Business Models as Game Design: Part I
I’m going to reveal something here, today, right now. I will reveal a long held secret of the game industry that They don’t want you to know. Are you ready? Here it is.
MMORPGs extend the lifetime of their gameplay by forcing the player to slog through repetitive grinds, known to some in the industry as “time sinks.”
Oh, wait, you knew that already? Well. I guess I won’t be writing an essay about it then. Let’s just talk about time sinks in game design then. I for one would like to know whether game design will ever evolve out of it – or more importantly, whether or not it even can.
I don’t think the idea of retaining a player base in order to collect subscription fees was behind the design of early MMORPGs like Ultima Online and EverQuest. I think the purpose of those games was simply to create persistent worlds in a multiplayer space. Nowadays, however, I am confident MMORPG game design documents read very much like startup business proposals.
Final Fantasy XI is a great example of the time-sink-as-game-design business model. Players were required, from about level 15 onwards, to get together with exactly five other people and kill monsters in easily-accessible locations. This translated to killing crabs and beetles for at least two hours every play session for weeks on . Fighting more interesting monsters was too challenging for six-person groups and was thus inefficient; spending anything less than a few hours killing crabs, on the other hand, would essentially waste a good opportunity to get experience. Leveling groups were a complete pain to form, and they were a complete bore to play.
But it kept players out of the end game for many, many hours, and in the long run, that meant players would have to subscribe for longer in order to experience all of the content. The problem was, of course, that all of the compelling content was back loaded into the last few levels of the game, and players often burned out long before they got there.
When World of Warcraft stormed the MMORPG world and promised quick, easy, solo-able leveling with rewarding content starting at level 10 (by which I mean dungeons, and lots of them), the era of MMORPGs like FFXI ended forever.
World of Warcraft was a revolution, and love it or hate it, and I think it was the separation of the group-oriented grinds into solo-oriented grinding and group-oriented content that did it for them. Blizzard kept the “level up to see content” game model, for sure, but by allowing players to reach max level without seeing a single person (if they wanted to), they essentially removed the grind from the leveling process.
Of course, it was still a grind, especially on your 10th WoW character, but the first time through gave you unique quests with unique sets of monsters to kill – most of which were doable by yourself.
But World of Warcraft still suffers from the same game design flaw that every MMORPG, to my knowledge, suffers from. That is to say, it locks away nearly all of the compelling content behind an artificial “max level” barrier. And it is artificial, because the learning curve for PvE content does not really begin until you enter a Heroic instance, and you can’t even do that until you’ve been max level for awhile and grinded out decent equipment for your character.
This is why I say that MMORPGs are still wielding business models as game design. They keep you away from their content for several months while still taking your subscription fee, and when you finally settle down to play through the “real” game, you’ve already given them anywhere from $30-$100, plus the cost of the installation DVD (usually $60).
Imagine if you had to kill faceless soldiers in Metal Gear Solid 4 for at least 30 hours before being let into the campaign mode. Now imagine that while you are playing through those 30 hours of content-dry gameplay, you are paying Konami $10/month. If Kojima could get away with that, do you think he’d design it that way? I can name at least ten MMORPG design leaders who would.
This is even more disturbing when you realize that most end game content does not even exist until 4-8 months after the game launches. World of Warcraft shipped with one raid dungeon and one raid encounter, and although its expansion shipped with substantially more (three raid dungeons, plus heroics), it took about 5 months for more content to come out.
And WoW is one of the better ones. To my knowledge, Age of Conan does not have any end game content in it right now. In other words, those months of subscription fees during which you are leveling are also masking the fact that the game does not even have end game content yet.
It is not that leveling up is a new mechanic for RPGs, but MMORPGs are different from their single-player brethren in that you do not experience character development (beyond dropping in-game cash for new spells) or storyline progression as you level. When you reach the end game of Final Fantasy VII, the world and its heroes are very different from when you first started.
And by their nature, MMORPGs cannot change. You cannot wipe out a monster infestation and turn the area into a friendly town – and if you do, it’s likely to reset in a few hours so another player can do the same thing, ad infinitum. If MMORPGs were not this way, players would log in a few weeks after game launch to find the entire world devoid of monsters due to the persistent efforts of the no-lifers who will have played through everything already.
Should players just settle for a long level-up grind before reaching content? On Friday, I’ll talk more about why they should not, and my proposal may, ahem, unsettle you.
furrp said,
June 18, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Very intriguing. However, your perspective on the level “grind” is not shared by all. In fact, some people prefer the grind to the end-game content. “It’s the journey, not the destination,” one might say. More accurately, I would say.
It is true that in most MMORPGs the leveling process can become a bore when there is little to no social interaction between people joined for a common cause. However, get the right group of people together (friends, I would suggest) and that “grind” becomes a fellowship, morphing into an enjoyable experience. It’s no longer a grind, rather simply time spent with friends.
