You remember when you were young. You could go for hours. And not just a couple times a month either. Nightly! Oh yeah! And it was always a group thing. You were h.a.r.d.c.o.r.e. A cat couldn’t scratch you.
Now of course it’s different. You just get all geared up and ready to explore the nether regions … and your kid interrupts, “I can’t sleep … read me a story.” Or you wife reminds you have to work extra early tomorrow, so “why don’t we just go to sleep”. Often, you’re just too tired from the day to power up and hop on.
It happens to everyone. Maybe once upon a time you used to raid the dark forest for hours every night … maybe even twice … with multiple groups. But not any more. It starts innocently. You finish up a little sooner than you used to. Over time, you get quicker and quicker. Pretty soon, it’s 5 minutes before bed twice a month.
And all of a sudden, you’re a Casual Gamer.
We all start out strong. The average 20-hours per week was nothing. And then, you know … life happens. Career, spending time with friends whose names aren’t spelled in 1337, kids, mortgages, the inevitable switch from beer to wine spritzers.
It happens to everyone. If you’ve got a job, kids or a significant other, you’re no longer playing nightly for hours. And if you still are, you probably soon won’t have a job, kids or significant other.
But we never forget the heady days of our youth. We’d all love to recapture that fun. And oddly, we’ve got money now … money that we perhaps didn’t have back then. I routinely pay a couple of subscriptions on MMORPG that I don’t actually play, but hope that I will.
You’d think, somewhere, out there, there’d be a company that would want to sell to this market demographic.
In a thread on Nerfbat’s Forums, I asked, essentially, two questions:
- Does anyone have any suggestions for casual friendly MMO’s that are still deep.
- Does anyone have design suggestions for what might make for a more casual friendly MMO.
There have been a several responses to the second question. But precious few for the first.
It seems no-one makes a deep but casual MMO.
Let me explain what I’m not looking for …
- I’m not looking for some cutesy side-scrolling whack-a-mole game.
- I’m not looking for an emo-dress-up-doll-come-see-my-place game.
Let me explain what I (think) I am looking for …
- Well thought out quests for both individuals and groups.
- Longer term goals to work towards both as individuals and groups.
- It’s gotta be social. PuzzleQuest is great, but not what I’m looking for.
- Worldy aspects … let me participate in shaping the world or at least my little corner of it.
- Modern, 3D eye candy.
- Guarantee me that I can hop in, get a quest and complete it … all in 20 minutes.
- Now do the same for group quests.
- Break down and remove barriers that prevent casual players from playing with their less-casual friends (in CoH terms … more SideKicking!).
- Make it easy for groups that aren’t on at the same time to stick together: improved ingame email or perhaps even full blown message board functionality.
- Make it easy to access in game communication from outside the game (IM, SMS). If my friends are getting in for a few minutes, make it easy for them to let me know (or for me to find out).
- Provide for asynchronous group play. Mini-games that require groups to collaborate to complete (like a RAID) but don’t require the group members to be on at the same time (unlike a RAID). Collection mini-games are a great place to start. Or maybe there’s potential for player directed, but NPC executed, tower defense mini-games.
Despite my belief that the casual-but-formerly-heavy MMO player market seems to me to be a natural target, I haven’t read that much buzz on the topic.
Inhibitor of Lagorama posted something exciting about Epic Warrior … a MMO-like game that appears to target casual players without being … you know … casual.
Each adventure in Warrior Epic can be completed in under 15 minutes. So whether you have a whole evening to kill or just half an hour, you can play and make meaningful progress.
That sounds great! I hope they do justice to the social side of the game. Lagorama has the gameplay video linked … go check it out.
Other than that, I haven’t heard much. Far more often, the buzz is about “casual games” in the non-MMO, non-social, non-worldy way. Or worse, simple “social” games. But that’s not what I want.
Do you want it deep and hard, but casual? You know … where you want it, when you want it and only for as long as you want it (and yet, not have to do it alone)? Then get involved in the discussion, either here, or in the thread at Nerfbat’s Forums. Let the world know what you think casual MMO gamers want.
By Ryan Shwayder January 8, 2008 - 1:08 pm
Great post. The most intriguing piece of it to me that I haven’t thought too much about is the idea of asynchronous social gameplay. How does it exist in games right now?
- Guild Banks: Everyone can collect stuff and put it in the bank, working toward a common cause at different times.
- Guild Advancement: In games like EQII, you have guild levels that players can contribute to no matter who is on when.
- Player Towns: In the few MMOs that have player town type systems, many can contribute to one town.
