Creating Loyal Players

When designing a game that you want to continue longterm there are two questions you should ask:

1) What will make players want to keep coming back?

2) What elements that discourage players should I avoid?

Persuasion expert Dave Lakhani makes a clear definition between the process of persuasion and manipulation.   "Persuasion is about creating an environment that lets two or more people to find common ground in belief.  The fine line between persuasion and manipulation revolves around intent."
Manipulation achieves a short-term benefit to the manipulator alone, leaving the manipulated feel cheated and angry.  He also points out that the world is getting smaller, and manipulators always lose out in the end.  When dealing with your player community, always strive to persuade, rather than manipulate.  If both parties benefit, the relationship between the two will inevitably be longer.

In "Persuasion: The Art of Getting What You Want", Lakhani explains how to create a cult-like following in business, by examining in technical detail how religion achieves such strong loyalty and integrating those methods into customer relations.  Now we are going to integrate them into our relationship with our player community.

Two points stuck out to me: People like to feel exclusive, and noone likes to think they may have made a bad decision.  The fear that leaving a community might feel like a bad decision afterwards will oftentimes keep players from taking that step in the first place.  And if they do, it provides a strong pull to draw them back in.

Let's talk about exclusivity.  Players love it, and who wouldn't?  Being part of an elite group feels great and enforces loyalty to a game.  Simply owning an in-game item most other do not have makes quitting that game feel like a shame and a waste.  Take away the eliteness of the membership or rarity of the item, and you are taking away a players incentive to remain loyal.  When Blizzard made end-game raid items available to solo-players via daily quests and rep farming, members of raiding guilds didn't feel so exclusive anymore.  The result was a general atmosphere of stagnation that lasted well into release of the next expansion.  When Blizzard made leveling from 1 to 60 so easy any idiot could do it in just a few days, it made long-term players feel less exclusive, as if the hard work they put in was a waste of time.  When Perfect World Entertainment practically made experience points a cash shop item, players who had earned their levels felt outraged and cheated, and rightly so.  Legendary gear also became cash shop items, and players who had earned those were diminished.  Especially if you've advertised, like PWE did, that the cash shop will be for "shineys" like fashion items or mounts only, breaking that promise and disrespecting the hard work of "honest" players felt like a slap in the face to many, and I know several of those who don't play anymore because of it.  Remember the difference between persuasion and manipulation?  Only one side benefited, and the relationship ended prematurely.

My advice: Give players something special if they deserve the reward, and then never ever give that same reward to lots of other people for next to nothing.  Remember that fear of making a bad decision by leaving?  You destroy that fear if you devalue a player's efforts.  Players who work hard to achieve in your game are in it for the long haul, as long as you respect and reward their efforts.  This is so much a no-brainer that I'm astonished at how often this is ignored.

"... it is much easier to persuade that person in the future, because you have benefited him and he trusts you..."

         - Dave Lakhani

Here's a tip I wish someone had given countless games that I have left over the years: Be consistent!

Inconsistency is the best way to make people not feel at home in your game.  While players usually have to accept a EULA to use their account, developers have no such official obligation.  There is, however, an unspoken agreement between publisher and player that protects the player's right to be treated with fairness and consideration.  Break that agreement and it is very likely the player will ban you from being played by him again in future.

Players who have been with a game for a little while don't like sudden change, especially the kind they have no control over.  Even bad rules and mechanics shouldn't be abandoned without warning.  Players tend to feel cheated or have a sense of "This isn't what I signed up for!".  You could scare away a good chunk of your playerbase if you already have a good thing going.

Here is an example:  World of Warcraft and Guild Wars were released at around the same time.  When that happened a lot of players from other games flocked to them.  I was an avid Everquest II player at the time.  I was already playing Guild Wars Beta, my intention was to continue playing both.  Here's what changed my mind.

