Game Design as Cultural Practice

Collective Casual Gaming

Puzzle pirates makes an inspired leap in creating a social network around casual games, acknowledging the cross-over between the audiences. I haven't played enough to give a comprehensive analysis of it's components, but my experience has revealed some interesting interaction methods. As a gamer on Bartle's scale, though I shift based upon the game, I'm primarily an achiever/killer. Unfortunately, this is not the intended community for this type of game. I've read about what players can do, from opening shops to waging battle on the sea, though I did not get the chance to experience those. What I did get to see was the general metaphor at work behind the gameplay, primarily the constraining of all player business into casual games. Sword fights are treated like spin-off of multi-player Tetris (with the garbage blocks) as well as all other tasks. It is relatively brilliant to take the grind tasks of games and replace them with similar tasks that people will voluntarily grind out. I at first was completely clueless as to how to go on and wasn't interested in talking with everyone to find my way, so I immediately jumped into games at a local tavern. I found myself in drinking game with money on the line, not knowing the rules at all. Still, in the chat box, my opponent gracefully explained the rules, giving me a chance to run off with his money. I'm personally used to very different kinds of interactions online, one involving excessive profanity and high-pitched youngsters on Xbox Live.

In presentation, the world is abstracted to Lego-man simplicity, and that goes really well for it. The casual games' color schemes work very well to match the work it abstracts, and they've created a diverse array of outfits players can work to achieve. A big downfall, however, is the isolation of characters during their chores. Quests in other games require much team work, whereas the maintenance of a ship in travel is represented by isolated gaming that breaks players apart. For a game that clearly is intended for a slower-pace more social group, more interaction in puzzles would add a lot to the experience. It was this isolation that kept me from really exploring the social aspects of the area. Also, I didn't want to invest myself into its rules. This may be an achiever mentality, but a game's starting hour is it's audition to me. If I didn't have to pay for it, I'm not going to invest my time to learn its intricacies it's not immediately fascinating. Just playing Bejewled in a new was wasn't enough to peak my interest at the time.

The game does excellently with what it has, though. It uses a very low-tech framework and has a low file size, very encouraging traits for first time users.  And, the generally relaxed gameplay is less intimidating for new users. It also allows for much easier modification of the game, a frustration expressed in Taylor's "Multiple Pleasures" and "Intentional Bodies." It also displays many of the values female gamers would have, as he laid out, as well as Baby Boomer gamers. As evidenced by my experience at the tavern, the gameplay is a fun distraction, but people are there for the interactions. One article on the Daedalus Project shows how player class is chosen, whereas here choices are limited to male/female with 2 designs for shirt and pants, and several hairstyles.  This ignores the majority of players polled in their studies, appealing instead to the quiet majority of online gamers, the all-night puzzle players.

Blogpost 6: Real & Imagined Player Types.

I play Kingdom of Loathing. My roommates and good friends play Kingdom of Loathing. People sitting next to me at the Pride Alliance lunch play Kingdom of Loathing. My parents, however, do not play KoL as it is often abbreviated. They tend to enjoy Sudoku, Wii Bowling, and online poker more.

KoL is a single player, web based MUD which has very recently begun including more content to promote player interaction. The game developers, Jick and Mr. Skullhead, host a bi-weekly online radio show where they discuss their players, new features, and answer questions about the game in general.

Many times they have mentioned the Bartle topology of Clubs, Diamonds, Heats and Spades. The game itself caters to diamonds primarily. Mostly characters and players grind through levels, collect items, defeat the Naughty Sorceress and then ascend (winning and beginning a new life). They are always releasing new content and game mechanics which they leave intentionally vague for their spading community. This community has created a wiki site to catalog all of their findings. Clubs and hearts are left out for the most part.

Jick and company are trying to remedy this problem. They are creating a new player vs player system to give clubs some means of competing directly against each other. They have also implemented a new buffing system and multiplayer dungeon, Hobopolis, to encourage team support and play.

In his paper, “Multiple Pleasures Women and Online Gaming”, Taylor agues that women will find games with a social and community aspect more appealing that those without. My roommate, Emily, seems to fit his hypothesis. She collects items, crafts weapons and buffs, and attends real life meet ups which the game's creators organize and encourage. She is active in the clan list and donates vitual currency to other players to get them started.