- Live Events: E.G. Griffon Tower Building in EverQuest II–many players can contribute at different times toward one cause.
What other asynchronous social gameplay exists in MMOs now? What are more ideas that would work in current MMOs (or others) in a similar fashion? How do we get players who participate in such gameplay to actually know who the other contributers are (guilds know, griffon tower builders don’t)?
I think I’ll start up a new thread for this particular piece of the topic in the Nerfbat Forums.
By Tachevert January 8, 2008 - 3:32 pm
Quoth the Tuebit:
I know this is going to be an unpopular sentiment, but I think you’re on to more than you realize here. MMOs, particularly of the Diku flavor, are largely designed around creating time sinks. The leveling process occurs at a more-or-less predictable rate, controlled by XP requirements and rewards. PvP, endgame activities, raids, instances, equipment gathering, material farming — all of these are (or should be) tested and measured for speed. No matter what the in-game currency is called, whether it’s credits or gold or SoJs or ISK, the real currency is time. (For more information, Google “Castronova” “time value of money” — but I’m not pulling this concept out of my tush.) In a world of 1s and 0s, time is the only truly scarce commodity.
As I mentioned in an earlier entry, I feel that the developers of a game have final say as to the rules. This isn’t the same as establishing community morés. The players decide what’s “right,” while the developers decide what’s “allowable.” And the developers can be as capricious and arbitrary as they want. And capricious and arbitrary describes the mainstream “anti-RMT” bent of developers. They picked one scarce commodity, time, and declared it to be the One True Commodity. That’s great for one group of players: those with lots of time and less money. It sucks for another group: those with some spare money, but not so much time. I won’t argue that the developers have the right to restrict this. I can even think of reasons (mostly centered around liability and nerfs). But I still call it arbitrary. And I’ll postulate that allowing some degree of RMT to “advance” in a game would go a long way towards making it more casual-friendly. “I see that you have just purchased your flying mount. For $4.95, less than 10 days’ game cost, you can have your epic flying mount. Advance your game! Would you like to buy this item?”
There’s a strange sentiment out there of “But I EARNED this; why should you be able to eBay it?” And my gut response is that this is a strange kind of entitlement. Let’s face it: The mainstream MMO just isn’t that difficult. I’m not saying there’s no skill. Learning an encounter, really mastering a class or build, min-maxing your equipment and character statistics — that takes real skill, and there are certainly exceptional players. But I’m talking in overall terms. There is no mainstream MMO I’ve ever seen where just attaining most goals (money, levels, items) couldn’t be satisified eventually through application of time. Sure, there’s always some truly “epic” encounter or reward that truly takes skill to earn, but then again, those items aren’t really commodities anyway. So the notion of “earning” your way just doesn’t really hold much with me. For instance, to advance Aldor reputation from Honored to Exalted in World of Warcraft potentially takes around 1,300 item drop turn-ins. Getting your first couple of drops requires some exploration or research, and a bit of combat with a potentially new enemy. By your 20th drop, you’ve probably mastered this technique. The other 1,280 are rote repetition of something you’ve already mastered. Earn that reputation, baby, earn every bar. And that kind of grind is just not casual-friendly. On the other hand, most of us certainly earn that paycheck. Why not convert it to something you like?
Other math I’ve heard is to take the time value of money backwards. “It would take me two months of play time to earn this. Therefore, it’s worth $30.” I find that logic relatively sound.
So at risk of being burned in effigy, I’m going to postulate that the casual-friendly MMO of the future will begin to accomodate some sort of money-for-advancement trade. And I’m going to use a non-MMO example. Rock Band on the XBox 360 allows the purchase of additional songs through XBox LIVE Marketplace. The “regular” gamer is beginning to see micro-purchases of add-ons to video games — and I don’t think you can get more “regular” than a party gamer on a console! I think it’s inevitable that this will extend into other industries. Buy your Doubloons today!
By Inhibitor January 8, 2008 - 7:31 pm
I started typing a reply, Tach, and then I realized it was approaching book-length and turned it into a post on Lagorama instead. lol
The attitude toward RMT is only going to get worse for some, I’m afraid, but it’s a-comin’. And personally, I don’t see the problem.
If it takes ten hours’ worth of grinding to get something I can buy for $10…well, what’s my time worth? It’s all about whether I want to spend my time grinding rep in-game or cash in-real-life.
Either way I’m grinding, and I see no reason why I can’t choose which grind to undertake.
By Tachevert January 8, 2008 - 9:32 pm
@Inhibitor: Great post!