Within a week, EQII changed in several significant ways.  Armor and weapons, which everyone was used to passing to lower guildies or alts, was suddenly bind on equip, a new concept to EQII at the time.  The crafting system, which was intricate and in no way broken, was tossed out and replaced by a new one.  The newbie-zone we were so fond of, the Isle of Trials, was removed completely.  None of these were technically bad moves, sometimes you have to replace chunks of a game to improve on the whole.  The problem with suddenly binding equipment was that players felt the game difficulty had been drastically altered without warning or their consent.  Players who had worked hard mastering the crafting system felt their efforts were not only unrewarded but a worthless waste of time.  The disappearance of the Isle of Trials was just the final nail.  Players who have an attachment to their character feel like a part of that character's past, a part of what made them who they are, is gone.

Within that week 3 guilds I was associated with disbanded, their members closing accounts and moving away in sheer frustration and anger. We felt the message from SOE was very clear: We have no consideration for our players.  Sony has every right to make changes to their products as they see fit, no argument there.  This is about making players relearn the gaming process once they are already integrated.  When a player is comfortable with the way he plays, and you then rip out core elements from under his feet, you make that player feel unimportant.  And we don't level our butts off and gather epic loot to feel unimportant.  The point is, if you show no regard for your player community, your player community will find someone who does.  And so, we and many others, abandoned ship.  Not because we were lured away by Warcraft, but because we were driven away by Everquest.

My advice: If you don't make changes to your running game, it stagnates and people get bored.  So make changes, but give the player community a feeling of involvement or importance.  Sometimes it's just enough to make an announcement on a website or forum and people wanting to appear knowledgeable will spread the news and prepare the way.  But your best bet is to make players themselves responsible for the change.  Integrate it into a storyline that the players can explore and bring the change upon themselves as part of the plot.  Make the change part of an expansion that isn't required immediately to continue playing, but comes coupled with rewards common players don't have access too.  Randomize those rewards.  Remember how important feeling exclusive is?  By the time the new content becomes required to play the integrated players will do the work in convincing the rest of the players that the change is worth it for you.   Let the players choose to allow change, or at least create the illusion of choice.  Remember railroading?  Nobody likes that.

Games as Parenting Tools

TV rots your brain, Dungeons & Dragons makes you a cultist, and video games make you slow and stupid.  I'm glad we're finally past all that, at least almost.  Each of these stigmas were born in a lack of information and the stubborn unwillingness to take in any information on those subjects.  Parents today know it isn't about forbidding electronic entertainment as the source of all evil, it's about having information about what their kids are into.  I grew up playing video games, and my brain certainly wasn't rotted (that depends on whether you're asking my mother).  Don't forget that a few hundred years ago reading books was considered a bad influence on children.  Our forefathers learned to know better, and so should we.

I don't mind my toddler watching television, but I pay attention to what he watches.  He doesn't gain anything from Spongebob, so I switch to Dora the Explorer instead.  There are no real lessons in the Power Rangers, so he watches Blue's Clues, Ni Hao Ka-Lan.  Wonderpets, Umizoomi, the Backyardigans, those are all beneficial programs that teach thinking and recognition as well as problem-solving, sharing and interacting.  I wouldn't let my 10 year old watch Cougartown or Next on Mtv.  I know enough about TV shows to know what is a benefit to my kids and what isn't.

Why shouldn't it be that way with games?  A lot of parents miss this opportunity to influence the development of their kids.  When we were little our parents knew Jack about games, because the most advanced thing out at the time was Beyond Dark Castle (man I miss that game).  Today it's different, a good number of parents gamed growing up and know a little something more than the previous generation.  I remember an article I read in the paper when Super Mario Bros 2 for the NES was released.  It warned parents that the game was violent and a bad influence on children.  Something to do with teaching them to jump on each other's heads, or such nonsense.  Today's parents are a little more educated.  So let's make use of this potential parenting tool.

A few years ago one of my teen sons was a quiet introvert who didn't go out much and didn't communicate well with other kids.  I signed him up for an online typing course, just to learn the basics to help him chat more efficiently, and set him up with an online-game account.  Playing an MMO, where interaction with peers is required to advance and other players are more likely to approach and engage you in conversation than real life, has really opened him up.  As I had hoped, his communication skills developed, he became more outgoing, and he makes friends more easily than before.  The trick was moderation.  Without a doubt, if your kid is playing an MMO you have to make sure he doesn't go overboard with it, but there are things your child can gain from the experience.