KoL primarily aims toward the current generation, casual audience than baby boomers or “hardcore” gamers. The game frequently lampoons games and internet memes which would make sense to someone who was born in the 80's and grew up on a steady diet of Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, and Final Fantasy. The game also forces a strict turns per day limit. Once you reach your limit (which takes 30 minutes to an hour to do) you can not play until the next day. Because of the intentional cultural divide and play mechanics divide, these types of gamers are not intentionally attracted.

My parents, on the other hand, are into the “casual” gaming experience. They begin their day playing sudoku over coffee. My mom will go to work and take crossword puzzles on the Nintendo DS while my dad will play poker online during lunch or in the afternoon after work. When mom gets home they may have neighbors over for wine and Wii Bowling.

In her paper, “The Truth About Baby Boomer Gamers: A study of over-forty computer game players”, Pearce researches the play styles of the baby boomer generation. While my parents are boomers, they do not play games with other people in a virtual community. However, their reasons for playing games are much the same as the reasons that boomers in Pearce's study played games. They enjoy the leisure activity and it is an opportunity to be social with friends.

It is interesting that Pearce mentions boomer gamers and how they play with their kids and grand children. My earliest memories of my maternal grandmother are playing Duck Hunt at her house in the early 80's. Now, I see friends of mine playing Guitar Hero, Rock Band, or other party games with their children. What her paper did was help quantify what many people have known for a while, gamers like to play together. Hopefully, the trend of group games will continue and game companies will begin to cater to more niche audiences.

Are you a player? Oh really what type then?

 World of Warcraft of course I don't have to worry too hard. Where do I fit in on the player typology from bartle? Achiever, socializer more than the other two. I don't explore stuff and I don't like perpetuating the cycle of the "killer". I describe myself thus because I enjoy overcoming the game world challenges like raiding and questing but I really don't care that much about the intervening space between the end points/goals. I guess one of the reasons for that is I feel goal oriented but the goals I am most like to follow are the ones I make. Often times to me it feels like the designers of WoW have designed content to give equal time to achievers and explorers and i'm not much into the exploring part so i find it a drain on my main resource which is of course time. In abstract I love the idea of an expansive world that can be explored and awesome information learned about. However, there is only so much time I can devote to the game an so I play the way that gives me the most reward for that time.

 "There are all these people I know who exist for me only in terms of my interactions with their avatar. I don’t know really how old they are, what they do. It’s all based on the avatar thing" (taylor multiple pleasures). I totally agree with this person even with the advent of voice over internet programs like ventrilo a lot of how i percieve and construct a mental image of a person is based on the avatar I see. Though the more alts they have the more likely I am to associate with voices first and characters second. I really feel like this quote from taylors interviews sums up how things work in any interactive environment that is removed from visuals. People depend so much on visuals that anything even if you know its not real can become a part of the mental model for interaction with a person.
    I wonder how environment affects the mental modeling people do of other players in the game. For instance I think that after looking through these types that if a game doesn't really have the affordances necessary to show "killer" tendencies then its very unlikely that somebody will have that precise definition attached to them. Like in Second Life griefing would be extremely difficult because of the "game" design though not entirely impossible. But in WoW its probably extremely easy to earn the reputation of a killer/griefer because theres a great deal of affordance towards violence and interrupting other players if you like playing that way. Thats not to say killers are the only people you will find in Wow but that you will find them more often ebcause of the game environment.

Jerald Parker.

Wow Gamer Types: Variety and Popularity

The massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft, or Wow, is one of the most popular online games of all time. Despite its relative age, in gaming terms, it continues to expand and to attract new players in droves. The primary draw of this game and one of the reasons for its continued success is the massive quantity of in game content, which allows a variety of player types to experience and explore the world in a manner that suits their play-style. These ways, however, are not at all new to online gaming. In fact, the thing that draws people to Wow is the same as what drew people to MUDs. According to Bartle, there were four attributes of MUDs that players typically enjoyed: In game Achievement, Exploration, Socializing and Imposition, and all four of these characteristics are available options for Wow players.

Having played this game for several years I have had the opportunity to be deeply involved with its community and meet a variety of different players, of both genders, who all played the game for vastly different reasons. Through my experiences, I have noticed certain trends of play and can form some broad archetypes, which are just nuanced versions of Bartle’s taxonomy, of the certain types of Wow gamer.

