long. The accessibility of the treadmill game counters this nicely.
It pretty much exactly reflects what I saw of the population numbers during last year's 'Reserves' program in PS - loads of new folks for the first couple of weeks, then less and less until about two months in (and this is a
free to play program don't forget) numbers were pretty much back down to the hardcore "We'll never leave!" types. Calling people carebears is all very well, but still isn't going to convince many of the 90% of people who aren't actually that good at FPS to stay on and continue being kicked about like a football, in the vague hope that one day, if they work
reall hard, they might just be able to reach Kills/Deaths parity. What's in it for them?
Then he describes the other type of game, 'Gameless Games' - those of the Sandbox nature where you're free to do whatever you like! There are few, or no, goals, and it's up to you, the player, to make your own entertainment. The problem here is lack of direction. We play games to be entertained, to pass the time, literally 'pastimes'. If it all has to come from within, is it a game at all, and more importantly, what am I actually paying for here? I suspect those folks who can spontaneously generate their own goals, drives, objectives and the like would be just as happy (and a lot better off financially) with a piece of paper and some crayons, as with an expensive PC, net connection and MMO client install and subscription. In this case, the treadmill presents a bit of a focus and direction - a reason to be playing the game in the first place, which is objective and not just something you had to make up.
The obvious example here, and opposite extreme to Planetside, is
Second Life. Certainly, they list just over a million residents logged in in the last 30 days, but as I type, concurrency for the whole system, is about 19,000, far below the traditional 1/5th 'shift pattern' of players that works as a rule of thumb for overall subscription, suggesting that the majority of that million don't spend an awfully long time in SL, even when they do log in. The society LL have created depends very heavily on a comparatively small number of self-motivated creative players to make interesting content for everyone else to buy, collect, do, hoard, etc.
(In March 2007, only about 30,000 residents had a 'Positive Monthly Linden Flow' - i.e. Sold Stuff, hinting at something of the ratio between Creators and Consumers in there, although that includes people who are merely selling on freebies, or other people's work, legitimately or not.
It's all here)
At any rate, even I find the sheer 'Do whatever you want' ethos quite paralysing of late, and many, with perhaps less building skills, or inclination, would find SL to be a quite barren place, once the social chatroom aspects and the rabid initial consumerism jade a bit. Again, just as with Planetside, I'm quite sure that a great many of those million residents 'bounce off' the game, but for different reasons, which a good old treadmill would also fix to some extent.
Anyway, an interesting article, largely because I've seen it for real and know it to have significant merit. Much as I rail against the rails, I think I'm starting to understand why we'll see more and not less games with treadmills, and why, at the end of the day, that might not be such a bad thing really...