Know your games so you know when to apply them, and you've got an awesome learning tool.  What kid is going to say "Aww Dad! I don't wanna play a video game!" ?  Mine sure don't.  Let's say your kid could use some help with hand-eye coordination.  Buy her a real-time strategy game like Battle Realms or Starcraft, which are also very good for multi-tasking skills.  Hand-eye-coordination?  Pretty much anything for the Wii will cover that.  Parappa the Rapper is gold for this purpose too, as well as reflex and reaction time.

Teenagers are tough to handle, I know this.  They are learning to think critically and question things, the world isn't just black and white anymore, there are millions of shades of grey.  The socio-emotional system in their brain is developing faster than their cognitive control system, causing them to be more susceptible to taking risks, not because they aren't aware of the risks, but because the emotion has more control than the reason.  Before they go out in the world, it is our job as parents to teach them that all action has consequence, and punishment doesn't work on them like it did a few years ago.  Here's my tip: get them playing story-driven adventure games with a multi-linear narrative; the longer the story the better, because it teaches them action and consequence in both a short and long-term sense.  My favorites for this category, and your kids will thank you, are the Gothic and Mass Effect series(16+ for this one).  But don't take my word for it, play them and determine for yourselves.

Documenting the Dawn of a New World

I've decided to blog/document the new world I have started writing.  A good world is the foundation of any story, be it game or otherwise and I thought it would be nice to write this one in the open to serve as a kind of guide.  I hope it might be of help to anyone else doing similar projects, or maybe those with more experience feel like throwing a pointer or two my way.  As I am applying for internships at various game companies it can't hurt to show my work process and creativity where it is accessible, besides.

The working title is Foranworld, and the documentiation is HERE

Monsters that Live

Warning: In this entry of my blog I use some elements of horror that might disturb the unprepared.

Their outlines were human, semi-human, fractionally human, and not human at all -- the horde was grotesquely heterogeneous.               -  H.P.Lovecraft

I've reached the stage of non-playable monsters in the world I am currently designing and started looking into fleshing them out as believably as possible.  In-game "mobs" and their implementation is often undervalued, so I thought I'd delve into that subject a little bit.

Of course every game that involves antagonists or combat needs its share of things to kill, ranging from common beasts to fantastic creatures and sentient monsters with lore and culture.  But I don't want to populate my world with monsters that, in essence, are the same set of mechanics with varying levels of difficulty and appearance.  The wolves my level 1 character defeats are really no different than the sabretooth tigers he takes on at level 15, for example.  It's all the same, and it gets old.  Of course these are necessary.  If you are creating a world of diversity you need to fill it with lots of things that look very different, and making each and every one of them stand out just might make none of them very special.  To keep your world from becoming just another mindless grindfest, and to provide quest-ammo that is more than "go kill 20 of these", you need monsters that grab attention, something that stands out and forces visitors to your world to think about and remember the monster rather than just put a sword, fireball, or laserbolt through it and move on.

What sets monsters apart from the masses?

