Elements

Last week, I was at the Austin Game Conference. There are a lot of reports from AGC, so I won’t try to duplicate their content here. I did want to mention two things I noticed while there.

First, WoW was the invisible elephant in the room. Everyone seemed to agree not to talk too much about this millions-subscriber MMO with no real representation at AGC. In every talk, every panel, it felt like WoW’s existence was a constant undercurrent. When examples were needed, WoW supplied the examples. When those examples were given, it seemed that everyone understood them. When you talked to people, inevitably the conversation would turn to WoW. “Do you play WoW? What level is your character? Do you play on a PvP server? I quit playing WoW. I’ve started playing WoW again. Everyone at the office plays WoW.”

This game has a mind-lock on our industry, and Blizzard doesn’t seem to care.

Second, the recurring theme of the conference was, from the perspective of a first-time conference attendee, “MMOs are failing their audiences.” Or, more bluntly, “MMOs still suck.” The rant session was the clearest example of this (and I am sad that no-one transcribed my rant about writing), but Dr. Bartle’s keynote was full of this sense of stagnation and failure. The NPC panel was all about the ways in which NPCs in MMOs are terrible. Ubiq’s Vegas talk was informed by the failures of the existing crop of MMOs.

And yet… outside of the panels and talks, the doom and gloom vanished. It felt like… watching a plea for charitable donations on television, and everyone nods solemnly: “That’s terrible.” Then we return to our regularly scheduled program, and the sense of guilt and obligation evaporates. At AGC, it was driven away by (as others have mentioned) Real Money Transactions. “I’m excited about RMTs. RMTs are the future of the industry. RMTs are going to revolutionize MMOs. RMTs are going to destroy MMOs. RMTs are a huge legal sinkhole waiting to swallow us up. Our game will have RMTs. Our game will never have RMTs.”

It feels like there’s a deep divide between the practical exigencies of the business of MMOs, and the theoretical design dreams of the creative side of MMOs. And I don’t mean that in a trite “suits vs. hackers” way. This divide existed simultaneously in the same person in many of the people I talked to. I’m as guilty of it as anyone: I don’t want to re-make WoW (’but with pirates!’), and yet it’s the example I always turn to, the context for my designs. I want to create, go in new directions, innovate — but I want a shit-ton of money, too.

I believe these conflicting desires can be reconciled. I think part of that process begins with identifying design decisions made because they’re right — and let’s not kid ourselves, WoW is chock full of very, very good design decisions — and identifying decisions made because of fear. Fear of being different, fear of scaring users, fear of reviewers, fear of publishers.

If it’s a good design, those fears are unfounded. I hope.