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It's the Players, Stupid!Written by Xandamere)
Global MU players gather to defend Fortress Crywolf.
The communities that spring up within and around online games fascinate me. In many ways, I find a game's community more interesting than the game itself. Beyond just personal interest, though, I feel that the success of a game is closely tied to the vibrancy of a game's community. In the long run, it's not the games themselves that make online gaming so interesting, but the other players. RPGs have long been my favorite genre of games. I like the idea of sitting down and forgetting that I'm actually playing a game. I want to immerse myself in a world and identify with my character, live out the story of his or her life. Since I started playing games online, I have not been able to play and enjoy a single-player RPG as I once did. Sooner or later I start thinking, "this is fun, but where's everybody else?" A world with only one dynamic character doesn't feel like much of a world. When I play an MMORPG I like that it feels as if I'm living in an actual world filled with other people, rather than a single-player game which revolves around one player. Such a single-player world can often make suspension of disbelief difficult, especially formulaic worlds in which the player kills the dragon, frees the princess, and saves the kingdom. The appeal of online games is the immersion, the feeling that comes from being just one character in a rich world among many other players. Having to make your own mark rather than having the central role in the world's story shoved on you is much more compelling. )
A Knight Online player catches up with his friends.
In the long run, people don't play online games for years because of the gameplay itself. As enjoyable as a game's content and design features may be at first, there is only so much new content that can be added, and players will invariably find themselves repeating the same actions, whether grinding NPCs for rewards (experience, gold, and items) or fighting others in PvP combat. Why, then, do we find online games so fascinating that we continue playing them several times a week for years on end despite all that well-traveled territory and all those repetitive actions? The answer is the player community. It's the other players that keep the game world dynamic and interesting. While computer-controlled characters in any game will always react according to a set pattern, human action is not so predictable. When we sit down to log in to an online game, we never know what we'll find going on in there. This creates a changing world, a living world. We want to log in to find out what's been going on while we were away, to hear about the adventures our friends have been on. This brings up another powerful aspect of online gaming: the relationships we forge while we're playing. By this point in the history of online games, there are many stories of friendships made in-game that transcend the game itself. Players have met in-game and become romantically involved, leading to real-world relationships and even marriages of couples who met online. )
I get owned. :(
Strong friendships being made via gaming are not the exception or a rarity. One of my current best friends was somebody I met in a game because he was on all the time, didn't have a guild, and thus was always looking for groups to do quests and run instances. I met him and he was both a fantastic player and a really hilarious guy. I ended up recruiting him to the guild I was in, and when I moved later that year, I found out that I had unknowingly moved just a couple miles away from where he lived. We get together a couple days a week now. I even met my girlfriend while gaming, via some forum drama that my guild had gotten itself involved in (I believe the first thing she said to me was to call me a jackass). The point is, these aren't just anonymous players you share the world with, but real people. The next time you look for a group for an instance you could be meeting your new best friend! Perhaps most importantly, it is not uncommon for groups of players to move from one game to another together. Loyalty to the community ends up being more important than loyalty to the game itself. From an industry standpoint, this is a critical point which most companies miss. The community doesn't revolve around the game; rather, the game revolves around the community. What this is all leading up to is that the communities that spring up around online games are not tertiary. They are as important to any game's long-term success as the game itself. Look at Habbo Hotel (http://www.habbo.com) for a clear example of this. Habbo Hotel is one of the most popular virtual worlds in existence, and yet there is no real "game" to speak of. Players meet in the Hotel and can go to public or private rooms to chat, and they can create a personal room enhanced with furniture and decorations. It is a world based entirely around the community, and it is fantastically successful. )
Standard community management strategy in action.
Both difficulty and opportunity result from this realization. There is difficulty for game companies to realize and act on this information, as is clearly shown by how the vast majority of companies publishing online games have little to no interaction with their community beyond possibly some forum support. Most companies use their community forums as a type of soapbox to shout from, announcing new patches, updates on resolving game issues, and the like. It seems like they're just not paying attention to the huge resource their community of players actually represents. The opportunity is there, though, for the company that realizes the critical importance of community and acts on it. As I've been saying, players make the game, and if you listen to them you'll find out which aspects of the game they enjoy and which they don't. As a game publisher you'll never be able to please everybody, but by interacting with the community and eliciting feedback from them, you can make more intelligent choices that cater to what your players want. Thus far in the industry there have been amazing games and wonderful communities to support, but no game has had a strong combination of both. )
War Rock troopers get their groove on during a lull in the fighting.
That, I believe, is what players are looking for and what will cause a game to stand out in the (now very) crowded field. The MMOG market has been growing dramatically, with the largest games counting their subscriber bases in the millions instead of the thousands, and there are dozens of new games scheduled to be released this year. Most of them will flounder or fail entirely. The company that embraces its player community and interacts with it on a far greater basis than has been done before will find itself with a successful game that I believe will escape the typically short lifecycle of the genre. I have been wanting for years to scream at game companies "Wake up! It's not the new expansion or patch that represents the future of your game, it's your players!" Do you agree with this article? Do you disagree? Let Xandamere and the rest of us know your opinions on this topic. Go Back to Gamer Scene |
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