· The Power Player – This person takes the game very seriously. They are very goal-oriented players seeking Achievement through better items and status within the game world. They usually end up raiding or competing in battlegrounds.

· The Lore Lover – This person loves the flavor and background of the game. They enjoy the story behind the game as much as the mechanics themselves. Often explorers, they will go out of their way to discover some little explored zone or detail or possibly

· The Savvy Socialite – This person plays the game to experience it with other players. Be it through role-playing or regular social networking, they have the most fun playing with others.

· The Greif Giver – Also known as the “Greifer,” revels in the misfortune of others. They have the most fun when they are preventing others from accomplishing their goals.

While the vast majority of players are not confined to just one of these groups, their play-style is going to consist of some sort of combination of these aspects. It is these allowances that have provided so many different personalities opportunities to enjoy Wow. It is because of this that MMORPGs such Wow have been a major draw for females into gaming. According to Taylor, it is the freedom of play-style and diversity of social spheres that have been the major selling point to women. The same seems to be appealing the “baby boomer” generation, as Pearce’s paper provides quantitative evidence that these adults play more online games than their teen counterpart.

From a design standpoint, these different perceptions of how the game should be played and the cultural and social backgrounds from which they stem must present within a games mechanics to have the kind of staying power that Wow does. In Taylor’s paper on virtual Environments there is a game designer who is quoted in saying that “Diversity in all its forms is better than any kind of monastic or singular representation.” This is a goal that a lot of game designers strive to achieve, but because of outside, often uncontrollable issues are forced to abandon; However; it is the universality and diversity of these MMOGs such as Wow that is allowing them to be so popular.

The Undiscussed Classes of "World of Warcraft"

As a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) with over eleven million monthly subscribers, World of Warcraft's in-game environments, goals, and tools must cater to a huge amount of different players with varying interests.

In “Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs,” Richard Bartle describes the a player of Massively Multiplayer Online games as being one of four types; an Achiever, an Explorer, a Socializer, or a Killer. Achievers focus on “points-gathering and rising in levels,” delighting in being the best of the best. Explorers search for discoveries in the game and the world of the game, “looking for interesting features” and glitches. Socializers tend to be more focused on other players rather than the game itself, using the environment as a “backdrop, a common ground where” players from all distances can interact. Killers choose to cause harm and destruction (possibly even being a griefer, or a user that plays a game to purposefully harass other players) without a real care for other aspects of the game; to a Killer, they're “all just means to an end.” The creators of World of Warcraft modeled the game to allow all these different types of players to coexist, and continue to upgrade the game's system to accompany them. In the game's upcoming patch, Achievers will have a huge amount of goals to strive for. A new system of, oddly enough, Achievements (various objectives that are scattered around the game that vary in difficulty and rewards) will be implemented and connected with the already copious amount of plot-driven quests. Achievers can also go to battlegrounds and fight in arenas to harvest points and tokens, allowing them to buy gear that will let them be more powerful. For the Explorer, there is usually no end to places to investigate. With each expansion of WoW more lands are added on; as of the second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, the game world will consist of three large continents, a separate world slightly smaller in size than a continent, several large islands, and countless hidden or untraceable areas. Since many of the lands hold large buildings and structures that are constantly being worked on, Explorers have numerous places to search for glitches or tricks. Many famous findings include jumping strategically on an almost completely vertical surface to climb to places otherwise unreachable, or using unseen holes in the graphics to sneak into (or under) cities. Socializers, however, are given one big drawback. The plot of WoW (and the Warcraft series) involve wars between different races, and in WoW the races are divided up into two separate factions. Unfortunately, those on opposing factions cannot contact each other except for using emotes (special commands for users to make their characters do an action, such as dancing, laughing, or crying) when “face-to-face” or taking advantage of extremely rare occasions. When dealing with those in the same faction, however, players have lots of options. In WoW, players can be in “multiple contexts” of the game, within many “social spheres” such as in a guild, “amongst acquaintances,” strangers, or even with friends from off the computer (Taylor, Multiple Pleasures, pg. 2). When in the same area they can speak, yell, use the area's “channel,” or use emotes. There are several safe, open areas that were made for “foster[ing] sociability and communication” in-game (Taylor, Intentional Bodies, pg. 29). From any distance players can group up into a party and chat, whisper each other, or use their guild's chat channel. Killers, as well, are given many opportunities to wreak havoc, although WoW tries to keep them from griefing constantly. Killers can “gank” (attack opponents that have no chance of fighting back, whether because they are at a lower level or due to some other circumstance) other players or group up and invade towns of the opposing faction, halting progress there completely.