One way is to illicit emotional response.  Just making your creature look gross or disturbing is old and these days we are a little too sophisticated for that kind of shock approach if that's all there is to it.  Something about the behavior of the creature, or what it represents needs to strike a nerve.  For this example I'm going to reveal a little about my big project that I have been working on for the last eight years.  I wanted a creature that was tragic and helpless, but definitely a very real threat to players.  I created, among others, the drowning man, the burning man, and the worm man.  Each of them are victims in their own way, locked in torment which they violently pass on to others out of fear or desperation, not out of malice or hostility.
          The drowning man, for example, is a mob you would find standing at the bottom of a lake or river, any body of water deep enough to fully submerse a grown man will do.  They stand with their feet anchored in muck, their lungs and every available space in their bodies filled with foul water, always drowning, but never dying.  Drowning men know they are dying, they are fear-stricken, hysterical, and in panicked frenzy, grabbing frantically at anything and anyone that comes close enough, a real danger to swimmers who are dragged under at first contact.  Because of their bloated bodies, drowning men are very difficult to dislodge and next to impossible to drag out of the water.  Even on dry land the water in them replenishes itself faster than the suffering drowning man can vomit the vile liquid, which is extremely toxic to anyone touching it.  In his hysterical desperation the drowning man, even on dry land, will stagger around and cling desperately to anyone who comes close, in hopes of being saved from his state.
          The burning man suffers a similar fate.  He is engulfed by a fire that burns painfully but does not consume him.  He is gripped by the same panicked hysteria and staggers about screaming for help, alighting anything flammable he touches.  Water or vacuum will not douse the fire that finds constant nourishment in its host.
          The worm man might be my favorite of the bunch.  He is victim to a swarm of parasitic worms that eat and writhe through him constantly.  Their skin secretes a regenerative fluid that closes wounds and holes just after they pass through them.  The host suffers a constant devouring of his skin and organs, the wriggling mass of his brain is only barely able to comprehend the agony of his existance.  He runs about grabbing at others forcefully begging for help.  Touching the worm man might mean becoming host to some of his worms.

None of these pitiful creatures wants to die, none of them want to intentionally cause anyone harm, but they are a threat.  The idea is to confront players with an uncomfortable choice, commit a mercy killing in self defense or flee and condemn the creature to unbearable agony.

This kind of monster is a bit extreme, and difficult to portray accurately in a digital setting where first impression decides what a player knows about his opponent.  These should not be overused to the point where players are dulled to the experience, just used enough to make them well-known.  Emotional mob response doesn't necessarily have to be horror.  Any emotion can trigger memory, play with what response your monsters can provoke.

Monster ecology is a good way to give them weight.  What part do they play in your local ecosystem, and how do they interact with other creatures?  In the world I am currently working on, brain leeches inhabit some swamps.  These critters latch on to the base of the skull at the back of the neck and burrow through to the brain, where they grow longer and begin a growing process of mental domination.  Straightforward enough, but why do they do this?  Leeches are hermaphroditic and reproduce by growing cocoons for their offspring.  In my world, brainleech cocoons do not gestate outside of the brain of a host.  When fully grown, the hatched leeches are ejected through the eyes, ears, nose and mouth of the parent host.  Now we have necessity for the monster's actions, in this case the one thing most creatures boil down to: the need to reproduce.  It's a good start, but I'd like to see more depth.

Independantly I had already started fleshing out the fairyfolk, in this world a cannibalistic and bloodthirsty bunch.  Redcaps are a subrace of elf that lives in the swamps and gathered their name from their red scalps and upper face, the only parts of them not submersed in water as they lay in wait for prey.  It made sense to connect the two monsters, and as such, redcaps are common hosts to brain leeches and small sub-communities of leech-controlled elves have appeared.  This won't make a big difference to powerlevelers or hack-n-slashers, but it is an important component of believable atmosphere.  Even the most insignificant inhabitants of your world eat, sleep and reproduce.  Especially creatures of instinct have a reason for every single thing that they do.  When creating a monster, ask yourself what these reasons are.

Relevance in San Francisco

As it turns out, Brenda Brathwaite (one of the most prominent devs out there) at Lolapps (facebookers might know them as the creators of Band of Heroes and Yakuza Lords) is speaking at a women's mixer (men are welcome to attend too) on August 26th about the very subject of my last blog.  As a professional with massive amounts of experience she'll be able to provide some knowledge that I did not offer.  If you happen to be in the SF area, you should attend and have a listen at 116 New Montgomery Street in downtown San Francisco.  At the time of writing this there are 96 tickets still available.  Attendance is free, but you do have to register.  You can do so at: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/783768272

Railroading in RPGs

A few years ago I was all up in arms over the definition of role-playing.  My pen&paper-gamer side was at odds with my video gamer side when I was confronted with it, so I gave the whole thing a lot of thought.  As Gary Gygax said once when asked what he thought of video role-playing games "It's not really role-playing it is?  I mean, who are you role-playing too?"

