Question 4: Always a hot topic, what's the future of player impact and dynamic worlds? Will we move towards games where the players and worlds interact and impact each other or is that beyond the scope of the next generation? What sorts of interaction might we expect to see out of third generation MMOGs? Is this going to become a "required" feature or a unique selling point?

Jeff Butler: "I think you're going to see two classes of games. My expectation is that some will be developers who know the linear, let's say the Final Fantasy RPG-esque, progression of character advancement and storyline. You're going to see developers who know that and do it very well bring their skills to massively multiplayer games as we have in the past, very successfully.

And then you're going to see the more open ended, pie-in-the-sky, no more ground hog day, living breathing dynamic world experimentation. Ultimately I think the most successful games are going to be a combination of the two that give people a choice of a directed gaming experience or an open ended one. Then that touches upon some of your early questions about the overall complexity and the depth of content that's being generated for these worlds today and the competition to make more content.

Ultimately you can define content as a roster of choices. The more content that exists, the larger the roster of choices. And so I think, that said, the most successful of these games will offer the most choices. Some people like a linear experience, some people are more comfortable with it depending on the time that they have to engage. Certainly solo gameplay can be more directed and linear since you have a complete understanding, based on the level range of the character, how to balance that content. There are very few variables in that equation so it makes it pretty easy to approach.

But again it is a competition for how much content can be put in these games now-a-days. And what it boils down to is the quality of execution, building tools, the size of the budget, the length of the development cycle, how much time the developer has on target to create content and how quickly it can be created. So ultimately it's going to be a test of how successful developers can be putting all these features into their games. These features and more on a go forward basis."

Mike Wallis: "There have been quite a few leaps in technology as well as creative implementations for instancing.  As an example, let's say we have a town.  In this town the player receives a quest to fend off an orc raiding party.  While fighting the orcs, perhaps a scripted event happens which has several buildings in the town catch fire.  Ultimately, the player successfully fights off the orc raid, but the town lost those buildings to the fire.  Using instancing, we can now have that same town shown to the player, except that from here on out, those same buildings in the town are now piles of burned wood and stone.

By using that simple example, it shows the power of instancing and the ability to create terrain-altering events that are influenced by the actions of the player.

Instancing has typically been used to drive story-related events.  We'll start seeing instancing drive terrain altering events as well.  By using both in conjunction, we can truly create the immersive stories players participate in.  Will it become a required feature? I don't believe so, but games that use it well will definitely be set apart from those that don't."

A world where everyone's actions can leave a mark without disrupting the play of others in more than a minor way is the holy grail of MMO game design. I largely believe that it is an issue that will be toyed with but not fully embraced for some time. Mike suggests a possible solution but not a total one. And we've seen games attempt this previously in a number of ways. (For example, Shadowbane which allowed players to both build their own cities and destroy the cities of others.) However I believe, simply, that with current technology a truly interactive world is beyond the scope of any project, massively multiplayer or even single player.

As time goes on this will undoubtedly change and we're beginning to see it as we see more complex physical and social simulations in games, both online and off. But I suspect it will be at least another decade if not significantly more until we see anything that approaches the holy grail. Why all the difficulty? Because what we're asking for, if you boil it down, is reality. And reality is unbelievably complex and took a few hundred million years of development time to get to its current state. It'll take some significant breakthroughs in both technology and design to make modeling such a system possible within a finite scope.

So what of now? Again, it's all about features. Mike's quite right. A game with the instancing system he mentions will definitely set itself apart. Just as the game with infinite character variety will set itself apart. Just as the game with the most content will set itself apart. Until we hit greater processing power and targeted middleware solutions, interactive features will remain in the realm of an interesting and, hopefully, memorable feature but not the totally game altering experience offered up as the ideal.

Question 5: What's really required to succeed? Is there truly a laundry list of "must have" features? Is there truly a list, be it races, pets, housing, guilds, or whatever, that Triple A titles must hit? Or is it more of a generic level of features that are required?

Mike Wallis: "There are 3 key things that every MMP must do well in order to succeed.  They are:

1. Combat—the combat system must be easy to use, but deep enough to master.  It must have a strong group dynamic, in which every class has an established role.  Players who master their roles within a group will optimize the efficiency with which that group kills mobs.
2. Questing/Missions—this provides an alternative way to advance your character outside of combat.  These can range from the typical FedEx delivery quests to the very involved and multi-stage epic quests.  Rewards range from items to status to experience.
3. Social—the economy, vendors to buy and sell goods, guild management features, chat features, and the crafting system all fall within this bucket.