While there is a lot to do in the environments of WoW, not much is open in the area of character development. Players can choose a faction, a race from that faction, a gender, class, and several cosmetic items, but often are forced to go with whatever armor or clothes they can get (as using something less “powerful” will make the game too difficult, even if the look of the weaker clothes is preferred). However, steps have been taken to try to make characters more personalized. Upcoming updates to WoW include “Barber Shops” where players can change their character's look multiple times, and titles that can be added to the player's character's name. Although there is still a great deal of improvement needed in customization, the creators of WoW are aware of the huge number older women players. Players can have multiple accounts (in fact, according to a poll by Nick Yee, the average number of characters per person is 8.7), so families can play together, share accounts, and have different characters for questing and socializing. The openendedness of WoW makes it perfect for the generation of older gamers, who seem to prefer having games as an “outlet to relieve stress, interact with a community, and just have fun...according to their own schedules,” as opposed to games that follow a plot then end abruptly (Matthew Bromberg for Pearce, The Truth About Baby Boomer Gamers, pg. 2).

Emily Cribb

Toontown, a game for kids and families to play together

I am going to analyze the game of Toontown, the first MMOG designed for encouraging the kids' social cooperation by Disney. It's hard to use Bartle's topology to understand how the game is played. Based on the description from the authors of the game (Mine et al., 2003), "socializer" is the major type of play that's encouraged by the game design; "explorer" is also encouraged by the design based on Panda3D, an open-source 3D game engine that supports platform-agnostic scene graph and distributed storytelling; Players can become an "achiever" by the quests between Toons (players) and cogs (pesky businesslike robots) and many mini-games embedded in the game. But "killer" (doing things to other players without consent) is discouraged by the game design. The purpose of the game is to create a "safe interface" for kids older than 7 years old.

There are both educational and entertainmental purposes for ToonTown. The major motivation of the game is to encourage the cooperative play. Different from MMOG for adults, the audience of Toontown are mostly kids, who are at the position of vulnerable population, requiring more protection. In the paper of Taylor (2003 a), she focused on the perspective of designers, and discussed how the issue of identity and social responsibility is embedded by designers. She thinks that there is trade-off between the freedom of identity and social responsibility; persistent identity can help build a reputation system in the game. In the case of Toontown, designers plays a major role of defining the rules to make the game to be a safe place to play. For example, one design choice is to use the drop-down menu for conversation instead of open conversation. This is a trade-off between the freedom of communication and the safe online environment for children, and the latter weighs more in the design concern. Open conversation only happens under the protection of password between "secret friends". Compared to the constraints of conversation between players, the cooperation is made very easy. A Toon can join a quest simply by standing close to the quest. In mini-games, the players can join the same game by taking the same "trolley". Toontown designers plays an important role in creating the safe and fun space for kids to play by carefully designing the game mechanism. Another perspective to analyze identity is from the player(s), which is discussed in Pearce's paper (Pearce, 2006). Like many Disney products, bad guys can be defeated eventually. Toons can almost always beat the cogs as long as they are working together; even if the toons lose, they do not die, they go to the playground to heal. The choice of avatar is cartoonish and harmless: dog, cat, horse, duck, mouse, rabbit, monkey, bear and pig. For kids and teens, it's especially interesting to find how the identity in the online world forms while they are still on-the-way to explore, change and develope their identity in the real world. One piece of research that I found online is that, Toontown was highly praised to have "A more responsible conceptualisation of what it means to have a friend in social software". Instead of encouraging kids and teens to make friends as a contest, the friend making mechanism in Toontown corresponds with the existing research that "teens have no real interest in talking to strangers".