Final Fantasy was definitely a ground-breaker for its' genre.  We called it role-playing, why?  Because you create a party of characters, name them, level them by killing monsters and rescuing princesses in a fantasy world and earning experience points.  In essence, you virtually recreate what pen&paper players have already been doing for years at that point.  Going a little farther back, SSI's tellings of Forgotten Realms stories, a setting of Dungeons & Dragons still immensely popular and well-known today, did exactly what a D&D module does.  It creates a plot line, pre-made dungeons and antagonists, and releases a group of player characters into the setting.  To the naked eye, those are all the elements of a role-playing game.  When these games first surfaced, did someone, perhaps at SSI, make a mistake in naming the new genre RPG?  Yes and no.

To me, role-playing means freedom of choice, it means altering the course of the story with my actions, creating new outcomes by the way I play or my character behaves.  But this is only a player's perspective, I didn't take into account the role of the Dungeon Master, odd because I pride myself on my DM abilities.  What does a Dungeon Master do?  Of course, it is possible to wing a story based purely on the initiative of the players.  This requires imaginative and inventive players capable of playing the role of their character without an obvious plot line prodding them along, and a DM who can roll with the punches and make things up quickly on the go.  This type of RPG session can be a lot of fun and I often used them for fillers between adventures or spur-of-the-moment sessions.

But I do love a good module, whether it is purchased or home-brewed prior to the gaming session.  An adventure module already has a pre-set course.  It has a developed plot line, and in many cases the DM has already determined what the outcome will be, provided the player characters manage not to get killed before the end.  So why did I so determinedly hang on to my standpoint that video games did not deserve to be refer to themselves as RPG?  It comes down to a single term: Railroading.

A DM who railroads his players takes away their feeling of being an active part of the story.  When you have no say over your involvement in a story, you feel more like an observer, with the DM being the only one telling the story.  I love the Final Fantasy series, because the stories are compelling, detailed and draw emotional response.  Can you influence the story?  Not really, not in enough detail to make a difference.  You take turns beating up monsters and watching the story happening to you.  This is railroading, it's not even making a decent attempt to mask it.  It's a little like watching a movie while pushing some buttons.  I don't play a role here.

When Bioware's Neverwinter Nights was nearing release, the D&D community, myself included, was immensely excited.  Finally here is a computer RPG with a module-development tool set and the ability to play the game as a DM who can shape the story as it develops.  While NWN was an exceptional game that gave me many months of fun both playing and developing modules, I was disappointed with the amount of active story-shaping a DM could really do.  The concept of "winging it" was never an option.  I remained convinced that there was no such thing as a digital RPG.

The coming of MMOs did their part in blurring the line.  Gary Gygax's question, at least, was finally answered, because players could now role-play to each other.  Today's MMOs still don't provide a platform that encourages or makes role-playing easy, you get too drawn in to the mechanics, the hack-n-slashing and power leveling to focus on personal character growth.  But that is a story for another time.

I was talking about railroading and how it relates to both computer games and tabletop RPGs.  Something very important finally hit me, probably not at first because digital role-playing was still in its toddler stages.  Yes, you can wing it when DMing an RPG, and that is one of the marks of a good Dungeon Master.  But it isn't the only thing.  A truly good DM doesn't railroad, he creates the illusion of choice.  What good is all that work you did on the story if your players run it in an entirely different direction?  You have to keep their actions in line without letting them know they are being guided towards your pre-determined outcome.  This isn't easy, and kudos to the DMs who can pull it off.  A massive amount of my respect, however, to digital game designers who can also pull it off.  DMs can always be inventive on the spur of the moment and adjust to player action.  A game designer doesn't have this option.  He often isn't present when his game is being played, and he certainly doesn't have a team of programmers with him, giving him the ability to say "Ok wait 15 minutes while we explain to our world how to react to what you are trying to do".  It's a ridiculous prospect.

