For the Right Reasons

We can measure facts, but a cause is not a fact—it’s a fiction that helps us make sense of facts.
~Jonah Lehrer, Wired.com

So, I guess Turbine is laying off some workers. To those whose jobs are on the chopping block: you have my deepest sympathies. I hope you land on your feet in a great new place. Meanwhile, there are those jumping at the chance to gloat at your misfortune, ready to draw conclusions not only about the health of Turbine, but the MMO genre as a whole.

Instead of linking to that old PR release about how great LotRO and DDO are doing thanks to F2P, please use this updated link.

F2P ALL THE WAY!
~Syncaine, Turbine finally updates us on the continued success of their F2P conversions

Yeah, because no proprietor of a subscription-only game ever laid off any employee. Syncaine makes a fallacious correlation between a business model he personally dislikes and the health of a company that operates it. (And yes, it's fallacious, because we don't know the circumstances or reasons behind the layoffs.) Syncaine espouses all sorts of valid reasons to dislike F2P. This instance, sadly, is just his schadenfreude showing through.

No game succeeds or fails purely due to its business model. The success factors of both WoW (which has hemorrhaged more players than pretty much all other MMOs ever had) and EVE have little to do with their business model (btw, doesn’t PLEX make EVE a hybrid?) and everything to do with game design. Turbine’s “rightsizing” is business, not game design. We need to look at the design decisions behind LOTRO and other games, as well as external market pressures, to understand why they succeed or fail. Syncaine insists on oversimplifying it to a question of how the companies extract money from players’ wallets.

I'm not saying business model doesn’t influence design. But a crappy, unpopular game will be crappy and unpopular regardless of the business model. And a good game will be good regardless of how the player is asked to pay for it.

Pretty much every game that is not WoW (including EVE) has proven that WoW is a glaring exception to the rule that MMOs are basically a niche in western markets. Every game has its fanbois and haters, regardless of its relative success. And every fanboi thinks his favorite is the result of superior game design.

But Syncaine has declared himself arbiter of both quality and success. He has "yet to see a great F2P MMO," but he's also the one determining "great." He knows "what a great sub MMO looks like," but again that is his personal opinion. This reminds me a little of the SCOTUS definition of obscenity.

I assume Syncaine is playing EVE. He certainly holds it up as an example of great game design. I don't dispute its success, but I would never play EVE, given the tales of what I consider dickish, unethical, and downright criminal behavior of the players. All explicitly allowed by the premise of the game. That's not a great game, in my opinion; and it's by far a distant second in success to the behemoth that is WoW, a game that Syncaine deplores, if I am not mistaken. And when we take into account that the average EVE player allegedly has upwards of 2.5 accounts, Syncaine's 500,000 accounts translate into maybe 220,000 really enthusiastic players. So about the same number of subscribers as LOTRO from what I could gather; though they pay far more per player.

I love TSW, but I don't subscribe. I throw money at it every once in a while for either "fluff" costuming, or the DLC-style content updates. And I am happy with that. Does it struggle? Yes, but it is in a niche genre. However, I haven't encountered a better progression system (imho) or better content (imho) in any other game. Syncaine, naturally, probably thinks it sucks. But I defy you to find any way that TSW drives players into the cash shop from within the game. The shop certainly is available through an in-game interface, but I don't really think that's what we're talking about when we say a game is "purposely designed to make me use their cash shops," as Xyloxan put it. Maybe LOTRO does, I don't know.

I am past the point in my life that I want to be tied to any particular MMO because I am subscribed to it. You can argue about my level of commitment, I suppose. But there are more important things in my life I have committed myself to than a game. Therefore, F2P is perfect for me, right now. If I don't like a particular F2P system—*cough*SWTOR*cough*—I don't play. I don't play LOTRO either. But the reasons have nothing to do with the business model.

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What is Lore?

Lore
1. the body of knowledge, especially of a traditional, anecdotal, or popular nature, on a particular subject: the lore of herbs.
2. learning, knowledge, or erudition.

The word "Lore" is related etymologically to "Learn."