While every successful game must have a strong #1 and #2, the features within the social bucket can vary widely. What does crafting bring and is it absolutely necessary?  Probably not, but it does provide a nice diversion from combat and questing, while at the same time giving non-combat focused players a key area to specialize in and therefore feel as if they are contributing to the overall community."

Jeff Butler: "I think that's what makes working in this business exciting. That there is not necessarily a single recipe for success. Depending on the individual title, the IP, the genre, fantasy, sci-fi, superhero, what have you, then that list is completely different. There are some basics, but they are so fundamental to this form of gaming that they go without saying. Things like persistence, an avatar, the ability to feel good about your avatar, to achieve and to be able to share that experience with others and to be able to compare your successes and failures with others. Those things are so fundamental to the core of the genre itself that I don't include them.

I think it is different for every game. It's different for every sub-category of the genre. It's what I find most exciting looking at the games coming down the pipe. We've got more hardcore games. We've got more adult oriented games with serious themes, like the new Conan game coming down the line where if it gets a teen rating it'll be surprising because it shares themes with the stories, you know heads are severed and there's all sorts of carnage and mayhem as part of the storyline. So it is going to be a different laundry list for all of these different games that are coming down the road to us. And as gamers there's no question that we're going to benefit by that. Not only is the genre going to evolve, but it's going to evolve in different and diverse directions depending on the game. Clearly World of Warcraft shows us that a formulaic approach to massively multiplayer games is not the key to success."

The moral of this article is quickly becoming this: the content bar exists. But what you use to reach it is largely irrelevant. There are a few, utterly fundamental features (persistence, some means of creating and resolving conflict, avatars, etc) that are just as critical to the genre as being in first person is critical to an FPS. But beyond that the door is wide open.

Your goals, as a developer, are two fold: 1) Can I provide enough content for the player to keep themselves occupied with and 2) can I make it entertaining. The better you answer those questions with your game the better, and hopefully more successful, it will be. Fulfill that promise and at the end of the day it doesn't matter if you've created Everquest III or the most awesome bug collecting game of all time. If it's fun people will continue to play it for as long as there are things to do.

Allow me, however, to also disagree with Jeff here on one point. I think the success of World of Warcraft points at bit more towards the success of formulaic designs rather than against it. Definitely games that experiment and expand our knowledge and technology are great for everyone and have been hugely successful. But World of Warcraft seems to be a game with none of this. Their graphics technology is old (although their art style and direction amazing), their gameplay is nothing that hasn't been done before, their factional PvP system also nothing new, they were not the first to instance, they were not the first to offer raids, they were not the first to offer quests. What they did is an excellent job of looking over the games that came before them, identifying what worked, and bringing it closer to the point of perfection in almost every area than had been done before. In doing so they very much used a "formula" or "recipe" to build World of Warcraft. Renowned IP + extremely polished but tried and true gameplay + highly polished content = the best selling MMO in the US.

Is this bad? Quite the opposite. World of Warcraft has helped the genre as a whole significantly. But to argue that it was anything but formulaic I believe goes against the facts.

So can we solve the content/feature issue by just continuing to refine what works? Yes and no. Certainly there's proven room for titles that do this. But the market also seems to have enough room to support those who truly attempt to push the genre in new directions. Everquest was wildly successful not only because of how it incorporated tried and true designs (primarily from the MUD space) but also because of the ways in brought innovation and helped define the modern genre. It could be argued that Final Fantasy XI was largely successful on the basis of IP alone. Guild Wars has just launched with a quasi-single player, quasi-multiplayer business model. What this shows us that different approaches work from even the most fundamental levels. Target your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, and plan well enough to hit the content/feature bar and there is an opportunity in the market to make a successful game regardless of any particular setting or mechanic.

Question 6: What is your personal opinion? Ignoring design and business sense for just a moment, is there anything you personally find a must have in a game?

Jeff Butler: "I'd have to say the cool factor of collecting. What really drives me nuts, I'm playing Star Wars Galaxies again after a nine month long break and what drew me back was all the different space ships, how customizable they were, the new armor and outfits. I'm all about having all the goodies. Having a really fast, really cool looking ship. Outfitting my character with a purple lightsaber and all sorts of unusual things. That's what really causes me to gravitate towards these games. You know in World of Warcraft hunting down the coolest looking pet and taming it as a hunter. Those things were huge on my list of priorities. I would take a pet that wasn't quite as good as the others and keep it because it was cooler. It was the collecting factor. Having cool looking stuff. Wielding a cool looking weapon. Having a cool looking pet. You name it. That's what really drives me in these games."

