Kill Ten Rats

We are home from a two-week vacation. Fortunately, we came back with enough time to relax before going back to work, because vacation is something that demands recovery time.

A fair amount of folks’ talking past one another is because of the differing goals that they bring to the table. Some people are at a restaurant for the dining experience rather than the food. Some people are playing the same game as you but not for the purpose of having fun. If you’re an anti-social teetotaler who just happens to like sitting on stools at bars, you are going to be a very lonely voice in a discussion about what makes a good tavern.

The title suggests the big distinction I am thinking about. After work, some people like to chill while others want to do something. I don’t know how much of this is a factor of personality or type of work, although the two are hardly independent, and of course it can vary by the day. Some people are not going to have a good time going out to “have a good time.” Even within narrower frames, some people tend towards more challenging entertainments, say marathons instead of going for a walk or George Martin versus JK Rowling. Baseball is America’s favorite pastime — it is mostly downtime, punctuated by brief potential activity, less occasionally by actual action.

I do not have far to run with this idea today. I am just reflecting on how this covers many differing reactions. I am very insistent that a game be a good game, repeatedly arguing that if I just want something to do while hanging out with my friends, we have lots of options that do not involve monthly fees, level barriers, and a dedicated server with maintenance windows. Other people, eh, they’re not here for the game; if they have fun, bonus, but they’re just looking for something to mess around with after work.

: Zubon

The most bittersweet of days for Guild Wars 2 is today. It is by far more sweet than bitter, but now the world is indeed moving on. In two months, possibly my most anticipated MMO ever will be real. In one summer morning, with a few characters of information, the community is shaken from a state of speculation to mobilization. I was expecting late September to November, honestly. So this is as much a surprise to me as anybody.

I am at a loss for words. I’ll just keep watching this video instead.

–Ravious

Longtime reader and commentator, Curuniel, emailed me and asked if I knew the origin of the sandbox / theme park distinction? I admit I really did not so I decided to crowdsource the question.  Google is not much help because it wants to show the more recent hits.On KillTenRats, the first instance of the term “sandbox” is in 2005 where Zubon praised EVE Online and A Tale in the Desert for being such MMOs. “Theme park” occurs in 2007 and 2008, again by Zubon.

Syncaine has a post from early 2008, but he uses the terms like ordinary vernacular. Looking at Syp’s MMO timeline, I would imagine that the actual distinction happened a bit later than Syncaine’s theory of Everquest. World of Warcraft, I feel, was really the MMO that streamlined quests in to “rides” instead of mere activities. It was so fresh at the time, the backlash of it becoming a theme park I feel came about much alter. Perhaps only later when around Blizzard’s first World of Warcraft expansion in early 2007  people began to see more of the same and a swath of alleged copycat MMOs came around. But, really this is all guesswork on my end.

Anyway, I’d love to hear people’s opinions or any better search attempts to find the origin of the distinction.

–Ravious

Eric of Elder Game discusses more game development on his MMO in progress. This time: why the undead are evil, not “misunderstood.” It’s a lovely, short treatment of the question in world-building:

Early in Diablo 3, you meet a Necromancer. And your character basically says something like, “Hmm, you don’t see many of those around town!” This is the saddest reaction to necromancy ever. Necromancy should be evil. …
Most zombie flicks don’t suggest that it’s Grandpa inside that rotting corpse: it’s just a meat puppet. So if you can get over the shock of seeing Grandpa’s rotting body, reusing his corpse isn’t so evil. It’s almost a noble act: you’re up-cycling useless flesh into something productive! …
[Shifting to talking about his differing design:] Necromancy mostly uses hate-filled undead, but there are other kinds, mostly occurring naturally. Ghosts, wraiths, banshees, and so on are fueled by unpleasant emotions like depression, greed, agony, and jealousy. They’re all sentient, and all of them are feared…
The Combat Psychology skill now has direct tie-ins to undeath. If you make a skeleton feel less hatred, you’ll literally make him weaker. Psychoanalysis can kill the undead!…
Maybe depression in this world is now a serious public safety issue. Most suicides are committed by extremely depressed people, and if they come back as ghosts, haunting their loved ones, they can spread more depression like an infectious disease. What would society do? …

Worth reading.
: Zubon

There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.
— Frederic Bastiat, What Is Seen And What Is Not Seen”

Spinks points us towards Battlechicken‘s battle with customer service: false positives on cheat detection and then a series of form letters rather than anyone responding to what she actually said. A week of fighting, blogging, and cancellation eventually led her to a human being.

I wonder how many players would have just quietly dropped the game, upset, on receiving the first email and not tried to fight back and argue their case. I wonder how many would have kept trying after the second and third form email.
–Spinks

This is a virtue of the vocal minority, the bloggers and the forum-dwellers: you (the developer) get feedback on why people are leaving your game to which your system might blind you. It took heroic efforts to find someone willing to entertain the hypothesis that the cheat-detection system was driving away customers. For the customer service rep responding to banned potential-cheaters, I can promise you that watching for that problem is very low on their rewarded activities, if they would be allowed to provide useful feedback on the question at all (if anyone with decision-making power was aware that the question might exist). These are the unknown unknowns, the blind spots where your organization is incapable of looking without violating the normal structure.

: Zubon