Harbinger Zero is wondering if players can create Lore. I gave him some link love on Twitter and got a couple fairly quick responses from the players behind TSW's Hikari Kenzaki and Frank Calhoun, saying that the RPers from TSW have created lore right on Twitter, and some of it has ended up in the game. I can't remember if HZero plays TSW or not, but since he didn't think Kenzaki and Calhoun's Lore affects his gaming experience, then he does not consider it Lore at all.

Now, I realize that HZero is working from a premise put forth by some EVE players in a recent discussion about that game; Lore is only Lore if it affects gameplay. But he himself expresses reservations with that premise. "I had severe cognitive dissonance when official company lore was only said to be effective when it impacts 'in game realities.'" Perhaps Lore is less important in a sandbox-type game like EVE.

Here's the thing about Lore, though. Its effects can be both subtle and far reaching, from the type of creatures you may encounter, to the architecture of the cities and other locations you visit. Do you have to be aware of the "history" of Meridian in Rift, for example, to be affected by it?

(I bring this up as a side note: In the recent Battle Bards episode on City Themes, Syp, Syl, and Steff discussed the layout of Meridian and how they didn't like it or understand its reasoning. Perhaps it would help to know that it is an occupied city; built by the Abyssal Cult as a center of worship, then turned over to Orphiel Farwind and the Defiants by the Faceless Man in a betrayal of Akylios the water dragon.)

You don't have to know any of that to be affected by it. Meridian doesn't really seem like a city because it isn't. As HZero pointed out, just about every game out there has some sort of Lore that affects design choices. This includes EVE. How much does this impact the player, though? If I am a Guardian in Rift, and never set foot in Meridian, how does its history affect my game reality? Does that make it "non-Lore" to me?

Prominent players in the Blizzard Community have ended up inspiring NPCs in World of Warcraft. Breanni runs a site devoted to companion pets and later became the proprietor of the Dalaran Pet Store. The cofounder of Wowhead has an in-game character honoring him. The Redshirt Guy who played Stump-the-Chump with Chris Metzen and Alex Afrasiabi of Blizzard even has a character in game. Granted, these characters are shout-outs by the devs, but just as player Lore is founded on dev Lore, the opposite can sometimes occur.

What about TSW's Twitter experiment? I'd hazard a guess that much of the interaction among RP player characters—and between the PCs and NPCs through their Twitter accounts—is not seen by the vast majority of TSW players. I follow all the NPCs and a good 75 PCs though my own RP account, and I am sure that I don't follow half the RPers. And of those that I do, for various reason I don't see the majority of their interactions. Does the "Lore" they create impact me? Does it affect the in-game reality? It does have that potential, in two ways.

1) Occasionally stuff put together by players ends up in the game, like the completed monster book in the Tree House in Savage Coast, as pointed out by Hikari Kenzaki. Players can go in game and see the book itself with artwork created by other players. Funcom also occasionally holds contests for things like original music that end up in the game, like "Sleepless Lullaby" by Bright September and featured in TSW Issue #7, "A Dream to Kill."

2) When I tweet in character, I am playing The Secret World. Whether or not I am not logged into the game client is irrelevant, if you think about it. I affect and am affected by other players, as well as the NPCs with accounts on Twitter, when I participate in those scenarios. Granted, TSW, being set in present day earth, lends itself to such interactions.

EVE does, too. The recent Battle at 6VDT received coverage from news outlets like BBC and CNN. I would say any in-game action that receives RW news coverage ought to qualify as Lore, especially in a game like EVE, where most of the stories you hear about are PvP betrayals and battles; as opposed to, say, World of Warcraft, where PvE Lore like the fall of the Lich King or Deathwing take center stage.

Your own personal lore may also affect your game experience, even if it doesn't change what you see or do moment to moment in the game. HZero mentions how the work of another player, Kodachi, enriches his own experience.

In the end, while there may be theoretical value to HZero's original postulate; in practice, I think it is very hard to discern where some little bit of lore affects your game reality. Every player experiences a given game differently, which is partly there are so many different games out there with loyal followings. Much like the real world, we may never end up in the history books of a game as individuals, but I think we create and influence the Lore with every action, nonetheless.