The only time I dislike RMT on principle is when folks participating in it degrade the game, such as rampant botting and the like.
I don’t know that I’m totally thrilled, but I believe it will be the way of the future. As if it isn’t bad enough to get lit up by rich kids with $2000 paintball markers when I decide to play that game, now they’ll be pwning me at home. *sigh* And then there’s the question of how many purchaseables will actually just be unlocking content you already have.
By Tuebit January 9, 2008 - 9:40 am
I’ve never considered RMT for myself … for a number of reasons. I don’t really want to avoid the game (although, I would like to be able to keep up with my friends). I also don’t want to get banned. That, and the idea of giving my credit card number to a shady outfit engaged in questionable activities in a 3rd world country just doesn’t seem wise.
“Official RMT” (ala station exchange) would solve this (and rampant botting), and give the company an additional source of revenue.
But really … at this point, I’d still like to believe that RMT is not necessary to give casual players a better experience … that design can make current triple-A, non-item-mall games accessible to the casual player.
It’s simply a question of studios wanting to put the effort into features that appeal to casual players (perhaps, rather, than spending sooo much time on raid content for the top 1%).
By Tachevert January 9, 2008 - 10:25 am
And with RMT, there’s the issue of nerfing and liability. It can be handled, but carefully. If people start speculatively buying gamestuff to make money through arbitrage, they might sue over nerfs… Advanced knowledge of upcoming changes would become akin to insider trading…
By Zoso January 9, 2008 - 12:58 pm
Excellent manifesto, I’d certainly be interested in something that encapsulated those ideas.
By sumdumguy January 9, 2008 - 2:05 pm
@Tachevert
Wow, nice post! And I like those ideas. I’d be willing to fork over small amounts of cash if it reduced my having to grind out parts of the game that I don’t like.
My general concern on RMT is how competitive people are, and how a game won’t be as fun if you are 1337 mostly by how much $$ you’re willing to throw at it. Take Collectible Card Games as a potential example of such abuse.
Also, the prices for virtual items are a potential issue, too. Right now an epic mount in WoW is nice but not 100% necessary, and if Blizzard let me buy one for a one time charge of $4.95, then I’d likely buy 2. But who’s to say that they wouldn’t charge say, ?$50? instead of that $4.95?
And it certainly can get worse – right now, it’s a nice thing to have but not a requirement. The last thing I want is for a company to make it absolutely necessary. And me to be eventually forced to fork over more $$ just to play “normal” content.
Of course, none of the RMT games that I’ve played have gone to this extreme, but it wouldn’t be hard at all for the developers to start doing so.
By Tachevert January 9, 2008 - 3:35 pm
As an example, I’ll bet money that a mainstream game soon offers a “premium” subscription level — pay $20/month instead of $15, and get 33% more XP, or items with better stats, or…
Wait, didn’t Everquest do something like that, at least for a while? Premium servers?
By Why Is Real Money Trade In MMORPGs The Target Of So Much Hatred? | LagORama January 10, 2008 - 12:26 am
[...] at WorldIV, Tuebit has an incredibly good post up about casual MMO players, and the way the market targets (or doesn’t target) [...]
By Psychochild January 10, 2008 - 1:25 am
I’d like a pony. But, I also want one that can go 100 mph. Oh, and I don’t want to care for it, so if it could not eat and poop, that’d be great.
Okay, a bit of snark there, but I have a point. The question is: what are you willing to give up out of that list? Because nobody’s going to be able to produce that game. My personal project covers most of that list (although it won’t be 3D, so it fails, I fear).
The further trick is that most games are deep because they have a lot of complexity that takes a long time to complete. Unfortunately, this means that some people will be able to spend more time than you, so it will end up not being casual-friendly.
One game you might want to check out is Lunia (http://global.lunia.com/). I found it entertaining. It’s a Korean item-mall game, but you can play along just fine without buying stuff and it doesn’t feel like a massive grind. Even pretty solo-friendly, but it’s easy to get people to pick up and group with you. Reminds me of the old SNES game Secret of Mana in some respects.
By Dirk January 10, 2008 - 8:17 am
I’m in the same situation. I have about 3 hours to play per week, spread over 4-6 days. Every month or so I’m able to play 2 hours in a row. And what do I enjoy?
within 25 minutes. And it has a fantastic graphics, a very casual friendly community and you just don’t need RMT (unless you really want everything at once. But from your points above only the external access to in game comm is missing (and I’d really love to see this). But that’s what forums are for.