Another feature about the game is that it is designed for parents and kids play together. The design principle for the game is "simple but not stupid" to attract audience that have different preferences and flavors. One specific design is to encourage "newbies" and "elders" to play together. Elders are explicitly rewarded for helping newbies fight with cogs. During the quest, cogs tend to attack the higher-level players. According to findings about baby boomer gamers (Pearce, 2008), helping newbies is mentioned as the second favorable type of play, making it more fun for parents to play with their children. It would be interesting to conduct qualitative study about how this game is played among families as what Pearce did in her paper, finding the dynamics of family life around game play.

Although Toontown was designed for kids and families, theres actually a fairly large adult toontown player community which set up secret friends and largely group together or do cog raids on the VP, CFO or CJ otherwise players have to use the clumsy but safe speedchat function whilst it marginely works. And this population likes the more challenging game play, such as such as the powerful combination of lure + trap gags, which requires more advanced teamwork than battling together. But for players who target for self-improvement and less into cooperative play, the game received a lot negative comments. One of them is that the game max out itself in three months, after that there is no room for improvment for the characters except winning more jellybeans (which is the resource in Toontown). The positive and negative comments shows that how the vision of the designers directly influences the game experience, and selects the audiences of the game.

MR Mine, J Shochet, R Hughston (2003), Building a massively multiplayer game for the million: Disney's Toontown Online, Computers in Entertainment (CIE), ACM Press
F Romeo (2004), Y'know, for kids! Social software for children, Unpublished paper presented at O’Reilly Emerging Technology
Pearce, C. (2006). Communities of Play: The Social Construction of Identity in Persistent Online Game Worlds. Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan (eds) Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
Pearce, C. (2008). The Truth About Baby Boomer Gamers. Games & Culture, Vol 3, Issue 2
Taylor, T.L. (2003 A). "Intentional Bodies: Virtual Environments and the Designers Who Shape Them." International Journal of Engineering Education 19, no. 1.
Taylor, T.L. (2003 B). "Multiple Pleasures: Women and Online Gaming," Convergence, Vol. 9, No.1, 21-46, Spring 2003.

Yan Xu, yxu7@gatech.edu

No Loathing of Players

Prior to World of Warcraft, I'd had very little MMOG experience - a little Anarchy Online several years before, some slight play in the Ragnarok Online beta; it was not until I started to play Kingdom of Loathing (KoL) not too long after that game appeared that I played any one game considerably.  That game also was the first I started considering what sort of player I was; there was a discussion on the forums that actually used Bartle's terminology to name player types, and it very rapidly brought the issue to most semi-serious players of the game.  Suddenly, everyone was considering what type of player they were, and how KoL fostered that playstyle.

Looking over the discussion, I concluded fairly quickly - largely from my playstyle in KoL - that I was an achiever.  Truth be told, it maybe wasn't *that* cut-and-dry.  I liked to visit new areas, see what kind of adventures they had, see what kind of stuff the monsters and events gave me, see what sort of things I could do or make with them; for a time, I thought I was an explorer.  As the game wore on, though, it became more obvious to me what exactly what my intent was for doing that exploration - I wanted to find new things so I could exploit them, so I could further myself in the game, either through direct use or by accumulation of money through selling them to other players.  Granted, I enjoyed the exploration, not in the least because of the consistently funny writing of KoL, but the actual goal of seeing new things was secondary to *using* them.  This would become even clearer to me once I began raiding in World of Warcraft; much as I enjoyed seeing new places in the game, ultimately I was more concerned with making progress through them, both in terms of my character becoming more powerful and actually clearing the content.

Over time, I've come to a fairly concrete understanding of what I am as a player.  I'm very heavily achievement-based; in single-player games, I favor the perfect run and getting things "right" (read: whatever makes my character most powerful) the first time.  It takes slightly extraordinary circumstances - needing to kill a character central to the game's plot, for example - or not understanding how to best do things for me to tone down my impulse to achieve.  This is similar in MMOGs - rarely will I deviate from what is "best" for my character as I understand it.  This was sometimes slightly frustrating in KoL - sometimes a new area would open up, and suddenly an item that was previously completely useless would become vital to completing an area.  I would then have to go back through previously conquered (and now totally inferior) terrain in order to make it through the new content and reap *its* rewards.  To this end, I frequented the forums, keeping abreast of the current news and strategies, to minimize the need for wasteful repetition and maximize my chances for advancement.  I eventually came to enjoy that community for itself - a rare example of the achiever opening up to socializers, perhaps - but my initial focus for the place was in fact to feed my achiever side.