Take, for example, the dreaded party wipe. In a group of strangers, everyone usually gets hacked off at someone else for “being a n00b” or the like, and often ends in someone leaving in a huff. Conversely, when you’re with a group you’ve developed friendships with, the party wipe is nothing more than a time to look back on and laugh.
Slightly shifting gears, I’d like to examine your definition of “time sink”. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I get the impression that you are moreless equating time sinks with the level grind, used solely for the purpose of delaying one’s progress to the maximum level, and likewise end-game content, which you’ve conveniently labeled the “real game”.
From my perspective, the “real game” is what happens before reaching max level. I’m speaking solely from the perspective of the one who values the journey over the destination. As I see it, in WoW and FFXI alike, once you reach the max level, all that is left is an infinite cycle of end-game content designed for the sole purpose of making your character more “uber”, whether that be through attaining purples in WoW, or capping merits in FFXI. From this perspective, the real time sink happens after reaching the max level.
This is one area where FFXI shines and WoW fails. FFXI is a very story-based MMORPG, and the developers have done a fairly good job of making sure that there is ample supply of story wherever you are on the road to end-game. Of course, that is minus the initial levels when you can’t really do much of anything. The Chains of Promathia expansion pack is a good example of this. The story packed in there gives content from lv 30 on up, raising level caps every couple chapters. One could easily experience an enjoyable story while leveling. Nation missions are also placed such that one could experience story even in the early levels.
I’m not discounting the fact that most of this mid-game content is moreless unattainable solo. Your solo statements still stand unargued. WoW does shine in the solo content department. This is, primarily, due to it’s end-game focus. WoW is, at it’s core, simply a progressive quest for better gear, even from lv 1. There is little in the realm of story, making the journey to max level feel more like a mercenary’s life, just helping out the townspeople with their everyday problems. In fact, to those who know nothing of WoW lore, most of the quests make little sense.
For these reasons I submit that one cannot fairly compare FFXI and WoW. Nor can one compare any other MMORPG to either of these (except for the fact that LOTRO is basically a WoW clone). Due to the vast differences in game focus, FFXI and WoW are completely different beasts, and should thus be treated accordingly.
I may have gotten a little off topic, but hey, it makes for some good conversation. Tag, you’re it!
mikebbetts said,
June 18, 2008 at 4:03 pm
It’s hard for me to envision how FFXI was anything other than a grind. True, there were (completely optional) story elements starting at level 30, but when it was time to level up, you resorted to killing boring monsters for endless hours. At least that’s how it was when I played it, and if they changed that aspect of the game, then I have to point to WoW as the inspiration for that change. When I played FFXI, leveling up took place completely separate from anything interesting in the game, and all of the interesting content was locked away behind higher levels.
And it is true that killing crabs with a group of friends makes it more enjoyable, but the very nature of the game and its sensitivity to the level process means that playing with a group of friends is actually very difficult. Our own WoW static group can only meet for 2-3 hours once a week, and the majority of the time, we are not all there. Imagine if my entire WoW time was limited to those 2-3 hours. Sure, it’d be fun, but I can play any number of other games for 2-3 hours a week with a small group of friends for a one time cost of $59.99. MMORPGs promise more, and I’m wondering how well they actually deliver.
I certainly understand your point of view. I did not raid at all up until February. Once I did, however, I stumbled upon something very fascinating to me: immensely compelling group gameplay (you make friends very fast in Karazhan, believe me) with its own, separate, end game progression based on developing skill sets (and to a lesser extent, gear) among the players.
More on that later.
furrp said,
June 19, 2008 at 9:27 am
Well, no, they haven’t totally changed the leveling system, and you’re right, it is pretty much separate from other content, but they have made steps toward making it less of a grind, and even made it feasible for parties of 2-5 people to make ok exp. Here’s a few of the changes they’ve made since you left.
– Signet gives exp bonus for smaller groups.
– Treasures of Aht Urghan expansion areas give some pretty darn insane exp at times, especially with the sanction (a signet-like mechanism) exp boost.
– Rings have been added that give exp boosts.
– Corsair has a job ability that boosts exp gain.
That’s all I can think of off the top of my head.
As you said, the story content of FFXI is completely optional, but it’s also the primary focus of the game. Without the story content, FFXI would be worthless. If I were the kind of player that thrives on end-game content, I don’t think I would have ever made it to end-game in FFXI. I definitely would have burned out long before.
What really kept me going was when I got my static back in ‘04. We’ve met almost every Friday since then, and lately expanded to Wednesdays too. It’s not really difficult to stick it out with a group of friends. I’ve done it for 4 years. I also have a draenei static in WoW that’s been running for a good while now. I hope our WoW group turns out to be just as good.
I’ve spent time doing end-game stuff, too. I spent more than a year losing exp in Dynamis. In the end, even though I gathered lots of gear, it really wasn’t worth the time invested. By far, I enjoyed the weekly static meets more. I haven’t tried out raiding in WoW yet, and I do mean to, but I fear it’ll be just another experience like Dynamis, and I really don’t have the time to devote to being a full-time raid member.