LotRO (www.lotro.com or http://www.trylotro.com for Europeans) is the perfect game for me. It’s strictly against RMT but otherwise very casual friendly. E.g. this morning I logged in, did two quests and traveled to the next big city (Rivendell
By Tuebit January 10, 2008 - 8:21 am
Psychochild said: “I’d like a pony. But, I also want one that can go 100 mph. Oh, and I don’t want to care for it, so if it could not eat and poop, that’d be great.”
You too? And here I was too shy to say so.
In the ideal world, I’d have that list and more. I understand that it might not all be possible … but I don’t believe any of it is impossible.
Most of the list (excepting “full blown message boards in game”) describes features that are already available in one form or another.
And I understand that not all aspects would fit every game. CoH’s concept of sidekicking wouldn’t fit in WoW, for example … but perhaps there are alternatives.
I firmly believe that any game could be made more “casual” friendly.
“Casual” friendly is NOT about letting casual players shoot directly to the end-game. I don’t necessarily want to bypass content.
Really, all I want is:
- Stuff to do when I don’t have a lot of time.
- A way to play with my friends.
- A was to contribute to a wider community with limited time.
The majority of quests take longer than 20-minutes. In fact, without looking up a quest location on a guide-site, it’s often 20 minutes+ just to get to and find the place.
There have been fedex quests that take much longer due to the distance that must be covered.
The sort of casual player that has less than an hour at a time ends up farming one location rather than engaging in the wider game.
Add in a dynamic local repeatable quest (or perhaps even several!). Instance the quest location in one of those many buildings that have precious nothing in them if you must.
By adding something that players could reliably do without wasting time on travel or searching for locations (or the quest itself) you’ve given the casual player a way to participate … and a reason for them to keep paying you.
SWG had mission terminals from which you could grab quick repeatable missions (and you could select a mission that was close by if you wanted to save on the travel).
Now do the exact same thing for group sized quests.
Anarchy Online had both individual and group mission terminals that doled out missions on demand. There need not be any guesswork about what your going to do when you log in.
This is not to say that mission terminals should supplant the current trend of hand-crafted quest chains … those are good too. But is there any reason we can’t have both?
I could go on to cite existing mechanics that allow friends to group across the level divide and mechanics that allow the casual player to contribute to a larger community.
I wonder if at MMO studios, if there’s someone whose job it is to say, to every design element … “Ok, how does this impact the casual player … and how could we include a variant of it that would work for the casual player.”
If there isn’t, there should be.
By Tuebit January 10, 2008 - 8:33 am
@Dirk
I’ve found, often, quite the opposite with LotRO. Rarely is it that I can complete one quest, let alone two, in 20 minutes.
And travel from anywhere to Rivendell in 20 minutes? They’ve either given everyone instant recall spells or they’ve tripled the speed of horses.
There are a few sections of the game where the quests are plentiful and short. But there are also huge sections that aren’t.
By Snafzg January 10, 2008 - 9:53 am
Have you tried Guild Wars? One negative is that for the best experience, you’ll want to join or form an actual guild. Finding play time for one casual gamer is hard enough but coordinating a group of casual gamers is nearly impossible!
By Emi January 10, 2008 - 11:29 am
I don’t really feel well served as a more casual gamer. One of the reasons I ended up slacking off and drifting out from LoTRO, WoW, et al. is I just could keep up with my friends’ levels. And their attempts at powerleveling me to where they were just felt too rushed and just not fun. Watching in significant other play WoW recently got me slightly interested in that game again, but watching what transpired when he started raiding and dealing with a guild that wasn’t 95% made up of people he knew from other games convinced me that endgame wasn’t for me. (What can I say, the people we had been gaming with since 2003 were pretty cool people – hard to replace for sure!)
I’m not sure how I feel about paying extra for game rewards. On one hand, it would take the aggrivation away from the grind that I tend to hate – but like someone else said, it is just rewarding the people that can afford to have everything? No matter who we are and what we do for work, gaming pretty much gives people an even playing field. If you added the ability to pay for extra things, would it make the game society similar to our own society’s classes as far as stratification?
By Psychochild January 11, 2008 - 1:46 am
I actually did post about this a while ago on my blog: Defining the Middlecore. I don’t think that you really want a casual game: you want a hard-core game that doesn’t require as much time commitment.
The thing is, most games don’t strictly require a lot of time; you can easily solo as a hunter spending what little time per week you have. However, there are external pressures that keep you playing more: friends that level ahead of you (and game mechanics that restrict you because of that), or the requirements for large organized activities (like raids).