That said, KoL had much to interest players of any of the main playstyles.  Socializers have in-game chat channels (with, interestingly, various unlockable ones, with criteria ranging from longevity in the game to special invitation from certain high-ranked players) and clans to serve their needs.  There is notably little impact from either of these - none at all for the chat channels, and (usually) small material advantages for being in a clan - in-game, though those of the killer persuasion would note that having a clan is a prerequisite for engaging in clan warfare - sort of like a greatly flattened, turn-based RTS.  Additionally, with a tremendous assortment of items, and the freedom to switch gear whenever is necessary, players are free to "show off" their personality by putting on various outfits.  A player wanting to show a regal persona might equip a frilly dress and a crown, one wanting to play the clown might use a foolscap fool's cap and the clown outfit, and so on.  Some combinations will actually change the stick-figure avatar of the player, decking them out in a Santa outfit, a miner's uniform, or even a fursuit.  The exceptionally image-concerned player can buy (with real money) a customized avatar, made up of pieces of virtually any of the game's art.  While many of these outfits may not be optimized for play, this is of little concern unless the player has chosen to PvP; one can simply switch to more effective gear when they want to adventure.

(an aside:  prior to the game's completion system being put in place, it was quite possible to get a player's baseline stats to the point where gear was almost totally irrelevant, making it *actually* possible to wear whatever you wanted whenever you wanted.)

Speaking of killers, KoL uses a system that )to my understanding) many MMOGs, particularly MUDs, use, the notion of a permaflag for PvP.  One begins the game with a Hippy Stone; smashing it, something that can be done at any time in the game, lets the player attack other players in PvP and at the same time makes *them* attackable.  I know relatively little about the PvP scene in KoL, other than that it requires an in-game material outlay comparable to that of cutting-edge achievers to get the right mix of buffs to completely dominate; the killer style of play is almost completely unattractive to me, to the degree that in WoW I will only engage in it if it is for a specific reward.

Explorers have their work cut out for them in KoL; there are dozens of locations, each with a number of adventures, some of which can only be accessed while the player's character is equipped in certain ways, or has certain buffs or debuffs on them.  Then there are a multitude of items to divine the use and effects of; a memorable event in the game history had a player try out an item which had the chance of removing currency when they had none on hand.  Due to a programming glitch, this put them at just under the maximum amount of currency possible (several billion); the bug spread and swiftly crashed the in-game economy.  Players are all but encouraged to try items in new combinations with places and abilities to see what may happen, to try and figure out the patterns behind super-rare monster spawns, and virtually every other in-game mechanic.  Given the relative regularity of new content (with most major holidays, and more besides), there is much to keep the explorer busy.

Backing all of this is the developer's ethic in how to grow the game.  The reaction to the bug above was not to take away the millions in ill-gained money that had appeared from the bug or otherwise reset things; rather, the bug was fixed, and a series of events occurred that encouraged players to spend enormous amounts of currency on interesting and novel items and quests.  In short, the developers of KoL take the stance that it is wrong to unduly take away ("nerf") the players, and frequently see problems that arise as a chance to introduce new content, frequently as a way for players to express themselves.  An explorer might investigate ways of obtaining hidden trophies; an achiever might try to be the best in an item collection leaderboard, or donate the most to one of the events; a killer might see what they could do to stock up on the items essential for PvP success given that everyone had huge stockpiles of money.  Meanwhile, the constant change and flurry of activity (bolstered by special events and trophies more oriented towards the social aspects of the game) would provide socializers added benefit from this ethic.  It might be slightly contrary to some people - perhaps the hardcore players that Yee spoke of who found gain in the loss involved in Everquest's death system might look at this as less of a chance for players to bond over their miseries - but in practice, the system worked to include and engage almost all players touched by the bug.

