I’ve designed an MMO and also a “proof of concept” minigame which is small enough to actually implement; I’ve been waiting for the tech to get to a state where I can implement the game without worrying about implementing the engine as well. It’s looking like that’s happening right now…

 Oh, cool — PlaneShift can run under Linux! I like games that run under Linux.

 

I am helping to build PlaneShift, and it’s all built by volunteer effort. It will be a long, long road for us to get to something we’ll call version 1.0, but I believe the project is well worth building. What we have now is the first 30 pages of a 1000-page book, but we will keep building it one word at a time.

I don’t believe commercial efforts will be able to truly create something satisfying for the niche market that the is the intelligent adult, not when there are millions of more-straightforward players with disposable income who are quite happy catching the simple frisbees out there. The easier road towards a profit is to make something prettier and (and sexier) and more satisfying on the reptile-brain level. Those of us who want to get more involved on more levels will need to build our own playgrounds.

The current state of design is just a single player RPG gone multiplayer in a persistent world. We are all playing the same single player RPG, just together. Sure we can group, but its just an amusement park. Let’s all get in line and ride the Vomitron again.

Sure, there are times when I’m in a mindless hack and slash mood. I don’t see why there can’t be some content that would be “accessible” for this lower input type of play, but I also don’t see why it can’t “matter” and “fit” in a better world context where the playerbase shapes and changes the world.

There is so much more horsepower available now, why must it all be directed at making things shiny? Not that shiny is bad, but come on. Help us out a bit.

Good post.

I dunno… I’m a believer of ‘Keep it simple, stupid’… So although I love the *idea* of having huge open-ended games like SWG, I just don’t really see it working. I think for a game to really work, you need to really focus on only a handful of things… WoW with its simple, accessable PVE experience, WAR with its focus of PVP. I don’t think Conan will do too greatly simply because it has such a grand scope.

I do think devs should give some skeletal structure to the game, because not everyone is a content creator. And in the end, there still needs to be a game there — SWG’s failing, IMO. All sandbox, no game.

It’s not easy. It’s a hell of a lot harder than coming up with pretty screenshots. But that’s why they get the big bucks.

Essentially the game is toolset wrapped up in a game that gives players the power to create their own dungeons full of quests and monsters. There is a game outside of this – essentially open lands where players can go out hunting – the world is full of a great variety of creatures and items that players can find to use in their own dungeons.
The whole game would revolve around players creating their own games.
The players can create stories for their dungeons, fill it full of monsters and traps and quests.
Dungeons are rated by the players that play them, and each month the highest rated dungeons get prizes and the lower ones are destroyed… This prevents the game world being full of all rubbish.
Prizes would be unique things that can be put into Dungeons… for example – if you’re dungeon is the top rated in one month you could win a massive one-of-a-kind demon to use as a boss.

I know of at least two companies that will be making a platform and a base game that can be infinitely extended by the players. I do wonder if these efforts — you can’t really call them games, they are more like platforms — will actually be fun. Because they are games, after all.

@Wombat — you can’t look at WoW, EQ2 and their copycats with their big bright glowing symbols that scream “Come here and I will tell you what to do!” and tell me the devs have high opinions of their players. And obviously there is a market for this sort of game, and I played WoW in beta and after release, and still play EQ2, so I don’t deny that it’s nice having a brainless game to relax in.

Where do you go, though, for a challenge? Where do you go when you want to make a difference? You’re absolutely right, you can’t have quests to “Kill the Dark Lord” for everyone to complete. It’s pointless. There’s three different ways to kill Mayong Mistmoore in EQ2 — Contested in Mistmoore, Instanced in Mistmoore Inner Sanctum, and Instanced in New Tunaria Throneroom. Or you could go back to EQ1 and kill him in the Demiplane of Blood.

Your option 1 — tell a story. I dunno. People consume content at different rates and it’s hard to tell a real story. A book in MMO format would be a big challenge… LotRO tries this, I think, but since you are always working on side stories, while the main story takes place off camera, it seems somewhat less exciting.

Option 2 — where the players create the content — is precisely what I’m talking about.

@Syncaine — there’s a bunch of tools to roll your own MMO at the moment; a talented group of friends could just use the Unreal 2 engine and put together a very minimal MMO very quickly. There are a lot of art assets (most of which you do have to pay for, but they are available) for people who can’t model, easy build landscapes, so it’s very possible for people to just do a proof-of-concept MMO on the cheap that could be extended by anyone with the same freely available tools. There’s actually someone who took the EQ engine, and made an original game on top of it… I’ve been meaning to give that a look for awhile.

@Kanthalos — I don’t doubt that players will generate a lot of the same ‘kill ten rats’ quests that fill MMOs today. But occasionally there will be some great ones that will make the whole thing amazing — I’m thinking of some of the incredible NWN and WC3 mods I’ve seen.

I would be curious to get your feedback on some of my design ramblings over at my blog. I have a feeling we have similar roots (UO for me, early EQ for you) and see similar issues with the MMOs of today.