Now, you can make an argument that you shouldn’t have things like the power-based-on-level curves we have in most current game (and I’d agree), but those are there for a reason. The main reason is that it’s easier to make someone run the same raid for a month rather than making enough content so that they don’t have to run the same raid even one night in that whole month.
Your issue about contributing to the game is also interesting, but I have a hard time seeing how that could realistically work. If you have 5 hours per week and I have 5 hours per day to play, how are you going to make a contribution to the world that’s as meaningful as what I can do with my greatly increased amount of time to play? We’re looping back into the same issues we’ve complained about since EQ1 raiding required your whole life and soul to keep up. You either have to boost up the person falling behind or hold back the person charging ahead, and both options tend to upset someone. (Unfortunately, it’s usually the person with all that time on their hands that now spends it calling your CSRs and screaming ugly names at them.)
All that said, I think it’s an interesting issue to tackle. As I said, I’m working on something in my copious free time that addresses some issues. But, these issues are really, REALLY hard to resolve and I don’t think I’ll be 100% successful. I’ll be happy with 30% and a guide on how to move forward.
By Psychochild’s Blog » Misconceptions about casual gamers January 11, 2008 - 2:55 am
[...] as the hardcore people that didn’t have a whole lot of time. I think this captures what Tuebit at WorldIV really wants: something that he can dig into without the 20-hour-per-week [...]
By Sierra Kilo January 11, 2008 - 12:34 pm
Casual MMORPG…
WorldIV’s Tuebit posted a semi-rant about the lack of MMORPGs with casual-yet-deep gameplay. It all started in the Nerfbat Forums.
Psychochild brings up a good point about time contribution. Playing 5 hours/week will contribute less than playin…
By Tuebit January 11, 2008 - 2:29 pm
“I don’t think that you really want a casual game: you want a hard-core game that doesn’t require as much time commitment.” quoth the Psychochild.
I’ve never really liked the term hard-core. I’ve never really been sure what it means. And even if you define it, there are 10 other people with different ideas.
Nor is it exactly true that I want a game that “doesn’t require as much time commitment.”
What I want is a perfectly normal game (be that WoW, or LotRO, or CoH), and I want to be able to play that game with my friends … despite not having much time to commit myself.
This may sound like semantics, but there’s an important distinction.
It’s not that the game need not require a great time commitment. A game that sucks my friends in for 30 hours a week is great!
The trouble arises when I absolutely cannot contribute in any way whatsoever to the social aspects of the game, because I have only 1/2 hour per day.
Sure, it’s true there’s usually an opportunity to participate in most games on a limited time basis … be that solo hunter … or solo mastermind … whatever.
But the problem is the solo bit.
When one “falls behind” all these artificial walls pop up that break community … group level difference restrictions … minimum level requirements for various dungeons.
When one has limited time artificial walls pop up the prevent participation … on a number of occasions when I’ve had even an hour or more … once the group is finally formed … there’s no time left to actually play.
I wouldn’t expect a designer to remove all the systems that cause these barriers. I wouldn’t expect a designer to remove all the artificial time sinks. After all … what would be left?!
On the other hand, I don’t see any reason NOT to expect them to add potentially avenues of play for the time-challenged socializer.
Quick, repeatable local missions. Asynchronous social game play. Special mechanics to allow communities to bridge barriers to group play (like side-kicking).
I can’t stress this enough:
In my view of the world … one doesn’t need to cheapen the game or the value of achievement. Make the game even harder if you would like. Double time to max level, if you want.
But while you’re at it … add ways for me and my guildies to continue to work together, regardless of how far behind I fall.
By Tachevert January 11, 2008 - 3:27 pm
One idea that I’d really like to see implemented is the notion of “expiration” of skills and abilities. Look at an army as an example. Generals do something fundamentally different than Privates. Now, I’m not suggesting that the entire game mechanic be changed as players advance (although that’s a possibility), but perhaps there could be certain skills that are ONLY available to the less-advanced. It provides an incentive for guilds to invite and train new players on an ongoing basis. And it gives a definitive role to those who don’t have time to advance as quickly. In player-crafting environments, it might make sense to have newer players creating components, and more seasoned crafters performing final combines. There’s still nothing to prevent hardcore players from “stalling” their toons at these points (such as the ?9 twink PvPers in WoW), but it could provide a real way for casuals to contribute.
By WorldIV » Eden … without the nudity or snake March 17, 2008 - 12:28 pm
[...] So I finally made 50 in LotRO. This is no small feat for a player who, of late, has become increasingly casual. [...]