A game designer has to, or at least should, work very hard to anticipate player action.  The story he crafts must be so very detailed that this world written in unbending code appears to be flexible to the whim of the player.  The NPCs must have life, a convincing personality, and the ability to react to the player based on his actions.  The story must have multiple endings, some of which a player may never see, which might put the designer in danger of feeling a little under appreciated.  In essence, the player of a PC RPG is still being railroaded.  The trick is making it look like he isn't.  When it comes down to it, that is what a good DM does at the table.  In game design, we call this multi-linear narrative.

So yes, the guys at SSI were mistaken in using the term RPG, but only because I can't imagine they had the foresight to know what is now possible 30 years later.  And yes, there is such a thing as a role-playing PC game, although at current I limit that definition to only a handful of games, all of them single-player.  We've come a long way, and we might never get where we're going, but if you look at how far we've come since the 1980s, the potential is without limits.  In any story, role-playing is an illusion to at least some extent, and creative minds are always coming up with new ways to hide the railroad tracks.  RPGamers have a lot to look forward to.

My first Blog

Dear Diary...  that's not how you start this sort of thing, is it.  I'm new to the blogging game, but I'm one of the millions with something to say that may or may not be of interest to anyone else.  As a father of 4 (soon 5) and student/intern of computer programming, I always considered myself too busy, until I saw the movie "Motherhood" in which an overly-stressed and under-appreciated Uma Thurman still manages to blog about parenting at least once a day.

So who am I?  An avid gamer for one thing.  I started playing Dungeons & Dragons in 1992 and never left the world it opened to me.  My RPG collection took up a good-sized portion of my living room and to this day I can't pass up a cool-looking die without bringing it home.  Video games were a big part of growing up for me, I collected gaming systems like others collected stamps.  In the early days I had everything from the NES and SEGA Mastersystem to the Turbografix16 and NeoGeo.  Mario, Link and Roger Wilco were childhood friends.  As a kid I always dreamed of growing up to be the 3rd Guy from Andromeda at Sierra On-Line (back in those days without the "On-Line").  Games that were considered unbeatable at my school were presented to me to be conquered, I sometimes felt a little like Fred Savage in "The Wizard".

Today I am in school to learn computer programming and applying for internships with various Gaming companies in my little pocket of Germany.  I'm unbelievably excited about this, I'm meeting game programmers from the local game community and stare wide-eyed like a fat kid in front of a confectionery store when I get a glimpse of upcoming games I have a chance to be a part of.  As I write this I am anxiously awaiting the results of the entrance exam I did for Ubisoft.  It's amazing to speak personally and on a professional level with people who have worked on games that I have enjoyed over the years.  Like the time I was introduced to tabletop role-playing as a teenager, I feel like I'm coming home to a new world.  I'm very much looking forward to working on future game projects.

Choosing which company that has opened it's doors to me is a tough one.  I wish I could do my internship at all of them.  Since I am not Jamie Madrox and can only be in one place at one time, I am forced to weigh the pros and cons.  Among other things, I have to remind myself why I do this.  I have a wonderful wife and 4 sons, and my daughter Brieanna Danielle is due to arrive in November.  It is our career that defines us in society, but it is our family that lays the foundation for that very definition.  A family that acts as a hindrance will surely affect how your career or job defines you just as much as a family that is actively supportive.  I plan to go far in this business, and if I want my family to support me, then I have to include them as an active part of my goals.  Becoming a father never gets old, every child is an enrichment of your life, and never does this enrichment diminish with the growing number of children.  I want to see my children grow up, take their first steps, go on their first dates.  Some career-men might assure you that you have to sacrifice many of these things to go get the bigger office or pay for that new sportscar.  But who am I doing this for if not my family?  What good is a sportscar when I can't fit my army of offspring into it?  You can be a great father and husband and at the same time be successful doing what you love.

Don't believe me?  Just keep your eyes on me in the coming year and I might change your mind.