Surely, this was not a quick fix - it was well over a year before the economy returned to normal - but in the end it was very successful, perhaps because of the positive values embedded in the methodology.  It made for a more immersive game - rather than player assets being "taken away" or "reset" by an artificial construct external to the game, in-game methods were used, drawing the player further in, making them want to use the bug-gained currency because it was important to do so in the context of the world.  The expression that the new content allowed for gave better avenues of expressing identity, and even promoted a sense of social responsibility; one did not donate to the Save-the-Yeti fund because it was the currency sink of the day, one did so (or did not) because of in-game goals and beliefs.  Lastly, the methodology adds legitimacy to the game; saying that the developers will not counteract things the players manage, even unintended effects, in all but the most maevolent of cases gives players the sense that they are free to explore, to act - that the developers want them to try everything, and that they should not fear "doing it wrong" and being punished for their actions.  While the cost to this approach is time - finding a good solution, adding it to the game, and letting it naturally unfold is not a quick process - it does leave a positive impact on several key considerations of the space they are working, which most players would agree is for the best.

Given its simplistic visual style and that it is essentially entirely free to play, many might consider KoL as an unlikely place to find interesting game design, let alone deep consideration for different types of players.  Thanks to the efforts of the game's design team, though, it has achieved just that, gaining recognition from both written and television mass media.  As it continues to grow and add content, it will be interesting to see how the game continues to mature and refine itself, and how future players will use the game's features to define what type of player they are.

--Evan

Roleplaying in Multiplayer Games

"The advice concerning changes which can be made to affect the player make-up of a MUD is, however, less useful to social MUDs, or to ones with a heavy role-playing component." (Bartle).

Bartle asserts in his article that the categories and suggestions he makes fit ill with heavy roleplay games, and that games and players involved with heavy roleplay might be exclusive from the average game. While this is a popular belief amongst the game community at large, I would argue that such an assertion is still largely flawed. At the same time, RP servers and RP-heavy games tend to encourage a different kind of community, where the same kinds of gameplay take place, but often with different motivations or interests behind them.

I may, of course, be a bit biased. I am a roleplayer; according to Nick Yee's categorizations in "Motivations of Play in Online Games", that places me into the Immersion category and (predictably enough) the Role-Playing subsection, which is defined as an interest in "story lines, character history, roles, fantasy" (5). According to Bartle, I am a Socializer. While these are both accurate assessments, they are also wholly incomplete and limiting. "The shift...that resulted from the introduction of an avatar" that Pearce notes occurs in MMOs, while empowering the average player with "body awareness", has been extended by more 'hardcore' roleplayers as a customizable narrative tool, while also creating a more tangible barrier between the player and the character being played (2).

In a typical MMO, this means not only using the visual chatbox as a communication tool but also making decisions based on both game mechanics and the personality of the character as a narrative tool. The degree to which the individual player leans more to one side or another is one way that roleplayers often differentiate themselves from other kinds of players, and thereby create their own identities. In World of Warcraft, all characters are - by default - members of their respective sides (Horde or Alliance) and of their factions (Humans are part of Stormwind and Orcs are part of Orgrimmar, for instance). Many roleplayers, however, will subvert this dominant narrative by choosing to play as mercenaries, independents, members of side factions, or even members of enemy factions - or shift their roles accordingly as the world's lore progresses. For example, one of my characters is a Grimtotem, a splinter group hostile to the main faction to which, according to game mechanics, my character actually belongs. As such, one of the limits I have placed upon myself is to not do the quests that ask my character to kill Grimtotems. Another friend, in also playing a Grimtotem, has chosen to do these quests, but as an out-of-character action. In this sense, while the mechanics and the avatar remain important, they become more like tools for the roleplayer to manipulate. The game thus acts as a canvas and a set for cooperative storytelling, but as with most MMOs, these changes must necessarily be limited because of the persistent environment of the game.

Roleplaying in multiplayer games is not a new phenomenon, however. As a fresh-faced thirteen-year-old, I was a member of a thriving MUD that had both a very robust combat system with an active PvP (player versus player) culture - and a mandatory roleplay policy, where characters could not advance past an early level without an admin-approved RPsheet, which included the character's background, personality, and goals, amongst other things. Similarly, most PvP action was accompanied by a later in-character (IC) post, which detailed the narrative and reasoning behind the traditionally 'Killer' action. The crowning point of these games was the ability for players to directly affect their environments and the dominant narrative of the world they played in – even able to rise to godhood in some MU*s through some lengthy process – but this is more possible because MU*s have smaller player-bases and more flexible text interfaces for easier customization and quick changes.

