Nefchast makes note of the way that EVE allows for players to make progress even while not actively “playing” over here:
…and it reminded me of a post over at the Armor Games blog that asked if players liked “minimal interaction” games. (They are notable for Gemcraft, a great Flash Tower Defense game that has a nice AFK flavor to it if you want it to.)
As an old-school Incredible Machine guy, with a deep love of strategy and planning, with a fairly constrained schedule and kids that may need attention at a moment’s notice, I really like games that fall into the “fire and forget” category. Similarly, I love tactical turn-based games. Yes, I’m a Chess geek, too, though I can’t get my family to play with me any more. There’s just something terribly satisfying seeing a plan come to fruition, especially if it’s because foresight leveraged and magnified precise effort.
Does that mean I’d make a good criminal mastermind, manipulating events from the shadows, never getting my hands dirty? Would such make for satisfying game design? Hmm… forget Grand Theft Auto, I want to play Grand Theft Government. Then again, the bankers beat me to it.
Maybe my penchant for AFK gaming just makes me lazy, but I tend to think it just means I’m exercising a different part of my body. Games that require planning and foresight make my brain happy, even as they don’t require much in the way of physical skill. As I’m a pretty cerebral sort to start with, such a clear preference shouldn’t be a huge surprise.
It should be noted that I do like games that require full attention, too, just at different times. Variety and options, that’s what I keep calling for.
As for MMOs, I’ve noted before that I spend an inordinate amount of time planning things and actually studying the game; far more than I actually play them, as it happens. It’s partly the dev mindset, partly just the sort of gamer I am.
Still… if you could automate the mind-numbing grind in these DIKU MMOs, and do so without shady black market captive labor, would you? Would it be better to just get rid of the grind? Also, how does AFK gaming coincide with the whole “we’ve gotta make these players play with other people because this is an MMO, dangit” mentality? (Note: I don’t like that mentality, siding firmly with Saylah, but still…)
…could you level up by chatting? Now there’s an incentive to socialize.
Thomas Disch’s short story “The Man Who Had No Idea” was about a society where you couldn’t engage in idle chit-chat without having a license proving you’d convinced at least ten people that you actually were worth listening to.
I’d want something like that before letting achievers loose to babble endlessly for xp
Or at least a better set of /mute filters…
Thanks for the short story mention! Now I’ve got something else to read when I can make time.
There’s an upcoming game called Gratuitous Space Battles which promises to do this for space combat: Design a fleet of ships and then let the AI pilot each individual ship. However, it’s success entirely depends on the AI. Unlike in RTS games you cannot micromanage if the AI does something stupid like getting lost or allowing itself to be kited and/or whittled to death.
That’s a fine and useful distinction. Games like Protector (a tower defense game) can be played in “fire and forget” mode since you control when the waves come, but you can also make micromanagement decisions midwave. The Incredible Machine was *just* fire and forget, but Crayon Physics can be altered on the fly. I think both are fun, but yes, even among “minimal interaction” games there are different functions.
Thanks for the link, Hirvox!
Arrgh, get your achievements away from my socialising. It doesn’t work. People would macro it, set up cliques to maximise their social xp, and game the hell out of the thing. If I want to chat, I want to find people who want to chat, not people who are just doing it for the xp.
Every experiment I’ve seen in trying to give xp in computer games for roleplaying didn’t really work. Because people gamed it. You need an honest to goodness live GM to make that work.
It’s bad enough with social networking treating your number of friends/followers as if it was a score. I don’t say no game will ever try it, I’m just saying that they shouldn’t
Spinks, that wasn’t a real suggestion. Yes, it would be trouble.
If anything, it’s my way of saying “get your forced socializing out of my gaming”.
Don’t incentivize it, don’t make it an achievement, don’t try to force people to be social. Give them good tools in a good game and step away to let players play.
I do think it’d be amusing to present raiding as if it was soccer manager. Let people set up their teams, transfer players, try to recruit the right number of tanks, heals, etc and then get a report every week on how the raids went.
That *would* be an interesting spin on things. Now I’m wondering why someone hasn’t tried that yet…