Mike Wallis: "For me, I would say a strong PvP system.  I reminisce about the days of Ultima Online in late 1997/early 1998 before all the crazy UO nerfs to player killers (PK'ers).  While out hunting monsters or crawling through a dungeon, I remember the anxiety building whenever a player who I didn't recognize would approach.  Was he friendly? Maybe he was a PK?  The sheer excitement from those encounters was amazing.  I think it was one of the most open systems available to players, by allowing players to police themselves without having to whine to customer service reps.  Back then, if somebody PK'd you, you would gather a vigilante mob of your friends, hunt down the PK, and enact justice on him the old fashioned way.  Brilliant!"

This is the designer Rorschach test. It exists primarily to tell us a little bit about the two individuals we've been interviewing. In this case they have, interestingly enough, picked answers that would illustrate a pair of classic Bartle archetypes.

Jeff is an "achiever" at heart and Mike a "killer" and we can see this throughout their responses in this article. Mike tends to worry about what specific gameplay will make a game fun. Jeff is primarily interested in content and making sure that a game has enough entertainment to last not just hours or days but months and even years. Certainly both are interested in all the aspects of a game and really portray very similar arguments throughout the article, but their different, base perspectives have also certainly flavored their responses.

The useful gem of information here is that even developers are divided on what makes a good game and this is healthy for the genre. But, unlike single player games which are almost disposable, an online game is a commitment, and almost always an exclusive one, by a player. Few can manage to play multiple MMO's at once. And therefore the hope is to create a game that delivers to all kinds of players. Do this and do it well and you've "won".

In the end this is largely what World of Warcraft did. Instead of being bogged down in details they attempted to hit all the bases, all the different kinds of players. There's something for casual and hardcore. There's a game and advancement for both PvP and PvE. There's trade skills, there's exploration, there's quests, etc, etc, etc. On top of their obvious financial success, Blizzard also did a favor to the genre as a whole in the processes. By appealing to such a vast market and using the following they'd built up over years with their other titles, they brought in many players from across many boundaries, not just "achievers" and "killers" but large numbers of people new to the genre. It can be expected that, for some time at least, and perhaps forever, that each new large scale and highly inclusive title will continue to grow the genre and benefit all developers.

Part V: In Conclusion

The Content War is real and will continue to grow. Each new game, which wishes to challenge for the top of the pile, will have to deliver more and more relative to the games that come before it. But there is hope. The genre will continue to grow. Gamers will continue to get better games and developers who can prove themselves good at both the art and science of game design will continue to be successful. Development skill, planning/management skill, and middleware solutions will all be pushed to the limit to fuel the insatiable twin fires of content and feature. Competition will be fierce as these games cannot, in most cases, share a user base. But despite all this the future is bright.

Additionally, as the competition continues between the Triple A titles the genre will expand and room will be created for smaller, specialist titles to emerge to greater and greater success. There will be a space for small developers to cut their teeth and refine the important skills that are at the core of the science of MMO design. And it is from this space that both the largest innovation and the best new developers will come to drive the juggernauts that are the Triple A titles.

And, finally, specifics matter little as long as you can meet that content bar. The barrier for entry is strict, difficult to reach, and unavoidable. However if you have the persistence, time, budget, and know-how you can succeed in an almost infinite variety of ways. The only rule is that your game must be good and must offer enough to be comparable to the best. The true freedom of the MMO genre is that it is a genre about play styles rather than game rules. You cover the basics and the infinite variety of gameplay is open to you and, if driven by excellent execution, has a strong chance of success.

This marks not only the conclusion of this article but also the conclusion of the Massive Growing Pains article series. By the time anyone reads this my time at the Guildhall will be over and the empowerment offered by academia will be gone. But I would like to thank not just Jeff Butler and Mike Wallis but Sigil Games Online, NCsoft, Turbine, GameDev.net, and the Guildhall for bending over backwards to make this series possible. I can only hope that people have enjoyed the outcome that a combination of academia and industry produced and that there will be someone who comes after me to continue to bridge the gap and provide the sort of useful thought, discussion, and learning that such combination can bring.

Thank you for reading.