Xoduz

About the Laws of Online World Design – Part IV

This is the fourth installment in a series of posts I’ll be making about Raph Koster‘s The Laws of Online World Design, as explained in this introductory post. I will start at the top of the list, and work my way down until I’ve poked and prodded every law in the list, not skipping any unless I really feel like it, or unless I should happen to be distracted by a pretty butterfly or something. Which is exactly what happened after I wrote Part III of this series in July 2009!

In this long awaited (right?) Part IV of the series, I’ll concentrate on the following law:

Macroing, botting, and automation

Continue reading “About the Laws of Online World Design – Part IV”

Ownership is Key

A study (published yesterday) from the University at Buffalo School of Management, which followed 173 players who were part of a large MMORPG community to figure out strategies in which to increase player loyalty/retention, concluded with what everyone who has actively played Ultima Online and/or Star Wars Galaxies (and/or MUDs) have known for (a) decade(s) or longer:

“It [the study] examined whether two different game-playing strategies were successful in producing loyal players.
One strategy found that giving players more control and ownership of their character increased loyalty. The second strategy showed that gamers who played cooperatively and worked with other gamers in “guilds” built loyalty and social identity.

“To build a player’s feeling of ownership towards its character, game makers should provide equal opportunities for any character to win a battle,” says Sanders. “They should also build more selective or elaborate chat rooms and guild features to help players socialize.”

It doesn’t take a brain-surgeon to figure out that this isn’t rocket-science:

Ownership is, has been and will continue to be a key ingredient to player retention.

Sources: The Escapist, University at Buffalo

Summit ends, leaves me with plenty to digest

MIGS logo Well, MIGS is over for this year. It was the first game-development conference I have attended, and for the most part I enjoyed it greatly. Interesting stuff being exhibited at booths/demo-stations, both from small-time indie-developers promoting their games (like for instance gamesbymo’s A.N.N.E. – one to watch!) and from big-time guys like Wacom, Autodesk, Granny, Epic and more showing off both hardware and software related to game-development. There were also other miscellaneous stuff going on, like a “sketch duel” competition, job fair for those looking for new (or their first – lots of students there too) gigs, and more.

Unfortunately I missed a good part of Tim Sweeney’s opening keynote since Google maps directed me to the wrong metro-station (NOT the one right next to the Hilton Montreal Bonaventure, where the event in question was being hosted), but hopefully I’ll be able to scrounge up a summary of it from somewhere. The other conference-sessions I attended were of mixed quality (name/link-dropping to follow).
Continue reading “Summit ends, leaves me with plenty to digest”