-Pauline

World of Warcraft: The Modern Day Visual MUD

One of the most popular Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games on the market is World of Warcraft. Although World of Warcraft cannot boast the kind of server population that Maple Story has “WoW” offers a play space that is more diverse by allowing players on any server to engage in combat against one another. By allowing player vs. player World of Warcraft opens itself up to all four types of Bartle’s typology. The server structure of World of Warcraft is also impressive in this respect by designating four different types of servers for players to engage the fantasy world on. Given that players are not strictly one type of topology the server structure allows players to engage the world on their own terms. Player vs. Player servers are the realm of the killer who wishes to dominate players of the opposing faction while an achiever or a socializer might enjoy a player vs. environment which does not allow for outright killing anytime. Explorers may fall into either server based on their second minor topology. If they enjoy the finer points of combat then they would choose a PvP(Player vs. Player) server and if they were instead more intruiged by the easiest method of achieving tasks or manipulating hiccups in the environment without interruption then a PvE(Player vs. Evironment) would be more to their liking. There is also the option to play on a role-play server (either PvP or PvE) and act out events under the guise of an avatar.

In regards to molding and maintaining this virtual domain of fantasy there are many patches that come out and constant play testing on a server separate from the rest that players engage the world using temporary recreations of their characters from another server. Once tested patches are uploaded to all servers and players are required to accept the changes made to the world or even their avatars. Most changes are minor and when big patches come out they usually include new material rather than changing anything that previously existed in the game world. While change to the game world might be hard to cope with expansion packs that are tantamount to an “uber-patch” release completely new content into the game world but the amount that is actually part of the living world already is very little. The actually meat of an expansion comes in the form of encapsulated environments that only players who paid for the expansion can access. It is necessary to release a patch to all other players who do not have the expansion so that they are able to play without inhibition. Once the expansion is released a majority of the content that exists within it immediately becomes immutable or in other words it has become part of the fantasy world that the players exist in and any change might cause a disturbance in the continuity that the players enjoy.

The virtual play space is not restricted to young audiences either. Guilds exist completely of mature adults who enjoy raiding and understand when one person has to leave because of family emergency or other responsibilities that must be handled. I have experienced this with one guild I had joined where the guild leader was suddenly called away to get her child ready so that her ex-husband could pick him up. Everyone in the raid waited patiently for her return without so much as a complaint.

~Cameron Jansen
~gth853w

New Ideas and Understanding in World of Warcraft

I had yet to commit myself to any Massive Multiplayer Online Game, so with this blogpost I had begun my first experience with the wildly popular World of Warcraft.  WoW is a MMORPG--meaning it focuses largely on stat management, equipping materials, and fulfilling quests. As a game with over 10 million subscribers, it stands as the most popular American made MMOG, only topped by internationally made games like Maple Story.

Perhaps the reason this game is successful is that it has something for everyone. As detailed by Bartle, there are largely four player types--the Achiever, the Socializer, the Explorer, and the Killer, and from knowing heavy WoW players and my own short experience, I know the game is masterfully made to cater to each. Firstly, achievers are people seeking rewards and higher ranks. In WoW, you can take quests to increase your level, earn new tools and gain access to new areas. From my short time I managed to level up a few times, defeating monsters and satisfying quests to do so. Some detractors claim that there is too much grinding required to maximize your usefulness--but this is hardly a requirement to enjoy the game.

Explorers are another type. They like to search unknown areas, learn the inside and out of a game, and go for maximum efficency. WoW has a very large and expansive world for players to explore, and through my playthrough I was in no less than five very large areas--I had yet to touch even 1/100th of it.  I do regret that I don't have a full account so I could explore the world much more, but being addicted is something I'd like to avoid with playing any MMOG. Socializers are yet another type, and the massive amounts of people who play WoW connect with each other to accomplish tasks and hang out. The use of guilds exemplfies this--even Pearce and Yee's paper about how Baby Boomer gamers apply here, as there are no doubt guilds of older people who play WoW as well.

Last but not least are the Killers--WoW arranges itself through PvP and PvE servers. PvP servers are no place for beginners, who can be killed and harassed by high level fighters, but some do derive enjoyment from this. Killers thrive off of being able to challenge and defeat other players, and some at least like a good challenge from other humans.

World of Warcraft is a game cleverly crafted by experience and offering to all four corners of the gamer type. This was certainly a new taste and experience for me when playing a game such as this.