Raph Koster today posted an article proposing that the reason people flock to games similar to ones they have already played is because they have no easy way of finding the alternatives. I agree! That’s a HUGE problem! How can I convince anyone Pi Story is a good game when they assume all MMOs must be 3D? How can I convince myself that oh, I dunno, Age of Conan is a game I’d like without going to the effort of buying it and installing it?
I really like Nexus: Kingdom of the Wind before EQ came out. What games are like that NOW? Without having a complete knowledge of all MMOs available, you can’t know. Raph even points to a comment to a Keen and Graev post that does a decent job of “sequencing” the modern EQ-type MMO (this includes WoW and its descendants).
Coldheat and I talked a lot about this last night. I talked about how we can look at modern MMOs as continually adding complexity (and in some cases, removing complexity) from older games (like Rogue, Colossal Cave Adventures, Risk), and how each decision made by a game designer could be thought of as adding, deleting or rearranging “genes”. Successful genes — design decisions — would be passed on to new games. Unsuccessful ones would not be copied.
Weighting these genes appropriately (which is the hard part), you could tell how similar two games were, which ancestors they shared, and hopefully, how much you might like a game given games you already liked. Or even more fun, proposing a bunch of characteristics (like Guild Wars, but with mandatory grouping and permadeath…) and getting a list selected from all the hundreds of MMOs that meets your needs.
So this morning, as I was setting up Shifter, my Shapeshifter solver, which required setting up some Python stuff since I hadn’t run Shifter since I re-installed Linux on Baphomet, I was thinking about what a web-based front end to such a database might look like. And today I am browsing Wired.com and see an article about the Python-based web framework, Django.
I’d briefly used other Python web frameworks, like Turbogears, but that was too much like work. I’d thought about making some Ruby on Rails stuff when I was between jobs, but I had nothing in particular to make with it, so that died. At work we use Struts and Hibernate with Java, and that REALLY seems like too much work. But a really simple Python-based framework…
So it’s all coming together. Since I have Friday off, I might use that time to try and pull together a data entry page so I can start breaking down the very earliest RPGs and MUDs into their component features. I think this “sequencing” of games will likely take the longest — how do you enumerate every feature in WoW? There must be millions. But until I get to entering data, I won’t know what the important ones are, the ones that by their very inclusion, advanced the genre. And this page must be robust, because if it works out, I will be making it public to hopefully get other people to help analyze the games they play.
I did something similar with my old book collection using keyword fields in a Q&A 4.0 database 20 years ago. Plot elements — time travel, romance, horror, elves, etc — cover artists, everything. But I never did much with it (aside from looking up cover artists) because I was pretty familiar with the books I had already read. Here, though, I will be entering information for games I have never played. So we’ll see how that goes.
I have lots of projects I start and never finish, but I think there is a real need for a MMO database that goes beyond just name and genre, and tells you its features in a way that can be compared and contrasted to other MMOs. So maybe I’ll be able to make time for this.
12 thoughts on “MMO Gene Sequencer momentum builds…”
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You know you could also use this idea and apply to it different developers since they tend to make games which are similar to one another in features. I’ve already know what studios I would assign to which features to make my dream game come to life.
http://relmstein.blogspot.com/2008/07/frankengame.html
I’m trying to think of the top twenty design decisions that set one game apart from another. For instance, flight/horse paths for fast travel across zones is nice, but I doubt it would be a deciding factor for someone. Or whether it costs money (FFXI Online, LotRO, DAoC) or is free (WoW, EQ2). Or the related auto-travel (WoW, EVE) where you select a destination and then can go AFK. Differences, but significant ones? I dunno. Probably too early to start cutting things down.
I think things like “WoW’s art style” are too specific. Maybe something like “cartoon art style”, but not “anime art style”.
Art style is a good one. At the low end you have Rogue’s art style — completely abstract, since everything (including you) is a single text character. (You’re an ‘@’). Then you have the infamous 8-bit graphics, then hand-drawn sprites, isometric/2.5d sprites, 3D characters (non-realistic), 3D characters (realistic). So that could be a slider. Maybe two.
There really isn’t a lot of options I’ve seen for modern MMOs Art Style. The way you describe it using abstract, single character, sprite, then 3D model seems more like graphics quality.
If I was going to list Art Style I would say:
1) High End Cartoon/Exaggerated: World of Warcraft, Warhammer, CoH/CoV
2) Low End Cartoon: Maplestory, Runescape, Habbo Hotel
3) Realism: LOTR, EQ2, AoC
4) Anime: Raganork Online, Concerto Gate
I guess you can say Champions is adding 5)Cell-Shaded but that’s about it.
Dream of Mirror Online has cell-shaded already. Well, it’s cell-shaded, anime style. Maybe “Asian-style characters” should be a selection of its own.
It gets tough, because the WoW art style is borderline Asian already. Art is so subjective, but it is also the first thing people look at. I know people who will refuse to play an anime-style game, even if the rest of the game would be exactly what they would like. And I fully imagine there are bunches of Asian players who would never want to play a game with a more realistic Western art style.
Art is one of the things least likely to be “inherited” from game to game, I’d imagine. It’s likely one of the first things done in a game. I see concept art way before I see any game play. Maybe keep it simple — cartoon, anime, realistic.
On a side note, IS Pi Story a good game? I got invited to the beta but it didn’t seem like my kind of thing . . .
I like how easy it is to group. Which is good, because I was having severe trouble with the supposed solo adventures.
The 2D/sidescrolling action may turn some people off, but you have to take it for what it is. It’s a decent game, but I wouldn’t give up EQ for it. Not that much different from many other Asian imports, but at least it isn’t point to click.
You mean click to move. Although point to click is a good one too. :p
Maybe I use a touchscreen? 🙂
Yar, click to move…
Hmm. http://www.mmoportal.com
Slightly more helpful than the mmorpg.com game list… maybe?
Hopefully a lot more. Though the comment section for each game can tell you lots about it.
Tipa,
I love this idea! I would be more than willing to help out where I can.
I will need help. Once I have all the factors for all 220+ games defined, then I’m gonna need a lot of eyes going over and saying, this game is like that game because of this, this and this, but THAT makes it different. And judging weighting factors. Once that is done, it will be usable. Before that — it’s just a list of games.
Building the connections is what will make it useful — and more than just a scraping of the MMORPG.com and Massively.com databases.