Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Multiplayer Gaming: A Problem of Time

Multi-player gaming is a highly diverse activity in terms of the age, economic class, and ability. But most of this diversity is hidden from sight; at best, the tone of a person's voice, or the pattern of their language, may give an indication of the player's background; but this is only applicable in games with voice-chat enabled, and is not particularly accurate. In-game, players are often represented by clones of various 3D-models, or don't have any visual representation at all (as is the case of RTS games). This makes easy to forget that the soldier to the left of you could be a twelve year old boy on his parents computer, while the medic to the right is a forty-year old with two kids, a divorce, and a six-figure yearly income.

But it isn't economic differences or maturity differences that I'm interested in in this article. Its the differences in the time these players have to devote to a game. It is a fair assumption that the tween or teen who has no responsibilities will have more time to devote to gaming then even a college graduate with a low-paying job and a girl/boyfriend. It is also likely, though not absolutely true, that the college graduate with a low-paying job and girl/boyfriend will have less desire to spend time playing the game. This does not mean they enjoy it less, it just means that, to college-grad, there are other options open, possibility that take time to explore. Long-term relationships, concerts, road trips, artistic hobbies, over-time at work – all of these take time that otherwise might be left open for a game.

Becoming skilled at a game is like becoming skilled at most anything else. If you want to become good, you have to practice, and the more you practice, the more skilled you become. Obviously, practice takes time. All practice may not be created equal, but generally speaking, spending eighty hours on an activity will make you more skilled at it then the person who spent twenty hours. This implies an inherit disadvantage, and thus the problem of time in multi-player games. Those who spend more time playing a game will become better than those who spend less time.

Games are almost exclusively a goal-oriented form of entertainment. If you didn't lose a game of Tetris when the screen filled with blocks, what would be the point? The game would be nothing but a simulation of block-twirling, or in other words, boring. The objective is tied to enjoyment. It is the reason behind the game. Completion of the objective may not be necessary for the player to find the game enjoyable. A hard-fought loss can be a great deal of fun, but only because it was fought for a reasonable objective that could have been won.

But if one group of players has spent so much time 'training' for the game that the other side has no chance of victory, then the objective no longer seems concrete. It becomes a carrot on a stick, ostensibly providing reward; but most people will not follow a carrot if they see they never have a chance of acquiring it. The status of the objective as objective becomes lost, perhaps seen as a lie, perhaps seen as purposeless and arbitrary, no more meaningful then spinning blocks. And once the status of the objective is lost, and it becomes not something to strive for but something that is impossible to reach, the game loses a great deal of its fun. Some players may lose hope, while others may 'rebel' against the game by suiciding their characters or trying to exploit the game's rules. But eventually, most players will quit.

The problem of time is one that is crucial to the success of many games. Franchises are becoming more and more powerful. Once upon a time, a game was a one-off commercial venture. If the game was successful, it sold well and perhaps several years later a sequel is introduced. But now game companies are looking for steady flows of income; not just MMORPGs, which obviously have an interest in keeping their players, but also other genres. Take Dawn of War, for example; the constant introduction of expansion packs had provided a steady flow of revenue for a game now several years old, and its success as provided a model for others to follow. Or consider the many instances of episodic content, the most popular of which are probably the Half Life II Episodes or the Sam and Max series.

The goal of the franchise, with its expansions or episodes, is to keep the player hooked for as long as possible. Game companies need to keep the players interested enough in game that they continue playing over the course of many years. The problem of time is a critical obstacle to overcome for any company that wishes to accomplish this goal, because the problem of time becomes larger over time. The core group of hardcore players, who have played the game constantly since release, have a massive edge over new-comers and casual players. Not only do they become more skilled, as discussed above, but they also form more social connections. And both of these – the skills, and the connections – become more powerful over time. The hardcore players eventually become so entrenched that the more casual players feel constantly inferior, dissuading those players from paying for new expansions or another month of online play. Why bother, after all, if there is no hope of catching up to the more active players? Why not just wait for a brand-new game, where the casual player can at least hope to find a relatively level field for a few months?

Game companies have not been silent on the issue. The most notable response has been the match-making system debuted in Halo 2 and refined in Halo 3. This system automatically ranks players according to various statistics and then pits them against other players with similar skills. This provides players with a more level playing field. This response, however, has so far been surprisingly isolated. Few other on-line games have taken so drastic of an approach, but it is needed. Perhaps the biggest problem is simply convincing developers and players that these new ranked systems are better than more traditional, open-ended matchmaking systems.

Up until the last couple years, with the introduction of Xbox Live, the online landscape was ruled by the PC. If you wanted to play online, you played the PC, and that was it. The PC, with its keyboard and mouse interface, naturally lent itself to fairly complex and open ended matchmaking systems. Most interfaces allowed players to search games by their name, the game type, the number of players, and etc. Or, players could simply select the server with which they had the best connection, as represented by the definitive gage known as 'ping'. For some, the idea of a match-making system that lumps you with other players based on skill is a step backward. This is particularly true because even in the case of Halo 3, there is no way to search for servers based on map or specific game type. You get what you get.

But the ideas are not incompatible. If the Halo 3 system was adjusted to allow the creation of 'games' by the player, as in Gears of War, then the headache of playing a map or game type you hate like could be easily avoided.

Ultimately, the problem of time with necessitate these solutions. The lifespans of games are becoming longer, and at some points companies will have to deal with the fact that even the best game cannot last forever if the community which plays it falls into elitism. Conquering the problem of time is the first step in the engineering of game communities by the companies making the games, and it is one that ultimately will leave us better off, the fear of 'big-brother' corporate dictatorships aside.

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